“Do you remember where you were when The Surge happened?”

  “Of course, I do,” Kris replied with a small shrug. “Everybody does.”

  The Surge, that initial burst of magical energy that pulsed out of the Earth’s core eight years ago and made the heavens shiver. It had opened cracks in the ground, knocked planes and satellites out of the sky, shredded the telecommunications network and crashed numerous power grids. It was the worst disaster to strike the modern world… and it was overshadowed by what happened over the next few months. The Surge was just the harbinger to the greater Resurgence to come as its magical energy awoke things that had been sleeping for millennia.

  “Well, I was in the library at Cal Poly working on my master’s thesis.”

  “You… got a master’s degree?”

  “Yes, and my thesis was on… wait for it… the Lack of Myth Creation in the Modern Era. I was attempting to discuss the disconnect between what myths and heroes were and what myths and heroes are.

  “Why did the Greeks believe so strongly in the Olympians, but we all knew that the Marvel comics are not real? Why were the superstitions about ghosts and werewolves and vampires believed in so strongly that people used to carry talismans against evil and even attack their neighbors, but we don’t see anything similar in the modern era? I had several theories, mostly involving cultural evolution and technological change...

  “We know that’s all crap now,” Kris interjected, her tone bitter.

  “Yes, all of those were massively wrong. But I did slip one other little theory, almost a null hypothesis, that all of these previous myths might just be based in some sort of fact. Just a throw away theory, but it still made it into my final thesis which I turned in three days before the Surge. I wasn’t going to let a few blackouts and chaos in the streets ruin two years of work. That was also four days before reports of supernatural beings became widespread and a couple weeks before the first of the Old Gods awakened fully. That thesis brought me to the Agency’s attention when someone finally got around to reading it, which took a while. Before that happened, I got recruited into the San Luis Obispo Guard to fight the Chumash pantheon.”

  “Those weak North American gods?” said Kris with a dismissive smirk. “That’s why your country did not fall. You only had tribal spirits to deal with. It would have been very different for you if Donner had awaken in your backyard.”

  “Don’t run down those Amerindian gods too much. There were so many different pantheons that had about a thousand different deities to deal with. The Chumash razed Santa Maria to the ground before we could stop them, and that campaign took over year. We finally chased Old Man Sun and the Great Eagle into a canyon and dropped a MOAB on their heads and ended that mess. Afterwards, I got folded into the Army and fought on the Mexican Front for a few months before my unit was pulled back for R&R.” Kris had nothing snarky to say about that. The bloodthirstiness of the Aztec gods was renowned even in Europe.

  “I am sorry. It was foolish of me to assume that you had not changed during nearly a decade of this madness.”

  “It’s ok. I still see you as an idealistic art student.” We shared a sad smile, a reflection of happier and simpler times. “Anyway, it was then that a Company man approached me.”

  “Turned out that the federal government needed people with my expertise at every level; the State Department, the CIA and the Department of Defense, you name it. They had thousands of people that knew the Chinese government inside and out but knew nothing about the Dragon Emperors and thousands more who were experts on post-communist Russia but had no idea what Perun and Baba Yaga would do. When the CIA eventually found and read my master’s thesis, and they were impressed that I had at least considered the possibility that the old gods were real. Plus, they liked my military experience and even some of my campus shenanigans. They said I was an ideal recruit, can you believe it?”

  “Frankly… no.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “They took me to Virginia, trained me and plugged me in an analyst job for a few years. I was bored so I kept applying for field work. When they started extraction operations in Germany, they tapped me because I know the language. Five months ago a sub dropped me off near Rostock and I’ve been recruiting German scientists and engineers ever since.”

  “And you have been getting these scientists and engineers to America in this submarine?”

  “The ocean is so damn big that even the gods that claim it can’t watch all of it and being underwater hides you from the sky gods. Works great.”

  “That still does not explain why you are in my apartment telling me all this. I am pretty sure that spies are not supposed to be this talkative.”

