Nothing Left To Fear

30

The gods arrange a meeting place, the Elysian Fields motel that has sprung up in the area, immaculate apart from the sign outside which flashes up No Vacances where the neon on the I isn't working. They have set up in the conference room on a series of foldaway tables but it could be a great hall with thrones at every juncture. The motel has a fifties chic that means everyone half expects to see Rock Hudson sitting on one of the couches in the lobby, it just looks like that.

The God Mercury manages the desk, handing out stickers with names on, not always to the right mortal. He types inhumanly fast, like something from a science fiction film, before fussing, buzzing about the coffee maker like a fly at a lamp.

When they are done, sat around the oblong made of the desks, each with a glass of water and a cup of very strong black coffee, a God introducing himself as Baldr takes the time to introduce the mortals to the gods, then the gods to the mortals. He does this carefully, enunciating the names as Kali rolls her eyes and fusses with her Blackberry.

Dean doesn't really pay attention to the prick in the suit, he watches Loki out of the corner of his eye, and the way Odin perches on his chair, head back and snoring. Baron Samedi is licking bacon grease off his fingers with wet smacks. Ganesh has a glass of milk in front of him. Artemis is in bike leathers, her is hair in twin pigtails and she has too much makeup around her eyes, it makes her look like a panda, but she has tattoos all over her skin. She is beautiful underneath them, they don't make her look edgy or hard, merely coloured in.

There are gods here he knows and Gods he doesn't. Gods he heard the names of and Gods he's never heard of, and unless he looks at them directly he can see their true forms trying to escape. Kali has ten arms lashing with swords, a pointed blue tongue swipes blood from around her mouth. Baron Samedi has loa at his feet begging for his favour. The least seeming of these is a Chinese woman that Baldr introduces as Guanyin but at the same time she has a hundred names that he says in the same syllables. Guanyin is just the name that Dean hears.

The Lady of the Lake is conspicuous only in her absence.

"These," Baldr says laying down printed forms on the table for the humans to look at, "are what we can offer."

Dean looks at it, Castiel stood behind him, always behind him, and then puts it back down. It's not much, it's certainly not as much as they had hoped for. 10 aesir, 14 valkyrie, 17 arrows of artemis, 4 loa of the highest order.... the list goes on but it doesn't really offer much. The weapons in themselves are powerful but against an army of hell it's not much.

"Not enough," Dean says putting the paper down and sliding his chair backwards, "you're asking us to supply the numbers and you give us this as fire power."

"Hold your horses there, Deano," Loki starts.

Kali holds out her hand to silence him, amazingly Loki goes quiet.

"We have matched your forces equally, to the man." She says, "each of us has given what we can, we do not have the countless Host of Heaven, but nor do we need to. The Angels have not left their cities in millenia and they will not. Castiel here is proof of that, if they can stand what you have done to him then nothing will sway them in their purpose." Her tone is even but Dean is aware of her, wearing a skirt of human arms, a necklace of human heads and a crown of flowers, skin like pitch, shining in the electric lamplight of this Doris Day motel. "If you wish for more than a simple alliance, then you must offer more."

"Whaddya want?" Bobby asks. What they are offering now is not inconsiderable but it's not enough.

"Worship." Kali replies succinctly.

"No dice." Dean says and pushes the chair back further.

"Valhalla." Odin counters, "the hall of heroes, those that fall will go there, not heaven or hell. I am a psychopomp, those that die in my name go to my Heaven."