Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (10 page)

My phone
chimed and I got a message from Prodromos. It read, “I’m going to
the house of God, He will protect me. I suggest you do the
same.”

Purple
time

I barely
turned around the corner of the building when she appeared out the
wall. Her nails passed right next to my face and I ducked to avoid
her. I ran through the parking lot, hoping not to see anyone there.
She came beside me, around the cars, her face puzzled, as if
deciding on a car sale.

I looked around and saw the tip of a church. It was too far
away but I ran towards it anyway. Along the way was a small park,
women with little children having a stroll. I ran between them,
narrowly avoiding one little boy with a bicycle. The Erinyes came
behind me and stopped.

I stopped too.

My face was contorted in fear. A few of the mothers were
watching me puzzled. The little boy was getting on his bike’s seat
again and preparing to move away.

I bit my lip.

Getawaygetawaygetaway.

The boy was taking forever. The Erinyes leaned down to its
level but her eyes were drilling deep into mine.

Her hand moved over the boy’s head, and her purple hair moved
in a wave and engulfed it.

I lost my breath.

Like a wave crashing on the shore, her hair pulled in the boy
and it was gone.

I screamed. Let him go! He’ll drown. Let him go!

The mothers moved in, one to protect her son from me, the
other to pull her own back away. They were moving through thick
water, too slow to do anything. Too slow.

The boy’s head managed to get out of the drowning hair for a
second and I gasped in hope.

Then he was gone again.

Just like my little brother.

Chapter
37

“
I didn’t
know Prodromos was a woman,” Deppy said, her high-pitched voice
echoing in the church.

“
I assumed it was a man at first, when I told you about his
messages,” I said, sitting on the pews. My face was in a perfect
bulldog impersonation, cheeks dripping on the sides.

“
What do we do?” Billy said, rubbing the back of his head,
towering over the body.

We were
in a large church at another part of the city. Prodromos, her body,
was lying under the cross in the middle section of the church. Her
face was pale, contorted into a horrid mask of fear.

She was
dead.

A few of
the candleholders were knocked over. The carpet was ruffled in the
end. Other than that, it was peaceful.

We had
located the church with the help of Deppy. I had no clue of half
the things she had said, but she had managed to locate Prodromos
and lead us to the church. Were we’d found her dead. Right after an
Erinyes attack, and right after her message saying God will protect
her.

If that
ain’t a kick in the guts, I don’t know what is.

“
Nothing,” I said. “You don’t do nothing.” I leaned close to
her body, tiptoeing and with the edges of my fingers went into her
pocket. I winced. A bit of vomit was coming out. Being near a dead
body makes your primal fears ding-dong in high alert. I fished out
her car keys and passed them to Billy. “You two get out of here, I
call in the police anonymously.”

“
Are you sure?” Billy asked, taking the car keys.

“
Yeah, before someone sees us. Wait for me three blocks down,”
I said, and went around the back to find the priest.

Chapter
38

“
Where the
hell are you guys?” I said on the phone, sweat dripping down my
face, my hair a mess.

“
I had a suspicion I was being followed,” Billy said and gave
me new directions.

I
sighed, leaned my head down and kept on walking in the summer
heat.

I found
the van and got in, putting the air-condition on ‘freeze me’.
“Where’s your love interest,” I asked Billy who was in the driver’s
seat. He stared at me with wide eyes and shook his head.

“
What took you so long,” Deppy asked from the back of the van.
I looked back through the hole in the van’s wall, and saw her on
Prodromos’ computer, checking out her stuff.

“
Look who fits right at home in the Scooby gang,” I said
pointing at her. “I was giving a police statement, that’s what took
so long.”

“
What?” Billy yelped and pulled my face towards him. “Why did
you do that?”

“
I put on my scared little girl act, which isn’t really that
hard, cause I’m a girl, and kinda little, and scared right now, and
I brought the priest to see the body.”

“
I’m still waiting for the reasonable answer to my question,”
Billy said seriously.

“
I told the police that I saw two men running away. And I gave
the description of the two guys that were following us downtown,” I
said calmly.

“
OK. That’s… Kinda clever,” my tall friend said, gears
spinning in his head. “I doubt that her death will show up as
anything other than natural causes, or a heart attack, but this
will help take those guys off our back. If only they weren’t so
inconspicuous…”

I
mouthed silently, pointing at Deppy. “What’s she doing?”

“
She’s going through Prodromos’ research.”

“
I’m going through Prodromos’ research,” Deppy said with her
squeaky voice, tapping away at the keyboard.

I
squeezed myself through the hole and went to the back of the van. I
caught a glimpse of Billy checking out my ass, but then he gathered
himself into the perfect gentleman again and stared straight
forward.

I sat on
the floor of the van and compared notes with Deppy.

“
Well, what Prodromos told you was true.” Deppy waved a hand
around. “Not the churchy stuff, the rest of it. I can see many
cases of the same thing all over the city, these Erinyes appearing
in photos, people acting strangely, persecution syndrome, the
works. It has reached a cult-status online, I mean, sheesh, there
are hundreds of discussions online about Erinyes and what they
are.” She pursed her lips. “It’s a classic case of creepypasta, I
expect a movie coming out about them in less than a
year.”

I
slammed my fist on the side of the door and yelled at her, “And how
does that help me?”

She
stood shocked, staring at my face.

I kept
banging my fist on the metal, annotating every sentence. “And. How.
Does. That. Keep. Me. Alive.” I sat back down and held my hand to
my chest. It was hurting.

