The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, page 15
I don’t, but then I do. The forest spills away into wine-gold ocean, clouds bruised purple and blood where they lap at the horizon, and there are rock formations in the waters, along the petroleum-smooth shore, like giants, like titans, like gods waiting in the blooming dusk. I have my hands pressed against the glass before I know what I’m doing, staring. The Oregon coast is a colder vista than what I’m used to, lonely as the forever highways of America, and I can smell green in the air that frosts in my lungs.
“Archetypes,” I say. “They’re all archetypes. Interchangeable.”
“Set dressing. Conflicts for the hero. Protagonists,” Coyote resumes, chortling through his lecture. “Every component of the story is still just that: variables plugged into the latest, greatest performance. We are all here in service of the narrative.”
“You mean we’re just puppets, then?” Cason’s voice tenses with warning. It’s like watching a golden retriever go on the offensive, which is funnier in theory than in practice: when teeth sink into your neck, it doesn’t matter if they belong to a wolf or a house pet.
Tanis and Fitz keep sleeping, exhausted, snoring in tandem.
“No, no. If I wanted to say you were puppets, I’d have said you were puppets.”
The flash of teeth in Amanda’s rear-view mirror, and for a second I see Coyote as he is: a collage of bodies and brushstrokes, pebbling the pane of a woman’s smooth brown shoulder, frescoed over canvas, reinterpreted by artists and hipsters and soccer moms starved for substance.
“I’m saying we are all interchangeable parts of a story.”
“Still not seeing your point.” Cason puts down his phone, both hands palsied into fists on his lap.
Coyote laughs. It is a sound that fills the world, has always filled the world, billowed through the empty rooms of creation, engorged them with light. It’s a laugh with an appetite for fuckery, for rejiggering fate’s compass to always point towards worst-possible-outcome.
“The father gods are as old as the notion of heroes. You cannot write a story without them. But every story has its actors, and every actor can be instructed to do something else.” He cocks his head, all coyote now, so little Coyote, save for the worryingly simian curve of a smile that shouldn’t fit his face. “You get what I’m saying yet?”
Cason slams upright, ramming his skull into the ceiling, waking Fitz and Tanis in the process. “For fuck’s sake! Will it kill you to just be straight with us?”
“What the fuck—?” Tanis bolts upright and sideways, away from the Chronicler and into me, causing my head to ricochet against the window, before she sinks her face into cupped hands. “This is fucking purgatory. I have sinned and this is my punishment.”
I grind the heel of a palm into my temple, wincing. “At least you slept through some of it.”
“Koulev—”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
“What would Maman say about all this? Sex with her is a holy privilege. There are people out there who would cut you for your disrespect—”
“What are we even talking about?” Fitz yawns, his halitosis physical: a miasma redolent of beef and starch and strangely, the lemonade we’d inhaled six hours ago. Marie wouldn’t let us leave until we were glutted on breakfast. She gave me her number then, a note with it: for when you come back. I don’t know if it was swagger, faith in her fine self, prescience or hope, but I have it in a front pocket, folded like a prayer.
Fitz one-twos me out of my reverie with a coughing fit. “Jesus, open a fucking window. Smells like Christmas died in here.”
“Every fucking window in the car is open,” I bark back. “Although I don’t know why it matters, we’re still on the road to annihilation.”
“We’re talking about the koulev’s sins and how she was tempted by a loa’s tit,” Coyote purrs. “I bet she hasn’t told her sweet Naree yet. You’re going to take that little secret to Hell with you, aren’t you?”
“Why is this even a topic of discussion? I—” Tanis flicks her tongue over her teeth, chest fluttering with shallow breaths. “I don’t understand. This has nothing to do with the mission.”
“How are your friends going to trust you if they don’t know how deeply you’ve fucked up? All they see is the mythical beast who ate the heart of a prophet. A good mother. A good wife.”
“I know you ignored me the first time I asked you questions about this. But seriously, you actually ate someone’s heart? Tell me you at least cooked it. With sauce. Heart is drastically overrated as meat, and—”
Fitz reaches around Tanis and with great deliberation, if minimal effect, punches me in the shoulder.
