3. I Meet the God of B-Grade Movies

For a fraction of a second, I couldn't move or think or breathe. I gaped at the monstrosity, the dryad quaking behind me like I could protect her. I felt like I was supposed to protect her somehow, but the problem was that I had no idea what I could do to help. The world fell into slow motion, the snake tasting us on the air with its pink tongue as long as my forearm. I was frozen, stuck in time.

MOVE!

All at once, a voice screamed in my head, and the world snapped back into real time. My feet knew what to do even if the rest of me was trying to figure out how a snake so enormous had managed to evade my notice until it had been pointed out to me. My hand found the girl's easily, and I turned on my heels and ran as hard and fast as my legs would take me, dragging her along behind me. She resisted at first, but she was surprisingly light and picked up the speed after a moment of shock.

Left.

I didn't even think about where the advice was coming from. I skipped to the left as quickly as I could. Next to us, where we had been running just before, a tree exploded into a shower of splinters. The dryad shrieked, but I kept pulling her forward so as to not lose ground. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the snake moving quickly out of the wreckage of the tree it had just demolished.

If we could just get out of the park. If we could just get to a house or a car. Somewhere with people who could deal with a giant snake running around loose.

Straight on. Keep moving!

The voice urged me forward and I plunged ahead, ripping my gaze from the snake, which was recuperating quickly. I was still holding onto the tree girl, but I wasn't pulling her anymore. She'd picked up her speed and was running full tilt beside m, clutching to my hand desperately. We didn't encounter a single living soul until we reached the edge of the park, which was fortunate, because I was still trying to work out an explanation of the situation for myself. I didn't think I'd be able to explain it to anyone else.

We burst out of the trees onto a sidewalk, heavily populated, before a busy intersection. I looked back and saw the brush shaking ominously behind us. I took the only action that made any sense to me.

"Run!" I screamed at the people on the sidewalk. I waved my arms frantically at the trees, where the snake would come from any moment. "There's... something loose in the park! A snake, or something, and it's huge!"

A couple holding hands walked past, ignoring me completely, but throwing my leaf-clad companion strange looks. A woman with a large, magenta purse swung it at my head, muttering something about ruffians and troublemakers. All the while, my new hippie friend was trying to push me away from the park with all of her willowy strength.

"We have... to move..." she said between deep breaths as she threw her slight weight into shoving me across the street. "They won't... eve see. They can't!"

"It's a giant snake," I said. "It's sort of hard to miss."

"I'll explain... later. Just... move!"

I shifted my weight slightly onto my back foot, accidentally sending us both off balance. We toppled to the ground together just as a gigantic, black-scaled body soared over us and into the intersection.

Horns blared and breaks squealed as cars swerved to miss it, only to slide into one another. I was back on my feet in the next instant, pulling the girl with me, and I didn't argue with her this time.

"We have to call someone," I said as we ran. "The police. Animal Control. A zoo. Something!"

"They can't do anything against that," she said back.

"What... is it?" I panted.

She only shook her head, which didn't make me feel any better about the situation. I could hear terrified shrieks behind me, and then the rough slither of scale on pavement. I knew instinctively that, for whatever reason, the thing was ignoring everyone else and following only us. Taking some small comfort in that fact that, while my own life was on the line, I wasn't leaving behind helpless people to become snake food, I concentrated only on running and trying to find a safe place to hide.

The voice in my head was telling me to get indoors as fast as I could, and with no better guidance, I led the girl down the street, looking for a building whose storefront wasn't made of glass. Finally, across the street, I spotted a brick-faced shop with a heavy, wooden door shielding the entrance, a small window in the top panel with a glowing 'Open' sign. The broken neon above the door declared that it was "Merv's P wn S op."

Over my shoulder, I could see the snake picking up speed, spitting angrily as it pursued us. Putting on a final burst of adrenaline, that tugged at the muscles in my legs and set my lungs burning, I dragged my running companion through the backed up traffic and to the pawn shop. I wrenched open the door and, more roughly than I'd intended, shoved her through.

I turned to take a final look at the snake and, seeing my impending escape, the muscles along its sides rippled as it used its entire body to spring forward after us. In the next second, I had the door closed and was ducking behind it, waiting for the impact that would no doubt send the door flying off its hinges at any second. I closed my eyes and braced myself.

I waited for a lifetime, but the door stayed firmly where it was and didn't so much as rattle. There was no impact at all. I pushed my ear against the door, but heard nothing, not even the sound of the angry cursing and honking, or screaming from the drivers outside.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the door in front of me, but it didn't look anything like it had from the outside. It was painted white, for one, and the knob was all silver and crystal. The "Open" sign in the window was gone and, for that matter, the window, too! This was definitely not the door to a seedy pawn shop, and it was entirely too well lit in this room.

