American Monsters

  Apollo, the one with the large, bald head and the bulging eyes, was too busy inspecting whatever he’d gathered in his hands to look up.

  Aphrodite Gunderson sighed. “No discipline, that boy. Lack of a strong male role model in his life, that’s what I put it down to. Ares, he went after your friend and he took the youngest with him. Between you and me, Hermes was born weak. In the head, you know? Maybe Ares will see him straight, but I doubt it. I can see a drowning in that boy’s future.” She said it sadly, but not too sadly. Another Gunderson wandered into view, carrying a pitchfork. He disappeared into the trees.

  “That my eldest, Poseidon,” said Aphrodite. “Wields that pitchfork like a trident, yes he does.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Amber said.

  Aphrodite laughed. “You hurt us? You got so many arrows in you, you look like a damn porcupine!” This seemed to be the funniest thing in the world to Aphrodite, and she practically doubled up with laughter.

  Amber waited till she’d finished. “You attacked me,” she said. “You attacked my friend. You’re helping my parents. You’re a long way from home and you’ve already used up your three chances. Walk away now, while you still can.”

  Aphrodite peered at her. “You wouldn’t be … threatening me now, would you, Amber?”

  “Look at me, Aphrodite. I’m a demon, just like my parents. Except I’m stronger. I am the Shining Demon’s representative. You don’t want to piss me off.”

  Aphrodite smiled. Her teeth were yellow, and had gaps. “Demons don’t scare me,” she said. “Some old great-great-grandpappy of mine, he made himself a deal with the Devil. Don’t know which one, don’t care. Then he got himself a woman, and he liked being a demon so much that he wanted to pass it on to his kids. It was at this point we figure he got it into his head to keep the bloodline pure, if you know what I mean.”

  “So you’re as inbred as you look,” said Amber.

  Aphrodite’s smile became a grin. “Very likely. We got generation upon generation up in them hills – weird to look at, sure, but strong, healthy. We got demon blood in our veins. But, even we got to admit, the gene pool is running pretty shallow lately. So we been shifting our focus. We met your folks back in the 1970s, and we been friendly with them ever since. Know why?”

  “Because you’re all psychopaths?”

  Aphrodite chuckled. “I can see why you’d think that, but no. Reason we been friendly is because of the kids – like you. Your folks’ve used us in the past – we’ve lost some beloved members of our family to their whims. Take today, as a for instance. They called us here – a long way from home, like you said – and they told us to wait, on the understanding that if and when things went sour, we’d step in while they ran. They don’t care if we die. Fact is, I believe they reckoned you’d have us killed long before we got the chance to kill you. May even be counting on it. But you know why we still do it? You know why we still come? It ain’t cos we’re stupid. It’s the opposite. For years, we been trying to snatch one of you away, right from under your parents’ perfect noses, and take you back with us. And now look. It’s finally happened.”

  Amber frowned. “What?”

  “You got some good hips on you,” said Aphrodite. “Child-bearing hips is what they are. You are what we call breeding stock, young lady. So you’re coming back with us to replenish the gene pool.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “You don’t have much of a say in things, just to warn you in advance,” Aphrodite said. “And that fella with you, we’ll take him, too. I got a loada womenfolk back home.”

  Amber nodded. “I see,” she said.

  “Do you?” said Aphrodite. “What is it you see? Can you tell me that?”

  “I just mean – that’s it, then. That’s the end of the conversation right there.”

  Aphrodite hooted. “Is it? Is it really?”

  “Yep,” said Amber, her claws slicing through the rope.

  APHRODITE YANKED THE HATCHET from her belt a lot faster than Amber was expecting. She ducked the first swipe, the scales on her arm deflected the second, and then she shoved Aphrodite away. She dived to the ground, scrambling beneath the truck as Aphrodite came after her with the hatchet. She crawled all the way under, got up on the other side, saw Poseidon and his pitchfork too late. Her scales rose, but the prongs sliced right between them, into her injured left shoulder and out the other side, pinning her to the wooden panelling on the truck. Amber howled in pain. Poseidon didn’t let go. He grinned at her screams.