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Shutting up.”
“Look, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’re trying to motivate us by pitting us against a common enemy—”
“Please. Oh, god. Come on. Not now, Cason.”
“—but I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it. For one, we’ve already got something we’re allied against: the end of the world. More importantly, I don’t think there’s a single person in this van who can say they haven’t messed up in some way. Especially you, Coyote. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
That edge again. Like a claw moving under a sleeve of silk. Looking over at Cason, his face dusk-lit by the dimming sun, I revise my opinion again. He isn’t soft. He has softened, sure. But that cushion is scaffolded by history, years spent being muscle, and okay, maybe I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of someone who cut me out of a crocodile god with a hand-saw.
“There he is. Imissed you, Case.” Coyote laughs again, the sound sinuous. “I thought that version of you was buried with Frank.”
“He was. He still is. Why the fuck are you doing this, Coyote?”
“Because I can? Because it’s funny to see you squirm?” The shadow of something canine, long at the shoulders, longer at the twist-tie limbs, sits in place of Coyote: its eyes smoking, the hind legs bent at right angles that should have broken them, but as I watch, they cross, one over another. “Because it’s about tradition, and a man on death row always gets a last meal? Or maybe, because I get bored on road trips and it’s something to do. Oh, look. We’re here. Turn in that the next stop, darling. There we go.”
FIFTEEN
WE MAKE TWO stops.
First, Winchester Bay, which isn’t so much a town as a footnote: a thin band of buildings around the mouth of the bay, the docks like bad teeth, jutting into the water. What it lacks in human company, it makes up for in boats. He steers us to a stop next to a dollhouse of a pastel yellow motel, before ushering us to forage for canned food, tackle, fishing lures, camping supplies, sourdough bread, jerky in all flavours, the priciest cheeses we can.
“Why are we doing this?” Fitz hisses.
“I don’t know.” Amanda shrugs as she comes back inside, a hand on her bulging shoulder bag. “But I sure as hell hope this guy Vining isn’t in immediate need of six hundred dollars. Jesus, Coyote.”
He grins over a shelf stacked full of pet products, arms laden with cat food.
When we’re done in the store, Coyote leads us into a bigger settlement, a town called Reedsport. There’s more space than people, but inexplicably, it includes a sprawling skate park. We keep going, spurred on by his promises, the boot straining to contain the provisions, the lock double-knotted with rope. Yes, it’s that good. Yes, it’s here. Where else would it be? Didn’t you read that article about how they found the best burger somewhere remote? It isn’t about Cordon Bleu training, it’s about love.
“Love. Right down to the open vein of it. Everything’s about love,” he croons. “Or meat.”
Coyote makes Amanda pull up in front of a restaurant that, at some point, must have been styled as ‘Wild West’ before someone trimmed it of frills. The sign, though, keeps its hokey, rustic charm, declaring without embarrassment: Don’s Main Street Family Restaurant.
“Best French dip in creation,” Coyote assures us, slipping out of the car. “I’ve eaten with kings and I’ve drunk champagne from the belly buttons of their queens. But nowhere in time or reality is there a better French dip.”
“I won’t lie.” I glance at the sign on its side, another saloon-style thing: a burger with the words Main Street beneath the banner. Close by, a billboard advertising award-winning pies. It’s earnest in a way that makes my teeth click. “I’m not feeling much confidence.”
But we’re shepherded inside regardless. The moment we step through, the patrons—an old couple splitting a meringue pie, a coven of teenagers, some truckers, a family on vacation—fall quiet, staring.
Coyote slinks up to the waitress, already flirting her into submission, his Saint Laurents mysteriously vanished, replaced by corduroy and a fisherman’s vest, hiking boots with mismatched laces. Despite his forwardness, none of the scrutiny drifts to him. It’s just us.
“You know,” Fitz leans closer, “the weird thing is that they don’t look like they’re about to call the cops.”
Tanis strokes a thumb over her Beretta. “They don’t smell of anything supernatural either. It’s very odd.”
