The Mythniks Saga Read online

  Once we got off the highway, I turned down the Haggard and Hope directed me to the Manuel Nieto Elementary School, headquarters of the minor Evil. The school was on the fringes of downtown Long Beach near a defunct used bookstore called Acres of Books.

  “Is he in there?” I said to Hope, pointing toward the school. I placed her on top of the Firebird, so she could see.

  “Oh, yeah. He’s in there. The nasty little bugger.”

  “What’m I looking for?”

  “You’re looking for Albert Cummings, late of Mableton, Georgia. Five foot four. One hundred and ninety-five pounds. Balding. Nearsighted. Pasty complexion.”

  “Your textbook kid toucher. What’s he got inside him?”

  “Looks like a third-tier Evil with a taste for young flesh. I don’t have a name or a history for you. Really, the Evil’s a nobody.”

  Weaker Evils need to inhabit a host body (like Albert Cummings). The stronger ones can create a physical shell for themselves. Many of your favorites from the Greek Mythology Hit Parade were actually Evils with creepy, custom-made shells. “How do you think we should play it?” I said to Hope. “Should we go in or should I lure him out?”

  “Hmm. I dunno. Out here maybe? If you barge in with your Hunter Thompson t-shirt, your leather pants and your weird clay pot, it might draw attention. Not to mention you don’t want to start wailing on him with all those kids around.”

  “Out here,” I agreed. I took Hope off the car and returned her to the passenger seat. I redid the seatbelt and started to close the door. “You need me to crack the window?”

  “Very funny.”

  I slammed the car door and headed toward the school. I had to pass through a small lobby to get to the office. In lieu of anything fancy, I decided the direct approach would be best. I entered the office, leaned on the counter and spoke to the girl manning the cheap desk. “Hi,” I said, adopting a Southern drawl. “I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for Al Cummings. I believe he’s y’all’s janitor.”

  The girl stood and came over to the counter. “Yes. Al works here. Is there some problem?”

  I cocked my head and played the sympathy card. “Yes ma’am, I’m afraid there is. You see I’m his cousin Lou from back Georgia way, and I’m here to tell him there’s been a death in the family.”

  The girl put a hand on her chest. “Oh, that’s terrible. Was it his mother?”

  Ugh. I was hoping to keep it vague. Then again, maybe the receptionist was aware of an ongoing maternal illness. Either way, I was being asked to show my cards. “Yeah, it sure was. The old gal finally gave up the ghost. She put up a good fight, though, I tell you what.” In my head, I wondered, Am I laying on the Mayberry thing a little thick? It’s so hard to know when you’re in it.

  The girl clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll page Al to the front right away.”

  “Do you mind if I wait in y’all’s lobby. I was gonna take Al outside and tell him. For propriety’s sake.”

  “Yes, of course. That’s very thoughtful.”

  As the girl picked up the house phone to track down my target, I went out into the lobby. It was lined with glass cases full of kids’ artwork. Bright yellow suns, blue water, green trees. For just a moment, I felt a pang. An I’m-old-and-I-never-had-kids pang. Technically, I was still capable, but what was I supposed to do? The life I was leading wasn’t especially ripe for procreating and domesticity. Besides, I’m a foul-mouthed drunk and that’s usually not good parent material. Or is that a myth?

  I only had to wait a few minutes before I saw Al round a corner and head toward me. He was spry for a fat man. I guess he needed to be to catch kids and wrestle ‘em to the ground. He squinted at me through thick glasses. “What’s this about?” he said.

  “Could we talk for a few minutes outside, Mr. Cummings?”

  “You mean about my dear, departed mother? I don’t have a cousin Lou. What’s this about?”

  With his trouble back in Georgia and his predilection for the Disney XD set, he probably thought I was a cop. Fine, I could play that game too. I dropped the Southern belle routine. “I think you know what this is about, Al. Why don’t you come on outside with me, so we can keep it on the down-low?”

