Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
The first signs of morning sun came in from the windows and drifted through Amanda’s new flat to the sleeping bag where he slept. She rose and from her suitcase pulled a dress shirt, skirt, and a suit coat to wear for work. A short time later, she made a quick breakfast and grabbed his MacBook before stepping out the door.
The cold English air hit Amanda’s cheeks ass he crossed up the walkway to the bus stop to wait for the next Metro Bus. A couple of minutes passed before one of the two-tiered vehicles arrived in front and opened its doors. The driver looked like the bus driver in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Amanda nodded, walked up the attached staircase, and took an empty seat in the back. She watched the scenery of his new home pass by the windows.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of muttering from a couple of preteens dressed in black sweatshirts. Ms. Duncan looked up as the two of them rushed toward him. As she rose from his seat, one of the hoods took out a spray can and sprayed over the top of his head and raining down upon his lap.
“What the hell!" She yelled, wiping the stringy stuff from her hair and her coat. She saw the two running down the aisle and proceeded to chase after them.
The other riders followed the chase from their seats. Some even cheered Amanda on as she moved closer. The two hoods were able to evade capture long enough to hide behind a taller, muscular friend seated nearby. Amanda tried to grab the two teenagers before they sat, but ended up bumping her shoulder into their muscular friend’s chest.
She could feel the man’s shoulder tense up as Amanda grabbed on to it and stood back upright. The man dressed in a T-shirt and jeans stood up and turned his head around to face him. “Is there a problem?”
“No, there's no problem.” Amanda replied, letting go of the man’s shoulder.
The teenagers looked on and laughed at her embarassment. Ms. Duncan frowned and turned away, seething inside as she walked back to his seat. She glanced back just as the hoodlums both levitated a few inches only to slam back to their seats, smacking their heads on the metal handrail. The sound provoked Amanda to turn around and watch the aftermath of what happened.
“Huh,” Amanda said in surprise as his fellow riders applauded. “Did I do that?”
***
The bus stopped fifteen minutes later just across the street from King’s Place, home of The Guardian newspaper along with a host of other offices as well as a concert hall. Amanda stepped out of the bus and noticed the building had a well-designed box-like exterior that gleamed in some sections from the early morning sunlight. It reminded him of any four story office building Ms. Duncan had seen before.
Amanda entered the lobby whose gray walls were filled with artwork made by people of little talent. The windows inside showed a view both of the little patch of King’s Cross in front of the building and the lake to all of its visitors. Bach played from the speakers for the businessmen and tourists seated in the waiting area.
She approached the large desk in the middle of the lobby situated between the lifts and the concert hall entrance. There was a young male receptionist seated behind the desk handling the phone traffic.
“Excuse me.” Amanda cleared his throat in an attempt to get the receptionist’s attention.
The receptionist ignored her and continued doing what he had done before. She tried to get his attention again by knocking twice on the marble countertop. The receptionist sighed annoyingly and shifted his gaze from his work to Amanda. When he saw her, the receptionist’s became much cheerful than he had before.
“Oh hello, ma'am! Welcome to King’s Cross. How can I help you?”
The sudden change caught Amanda off-guard, though she assumed it was just a tactic that came with the job. “My name is Amanda Duncan. This is my first day at The Guardian. I was wondering if you knew which floor it’s on.”
“Oh, that would be on the fifth floor,” the receptionist answered after promptly checking a clipboard placed next to the phone. “It’s right next to the vending machines...in case you’re hungry.”
“Thanks,” Amanda said before moving over to the lifts. She was a couple of steps from the lift doors when she turned around back to the desk. “This may sound crazy, but I was wondering—”
Amanda stopped mid-sentence when she saw the receptionist had returned to his work, ignoring anyone coming by. Maybe it was a fluke, she thought. Ms. Duncan walked inside the lift and pressed the “Up” button on the console. As the lift doors closed, Amanda’s thoughts returned to his new employer. How big will the office space be? Will it be as intimidating for me as it was when I was sixteen and started work as an intern for the Post-Intelligencer? Will my fellow co-workers be friendly or resentful the moment they see me? He took a deep breath as the lift stopped and the doors opened.