From behind us, a voice: “You remind me of my girlfriend, first time she came here. But it isn’t anything personal. You’re just very clearly out-of-towners, which is its own brand of weird in these parts. Just… stop standing around, looking like it’s the end of the world, and it’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, that’d be easy to fake,” Tanis mumbles.
I pivot on a heel. The man behind me is a sinewy redhead with an aw-shucks, small-town kind of smile, a baseball cap broadcasting allegiance to New York perched astride messy curls, and inexplicably, a hoodie with a Pokéball logo stitched above the heart. “Stop looking so nervous. Anxiety bleeds out.”
Advice dispensed, he pads into the restaurant, joining a round-faced Chinese woman in a leather jacket. I almost go over, but Coyote saunters back, his arm around the waitress’s waist. His glee is tangible. Finally, someone who respects his magic enough to humour its repercussions.
“We have a table,” he declares, grandiose, with all the fanfare of someone announcing a cure to cancer. “Babyface said she got us the best one in the house.”
She titters on cue.
They walk off. Fitz goes first, mumbling to himself. I can see now what the redhead meant. It is a tension in the shoulders, a stiffness of the hips, the walk, the way the body points itself towards all available exits, the stop-start of a gait meant to melt into a crowd of thousands. Chameleon tricks, down to the outfit: cargoes, trainers, hoodie, all in dollar-store colours.
I flick a glance at Tanis. Leather jacket, different strut, but same look. If Fitz hides by looking too ghetto to matter, Tanis achieves the same with the reverse. On her part, the lamia looks excruciatingly like trouble. The Remington probably doesn’t help.
Which leaves me.
I look down.
Tattooed Chinese man with a wardrobe of scars.
Not suspicious at all.
“Do we really have to stop for that stupid sandwich?” I hiss to Tanis.
She shrugs. “Apparently.”
“You said there was a dog on the black road.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Is it possible that it might be another kind of dog? What if we found a talking German shepherd somewhere? I’m sure that’d work. Maybe a retriever, they know how to fetch. They could fetch the father gods—”
“We have two choices.” Another loose-boned shrug. “Have a sandwich with Coyote, or listen to Amanda scream about how much she hates him. You pick.”
Then Fitz utters a long hitching croak, eyes wide, and begins clawing at his throat. He chokes out a few sounds that could be syllables before giving up, letting them thin into this reedy endless whine that keep climbing. Higher, higher until it reaches a summit only the castrati visit. Then it happens.
Fitz begins to bleed.
Ears, mouth, nose, eyes. Until the whites are rinded with red and his lashes, wet, stick to the sclera. His jaw cracks open, tongue unrolled. Blood keeps pouring. He mashes his hands into his hair, mute, fish-mouthing for air, and this is the point where Tanis kicks out of her chair, starts howling for medical assistance.
He slumps. I circle around to the other side of the table, wadding up napkins uselessly, hoping I can at least staunch the flow, keep Fitz from bleeding out before an ambulance gets here. The Chronicler is panting now, head buried in his arms, nails digging into his scalp until their beds flush red.
I touch a hand to his shoulder. “Fitz. Jesus, Fitz. It’ll be okay. Breathe, breathe, breathe. You don’t want to end up in shock. You’ve got to keep breathing. Calm down.”
What I don’t expect is his arm lashing out, fingers knotting in my shirt, wrenching me to his face, pulling me close enough to hear what he has been saying all this while, what I thought was the rasp of air. “Heishereheishereishereishere.”
His voice breaks off into a sob at the exact instant Amanda explodes through the door. “Get the fuck out of here—”
But it’s too late.
I forgot that Fitz is a receiver. I forgot that’s why he’s a strung-out ex-addict who had decanted decades into anything, anything that would give a break from the hallucinations. I forgot this is what happens when there’s too much electricity running through a machine: its fuse box pops, it liquefies, it fries.
“He’s here,” Fitz gasps into my shirt, the fabric turning sodden with wet heat.
Coyote sighs, and in his mouth, the name is an invocation and an epithet and a curse and a worship. “Marduk.”
