Sample chapter for The Godshead

As with The Last Pendragon, it's kinda long, so it's below the break for those who don't want to read or scroll past the whole thing.  And if anyone wants to read other stories from the same world (different characters, different situations) that just didn't add to the plot that The Godshead* developed, you can go here for that.

The whole world was spawned by a dream I had.  Imagine Odin (king of the Norse gods) and Zeus (king of the Greek gods) arguing over who was the better king of the gods over a pint...or ten.  I woke up with the giggles, and the world was born.

I'm about a third of the way into writing the second book (out of five) in that series, if anyone likes what they read.

*The first link goes to the Kindle version, the second to the print version.  For some reason, they didn't sync like The Last Pendragon did.

At The Godshead

It's funny, the things you see when you frequent a tavern that happens to sit some ninety degrees from the rest of reality.  Especially when that particular little tavern is the main hangout of some of the older gods.

 On this particular lovely evening, I'd decided I'd had enough of arguing with my beautiful, beloved wife, and headed for the abandoned factories near the railroad, where I could feel the Godshead had settled itself this week.  Most of the streetlights between the parking lot closest to the entrance and where the door would be were out.  The pool of blacker darkness than should be able to exist in a city, offering a view of stars that weren’t in any recognizable constellations both gave notice that the tavern was in the area,  and an atavistic level of unease to those who would be in the area, especially if they didn’t know to look for the tavern.  The Godshead had a way of protecting those that were welcome.

I almost walked past the door, still thinking about the latest argument we'd had.  About money, like usual.  If she—no.  I cut my thoughts off as I reached blindly for the splintery wood handle of the door that was only sort of there.  I was not going to let this spoil my quiet drink.  As soon as I pulled the door open, an avalanche of sound crashed through it onto me, making me hesitate briefly before I stepped through.

Some whim of fate put the entrance I used behind the bar.  After blinking in the bright(er) light offered by the roaring fire at the other end of the long, smoky, dark hall, and the torches roughly evenly spaced around the length of the room, I saw why.

"I'm the better god!" Odin roared, swinging his tankard at the deity across the heavy, trestle table, his single eye sliding in and out of focus.  "Hold still so I can prove it!"

"Shaddap, you one-eyed trat…trec…slimy bastard!  I'm the better god!  I have way more power than you on one of my bad days!" Zeus roared in response, his eyes (and hair) wild.  His beard bristled and sparked.  Quite a lot jumped to Odin’s tankard as he got it just a little too close. 

Odin yelped and dropped the stainless steel mug.  "Bad hair days, sure…where else would the lightning come from?  Your ass?"

"Oh, Jesus," I whimpered.  There went my quiet drink.

A young man looked up over the bar, from where he was hammering a shim into the bottom of a barstool to tighten the join of a leg.  "Yes?  How can I help you?"

The bartender (who I knew was behind me—really, you can stop laughing, now) lifted me by one arm and the back of my belt, and set me on the other side of the bar, next to the young carpenter.  He nodded toward a guy with an elephant's head.  "You can help me by taking the bar nuts away from him," he said, voice tired.  "And keep him out of them.  I've cut him off three times already, tonight, and he somehow keeps getting them."

A dusky-skinned lady with a sweet face and a glossy, dark braid sat on the barstool next to me, watching the argument out at the tables with amusement.  "What started this?" I asked.

 "I have no idea," she murmured.  "But it's entertaining."

 I sighed and shook my head, snagging a barstool of my own and sitting down.  I called for my usual (seriously, where are you going to find a good, full-bodied, dark beer made in the old ways?), and turned around to watch. 

 The bartender leaned across the bar, holding my beer out to me.  “They started this when they started drinking,” he said morosely, his eyes fixed on the four men at the table.  “I hate it when they bring Hermes and Loki with them.  It never fails.”

“You stupid one-eyed prick!”

“At least my wife hasn’t frozen mine off!”

“Why do you always bring things back around to talk about sex?  Pervert!”

“Who’s calling who a pervert?” Odin howled.  “I’m not the one that used the whole goose!”

“It was a swan, you retard!”  Zeus took a long drink from his mug.  As he set it down on the table, his eyes fell on Loki, and he started to snicker.  “And at least everything I’ve ever turned into was male.”

Loki’s dark brows furrowed.  “And at least I had a reason beyond a frigid wife to turn into an animal in the first place,” he retorted smoothly.  He took a sip from his glass.  “Besides.  It’s one thing to pay for it, but it’s another thing entirely for the transaction to be the entirety of the action. Who the hell gets anything from becoming an inanimate object?”

Zeus and Odin looked at each other and snorted.  “Meh, depends on the object,” Odin snickered.  “Some of the catalogs Frey’s got from the mortal world have some freaky shit in them.”

Both men started laughing.  Loki started turning an ugly shade of red.  I wondered if the others realized what a monumentally stupid idea it was to insult him in particular. 