Amanda could hardly find the words to describe the massive area. The walls were made of cobblestones and concrete. It was arranged in a way that blended elements of a Gaelic castle and 2001: A Space Odyssey in its design. Even the chairs had the same blend of futuristic and ethnic elements to it. A massive plasma screen fifty inches wide in the middle of the wall showed a BBC News broadcast while a half dozen smaller TVs around it broadcast news from stations stretching from the U.S. to Russia and Australia.
“Welcome to the Guardian, Ms. Duncan,” It was Brigid, appearing from behind him with a smile. “Let me introduce you to the other editors on staff.”
“Who came up with the design for this place?” Amanda asked as they toured the bullpen.
“It was Hermes, believe it or not,” Brigid replied. “His carpentry and construction skills are quite underrated in the annals of human history.”
Amanda nodded and continued looking around at the spacious office and the people hard at work in their cubicles. “What do you do when you have to go to another country?” he asked Brigid.
She chuckled and took a deep breath. Her body shook violently for a few seconds as her facial features began to change. The entire ordeal frightened Amanda, though strangely not anyone else inside who continued to go about their business. Ms. Duncan couldn’t take his eyes off of it. The transformation was complete a minute later. Although her dress suit had remained unchanged, her face though revealed the same bald, bespectacled man that he had remembered from prior interviews.
“I do this only when necessary,” Brigid said in the man’s soft English accent. “I’ve shifted to dozens of other forms in order to maintain the illusion of this place.”
“And people accept it all without question?”
She nodded matter-of-factly. “It is a fact of the animal kingdom,” Brigid said. “Ignoring those they deem to be harmless.”
“Yet you’re here,” Amanda fired back. “That must mean you gods must see us as harmless.”
“No, not all of us,” Brigid stopped and closed her eyes. Her face shifted back to its original female form almost instantaneously. “Some see you as equals, others…as mere pawns.”
Amanda stopped a few feet from the door. A feeling of great stress overwhelmed him and he clutched his chest. Brigid turned around and saw her new employee breathing heavily. “What’s wrong?” She asked him.
“Just—Just a little nervous, I think,” Ms. Duncan replied in between heightened breaths. “I’ve tried to be strong since I got here and met you. But I—I'm not sure I can handle it anymore.”
“Just breathe, Ms. Duncan,” the Irish goddess said, wrapping her arm around Amanda. “It will get easier as the days go by, I promise you.”
Amanda looked on as she started to feel light headed. She didn’t know whether to believe her. But she had an aura to her that made him feel she could trust Brigid. “Doesn’t anyone get suspicious about this place?” She asked, trying to breathe normally again.
“Outside of the occasional minion from Ofcom, not a lot really,” she replied. “We do our work by day, and when called upon, save the world in the evening. As long as that balance remains undisturbed, we are fine. Besides, given the popularity of the Internet, the operations of a newspaper hardly merit a lot of concern among the populace.”
She was right, Amanda thought. No one really cares what a newspaper does as long as they’re not tapping into their phones or tablets. Often, they only glance at the Sports section or read the Comics and toss the rest. Or they use it as lining for the bird cage.
“How does the staff keep silent about all this?” Amanda asked, trailing Brigid across the office floor. “Someone must have spilled the beans about this place to a rival newspaper or TV station. That is, unless everyone here is a supernatural creature.”
“They accept what they see, Ms. Duncan,” She smiled at one of the reporters passing by on her way to her office. “And not everyone here is a ‘supernatural creature,’ as you put it. Some are, and some are as human as you are. Each side living and interacting with one another in perfect harmony.”
The loud growling of his stomach delayed Amanda’s train of thought as she followed Brigid to her office. “Do you have anything to eat? My breakfast was pretty much a few pieces of bread and a Diet Pepsi.”
“I think there’s some Shepherd’s pie in my refrigerator,” Brigid said moving over to her chair.
She then pointed the way to the appliance as she took a seat in her high backed office chair. Her office was more low-key than Amanda had expected as she opened the door to the mini refrigerator and pulled the pie out.
“Before I introduce you to the rest of the Editors, Ms. Duncan,” Brigid said, “I thought we should what discuss your first assignment will be."