  I grimaced, “That’s where things get tricky. My cover has been blown.”

  “By blown, do you mean…”

  “A certain one eyed, eldritch bastard and his buddies are looking for me.” Generally, when in a god’s territory you avoid naming them unless you wanted their attention. The CIA had assigned Wotan the codename Wheelhouse but Kris wouldn’t that.

  “Scheisse,” Kris pushed herself back from the table and her eyes automatically flicked around the room just to see if my mere oblique mention of the god might have drawn his attention. It shouldn’t have, but this deep in Wotan’s territory it was hard to tell. “I should toss you out that door right now!” she hissed. “You are a dead man!”

  “Do that, and you lose your only chance to get to a place where you can say a name like his without fear.”

  That calmed her down a little but her eyes still roved the room nervously. “if they catch you, the Wotanvolk will blood eagle you in the middle of the Altmarkt.”

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  I winced at that; I’ve seen more than a few of those public executions. “I’m well aware of how screwed I am. That’s the only reason I am here spilling every CIA secret I’ve got. I’m hoping you can help get me out of the city, at least.”

  “But how did those Schweinehunde even find you? Could they have followed you here?”

  “If I’d been followed, we’d already be dead,” I said with a wry smile, it wasn’t reciprocated. “I don’t know how they found me. My cover was that I am a stranded American college student wandering across Europe in search of a home.”

  There had been hundreds of thousands of American citizens like that the world over, involuntary expats. The US Government made serious efforts to rescue them in the early days after the Resurgence, when the yoke of mythological tyranny still lay lightly upon humanity’s shoulders. Those dwindled when the Old Gods began to cement their control… and the number of Americans abroad fell as they died in one horrible way or another.

  “They know my code name,” I continued. “I can’t go to my normal CIA contacts because for all I know everyone on the Continent had been compromised. That’s why I came to you, nobody, even the Agency knows about our past relationship.”

  “Then how do you know if your submarine has not been “compromised” as well?”

  “Well, the submarine isn’t on the continent…” I replied disingenuously before hastily continuing when I saw the storm clouds gather on her face. “Because the sub isn’t part of the network for this very reason. Each agent’s extraction operation has a time and place table known only to him and a coded series of light messages, also known only to him, to call the sub to shore.”

  “What if one of the other agents was captured?”

  “Even if the Wotanvolk captured or turned another agent they still wouldn’t have my table. That’s only here,” I tapped the side of my head, “and on the sub. Worst case scenario is they get enough information to lure the sub into a trap and destroy it… but they still won’t know when or where I’m scheduled to meet it. So, at least we won’t be walking into a trap of our own.”

  “That won’t help us get to America.”

  “No,” I admitted, I was just pleased that she has said ‘us’ instead of ‘you’. “But it is the best chance that we have, and fooling and destroying a Los Angeles class submarine is not easy, even for an Old God. Are you with me?”

  I locked gazes with Kris, staring deep into her dark blue eyes and willing her to join me. For a moment, I thought she would say no; the cumulative fears and disappointments of years weighing down and crushing and any hope that she might have had. But then, something shifted in her face, her jaw firmed. “Yes. I am with you. Let’s get out of this hellhole.”

  “I can’t trust any of my official contacts or safe houses in the areas One Eye controls.” I swept my hand across a portion of the map laid out on the table between us. It was an old road map of Central Europe that dated from sometime in the late nineties that Kris had stashed away. The geopolitical lines on the map were no more real than the dead polities they denoted but roads, cities and rivers were largely the same.

  Determining the territories of the Old God’s took more guesswork butt had become a necessary survival strategy in occupied Europe.

  Wotan controlled a large territory, as befitting a powerful god. Besides Dresden, the Teutonic God of Wisdom controlled lands all the way north to the coast, west to the Elbe River and Thuringia, east to the Oder River and then south to the Austrian Alps. A formidable chunk of territory that encompassed most of the Czech Republic, Austria, eastern Germany and western Poland as well as the cities of Rostok, Madgeburg, Leipzig, Wroclaw, Prague, Linz and, of course, Berlin. Normally his lands were considered relatively safe and orderly for regular humans, but it was now all a deathtrap as far as I was concerned.