I had expected dim lighting at best, good for hiding crucial flaws in things until after they'd been purchased and taken home. I turned around slowly, my danger senses pinging wildly, and what I saw confirmed that I was not in a shady pawn shop in downtown Crawfordville, Florida.

I was sitting in a completely empty room, spotless and white, on a plain tile floor next to the strange girl from the park, and she was staring at me with wide eyes.

"What did you do?" she asked in a harsh whisper.

I started to tell her that I hadn't done anything, but had no idea whether that was true or not, so I stopped. In lieu of any intelligent response, I looked around slowly. The room had only one exit, which was a corridor of the same color that bent to the right after about ten feet, though where it could possibly lead, I had no idea. The pawn shop we had entered was a hole-in-the-wall, and this hallway was too long to be in it. I turned back to her and shrugged.

"I'm... Maddie," I said, finding it suddenly silly that I didn't know her name and she didn't know mine. It seemed to me that once you'd survived certain death together, you should be on a first name basis with a person.

She seemed a little confused at first, hesitant, but eventually said, "C-Carthy."

I reached out to shake her hand, which only seemed polite, but flinched when a man's voice call out from down the hall and around the corner.

"If you'd both like to come 'round to the viewing room, I think you'll find it more comfortable." The voice sounded polite and curt—businesslike.

I looked at Carthy and she looked back, both of us confused and more than a little afraid. We both stood and—out of habit, I suppose—linked hands and walked down the pristine corridor. Just around the corner, the hall opened into a large room that was just as plain white as the rest, but not as empty.

Two of the walls were lined with TVs, dozens of them, all showing something different. Along one walls, I saw an empty field of perfectly golden wheat waving in the breeze. There was a family sitting down to dinner. A futuristic movie of a moon colony.

On the opposite wall, a TV showed rain falling on an unmarked gravestone. Another was focused on a lone woman sitting on a porch swing with her knees to her chest. One was playing some sort of gory Civil War movie

In front of each wall, hooked up to its respective set of TVs, was a console with hundreds of buttons and multicolored lights, and at each console was a set of overlarge, noise-cancelling headphones and a chair. One chair was occupied.

The man wearing the headphones was wearing an impeccable three-piece, pinstriped suit, though the pinstripes were mildly redundant since he was at least six feet tall and quite gangly, but it suited him at the same time. He had short-cropped gray hair, neatly parted and swept back. His lips were thin and looked chapped and his nose was slightly crooked on one side, like it had been broken.

His intensely blue eyes seemed so sad, and they were focused heavily on a screen that was showing some sort of end-of-the-world movie where the Empire State building was in ruins, and much of New York was in darkness or on fire. Carthy and I stood perfectly still, waiting for him to speak, but he didn't. His screen changed to Los Angeles, which was mostly under water, and places in Florida that I barely recognized for the sun scorch that had all but turned it into a desert.

Rapidly, the screen flipped through places from around the world in various states of destruction, and for some reason, I couldn't look away.

The Great Barrier Reef was a tangled jungle of caverns and dead, petrified coral, looming dark and dangerous over an empty ocean bed where nothing could live. There was an aerial view of an island where thirty volcanoes were erupting all at the same time. The Leaning Tower, crumbled. The Sphinx, beheaded.

And then the TV started to show really weird things.

Niagara Falls, churning a dark red liquid over the cliff instead of water. The Eiffel Tower, painted an ominous shade of red and wrapped with what looked like razor wire. The Taj Mahal, all color leached away, under cover of night, with ghostly pale figures floating aimlessly across the grounds.

The man tapped on the screen with a long, bony finger, startling me out of my trance. He frowned and shook his head.

"Still the same," he commented vaguely to no one in particular before turning to Carthy and me. He removed his headphones and smiled, but the smile was shallow and didn't touch the sadness in his eyes.

"Listen, Mr., uh... Merv," I said, uncomfortable, "We didn't mean to walk in on... whatever it is you're doing here, but we're sorry for bothering you and we'll be going if you'd kindly show us the back way out?"

He chuckled slightly. "Forgive my manners," he said, waving a hand. "You should have a seat."

I started to ask where he expected us to sit, when two straight-backed chairs appeared out of nowhere. My mouth fell open and I rubbed my eyes hard, sure they were playing tricks on me. Carthy didn't seem surprised at all, however, and all but collapsed into one of the chairs. I sat down next to her, not sure what else to do. I hadn't known her for very long, but I was feeling very protective; I didn't want to leave her with some maniac.