  Aphrodite came running, fury contorting her face. More scales rose on Amber’s upper body and arm as she fended off the hatchet. Aphrodite dropped back, breathing heavily.

  Apollo wandered up, holding Amber’s vial of blood. He popped the stopper out, sniffed it, stuck his extraordinarily long tongue in to taste, then whipped his head back. A grin spread.

  “What’s that?” Aphrodite asked. “What’s that you got there? Give it to me, boy!”

  Apollo shook his head, guarding the vial jealously.

  “Apollo!” said Poseidon. “You share that out now! You share it!”

  Apollo shoved the vial into his mouth and bit down. Astaroth’s blood spilled down his chin and Apollo’s eyes widened as he chewed the glass.

  “You goddamn degenerate,” said Poseidon.

  Apollo’s bones cracked and his veins stood out under his skin. Blood vessels burst and his bulging eyes bulged wider. He fell to his knees, his body distorting, a strangled cry escaping his lips.

  “What was in that?” Aphrodite demanded. “What was in that bottle, you little witch? What did you do to him?”

  Apollo’s left eye burst, spraying his cheek with viscous fluid, but he barely seemed to notice. Aphrodite screamed in anguish and renewed her attack on Amber.

  “I’ll kill you!” she hollered. “I’ll hack you into bits!”

  In her anger, Aphrodite came too close and Amber managed to rip the hatchet from her grip. Amber kicked her away and threw the hatchet at Poseidon. It didn’t embed into his skull or anything, but it knocked him off balance and he stumbled.

  Amber took hold of the pitchfork, gritted her teeth and pulled it out. She almost fell to her knees, but Poseidon was lunging at her and she flipped the pitchfork, driving it into his belly as he came. He gasped, but his momentum took him forward and Amber jabbed the end of the handle into the ground. He was taken off his feet like a graceless pole-vaulter, before toppling sideways into a pained, mewling mess.

  Aphrodite grabbed Amber’s horns from behind, dragged her back with surprising strength, screaming obscenities the whole time. Amber tore free and spun, stumbled, got a knee in the face for her efforts. She fell and Aphrodite got on top, straddling her, bloodying her knuckles on Amber’s scales. She grabbed a rock, crunched it down on to Amber’s forehead, tried to do it again, but Amber caught the rock in her hand. She slashed through Aphrodite’s leg with her other hand, then pulled the rock away and struck Aphrodite across the temple.

  Aphrodite sagged and Amber pushed her off, tried to stand, but Aphrodite wasn’t done yet. She wrestled her as Amber struggled to straighten up, pulling her hair and trying to get her back down to the ground. Aphrodite went for her face, but her dirty fingernails slid off the scales that had already formed, and Amber got enough space between them to hit her. Aphrodite pinwheeled back, nudging against Apollo, focusing her rage on Amber —

  —and then Apollo stood and batted his mother away with a single swipe that crushed her against the truck.

  Apollo fixed his remaining eye on Amber, and charged. They went down in the twigs and the dirt. Amber turned over, slashing at Apollo as he crawled on top of her. She shunted herself back, kicked him in the face, did it again, and when she drew back her knee to do it a third time he moved forward, his face pressing against the sole of her foot, his full weight on her leg. His hands gripped her. He bore down.

  Her foot became a claw, each toe a multi-knuckled talon tipped with a three-inc
h nail. She flexed and clenched, and those nails pierced Apollo’s cheeks and skull, slicing into his brain.

  Apollo went rigid, and then he breathed out, and his remaining eye closed. Amber put her other foot on his chest and pushed him off her and stood. She wiped her foot on his shirt, doing her best to get his blood off. She didn’t look at his face. She didn’t want to see what she’d done.

  She followed the trail as far as a small bridge, then saw a building through the trees. The funeral home. Wary of stumbling across Ares and his arrows, she stayed low as she crept towards it. At the treeline, she scanned her surroundings. No sign of Ares or his brother, or Amber’s parents, or even Milo. She could see the Charger from where she was, though.

