EXCERPT — from CODEX I: BILLY ARMADILLO / LUX AETERNA by A. Coyote
An immortal walks into a motorcycle shop.
The shop owner’s name was Bill, but that was never going to fly since, ya know, my name is Billy — so we got to talking. After I told him I needed him to teach me everything he knew about motorcycles, I said, “You don’t even look like a Bill. Maybe a Billiam. And you can’t be Billy. Are you married to Bill, or could we go with Will? Doesn’t matter — the first name isn’t the main attraction. It’s the name that comes after.”
He smiled with kind, warm eyes.
I took a deep breath and put my hand on his shoulder.
And I felt it all. Every memory, every truth, every connection. Flashes of a younger version of him working on vehicles — not just cars and motorcycles, but military equipment. Images of him helping people who didn’t quite fit the normal mold. People who needed modifications that went beyond standard mechanics. And then I saw his ancestors — his father and his father before that, back and back and back through centuries, all doing the same thing, all with kind eyes. And then further still... a man in ancient Greece, sitting at a fire, drawing numbers in the dirt. And next to him — Raven. My mother.
He looked right at me as I took my hand off him, his eyes with an all knowing smirk. “You get it all? How was it?”
“What?”
“Ya mum’s signature move.” He wiped his hands on a rag, walked to the fridge and cracked open two beers.
I froze. “What..?”
He handed me a beer, clinked it, took a long pull. “Same frickin’ look in ya eyes, seeing through everything, traveling through time and getting the whole history when you touch someone. Thing is though, you don’t really know how to use it yet. Ya like a baby rattlesnake releasing all the venom at once. Ya gotta learn control, but we will get there.”
He studied my face. “You’re sure as shit Raven’s daughter.”
“How do you—”
“Because she told me one of her girls would show up eventually. The one with the teflon armor and the razor wit.” He smiled. “She said I’d get what that meant when I saw you, and ayuh, she wasn’t wrong. I mean, she rarely is but you know that.” He then gestured to himself. “And I’m Moose now, isn’t that what you got when you traveled through my shoulder?”
I stared at him. “Damn, Billiam... how’d you—”
“Raven’s called me the exact same thing for forty years. We’ve known each other a long time. I was twenty and she was somewhere around five thousand years old, give or take a century — she stopped keeping track around the Roman Empire, said it got depressing.” He chuckled. “So what’s the deal — do all you eternals get some telepathic email that gives every person’s animal name? Can you beam over to the rest of them that I want to change mine to something a little cooler... like Dragon?”
I took a long pull off my beer and laughed. “Nah you can’t change it, Moosey. You think I’d keep Armadillo if I had a choice? We are what we are—”
“For the time we are it. Yeah, I know.”
We both smiled. The kind of smile that doesn’t need words — just loaded with reciprocity.
I was still turning the puzzle over in my head. Then it hit me.
“Moose, the guy in Greece drawing numbers in the dirt... hang on...” A wave of chills blanketed my whole body — or the beer just kicked in — regardless I blurted out: “Fuckin’ Pythagoras!!??? Like THE Pythagoras...? Oh fuck, my mother and Mr. Theorem himself? Daaaammmn. Well, my sister Wyatt is a math genius so that checks out.”
Moose grinned. “Knew you’d get there. Pythagoras is my eighty-five times great grandfather. Give or take. I stopped counting. It got weird around fifty.”
I started laughing and then raised my beer to him. “What up, nephew.”
He laughed and shook his head, then pointed to a motorcycle in the corner. Old. Vintage. Harley. Beautiful.
“This was hers.”
I smiled. “No shit.”
“Raven helped me — more times than I care to share — out of a sticky situation with some government fucks. They didn’t appreciate my discretion regarding certain modifications I’d made for certain people.”
“What kind of modifications we talkin’, Moosey?”
“The kind that make sure certain special folks like you are very hard to catch. That is what we do, Billy. We are your mother’s BEES. Boundless Evolved Eternal Soldiers. We have hives all over. All the ancestors of your mother who are not immortal but... the thing about BEES, we have all the same gifts as you but… we die.” I took that all in. Fucking hell. My mother is… wow. Moose, switching gears, patted the bike frame. “She hasn’t used it in over a decade. Said you’d need it more than her right now.”
I stared at the bike. Then back at him. “How many of you are there—”
He just smiled and reached for a completely random-looking can of WD-40 on the wall.
It was not random at all.
The wall — covered in tools, car parts, a full workbench — split perfectly in half down the middle. Behind it: a steel elevator. He punched in a six-digit code. I memorized it. He knew I did.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said.
We got in. The wall closed behind us. We descended for what felt like ten minutes. The elevator dinged — a doorbell ringtone that sounded like it was composed by Chopin, and knowing my mother she probably slept with Chopin and he wrote that for her or some shit — and then the doors opened.
Deep beneath the earth, below a random auto shop in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire, was a full-on Batcave.
I looked at Moose.
Moose looked at me.
“Wifi password is listentoeverythingmoosesays.” He paused.
I looked at him.
“Fine. It’s actually calmdownbilly. All one word. Your mum set it in 1983.”
I shot him a look.
“I know.” He shrugged. “Everything you thought you knew is about to be challenged.”
I sighed and smiled. “Can’t wait.”