"Listen, I know this sounds crazy," I started, "but there's a giant snake at your door ready to wrap us into burritos and eat us whole, so you'd really be doing yourself and us a favor by showing us out the back."

He waved his hand dismissively. "The door you exited is not the door you entered, child. That beast is nowhere near here."

"What do you mean, 'not the same door'?" I asked. "How did I go through one door and come out another?"

"All things in their time," he replied. "We have other matters to discuss first."

I shook my head. "No," I said. "All things in this time. How do you even know about the snake if you've been in here this whole time. Where are we, if we're not in Crawfordville? And what do you expect to do about the fact that there's a monster running around Florida, causing car crashes and eating kids in the park?!" I was panting when I was done, and on my feet, angry.

He stared at me calmly, blankly, and after a few moments under his easy gaze, I felt a little silly, even though I had every right to be mad. I sat down stiffly, meeting his eyes with a glare that I hoped was determined and not pertinent, but he only sighed and shrugged.

"Very well," he said. He turned to his console and pressed a blue button. All of the red lights on the console lit up at once and every TV screen changed to the same channel. It was the Crawfordville news station, and the field agent was recapping what had happened at the intersection. I gripped the edges of my seat with both hands and waited to hear the worst.

"This is the place where two hours ago, a massive car accident occurred, leading to a delay in traffic that cleared up only recently."

"Two hours!" I yelled. "We've only been here for two minutes!"

He shushed me and pointed to the screens.

"No major injuries have been reported, but two drivers have been hospitalized for minor concussions. The accident was caused when a city bus careened into this busy intersection at top speed. No cars impacted the bus directly, and instead swerved into each other, allowing the bus to vanish from the scene without any clue as to who was driving."

My mouth was hanging open. A bus! A bus!?

"Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the pile-up, but sources say that camera footage from the traffic cams in the area hasn't been clear enough to get a better description of the bus, or a license plate."

"What!? That's because there was no driver! There was no bus! It was a giant, scaly, angry snake that tried to eat me!" I covered my ears with my hands, unable to believe what I was hearing. The man turned the screens back to their previous channels and the news stopped.

"That monster was sent after you, girl," he said. "It wasn't there for anyone else, and once you were gone, it went straight back to whoever sent it."

I groaned; my head hurt. "Why would anyone do that, though?" I asked. "I've never done anything bad to anyone before." I cringed momentarily. "Not on purpose, anyway," I added. I could think of a foster parent or two who might have grounded me for a year, but no one who would do this.

He shook his head. "It's not because of something you've done or haven't done," he said. "It's because of what you are."

"A demigod," Carthy whispered next to me, and I remembered what she had said in the park. I did seem like hours ago, even though I knew it had only been minutes since our conversation.

The man nodded. "I brought you here," he said, "because you didn't know how to save yourself. Strictly speaking, I'm very hands-off when it comes to mortal affairs, but you haven't even been given a chance to train. I had hoped that I was wrong and that your ignorance of our world might let you reach New Rome before they sensed your presence, but then, I was always a fool for hope. Even when I know precisely what's going to happen, I still try to change it."

He looked back to the monitor, which was showing the Grand Canyon, a river of lava bubbling at it's base, and shook his head. "For all my interfering..." he started, then stopped. "Anyway," he said, "I couldn't leave you to the snake, so I lent you a small bit of guidance and brought you here."

I looked up at him, not sure what to say. I felt a tickle somewhere around my heart, but I shoved it away. "And what... are you going to do with me" I asked, "now that you have me?"

He smiled and the barest hint of gentleness touched his sorrowful eyes. "I'm going to open a door," he said, standing. He moved out of the room and down the hallway toward where we had entered. I glanced at Carthy quickly, but she shrugged and followed him. I rolled my eyes, but did the same.

In the empty room with the single door, the man stood with his hand on the crystal knob. I walked over to him and he knelt in front of me to speak to me at eye-level. He handed me a sealed envelope and I tucked it into my jacket. "On the other side of this door," he said, "is a place called New Rome. There, you'll meet a woman called Serafin. Find her, and give her the envelope."

"I don't understand."

"You will," he said, "soon."

He opened the door, and there was nothing on the other side except for a faint, white light trickling in. Carthy squeezed my shoulder and stepped through, disappearing after a few steps, and I moved to follow her. I took my first step out the door and stopped, turning back to him.

"Who are you?" I asked.

He smiled, and this time it was almost happy. "My name is Janus," he said. "And I am your father."

Then, he closed the door, and I was swept back by some invisible force, so quickly it made my head spin. My last thought as I lost consciousness was that I did have a father after all.