Hermes leaned across the table and patted Loki on the arm.  “I don’t think they’re insulting you, dude,” he said, flipping wavy blond hair out of his eyes.  “I’ve seen some of those catalogs.  Some of those fake dongs are bigger than any real one Aphrodite has ever seen.  It’s got Ares downright jealous.”

I couldn’t help it.  I started to giggle.  “How long have they been going at this?”

Ganesh shrugged.  “Most of the evening,” he said.  “It started out stupid and has gone downhill from there as they get drunker.”

Christ tipped the barstool he’d been repairing back up onto its legs, and sat down.  “Water, please,” he said, leaning his elbows back on the bar.  “I’d try to step in and arbitrate the discussion, but I can’t muster the desire.  This really has been far more entertaining than it should be.” 

The bartender handed Christ a fairly large glass of water, complete with ice and a lemon wedge.  He smiled gently at the bartender, removed the lemon, and lifted the glass for a drink.  Somewhere between the bar and His mouth, the crystal clear water took on a rosy hue.  The bartender shook his head and sighed.  “I hate when you do that.”

The Son of God—the one I still believed in, damn it—snickered.  “It’s one of the reasons I do it, brother.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the bartender snorted.  “Why Our Father finds your pranks funnier than mine I’ll never know.”

Odin glanced over at the bar.  The ravens on his shoulders stirred briefly.  One of them muttered, mostly asleep.  “It’s because yours are harmful, Morningstar, and his aren’t.  It’s not always all about you, all about you, you know,” Odin finished in a nasal sing-song taunt, obviously channeling the birds.

“How would you know?” the bartender snarled.  “You weren’t even a glimmer in the dark when I was created.”

“A little birdie told me.  Speaking of birdies…” Odin turned back to Zeus, eyes dancing.  “Didn’t that particular encounter of the perverted—“

“Shaddap!”

“—kind net you a pair of twins?”

Zeus perked up.  “Hell yes,” he howled, pumping a fist in the air.   “Apollo and Artemis.  Both with godheads intact.  In fact, many of my assik…assig…affairs, damn it!  Most of my affairs got me either a god, goddess, or hero.  Not like that vicious, ice-cold harpy I married.  Froze my manhood to the point I fathered a deformed monster with her,” he muttered, looking down into his cup.

Odin scowled.  “I would be proud to call Hephaestus my son,” he said firmly.  “What matters looks with talent like that?  And it’s your fault he’s deformed and crippled.  You were the one that had never seen a new baby before, went, ‘woah, ugly,’ and threw him off Olympus!”

Hermes snorted, then started to snicker.  “Despite that, he did get the hottest of the hot for a wife, didn’t he?”

Zeus shook his head.  “Yeah, and look what that’s got him: an ass-load of jealousy, because she won’t share her bed with her husband or stay out of Ares’.”

Odin swayed, shook his head hard, and upended his tankard.  He slammed it down on the table, leaned forward, and stared into Zeus’s face.  “Sounds like the bitch takes after you,” he slurred.  Zeus gaped, surprised at the sudden change in tone.  Odin nodded once, leaned back, and picked up his tankard, only to remember he’d emptied it.  “Mead!”

Zeus scowled.  “Nectar!”

Odin scowled back.  “Mead!”

“Nectar!”

“MEAD!”

“Not this again,” groaned Ganesh.  He heaved himself to his feet.  The lady had disappeared sometime during the devolution into penis jokes—I’d been so dumbfounded by the stupidity in front of me that I hadn’t noticed her leaving.   “I’m out of here.  Who knows how long they’ll be at it this time, and whether the next real argument will be any more entertaining?”

Christ reached out and squeezed his shoulder.  “Don’t be a stranger, my friend,” he said. 

Ganesh turned a warm glance on Christ.  It was hard to tell with the trunk, but I think he might have smiled.  “How can I be, when I’m an aspect of You?” 

The bartender snorted.  “Gag me with a spoon,” he said, as the gentle giant ducked behind the bar to leave.  He straightened up, watching the table full of arguing gods.  “Stupid fuckers ran everybody out, tonight, and haven’t had the decency to finish the first argument they started,” he muttered.  He stuck two fingers in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle.

“Hey, idiots!  Your mugs are self-refilling!” he snapped. 

Both Zeus and Odin stared at him for a moment, then looked back at each other.  “What were we arguing about in the first place?”  Odin asked.  One of the ravens sighed, but said nothing.  I suspected this part of the argument was a repeat of earlier, as well.

Zeus shrugged.  “Dunno.  Don’t care.”

Loki leaned forward.  “You were arguing about who was a better king of the gods.”  Then he sat back, as if his work were done.

And it really seemed to be.  Zeus snorted as he took a sip of his nectar.  “That’s easy.  I am.  Hello, sky god, here.  I throw lightning.”