  “But it might just be that once we go into another god’s territory the CIA network will still be intact which will make getting out of here alive much easier,” I continued. “We could go directly west, that is the shortest route…”

  “But that goes to Ermen’s lands,” interjected Kris hastily.

  “Exactly, and since we don’t have a death wish we don’t want to go there,” I agreed. “Plus, to get to the coast from there we’d have to go through the lands of Teiwaz and that would also suck.”

  The Teutonic God of War had his realm on a constant war footing and going through there stood us a good chance of being swept into his army for use as cannon fodder in his endless wars against his Scandinavian cousins to the north.

  “Our safest route is to get to Bavaria first. From there we then can work our way north and west to the coast.” My finger drew an arc through Munich, up through Stuttgart to Mainz and then staying east of the Rhine all the way north. “Most of my sub rendezvous points are here.” I tapped the shoreline in what used to be the northern Netherlands.

  Kris nodded in approval. “That means we only have to deal with Volla, Nerthus, Fraujo and Inguin and we avoid Donner’s territory.”

  The thunder god, Donner, had claimed everything west of the Rhine all the way to the apocalyptic battlegrounds of France where the Celtic and Roman gods fought an endless war over land that both pantheons claimed. The Teutonic Pantheon had been careful to place their most warlike gods along their frontiers. Europe crowded with a half dozen major pantheons and dozens of minor ones claiming a piece of it. Warfare raged between the pantheons.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “All those deities are far easier to deal with than their brethren and we can more easily move between their borders.”

  “But, to get to Bayern,” Kris used the proper German way of saying Baveria. “We will have to go through lands of Frau Wyrd.” Kris tapped the portion of the map around Nuremburg. “And that will not be easy.”

  “No,” I concurred. “It won’t be. But I can’t see any better way to get into Bavaria.”

  Frau Wyrd was the Goddess of Fate within the Teutonic pantheon and as such as reputed to see all and be a mean, old biddy besides. No one was quite sure what the extent of her farseeing powers were, but it was pretty certain that she would be able to see everything happening within her borders. That’s why the CIA never bothered to put a safe house or agent there. Yet, I’d be safer there than in any area Wotan controlled.

  “So that is our way out of here,” I continued once I was sure that Kris had no further objections or suggestions. “Now we just need a way to get out of Dresden, to Nuremburg and then a way to get through Nuremburg without tempting the Fate, so to speak. Once we get into Bavaria, I can to contact the CIA assets there.”

  “How do you know they have not been found out too?”

  “I don’t, so I’ll have to do it very carefully. My hope is that only assets within One Eye’s territory have been compromised. If we’re lucky, we can use CIA resources to get back to the coast. If we’re unlucky, we will have to do it all on our own.”

  “If we are unlucky, we will have our heads cut off in sacred grove,” Kris replied cynically. After the last eight years, cynicism was basically a reflex within anyone still alive.

  “Kris, we need to be positive,” I got only a scowl in return. “Ok, that first part is going to be all you. Can you think of a way to smuggle me out of Dresden? Big W’s cronies know me by sight so I will need a disguise or be hidden somehow. What do you got? Any ideas come to mind?”

  She gazed at the map meditatively for a few seconds. “Maybe,” she said slowly as if the word had to be dragged out from hiding. “I will need to go talk to some people first. I cannot promise anything.”

  “Well, you better, because we only got one shot at this.”

  “I know. Stop pressuring me. Let’s go to bed, I will talk to some people tomorrow.”

  “Ok…” I glanced around the small apartment before allowing my eyes to light upon her bed. “So… where do I sleep?”

  “On the floor!” she said definitely as she tossed me an angry look and a threadbare blanket before yanking shut the curtain that partitioned her “bedroom” from the rest of the apartment. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

  I awoke to the hammering of an aggressive fist on the door.