Free Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk by James Lovegrove Page A

right in front of me now. Her perfume was heady, her allure undeniable.
    “Are you so sure?”
    “I am.”
    So am I . But Anansi sounded far less adamant than I did.
    All at once her hand was cupping my crotch. My breath caught. I stiffened, in more ways than one.
    “Feels good, doesn’t it?” she whispered in my ear.
    It does. It does. Oh, it does .
    “I swear I won’t embarrass you, Anansi. Or Dion, if I may call you that. No one would ever have to know. It would be our secret. Your room. Now. I’ll do anything you desire. Anything.”
    Anything...?
    “For old times’ sake. We’ll keep the lights low. I’m very skilled. You won’t notice any difference.”
    Oh, Dion, we could, couldn’t we? Look at her. She’s so lovely. All we have to do is half-close our eyes and it would be like being with a normal woman, just about. Come on, what harm can it do?
    Fortunately, when it comes to one’s baser urges, I am made of sterner stuff than that.
    “I was wrong, Loki,” I said, yanking her hand away by the wrist. “I am married. Or at least, Anansi is.”
    “To silly old Aso, who’d be none the wiser.”
    “Aso would find out. She always finds out. Anansi’s infidelities always end up biting him on the backside.”
    “I could do that to you if you like,” Solveig purred.
    “No. You’ve tried your best, son of Odin, half-brother of Thor,” I said, “but your best isn’t good enough.”
    I strode off to my room, very pleased with myself, although Anansi was less than satisfied and kept grumbling discontentedly.
    I was even more pleased with myself after a swift search of the room turned up a tiny infrared camera and wireless transmitter which had been inserted into a corner crevice, up where the cork wall tiles met the Artexed ceiling. The camera’s lens was pointed straight at the bed, and I had no doubt who had installed it or why.
    “She broke in,” I said.
    Solveig? How?
    “Vintage hotel. No key cards. Old-fashioned door latches like these aren’t too hard to force with a credit card or a slim jim.” Hark at me, the man who’s rubbed shoulders with more than his fair share of cat burglars and carjackers.
    Devious bitch , said Anansi.
    “And if she’d had her way, we’d have been on YouTube before you know it. Every avatar with a laptop would have been watching us over breakfast. Dion Yeboah in flagrante with a shemale. Chances are she’d also send it as an email attachment to my colleagues in chambers. I’d never live it down. My career would be in tatters.”
    Not to mention our hopes of victory.
    “She’ll get what’s coming to her,” I vowed. “Just you wait.”
    But still... It might have been memorable. Just as a one-off .
    “We don’t think that way, Anansi. Not if we’re here to win.”
    I was minded to crush the camera underfoot and present Solveig with the remnants, but decided instead to keep it. I lodged it in a drawer. It might come in handy.
     
     
    D AY TWO OF the contest was crueller than day one. This was the natural order of things, according to Anansi. As the ranks of competitors thinned and the tension mounted, the trickery took on a nastier, more vindictive edge.
    So Hershele Ostropoler, the Ukrainian Yiddish analogue of Mullah Nasruddin and Till Eulenspiegel, had his turkey bacon rashers at breakfast replaced by the real thing when he wasn’t looking. He wolfed down several mouthfuls of pig-flesh before the substitution was revealed. Given that his avatar was a Hasidic Jew, it was hardly surprising that he dashed straight out of the restaurant in search of the nearest toilet to throw up in.
    Someone, evidently inspired by my casual remark outside Reynard’s room, placed a live rattlesnake in the bed of the Korean woman who was acting as vector for Gumiho, the Nine-Tailed Fox. The woman was lucky, in as much as the snake only snuggled up against her leg for warmth and wasn’t prompted to bite her. She was too terrified to set foot inside the Friendly Inn