  Taking a deep breath, she broke from cover, and ran hunched over until she could use the funeral home itself as a shield.

  She approached the Charger carefully. On the far side the smallest of the Gundersons, Hermes, lay with his throat ripped out.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, an arrow, but Milo crashed into her from behind and the arrow skimmed her cheek. They hit the ground and rolled behind the car. Red light spilled from Milo’s narrowed eyes.

  “They’re dead, Ares,” Amber called. “Your mother. Apollo. Hermes. Poseidon is bleeding out as we speak. You want to die here, too?”

  “I’ll kill you!” Ares shouted. “I’ll kill you and scalp you and wear your ears around my neck!”

  Amber took a peek. She couldn’t see him. “Who’s going to take their bodies back to the hills, Ares? If you die here, who’ll take them home? Who’ll bury them?”

  “We don’t bury our dead!” Ares screeched. “We eat them!”

  Amber shrugged, more to herself than anything. “Makes sense,” she muttered.

  She jumped at the first gunshot. Three more followed, and Ares broke from cover, fumbling with his bow. He turned to loose an arrow back into the trees, but more gunfire dropped him. He started crawling across the trail, reaching for his fallen bow.

  The FBI agents, Sutton and Byrd, stepped from the treeline, guns trained on him.

  “Don’t do it,” Byrd called.

  Ares had his bow in his hand now, and he had an arrow nocked and he tried getting up on one knee and they fired until he was dead.

  Then they turned their attention to the Charger and stalked towards it, guns at the ready.

  “Drop your weapons!” Sutton shouted. “Raise your hands and step out where we can see you!”

  Amber glanced at Milo. He was getting himself ready for round two. She heard Byrd cry out and looked back, saw Poseidon lunging at them with his pitchfork. Blood drenched his shirt and every step was a stagger, but he was a dangerous opponent and the agents knew it. Sutton fired twice into his chest and Poseidon swung the pitchfork across his face. Sutton spun, yelling in pain, as Byrd emptied her gun into Poseidon’s back.

  Amber and Milo jumped into the Charger. The engine roared and Milo slammed his foot down and they got out of there in a cloud of swirling dust.

  AMBER WAS BACK IN the funeral home, but it was 1914 and the corridors were maze-like in complexity. She was trapped, with no way out, with no idea which way she’d come. She heard people shouting, and then James and the blonde girl, the one named Molly, sprinted by.

  “Run, Amber!” James yelled. “Run!”

  She looked back. Her parents walked after them, smiling.

  Amber tried to shift, to protect her brother, but it didn’t work, and now her demon-self was beside her.

  “I’m not going to help you,” her demon-self said.

  Amber started running, terror filling her throat. Her parents were still only walking, but they were gaining.

  She turned a corner, saw James helping Molly out through a window. He closed it behind her, ignoring her calls for him to follow, and he started running again.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “This way!”

  But he ran straight into the arms of Alastair, and as much as he kicked and struggled there was no getting free now. Amber’s parents closed in, and so did Kirsty and Grant and Imelda, and they ignored Amber and grabbed James and pulled him apart. They sank their teeth into his flesh, even Imelda, and Amber shut her eyes as her brother screamed, and when she woke up she was in a nice hotel and there was blood on the sheets and someone knocking on the door.

  Grumbling, she got up and caught her reflection as she pulled on a complimentary robe. Red, and horned. She reverted, checked her wounds. Mostly healed. She was a little stiff and a little sore, but, apart from that, fully functioning, and she invited the room-service people in. They laid out her breakfast and she even gave them a tip before they left.

  While she ate, she searched the TV channels for a mid-morning rerun of In the Dark Places, or maybe even When Strikes the Shroud, but settled for the news. They were still talking about the police chief’s son in New York. Amber switched over to Adventure Time reruns.