She
managed a few words, “I’m, ah. I just looked into it, I need more
time…”

“
I measure my
life
,” I snarled, spitting out the words, “in a-hundred-and-nine
minute parts. I can’t sleep properly, everything hurts, nobody can
see this thing chasing me, and now,” I gulped. “And now, the only
person who seemed to know anything about it is dead. Dead because
the stupid kariola thought God would save her, so she just sat
there and let Erinyes take her.”

The back
of the van opened and Billy stepped in, bowing down to fit in and
closing it behind him. He put his hand on my shoulder.

I sagged
and cried in his arms.

Deppy
sat next to me and hugged me.

“
I’m sorry,” I sniffed.

“
It’s OK,” Deppy said. “We’ll figure it out.”

I let it
all out for a few minutes. Deppy gave me a paper tissue from her
purse and I blew my nose into it.

“
I look like a mess,” I said, holding my phone in reverse
camera mode to turn it into an expensive complicated
mirror.

“
You always look great,” Billy said, and then bit his
tongue.

I got
out the van, from the normal door this time and went around to the
passenger seat. Billy sat on the wheel and asked, “So, where
to?”

I
checked my watch. “Take me where you first kissed me,” I said, and
got a raised eyebrow from Deppy.

Purple
time

She came
out the concrete floor again, digging her way through. I was ready,
I ran between the stacks of barrels and avoided her
lunge.

As she followed, her nails scraped the barrels and threw out
purple sparks. I knew that after, nothing would be there but if I’d
let those sparks touch me I would hurt a lot.

I reached the end of the row and stopped, turning myself and
standing on the spot.

Maybe I could just let her end this. Maybe that’s what it
was, to end my life gasping for air, just like my little brother
had died when we were little. When I was supposed to take care of
him, when I was old enough to be left in charge of him. When I let
him die in the flood.

The Erinyes came closer, but slowed down, even in her dreamy
movement, and looked me in the eyes. Hers were gleaming. It was as
if she knew what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Guilt. Guilt
over my brother’s death.

Guilt because I was too vain, staring at my reflection in the
mirror, to see that he had gone out for his bicycle.

The Erinyes came to my face, a mere centimetre away, smiling.
I kept my eyes open and gulped. Maybe I deserved this. Maybe I
should experience getting choked to death, a fate, I presumed,
similar to drowning in water.

The Erinyes hair spread out and leaned closer to envelop me.
I couldn’t bare it, I shut my eyes. One second, two seconds. Three
seconds, I bolted out of there, ran like the wind, ran like my life
depended on it.

Chapter
39

“
Well, this
was interesting,” Deppy said deeply, in contrast to her normal
cheerful tone.

“
Trade ya any time,” I said.

“
Nooo,” Deppy replied, expanding the ‘oo’ into a deep forced
laugh.

“
Okay Scooby gang, we have a van, we have a nerd, we don’t
have a dog. What’s stopping us? Let’s plan this thing through,” I
said in a coach tone of voice.

“
You want to go through with Prodromos’ plan,” Billy said
matter-of-factly.

I opened
my palm towards Deppy. “Yes, as she said, everything Prodromos came
up with is sound and factual. His own interpretation is the only
thing that’s wobbly.”

“
Well,” Deppy said showing us some schematics in the van’s
monitors, “Here are the plans she wanted to use to get in. All she
needed was an original access card to spoof the system, which we
have now, and access to the R&D lab to download all the
research data and internal emails. Hopefully, the answers lie
there. They will require some digging afterwards.”

“
Great,” I said slapping my hands. “What else do we
need?”

“
I’ll need to go in to get the data from the computer,” Deppy
said hesitantly.

“
No. I’m not putting you there, you’ve already done enough.
I’ll go, you talk me through it,” I said firmly.

Deppy
sighed with relief. “In that case, I’ll set up a USB drive to it
all automatically. Should work fine.”

“
Do that. Get it ready,” I said. “Billy, fill it up with gas,
I’ll owe you. OK, we go in tonight. “I’ll need to show up at the
police station for a follow up statement.” My head tilted down as I
was reminded of the dead woman.

Billy
frowned. “That was reckless Mahi. What if those policemen had kept
you there for hours and your time was up? What would you do? Tell
them, ‘Sorry officer, I gotta run a few laps around the building
for a minute, cause I’m an Olympic athlete. Nevermind me looking
like hell, running for my life from an unseen predator. It’s all
good. Coming right up in two minutes, tops.’”

I squinted at him and put a finger on his chest. “Sarcasm
is
my
domain,
tall dark and nerdy. Besides, that was a good excuse you came up
with, I might use that next time.”

He
grunted.

I
shushed him and looked at my watch, calculating
intervals.

“
We meet up at midnight at the park, OK? I’ll just be done
with the latest attack, so we can skedaddle to Gerakas right away.
Be on time,” I said firmly.

“
Will you be OK till then,” Deppy asked worried.

“
Shuuure,”
I said so I could believe
it myself. “Six measly attempts to choke me to death till then.
I’ll be fine.”

Chapter
40

I slid the
side-door of the van open and jumped inside.

My eyes
jumped from Billy to Deppy and back again. “Am I interrupting
something?”

“
Nope,” Billy said at the same time as Deppy’s “No, it’s
fine,” anxious laugh.

I was in
no mood for their stupid skata. I had spent all day lying to my
parents, making excuses, running off to the little forest, getting
chased by that sadistic Erinyes, going back, lying some more,
resting for a few minutes, making more excuses, running again. It
had taken its toll on me.