“What is it?” She took another bite of the meat and corn pie. “An interview of some high-maintenance diva? Keeping an eye on a reality star clinging to their last few seconds of fame in the West End?”
Brigid stood up and handed him a photo of Lugh taken from a CCTV camera. “This is the warrior god Lugh. He is the only human to ever have ascended to Avalon and become a god. Somehow, he has returned to Earth.”
“I remember Lugh,” Amanda said, swallowing. She held the photo up. “My dad read the story to me when I was a kid. He was a hero though.”
“That is only a part of his tale,” Brigid walked away back to her desk. “There is a darker side to that tale. A side that involves a man who grew angrier with humanity as the centuries passed by. It led him to try to overthrow my father on Avalon because, he claimed, he was the only one who could ‘save’ humanity. Thankfully, he was stopped and locked away in Neamhchinneacht in Avalon till a few weeks ago.”
“The good news is he should be pretty easy to find,” Amanda placed the photo on her lap before taking another bite of the pie. “All we have to do is look for a floating god in a suit of armor carrying a massive sword.”
“It is not that simple I am afraid,” Brigid uttered walking past the desk to the door. “Lugh has the same power I have to shift into any human form possible. It is likely that the man you see in that photograph has shifted into a brand new identity.”
“So, my first assignment will be to capture an all powerful warrior god all by myself?”
Amanda’s spirit dropped with a thud as she finished her last bite and stood back up. “Grand.”
“Who said you were doing it alone?”
The office door opened and a tall tanned Latin man stepped inside her office. He was dressed in a pinstripe suit. His muscular physique and shaggy dark locks made him seem physically imposing. Like an NFL linebacker or a black bear. “This is Chabe,” Said Brigid. “He is the Brazilian god of strength and agility.”
Chabe smiled and nodded at Amanda as another figure stepped through her office door next to him. This man was dressed in slacks and a white formal shirt. He was slender and more fairer skin than Chabe was. He was also less intimidating and scary than his predecessor. “This is Jar’Ed, the Aborigines god of intelligence and the mind. He was the one who set up our first meeting in your head. His skills however are considerably greater than that.”
“G’day!” Jar’Ed uttered. Amanda looked on and nodded politely, privately hoping to stay on Jar’Ed’s good side for as long as she was here.
“The final member of my editorial staff,” Brigid said, stepping to the door and locking it. “Is already inside this room.”
Amanda dusted some of the pie crumbs off his pants, trying to figure out who this person was. Maybe it was some type of rat god, she thought. Or a being that can shrink down to microscopic size like Ant-Man. As she thought of the different possibilities, she felt a cold hand on his shoulder that caused him to jump out of her skin.
She swung around to catch the prankster face to face. What she saw wasn’t a man of flesh and blood, but a ghostly humanoid presence who smiled before gliding next to Jar’Ed. “You...” She said softly.
“That is Ghede,” Brigid proclaimed, placing her arm across her ghostly shoulder. “She is a Voodoo ghost who works the darker crevices none of us can fit through. It is a skill that has proven to be very advantageous to her when it comes to the realm of Politics. Though I imagine you remember her from one of her Snooker excursions in the States.”
“I want to say I’m sorry, Ghede,” Amanda said slack jawed. “I actually thought then you were a man.”
“It’s fine. Most men do,” Ghede replied in a Creole accent before bowing. “Welcome to the Guardian, mon homme!”
Brigid chuckled before walking toward Amanda. “By day, we are the editorial voice of one of Britain’s biggest newspapers. By night, we are the force that keeps this world from turning into dust. Now, that we know each other properly…let’s get back to work.”
The three deities chatted with one another for a brief moment before stepping out of the office. Amanda joined them a short time later following behind Chabe. Brigid noticed the stain on her skirt and legs as she walked. “Is that from the Shep’s Pie?”
She looked down at the drying purple stain and chuckled, “Oh, no no! I was sprayed with what I think was some silly string on the bus ride here. I thought I got it all off, but guess not. Do you have any Gaelic remedies that can help clean this up?”
“Nope,” Brigid said, patting her on the shoulder. “Just bleach.”