Immortal Lycanthropes - By Hal Johnson Page 0,77

witnesses agreed, was “trippy.”

“It looks like some kind of snake arrow,” Myron observed.

Dantaghata licked his lips. “The Nagastra. Its poison bite is certain death.”

Myron nodded. That sounded about right.

Dantaghata said, “Put it down before you injure yourself, little boy.”

Myron drew back the bow.

“You can’t even hurt me,” Dantaghata said. “I’m like a wheel made meticulously over a month by a craftsman who can make five chariots in a day.”

Myron took careful aim.

“Like a drop of vinegar in a jug of milk, alone I can spoil whole armies.”

“You done?” Myron asked.

“Very well,” Dantaghata said. “As you killed my brother, so shall you kill me. Very well.” And he began to cry.

“Stop it,” Myron said.

Still sobbing. “The burning ground has seen the back of every man. No man has seen its back.”

“Cut it out.”

It is here that I wish I could have spoken to Myron. I would like to know what he was thinking, now that he had his enemy in his sights. Was he thinking about those years when he had had reason to believe that no one wanted to kill him? Was he reviewing the deaths he had seen recently, the violence and the fear that followed him like a hungry dog?

What was the thought process, I want to ask him, that led him to do something as stupid as what he did? “Ah, screw it,” he said, and threw the arrow and bow over the side of the bridge to the river below. The snake head screamed all the way down. “Just leave me alone,” he also said, and turned and walked away. He had gotten maybe thirty feet, when he heard that familiar grating voice behind him calling out.

“I had a second bow in my backpack, tardo.”

Myron turned, and there, indeed, behind him, was Dantaghata, a bow, a slightly different bow, in his hands. The arrow he had drawn back glowed blue. Doubtless, Myron felt so tired.

“Goodbye, universe,” Myron said.

“Shut up, megadouche,” Dantaghata said.

And then he released the arrow.

What happened next there is perfect unanimity on. Dantaghata released the arrow, but the arrow did not move. The arrow stayed in one place, and the bow Dantaghata was holding moved backwards instead. It moved backwards as it straightened out, but then it continued to move backwards, and Dantaghata was moving forward at the same time. In fact, they were both shrinking, or contracting. The bow and Dantaghata’s body moved closer and closer as the arm separating them shortened, and soon the arm was so short that the body and the bow overlapped, and then they crossed, and then they were no more. The arrow stopped glowing, and it clattered to the ground.

The glue sniffers on the bridge were so terrified by this vision that to a man they swore repentance—but were they sober when they swore?

But Myron, Myron just turned away and walked across the bridge.

2.

Myron walked through northwest Portland until he came to an address he had scribbled on a piece of paper, copied from a library’s phone book weeks earlier. The paper was damp and creased, but the number was still legible, and he double-checked: 408. It was the Twenty-Four-Hour Church of Elvis. Next to it was a wooden door, which at first appeared to bear no sign, until Myron noticed the red-tinted window set in it. The glass was in the shape of a flower, quartered—the rose and the cross.

Off to one side an animal that resembled a large red cat, her fur impossibly soft and bright with white and black highlights, was pacing back and forth, waving her striped bushy tail and occasionally making a little jump. She seemed to be trying to catch Myron’s eye. He studiously ignored her, although the back of his neck must have been tingling like crazy, and tested the door—it was unlocked.

The frisking animal darted forward as Myron entered the building, but the door shut in her face. It is therefore on no red panda’s testimony that I base the following account. My source, though reliable, must remain anonymous, for the Rosicrucians are known above all else for being secretive. And unfortunately, I did not get from him all this information until much later.

Myron found, inside the door, a dark wooden staircase, going down, at the foot of which stood a tiny, three-foot-tall door with a wooden plaque. It read, in several alphabets and languages, among which Myron recognized Spanish, Hebrew, and something that was probably Chinese—and rather prim English, fortunately—WHOM ARE YOU HERE TO SEE? The bottom few