Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk by James Lovegrove Page B

together and returned to the window. Through the rain-spattered panes I saw the Egyptian sprawled by the poolside, supine, and Masayuki on top of him, prostrate, having been propelled off the roof. Masayuki’s hair was singed and smouldering and there were various scorch marks on his skin. Both men appeared stone dead, but as I watched, they stirred. The Egyptian tried to push Masayuki off him and get to his feet. Masayuki attempted to rise as well, but his efforts were as in vain as the other man’s. Their muscles seemed numbed and not working properly. They couldn’t disentangle themselves from each other, and in the end they sagged like exhausted lovers and let the rain pound down on their bodies.
    Storm gods’ avatars, struck down by a bolt of lightning , said Anansi. If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is .
    “Or just irony,” I observed. “A cosmic joke.”
    Either way, they’re out. Which, if I’m right, leaves only us, Coyote and Loki .
    “Hopefully, Coyote’s eliminated Loki by now, or vice versa.”
    “You could say that’s happened,” said a voice behind me, in a rough, worn-out croak. “Kind of.”
    I whirled round.
    It was Bill Gad. A glimmer of lightning showed me his weatherbeaten face, his double-plaited hair, his coyote-head tie clasp.
    Showed me something else as well.
    A knife in his hand.
    Blade glistening wetly.
    Dripping thick dark droplets onto the floor.
     
     
    F OR A MOMENT I was dumbstruck. A hundred thoughts rushed through my brain, a hundred different scenarios.
    Blood.
    He had killed.
    He was about to kill.
    It was a trick. Fake blood.
    It was not a trick. Real blood.
    Gad’s eyes shone in the next crackle of lightning. They were sombre, grave even. They were also, I realised, frightened.
    I knew that look. I’d seen eyes like those a dozen times before. They were the eyes of someone guilty, someone who has done something they wish with all their heart can be revoked, but can’t.
    “Gad,” I said. “What is this? What’s going on?”
    “I didn’t mean to.”
    “Didn’t mean to what?”
    “You gotta help me, Dion. It went too far. I overreacted.”
    “Gad, what the fuck have you done?” I am not normally one who swears, but these were not normal circumstances.
    “She... He... I have to show you. It’s the only way.”
    “Give me the knife first.”
    “Knife?” He sounded genuinely confused, as if he had forgotten about it.
    “The one you’re holding. I’m not going anywhere with you unless you give it to me right now.” I have no idea where the commanding tone in my voice sprang from. I had never been so scared in my life. I just knew somehow that in order to lessen the danger to myself I should be authoritative, take charge.
    “Oh. Yeah.” His dim silhouette moved. The knife came up, point towards me. Gingerly I took it by the handle, plucking it from his limp grip. It was an inch-wide hunting knife, a heavy thing, the wooden handle inlaid with some kind of precious stone, turquoise I thought. The blood on its steel blade gleamed blackly.
    “This way,” said Gad, and I followed him to his room.
     
     
    A NANSI HAD NOTHING to say as I surveyed the scene in Gad’s room, and the spider god’s muteness was eloquence itself.
    My eyes adapted to the gloom slowly, so that it took me a while to assess every feature of what I was looking at – a horribly long while.
    There on the floor was the Navajo rug which was the Friendly Inn’s idea of a decorative finishing touch – a bit of threadbare local colour – and there on the rug was the body of Solveig, Loki’s avatar. It may seem heartless to say so, but she looked thoroughly disgruntled to have found herself in such a situation. Her eyes were half-closed and turned to the side, as if she were rolling them, and her mouth hung slack in a position indistinguishable from a pout.
    She was irrefutably, irrevocably deceased. It would have been obvious even if there hadn’t been the prima facie