“Big deal,” huffed Odin.   “I was played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in a movie, recently.  I don’t recall anything about your pantheon except in science fiction should-have-been-made for TV movies.  And bad sixties serials.”

“What about that one miniseries?  About that one mortal Poseidon fucked over for ten years?”

“You weren’t in it, jackass!”

Okay, Ganesh was wrong.  This was infinitely funnier.

 “You kill your own faithful!  After you fuck their wives!”

Odin shot Zeus an odd look.  I suppose if he hadn’t been nearly cross-eyed drunk, it might have passed for affronted.  “I do no such thing.  Often.  Their wives are usually lying to hide their own infidelity.”

“Often?” Hermes asked.  He looked like he regretted the question as soon as he asked.

Odin shrugged.  “When I do take on an aspect of a warrior before Freya or I collect him, it’s because he’s a hell of a good fighter and doesn’t have a son to carry on his name.  And when I take on an aspect of one of mine, I take on all of it, and the child is his.”  He smirked.  “Even if he didn’t have the fun of fathering it.”

“How’s that any better?” Zeus snarked.  “You’re still fuckin’ the homefront, and killin’ the soldier.  You housebre…homewe…Jody!   All my women are single, at least.”

“I suppose a virgin’s maidenhead is the only way you actually ever shed blood,” Odin sneered.  “I prefer my women older than barely nubile.  You’re a cradle-robber, and you hit like a girl.”

“Is that so?” asked a cool soprano from right behind my left shoulder.  I didn’t jump, honest.  I knew she’d come in behind me.

Zeus smirked.  “You’re in trouble,” he snickered.

“He’s not the only one,” said a cool alto behind my right shoulder.  I knew she was there, too.  The squeak was a hiccup.

A tall, leggy, curvy woman with a wrist-thick blond braid planted her hand on the polished granite bar top and hopped over the bar.   She was so gorgeous she made my hair ache to touch her.  She swaggered over to stand behind Odin, and started rubbing his shoulders.  I do not know how she made it look so threatening.   “And just how does a girl hit, husband?”

Odin gulped.  “A girl doesn’t hit very hard, if they can swing a punch or blade at all,” he said. 

Freya’s hands tightened on Odin’s shoulders so hard that her knuckles stood out white against her golden skin, and Odin twisted in pain (under the circumstances, no one could fault him the oddly loud, high pitched whine that wasn’t quite a scream).  “Is that so, husband?” she asked, conversationally.

“Girls can’t hit hard, but you’re all woman,” Odin wailed.  Freya let go of his shoulders, and Odin landed face down on the table, whimpering in relief.

“Good save,” Zeus muttered.  Unfortunately, as drunk as he was, his mutter was at the same volume as his normal conversational levels.

“Yes,” the other goddess agreed.  She glanced at the bartender, who jumped to gently lift her across the bar by her waist.  I got a brief impression of a small, straight nose, olive skin, and dark hair and eyes as she stalked past me toward Zeus.   The fact that she barely came up to the middle of my chest and wore an Oscar de la Renta pantsuit and some kind of designer heels did not reduce just how scary she was.  “However, his ‘good save’ does nothing for you, husband mine.”

Zeus whimpered, and his beard went limp.  “But, Hera,” he started.

She swept her hand, palm down, across in front of her waist with such force that her chin length bob swung into her dark eyes.  “But nothing.  I want to hear nothing from you.  If it were possible, I would have divorced you for your behavior long ago.  As it is, you are no longer welcome in my home.  You’ll find your belongings in the shed on the terrace behind the villa.”

Freya leaned over Odin, hauling him up to his feet and pulling his arm across her shoulders.  “And you.  You are not getting off so lightly yourself, my love.  You are banished from my bed—from all such bedding—until you apologize for insulting girls so.”

Hera snorted, and started to giggle.  “Agreed.  I hit harder than he does.  Hermes, take him to his new home.  King or not, he’s restricted to grounds until I say otherwise.”

And, just like that, it was all over.  Between one blink in the next, all gods from the Greek and Norse pantheons were just…gone. 

I sighed, and turned to face the bartender.  “Damn,” I sighed, looking at my beer.  Or rather, since I’d polished the last of it off down to the foam about the time Loki had restarted hostilities, my empty glass.  “And I thought my fight with my wife was bad.”

The bartender grinned, sliding another beer.  “Oh really?” he purred.  “Do tell.”

Christ shook his head.  “You are such an asshole, you know that, right Luc?”  He turned to me, setting a gentle hand on my shoulder.  “Don’t think about it right now,” he said.  “And definitely don’t tell my brother anything about it.”

“Thank you, Lord,” I sighed.  “I had already planned not to.”

“It’s getting late,” He said, ignoring the gusty sigh and pout on the other side of the bar.  “Why don’t you finish your beer and head home?”

I nodded, and tipped the glass up, intending to take that excellent advice.