  That seemed to work. He wouldn’t be keen on another scandal and a westward exodus. Especially since another westward exodus would leave him square in the middle of the Pacific. I held the door for him and he walked out, glaring at me all the while. “What’re you, undercover or something? You don’t look like a cop.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me. Come on. Over here. By the Firebird.” I kept him in front of me and he meekly played along.

  “Look, I think I can clear this up,” he said. “It’s a misunderstanding. I didn’t know what I was doing was wrong.”

  I took a sharp breath. “You didn’t know what you were doing was wrong? You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Yeah, I mean everybody here was doing it. The teachers, the teacher’s aides, the gym coach, the assistant principal, the landscaping guy, the lunch lady.”

  Whoa, Nelly! Had I stumbled onto some kind of child molestation ring? That was way above my pay grade. I just wanted to put away an Evil. “Are you telling me all those people were doing the same thing you were doing?”

  “Yeah, of course. We didn’t think it was doing any harm. In fact, we thought the kids might benefit.”

  “You sick fuck!” I’d had about enough. I kicked Cummings’ feet out from under him and he went sprawling on the blacktop between the school and my car. A couple of people on the nearby sidewalk stopped to look at the sudden scene of violence. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to need much time with Al anyway. Despite gaining a few pounds over the last couple of years, I was still as mean as a nest of vipers. I hadn’t even bothered to get my bag out of the trunk. For penny ante shits like Cummings, you don’t need brass knuckles or nunchucks. I walked over to him and kicked him in the kidneys. His glasses went skittering across the pavement. “Was it your idea then, janitor boy?”

  Al was panicked now. Panicked and crying. He crawled away from me toward his fallen specs. “Yes! Yes! It was my idea, but I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t know it was illegal. I was trying to prepare the kids for their futures!”

  What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was Cummings grooming the kids for a prostitution ring? My blood was boiling. I closed the distance between us and straddled over top of him. I reached down and pulled him up by his dingy gray work shirt. I put two hard shots into the center of his face, breaking his nose and scraping my knuckles. “Come on,” I said, dragging him awkwardly toward the Pontiac. Cummings was too dazed to protest or even makes a coherent sentence. He allowed me to get him up and rest his upper body against the driver’s side door. I raised my leg and piston-kicked him in the balls. A crushing blow, but hey, he wasn’t going to need the body much longer. “Wait here,” I said. “I got something for you.”

  I stood and, at the exact moment I reached my full height, I heard the sound of glass shattering. A woman stood on the other side of the Firebird and damned if she hadn’t just knocked out Hope’s window with a tire iron. I said, “Hey!’ and she saw I was looking at her. That sped her up. Fast as lightning, she got Hope out of her harness and ran in the direction of Acres of Books.

  It was Hope’s turn to say, “Hey!”

  Since having my pithos stolen was far down on my list of expected things to happen, I was caught flatfooted. Soon, though, I’d forgotten all about Cummings and I was on the run after the jug thief.

  I gotta say: bitch was fast. She had on those running shorts that really look like panties (the real reason why so many men watch women’s track on TV), as well as some high-end running shoes. Figures. I’m soft in the middle, and I gotta get robbed by Jackie Joyner Kersee. The chick was running across the dusty lot behind the defunct bookstore and I was just reaching 3rd Street. Gone to seed or not, there was just no way I was gonna
catch the broad. (You try running three hundred yards at full speed wearing leather pants.) I was almost relieved when I saw her hit the cross street and get into a waiting car. The car, a muscle car like mine, motored away at a respectable speed.

  No, I did not get the license plate.

  For a long time after I caught my breath, I looked at the spot where the car had been. I’d had my pithos for thousands of years and now it was gone. I couldn’t even begin to work through all the implications of that. My head was swimming.

  And then I remembered Al Cummings.

  You wanna know something funny? Hope can track Evils from hundreds of miles away. She can tell you what type they are as well as a bit of their history. I don’t have that particular gift, but I do have a thing I can do at close range. When I’m close enough to an Evil, I can smell him. I can see his beady little eyes just behind those of his human host. Never once did I smell Evil on Cummings. Never once did I spy the creature lurking behind his astigmatic eyes. I guess I was too cheesed-off by the whole alleged pedophilia thing.