The blue sky rots black with storm clouds, fog running in ink swirls through the crack in the windows, the open door.
A bell jingles, small and pert, vulgar in its delicacy.
Amanda—pupils in pinpoint, brown irises blown-out, only green left behind—staggers from the Vestibule, brought halfway down to a knee.
“You heard Amanda. We have to get Fitz out of here.” Tanis is already crowbarring Fitz into a position that will let her lift him: one shoulder under his armpit, one arm around his waist. “I don’t know what is going on, but”—she falters—“it can’t be good if someone’s bleeding out of every orifice.”
“I don’t know about every orifice—”
“Don’t.”
“There’s nowhere to go.” Coyote lights a cigarette with a flame at the end of his tongue, head tilted back impossibly, the inside of his mouth gilded with blue shadows until he gulps the light down with a puff of smoke. “Even if you got to the door, you’ll just end up inside again. The kings of kings, the gods of the gods, the all-stars; when they make an entrance, they expect you to watch.”
The hummadruz registers too late. In the initial panic, I’d ignored it, thinking it tinnitus, some fault of the ears. I’ve died so many times I no longer expect my cochlea to remember the factory settings. But now, I hear.
The patrons, every single one of them, sitting straight-backed in their booths, eyes clouded over, are whispering. Chanting. Their mouths move with near-synchronicity, rictusing into configurations that suggest whoever authored their choreography has no idea how the human mandible operates—or if they did, has no appreciation for the line between functionality and failure. Where the body can be coerced into action while enduring increasing values of pain.
I feel like a cliché, but the words come out. “What are they saying?”
“His names,” Fitz moans. “They are speaking his names.”
Coyote bobs his head, smoking his cigarette, a kiss deposited into the collarbone of the waitress. She looks—not dead, but something less than alive, shrivelled into a conduit. Chewed-up. Gods subsist on belief; that’s why they’re in contest over us. But as I stare at the girl, I have wonder if some of them take bigger bites than others.
“He’s a motherfucker,” Coyote says. “Even for one of his kind. Zeus, he killed his daddy, but in those days, that wasn’t anything. But Marduk, though. He ate Ea and Enlil and Eridu and Asaluhi, courted Saparnit with a wedding gift of their gristle. You’d think that was what made him a bastard, but no, it isn’t even that. The thing that makes Marduk a right motherfucker, even worse than that murdering Yahweh, is that he told history that it was consensual. That he was their evolution, was given their traits when Babylon became great. But the blood stains are still all over the table cloth.”
“Do you ever fucking shut up?” Tanis snaps.
And after all that build-up, all that set-work, the cinematography, every mouth in the room keyed to this climactic moment, Marduk’s entrance is a spare thing: just a brown hand brushing through reality, as though it were a flap of flayed skin to be waved aside.
Marduk steps into the world with a dancer’s grace and a newborn fawn’s care, one sandalled foot after another, anklets of gold flashing in the near-light. His clothes do not match: loinskirt, fringed shoulder-cape, a perfectly-pressed dress shirt, the kind that would have set an honest man back a month’s wages, cufflinks. But he could have been wearing burlap, for all it matters. It’s his eyes.
In his eyes are worlds, a ziggurat smoky with prayers and offerings of attar, priests and crowds in praise, every empire laying itself prostrate for him, throat bared and trembling for the heel of Babylon’s foot. What else is there to do, in the shadow of Marduk, he to whom the gods turned, he who pierced Tiamat’s belly, he who made the humans so that they may bear the burden of the divine, he who is supreme, he—?
“You know what, asshole? Fuck your mind tricks. I had enough of this bullshit with my goddamned mother.”
Tanis’ snarling repudiation of his power snaps it at its neck, breaks the spell enough that I surface, gasping. The lamia thrusts herself between the god and us, tossing Fitz into my arms with a careless motion that reminds me again how strong she is. I totter under the Chronicler’s weight, sag into the booth again, head pillowed on my chest. I wrap a protective hand around his skull, fingers sinking into a crusting of hair and blood, and try not to think about how much it reminds me of jello.
