Joosep was thinking about wending his way back to the farmhouse when he glimpsed a flash of light in the hills that overlooked the Lepik family property. Further flashes followed, up there in the woods, accompanied by a series of faint but distinct pops that could only be gunfire. Joosep couldn't help himself. He left the barn, heading out for a closer look.
He was less than a kilometre from the woods when he saw the Chimera suddenly come bounding out into the open. It hurtled across a pasture, and it looked to Joosep — although he found this hard to believe — that the monster was in a state of alarm. It was fleeing for its life. But from what?
Phantoms.
That was what Joosep thought as he saw a quartet of figures emerge from among the trees, giving chase to the Chimera. They seemed to be people but he couldn't be sure because, somehow, he could barely make them out. Though his eyesight was good and the moonlight strong, their outlines seemed to ripple and waver, now there, now not. He saw them by the shadows they cast more than anything. And they were moving so fast, too fast, surely, to be people. Nothing human could run at such speeds. Hermes could, but then was he human?
The four flitting figures caught up with the Chimera, and within seconds the monster was being subjected to sustained bursts of gunfire that pinned it to the ground and made its body twitch and stutter all over. The coup de grace was delivered by something which Joosep presumed was a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. All at once there was an almighty, dazzling explosion that seemed to light up the entire landscape, and as the echoes of its roar caromed away through the hills and the glowing afterimage faded from Joosep's vision, he perceived that the Chimera was no more. Where the monster had been crouching there was now a smoking crater in the earth, dotted with flickers of flame. Never again would this fantastic beast lope down to the Lepik homestead to seize its gladly given sacrifice off the tree-stump altar.
The four phantoms set off back up the hillside, melting into the woods, and Joosep watched them go. He couldn't imagine who — what — these people were. They might not even be people. In a world where the Ancient Greek Pantheon walked, real and alive, anything was possible. What he did grasp was that something major was afoot. Death had been brought to an Olympian monster. That was not some casual, random act. That was the deliberate breaking of a taboo, and tantamount to a declaration of war.
Wearily, feeling all of a sudden very old and very lame, Joosep turned and limped off homeward, into the dark.
That same night, among the bill of mythopornographic delights being offered by Blue Eros to its subscribers was a cinematic masterpiece detailing a young girl's initiation into the world of mixed-sex threesomes, set against the backdrop of the Trojan War. Troilists And Cressida.
25. MAN-LION DREAM
S am slept for almost a full twenty-four hours. She was dimly aware of Mahmoud entering and leaving their room every so often, for all that Mahmoud was as surreptitious as she could be. Otherwise, she was dead to the world.
Dreams came thick and fast, and lions featured in many of them. Dead lions, for the most part. Whole prides of them, slaughtered, eviscerated, bullet-riddled, their corpses strewn across mountainsides and deserts and strange dark forested landscapes. Sometimes the lions morphed into monsters such as the three Sam had recently helped kill, things that had lionlike attributes but were amalgams of other beasts as well. One of these started speaking to her as it lay, sprawled in a stew of its own blood and internal organs, dying.
"It hurts," groaned the creature, which had distinctly human facial features. "Why have you done this to me? What did I ever do to you?"
Sam's dream self could come up with no good answer to that. Rationally, she knew that the monster had to die, just as all the Olympian monsters did. Landesman's plan demanded it. The world was crying out for it.
Emotionally, a justification was harder to find.
"I'm sorry," she said, conscious how pathetic this sounded.
The man-lion shook its mane. "'Sorry' really won't do. Where is this all going, Sam? Have you even thought about that? Say you wipe out all us monsters, and the Olympians too. Unlikely, but not beyond the realms of possibility. What then? What happens after?"
"I feel better."
"You're sure? And will the world feel better? Years of pent-up aggression. The dozens of simmering conflicts the Olympians have been keeping a lid on. All that anger held in check. Ancient hatchets buried but not forgotten. All of it comes exploding out at once. Remember the Balkans after perestroika? Now imagine the same but on a worldwide scale. Humankind will tear itself apart."
"Or we'll all heave a sigh of relief and get back to the business of being ourselves again."
"And being yourselves, was that really so great?" the man-lion asked, its voice seeming to grow stronger even as its life ebbed away. "What was so fantastic about a world where men like Regis Landesman, purveyor of instruments of death, could flourish? Remember what you used to see day in, day out at work, Sam — the degradation, the crime, the mindless brutality. Lives ruined at a single stroke. That was your job, cleaning up the mess left behind by people who were at best thoughtless, at worst evil incarnate. You know better than most the corruption that lurks beneath the surface film of everyday life, and how thin and fragile that surface film is. The husbands who just suddenly snap and turn into wife beaters, wife killers even. The lunatics who listen when God tells them to go out with that Stanley knife and use it on whoever looks at them with the Devil's eyes. The junkies who rob pensioners' savings tins then take a shit on their living-room rugs for good measure. The whores so worn out and numb inside that they think getting beaten black and blue by their pimps is proof of affection. That's what you want to go back to? That's a status quo worth restoring?"
"There's still crime, even under the Pantheon."
"Nowhere near as much as there used to be."
"Crime is the shadow of freedom."
"That's what Ade used to say, isn't it? That was his personal favourite little Christmas cracker motto."
"Don't you mention his name. Don't you dare."
"You raised the subject. You quoted him. Very liberal for a copper, was Ade, wasn't he? Always could see the other guy's point of view. Always tried to understand the crims' mentality. That's probably why he was destined to stay a uniform for ever. Didn't have the detachment, the inner steel. Not like you."
"Ade was a good man."
"Of course, of course." For a being that was on the brink of death, and sinking fast, the man-lion seemed to have a lot to say still and plenty of breath to say it with. "And that's why you loved him. Deep down, though, you always felt he was a bit of a sap. How did he do it? How did he survive day after day on the beat, being abused and derided, having teenagers spit and jeer and call him ' cunt stable,' and not get ground down by it, not become bitter and cold? How did his heart continue to remain open and honest and fair? Because he lacked guts, that's why."
"It isn't weakness, staying uncynical."
"Oh but I think you think it is, Sam. Wasn't it because Ade was so wide-eyed and eager to help that he got himself killed? That's the truth of it, no? If he hadn't volunteered with the Police Support Unit, hadn't trained for crowd control, hadn't been at Hyde Park that day, hadn't dashed in to save a life when Apollo and Artemis arrived and everything went to hell…"
"Shut up." Sam realised she had a submachine gun in her hands.
"Shut me up," the man-lion replied.
So she did, pouring bullets into the expiring monster's face until it had no face left.
"There, that's you put out of your misery," she said as the gunsmoke cleared, "and mine."