  When I got back to the poor guy, he was crying like a baby—which, of course, made me feel like a grade-A shitheel. He was blubbering and trying to hand me a stack of lottery tickets. They were stained with his own blood. I was gonna ask him why, but right then I got hit by a bull elephant.

  The cops brought me down with tasers, and really, who could blame them? I’d taken a hapless janitor out of an elementary school and cleaned his clock in broad daylight. That almost never endears one to the local constabulary.

  Afterwards, I wasn’t in the best of moods. I used my one phone call to order pizza, and I was surly and uncommunicative. They stuck me in a holding cell until I could be transferred to County, and I used the time there to brood.

  Who would want to take Hope? How had Hope been duped into thinking Al Cummings was a minor Evil? It was the first time in thousands of years I’d seen Hope be wrong about anything. Or was Hope somehow complicit in her own kidnapping? Did she want someone else to have the pithos? If so, why? I guess if someone else opened the jar and let all the beasties out, it’d guarantee Hope a longer run as Lord High Counselor to the Cursed. But that didn’t sound like the Hope I knew. Okay, so if Hope was just as surprised as I was by the day’s events that meant an interested third party had set us both up. But who? They’d have to have knowledge of the pithos, and they’d have to have motive. I can’t imagine anyone would want to reopen the jar and undo all my hard work. Thousands of years being a slave to a jug has limited appeal, as I think I’ve made clear. Okay, well, thinking outside the box, what if someone needed immortality for another reason? Maybe they were pulling a scam that involved serious longevity. But, if that supposition was right, the list of suspects would be narrow. No lingering mythological characters would be behind it because they’d already have immortality. I didn’t recognize the gal in the sassy short pants, so I was reasonably sure she wasn’t part of the graduating class of Hellenic Folklore. She was black which, not to be racist, took her out of the running. (This may surprise you but, characters from Greek mythology tend to be, well, Greek.) Was Speedy working for someone else? A Greek, maybe? I hadn’t gotten a look at the driver of the getaway car. It could’ve been anyone, man, woman or minotaur. Were any of my mythological cohorts mad at me? Not that I could recall. At least not mad enough to stage a scene like the one that went down at the school. Hope’s hijacking took some planning—not to mention some malice aforethought, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to go to that kind of trouble. Most of us mythological types are lazy in our old age.

  All that was roiling around my brain pan. Meanwhile, on a parallel track, I was really feeling put out. Somehow Fate had gotten wind of my plan to end my own surly existence and had laid down a serious roadblock. I was sad, I was pissed, and I was acrimonious. It sucks to make your first committed decision in ten years and then get tripped up. It’s hard not to take it personally. Look, I thought, bargaining with no one in particular. I just wanna die. Why can’t you just leave me alone?

  I wasn’t gonna resolve any of it with the details I had up to that point. Nor was I gonna crack it from a little cell somewhere in the ass-end of Long Beach. Maybe I should’ve taken the chip off my shoulder and called a lawyer instead of a pizza guy. California Penal Code 243 (Assault & Battery) carries a sentence of no more than six months of incarceration and or a fine of two K. In six months, whatever scam was in the making would already be done. I needed a bailout if I was going to fix things.

  A voice brought me out of my reverie. “Hey, pretty lady. Why so glum?”

  I looked up. Standing with a deputy on the other side of the bars was Hermes. He was, as usual, wearing a killer suit with a red silk tie. Without thinking, I said, “Herpes.” “Herpes” is what I’d called him starting from way, way back. Not because he was afflicted, but because it was funny.

  Hermes scrunched his brow. “Tell you what: You agree not to call me ‘Herpes’ for at least a day, and I agree to get you out of here.”

  I may be belligerent, but I’m not stupid. “Fer reals?” I said, unable to hide my excitement.

  “Fer reals.”

