Still, the oddly colored pigeons qualified.
A siren drew her attention, and she glanced away. When she looked back, the birds were gone.
But she couldn’t get them out of her mind.
Bruce made it back to his home without getting caught.
It’d all seemed so simple. Steal a truck, wait for the right opportunity, and then crush Teri Robinson under his bumper. He’d picked Teri rather than Phil because she was a woman, and that had made her less threatening in his mind. Irrational, he knew, especially since his weapon of choice was a twenty-ton vehicle. But this would be his first human sacrifice to Gorgoz. He’d slaughtered a small menagerie in his dark god’s name, but humans were a big step. Still, when the order came down, he was ready for it. This was his chance to prove himself to Gorgoz, to rise up in the ranks.
And he’d blown it.
But he was safe. Nobody had seen him. Except maybe Teri, and it was a fleeting glance at best. She’d see him again. And next time, there would be no miracles to save her.
“Hello, bug.”
He jumped at the voice.
The spotted rat on his sofa stared at him.
Bruce knelt. “Master, I have failed you.”
“Yes, you have.”
“It won’t happen again,” said Bruce.
“No, it won’t.”
The scampering of dozens of tiny rodent feet filled the room. And Bruce knew the time had come to pay the piper. He regretted that it was going to end like this, struck down before he even had a chance to rise up in the ranks, before he’d gotten his chance to at least get something worthwhile from all the blood he’d spilled in Gorgoz’s name. But, honestly, he wasn’t surprised.
The swarm of squirrels, rats, and one ravenous, red-speckled wombat pounced on him and devoured him, and Bruce’s career in Gorgoz’s temple came to a bloody end.
12
“I challenge,” said Lucky.
“You challenge?” Quick tapped the table with his clawed fingertips. “But it’s a word. S-O-M-B-R-E-R-O. A wide-brimmed hat.”
“I know what it is,” said Lucky. “But it’s not an English word and the rules say very clearly that all words must be in English.”
“No, the rules say words must appear in the dictionary.”
“So I challenge. Check the dictionary.”
Quick picked up the pocket dictionary resting beside the Scrabble board and flipped through to the S section.
“Is it in there?” asked Lucky with a wry grin.
“No, it’s not,” replied Quick, “but that’s not fair. The page is missing. Just like every other page that would contain every other word that you’ve challenged.”
“It’s not my fault the only dictionary we could find was defective.”
“Then whose fault is it?”
“Hey, it’s just my nature. I can’t help it.” Lucky laid out all his tiles, reading as he went. “Z-E-O-L-I-T-E.”
“That’s not a word,” said Quick.
“Do you challenge?”
“What’s it mean?”
“Do you challenge?” asked Lucky.
“You don’t know what it means, do you? You just laid out the tiles at random, didn’t you?”
“I know what it means,” replied Lucky after a moment’s hesitation. “Do you know what it means?”
“Why don’t you tell me then?” asked Quick.
“Why don’t you tell me?” said Lucky.
“Just admit it. You don’t know what it means.”
“Okay, so I don’t. But I don’t have to know. That’s not in the rules.”
The gods stared at each other across the coffee table of honor.
Lucky smiled. “Do you challenge or not?”
Quick scooped up the dictionary and flipped through it. He slammed the book onto the table. “I hate playing games of chance with you.”
“Scrabble is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill with an element of chance. There’s a difference. And don’t be such a sore loser. Come on. You’re due! Nobody wins all the time. Not even me. I think I saw an old copy of Clue in the closet.”
“Don’t you need three for Clue?”
Phil walked through the front door.
“Phil will join us,” said Quick. “Won’t you, Phil?”
“Uh, sure,” said Phil. “What are we doing?”
“Playing Clue.” Lucky bounded to the other room to get the game.
“It’s been forever since I played that game,” said Phil.
Quick shook his head.
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
“You have a little something there.” Quick pointed to a spot of white bird crap on Phil’s shoulder.
“You should see my car.”
“Uh-hmm.” Quick grinned. “Let me guess. For the most part everything was going great today, but sometimes, odd moments of improbable bad luck hit you out of nowhere.”
Phil nodded. “How’d you know?”
“The universe is a chaotic place by nature. Gods of fortune can curb that, even bend it in the favor of their followers, but they can’t completely prevent bad things from happening.”
Lucky returned with the game and started setting it up.
“Want to explain about entropic balance?” asked Quick. “You’re the luck god.”
“It’s not that complicated,” said Lucky as he laid out the miniature pewter murder weapons. “In the old days, we usually just ignored it and all that ill fortune gathered up in a giant clump of negative karma hanging over our followers’ heads. Eventually, it would fall and fall hard. Whammo, a lifetime of delayed entropy would hit them all at once.” He punched his fist into his palm. “The results… not very pretty.
“But you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” said Lucky. “We eventually figured out that if we allowed small bits of random chaos into our followers’ daily lives we could defuse the big whammy. Entropy isn’t picky. It just doesn’t like being ignored. So a few odd misfortunes here, a little bizarre luck there, and everything works itself out just fine.”
“I didn’t think you had to worry about stuff like that,” said Phil. “I thought you just did whatever you wanted.”
“Oh, we have rules we have to follow, too,” said Quick.
“Are you allowed to admit that in front of me?” Phil asked. “Isn’t there some kind of rule against it?”
Lucky and Quick chuckled.
“Some gods think we should present an all-powerful image to mortals all the time,” said Lucky. “But they’re humorless pricks.”
Phil laughed. He was becoming used to this. Not just talking with gods and living with gods, but actually liking them despite himself. But Lucky and Quick weren’t immortals as he knew them. They weren’t aloof or terrifying or wrathful. They were just a couple of working stiffs scraping by with a handful of followers and hoping to get ahead. Even if he would have preferred not having a reformed Aztec sun god sleeping on his sofa, he could relate.
They picked their pawns, and Lucky won the roll to see who would go first.
“Imagine that,” mumbled Quick.
“Oh don’t be such a spoilsport.”
Lucky picked up the die just as the front door opened. Teri stepped in, a little disheveled and with a slightly dazed expression.
“Teri, what’s wrong?” asked Phil.
“There was an accident.”
Quick threw a glare at Lucky, who stared nonchalantly at the die in his hand.
“What happened?” Phil asked. “Are you hurt?”
“No, there were some injuries, but nothing serious. I got hit by a truck. It was a real mess. I could’ve been killed.” She absorbed the thought. “I should’ve been killed.”
Phil put his arm around her and guided her to the sofa. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Lucky’s car saved my life.”
Quick cleared his throat while Lucky straightened out the line of miniature murder weapons.