City of the Plague God: Chapters 34–41

"Then tell him to come here and demand it himself. I will not bow to his sniveling lackeys."

"I may have relinquished weapons, demon, but do not be foolish enough to think I've given up an ounce of my power."

Jagged bolts struck all around us, trees burst into flames, and deep crevasses appeared in the earth.

His tail flicked uncontrollably as he scuttled away, staring down at an oozing gash across his belly.

But even in his death throes the rat was lethal. His tail whipped through the air.

I'd wanted to return home, but it was gone. All that remained was this...defiled shell.

The sky rumbled, and there was an oppressive weight to the air, a sullen, foreboding pressure, as if it were waiting for something.

The sky rumbled, and there was an oppressive weight to the air, a sullen, foreboding pressure, as if it were waiting for something.

Wooden boards had been hammered haphazardly across the front, but there were gaps I could peer through.

More pressed flowers were strewn across the desk.

He rubbed his flaccid cheek absentmindedly.

He'd always offered up his portfolio, and I'd studiously avoided it.

Her lackluster, brittle hair rippled with life and shine.

"I always wore gloves. You got to understand—gardening ages your skin faster than a month of sunbathing. Not that that matters now," he said wryly, studying his wrinkled hands.

If not for his vanity and meticulousness, he would've been immortal like me.

The steering wheel melted in my hands. The seats re-sculpted under our bodies, and the chassis screamed as it warped.

The Jaguar was gone. In its place was a four-wheeled chariot. Not some rickety wooden contraption you'd see in some museum, but the weird, outrageous vehicle of a god, built of sleek, otherworldly metal and shimmering with starlight.

The lamassus growled and tugged and twisted under the yoke.

Insectile limbs stuck out from a few of the jackets, and mandibles clicked from grossly wide mouths.

The strength of the lamassus and the power of the chariot passed through the reins into me, making us an unstoppable juggernaut.

They didn't need any encouraging—they had a reviled demon in their sights.

The only feature was the dark green block of Washington Square Park, sporadically lit by lightning flashes.

Masses seethed along the streets below—the countless poxies on a rampage of mindless destruction, driven beyond insanity by Nergal's diseases.

He orbited the chariot, gliding smoothly over the buffeting winds, spear raised.

"It is rife with plagues, sicknesses no medicine can cure. Your people will tear themselves apart with tooth and nail. I promise you a bloodbath from which the city will never recover. And then it will spread across the land, and beyond."

Glowing droplets of eau de toilette streamed out behind me, instantly vaporizing into a silver mist that caught the eddies and spread, seeding the cloud.

Now that he was closer, I could see that his wings smoldered.

One was torn, and the feathers were singed. Parts of his body smoked, too, the skin black and peeling under his molten golden armor.

His feathers wilted and started to molt.

I gazed up at the clouds, and the raindrops infused with Mo's Promise.

The swarm enveloped the body of the plague god in an opaque cloud, its buzzing reaching an ear-piercing whine.

I dipped in my brush and started applying the second coat of Overtly Olive to the window frame.

"You and Mohammed, sitting in a rowboat in the middle of the sea. The waves were so high, Sik! And there was lightning and the blackest storm clouds. I was terrified for you, but you were both laughing. As if defying the chaos, the very elements that were trying to destroy you."

We'd been so close to tragedy, and yet here we were, reclaiming our lives.

I sighed as I continued painting, all the while listening to the guy's increasingly extravagant—and desperate—sales pitches.

"Fame's a fickle thing. It's gone before you know it."

At least people wouldn't be turning up to test my immortality. Some guy, convinced the Big Rain had made him invincible, had dived off the Brooklyn Bridge to prove it.

Mo's Promise had affected me after all. When it came to Nergal, the desert hybrid had neutralized the effects of the original flower I'd brought back from the Sea of Tiamat, as Ishtar had suspected would happen.

As for how New York City was faring, if the Big Rain by itself wasn't enough to keep the conspiracy nuts from working overtime, we now had headlines on the front page of the New York Post like "The Gods Walk Among Us" and "The Miracle of Manhattan!"

She held out a rustic-looking wooden box. "Here. I brought you a deli-warming present from Gilgamesh."