  Ten minutes later, we were on the sidewalk in front of the police station and Hermes was steering me by my elbow. “C’mon. I don’t wanna talk here. I had a glass guy come out to the impound. The Firebird’s good as new.” He was limping. Somewhere way back in the day, he’d had his left leg crushed and it never healed properly. His days of running super-fast and playing FedEx for the gods were over.

  As promised, my car was waiting for us half a block away. “Wow,” I said, appraising my new window. “I take back all those mean things I said about you.”

  “Good. You can get started on a new batch. Get in already.” We got in and drove away from the heart of Long Beach to a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf near the highway.

  After we’d ordered our drinks and sat down outside, I said, “How’d you know I’d been pinched?”

  Hermes raised one eyebrow and flashed a crooked grin. “C’mon...” he said. Dumb question. After all, he was Hermes, messenger of the gods, patron of thieves, and tradesmen. One of the few Olympians who hadn’t fucked off.

  “Alright, what made you come get me so fast?” I dipped my tea bag in my cup of hot water and waited for the steeping to bear fruit.

  “First of all, congratulations on your big comeback. Ten years at the beach and then, wham! it’s like you never left.” I guess I don’t need to mention the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Don’t think I don’t feel bad about that. Any idea how my victim is doing?”

  “Albert? He’ll be right as rain give or take six months. A little traction, a little reconstructive dental work and he’ll go back to being the Adonis of Manuel Nieto Elementary.”

  “I don’t know how deep you’re into this, but do you have any idea what was up with those lottery tickets?”

  Hermes dunked his crumb cake into his black coffee and took a bite. “Funny story... He and some of the other staff were buying the tickets and handing them out to the kids as incentive. Winning tickets went into a kitty for school improvement and treats for the lil’ tykes. Anyway, that’s what he thought you were busting him for.”

  “Swell.” I took my first sip of tea. “Help me out with something else: You know Hope, right? Wouldn’t you say she’s got the best radar in the business? She can whiff out an Evil from miles away and tell you how many freckles its got on its balls.”

  “Colorful. And accurate.”

  “Hope was the one that sent me after Cummings. Said he was a pedophile Evil. As we both now know, he was not a pedophile Evil. That means Hope was either lying to me, or she was handed a bum ticket.”

  Hermes had turned sideways and was removing his left shoe and sock. When the footwear was off, he rubbed his foot. His foot was all gnarly from his old mishap.

  “Having some trouble there?”

  “Hm? Yeah, sorry. I know this is gross, but the bones have
a way of tangling on me. Every so often I gotta give myself impromptu massages.” He put his sock and his Bruno Magli back on and picked the thread back up. “I can’t imagine Hope would lie to you. Not unless she had a good reason. I’m gonna say someone crossed her wires.”

  “Okay, who? Any ideas?”

  He picked up his crumb cake again with the same hand he’d used to rub his foot. That sparked my gag reflex. He’d just mixed crumb cake with foot sweat. “Nothing specific. There’s been chatter in Mythnik circles. Some weirdness is headed our way, but nobody knows quite what it is. It’s got most everyone on edge.” The term “Mythnik” was coined somewhere in the early nineteen sixties. Probably by a guy in a black turtleneck and beret. I had a love/hate relationship with it. It was simultaneously demeaning and cartoonishly cute. I liked that last part at least.

  “Chatter? Why haven’t I heard this chatter?”

  “Maybe you would if you weren’t loaded all the time.”

  He was right, but it still stung. “Oh, yeah? Well, you’ve got a... dumb hat.”

  A cheap shot. Hermes had retired his winged helmet ages ago. Anyway, he ignored the dig. “We’ve got a pattern of weird incidents but none of them seem related. A lot of old-timers are suddenly fucking off. Underworld sources say the dead have been especially restless. I think it’s all related, but I don’t know how.”

  “Did you say more people’re fucking off than usual?” He nodded. “That’s weird because I saw Pan last night. He came to say goodbye.”

  Hermes whistled. “Pan? Wow, it’s the end of an era. Did he say why he was calling it quits?”