  She took a shower. A long, hot one. Her body ached. Removing the arrowheads had not been a pleasant experience. She’d chosen this hotel last night because she could not face a stay in another dingy motel, not when she had so many injuries to recover from. It was an expensive room, but worth it. Milo had spent the night in the Charger. He did all his best healing there.

  Amber dried off and examined herself. Not bad. Another few hours and there wouldn’t even be scars left.

  There was another knock on her door – this time it was the laundry-service people, returning a pile of her freshly pressed clothes. She dressed in jeans and a Spider-Man top and packed the rest into her bag. She laced up her spare pair of sneakers and left the hotel. Milo was waiting for her outside, standing by the gleaming Charger. As usual, not a scratch on either of them.

  She nodded to him. “Morning.”

  “Have you thought about what they said?” he asked.

  Her head dipped. “Can we just say good morning to each other? Can that be how we start our day?”

  “Sure,” Milo said. “Good morning. How did you sleep?”

  “Very well, actually. How about you?”

  “Like a log. Did you have breakfast?”

  “I did. It was lovely.”

  “That’s good. That’s nice. Have you thought about what they said?”

  “What who said?”

  “Your parents.”

  “They said a lot.”

  “And have you thought about it?”

  “What part? Their proposal? Don’t tell me you think I should work with them.”

  “No,” Milo said. “But you’re looking for a way to double-cross Astaroth. It’s worth thinking about.”

  “No, it isn’t. They want me to walk them into his castle so they can kill him? They can’t kill him. He’s a Duke of Hell – they’re not gonna be able to just stroll up and stab him in the back.”

  “Their plan isn’t a good one, I agree, and I don’t think you should even consider working with them. But there must be something here you can use against both Astaroth and your parents.”

  “Do you have any idea what that might be?”

  “Not … yet.”

  “Then will you let me know when you do? Because I will be all ears, believe me.”

  “I just want you to consider your options.”

  She looked at him over the car roof. “What options? Seriously, what are they? Where are they? I can’t run. He knows where I am at all times. If he ever wants to find me, he just thinks about me and boom. How do you hide from someone like that?”

  “I don’t have the answers, Amber. I’m just asking the questions.”

  “I don’t have the answers, either, Milo.” She went round to the trunk, which opened for her, and dumped her bag inside. “But I do know that teaming up with my parents for whatever reason would only lead to their crushing, inevitable betrayal. Those two only care about each other.”

  “I’m not arguing with you there.”

  She closed the trunk. “But, like I said, if you can think of a geniu
s plan that will get me out of this deal with no strings attached and no one wanting to kill me over it, please do not hesitate to share this miraculous insight with me.” She got in the car and buckled up.

  Milo joined her a moment later, and they pulled out on to the road and drove.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Amber nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That was a whole dose of attitude right there.”

  “It was.”

  “I’m a bit taken aback.”

  “So you should be. And what about you? What are you going to do?”

  “About which part?”

  “Once we catch my parents,” she said. “What are you going to do next?”

  “I’m going to help you get free of Astaroth.”

  “And then what?”

  Milo took his time replying. “When this is all over? When your parents are gone and you’re no longer Astaroth’s representative? Then that would lead to a conversation.”

  “About … us?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Would you …” Amber sniffed, and shrugged. “Would you want to stay together, maybe? As a team?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Cool.”

  “Depends what we do. There’s no point in being a team if we don’t actually do anything. Normal people with normal lives, they’re not generally part of teams.”

  “So then what would we be if we had normal lives?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Friends, I guess.”

  The smile burst from somewhere deep inside, and arrived so suddenly Amber had to turn her head to look out of the window. “Cool,” she said.

  They came to a junction. “Which way?” he asked.

  She pointed.

  By nightfall of the following evening, they’d made it past Minot, North Dakota. Amber told Milo to pull over near a farm. She shifted and they waited there until a man and woman walked up to them. Dressed plainly, with deep lines etched into their hard faces, they each held a black jar. Amber knew instantly what was inside the jars, and she knew instantly what they’d done to collect their offerings.