by S T Branton
Look at him, Marcus said. I was wrong. His brands are alight.
I stepped closer, and my eye caught a weird glow on the underside of the ruined sleeve. The edge of Brax’s chain tattoos peeked out from under the fabric. “Oh, shit.” Instead of the cindery charcoal black that they were before, the chains swirled like channels of molten lava across his body. He was the same as every other Marked in the city. “What does that mean?”
The fiend’s actions are not his own. He must be in Rocca’s thrall.
“Are you sure?” I frowned. “His manners have gotten way worse, but he’s not acting that much different from last time. Besides the fact that he wants to kill me.”
The Mark does not make him mindless, only vulnerable to internal commands. He will not become aware that he was acting outside of his individual will until after the Mark has been deactivated.
Brax’s hand tightened into a rocklike fist. His breathing was labored, almost wild. The visible brand on his arm blazed, fierce and seemingly painful.
“Man, he is going to be pissed,” I said. The thought made me back up again and bring my sword around in front, upright and steady. “What do I do, then? I can’t kill him while he’s being mind-controlled. Doesn’t seem fair.”
Marcus let out a grudging sigh. Agreed. Honor above all else, Victoria. Brax may be a plague let loose from Asphodel, but he is a warrior too, and he deserves to die as such. You must find a way to sever his link to Rocca. Only then can this fight be finished.
“Right.” I chewed my lip. “No problem.”
Brax finally released his hand, the limb falling limp at his side. He raised his head to stare at me from underneath his heavy brow. His features were still twisted in a mix of pain and anger. His teeth gleamed in the low light.
“You’ll pay for that, you hunter scum,” he growled.
I beckoned him on. “Come take your pound of flesh. If you can.”
Brax bull-rushed me, bellowing, and the hammer cut a crescent through the crisp night air. The stench of its burning struck my nostrils as I maneuvered deftly out of his way. He swept around to face me again. I hesitated as he came in to hit me. Did I want to hurt him, and if so, how badly? His intense reaction to the burn stuck in my mind, and I turned the flat of the blade toward him, angling for skin. The sword sizzled on contact, and Brax’s bellow became a howl.
Again, the tat on his arm flared brighter. But then it faded, and the constantly shifting colors became sluggish. Brax threw his arm to the side in an attempt to knock me away. I batted at him.
I think you must be on to something.
Brax lashed out with his weapon, the hammer flailing. I ducked and grabbed his arm, hauling him forward until he faltered. Cutting off another section of coat sleeve, I pressed the Gladius Solis to his skin. The hammer clattered to the ground.
“You’ll thank me later,” I told him. “Trust me.” He sagged to his knees. I threw his arm backward, opened up his chest, and sent him sprawling prone. His coat dropped open. Then I got down and held the sword to his chest.
Brax shrieked with such force that the veins in his neck and face bulged out. His glasses slipped to the side, exposing eyes screwed shut in agony. The network of chains across his body lit up once more before they faded out, dead. With that, his screaming stopped, and his rigid muscles relaxed. His head lolled back, grey skin sheened with sweat.
I stood up and looked down on him doubtfully. “He looks like shit. Did that work, or is he dead? I wasn’t trying to kill him.”
I believe it may have worked as intended. Marcus himself didn’t sound too sure. Regardless, you must exercise caution if and when he awakens. He could be… irate.
“Can’t say I’d blame him. For that, anyway. We’re going to have a talk about the whole ‘attempted murder’ business.”
For what it is worth, you have done well in proving both your honor and your sense of mercy. Were I to be truthful, I would admit that I am not sure I could have acted with the right decorum in such a heated moment.
“Yeah, you would have.” I kept one eye on Brax’s unmoving form as I examined the Gladius Solis for any signs of wear. “I was going to kill him before you stopped me.” On reflection, I added, “In self-defense, that is. I’m still not totally convinced he’s our worst enemy.”
Not our worst, to be sure. But not a friend and not deserving of trust.
I decided to reserve final judgment until Brax had regained the ability to speak for himself. He’d been an enigma from the start, and something told me his circumstances hadn’t simplified over time. “I guess we’ll see.”
On the ground at my feet, Brax’s eyelids twitched. I pointed the sword at his chin as he gradually returned to consciousness.
Not the most welcoming visual, but Marcus’s mistrust wasn’t exactly unwarranted. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Chapter Twenty
Brax made a mindless attempt to sit up and stopped halfway, dropping back to the street with a tortured groan. He seemed not to have noticed the sword at all. “What the hell,” he mumbled. The unburnt hand lurched to scrub over his face, after which he opened his eyes at last. I had seen them once, but the pure black orbs were just as unsettling the second time around.
“Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty,” I said. His initial response instilled confidence that he wasn’t on the verge of another homicidal rage, though the sword remained as a failsafe.
“Huh?” He picked up his head to inspect me, eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah, it’s you.” He took another stab at sitting up and managed to pull himself somewhat vertical. “Get that thing out of my face, would you?” His tone bore none of the venomous hostility from the fight, nor any real conviction. The Brax in front of me was spent and dazed, clearly still recovering.
“Depends. How murderous do you feel right now? Scale of one to ten.”
He stared blankly. “Do I look like I could murder anyone right now? Feels like I’ve been drunk for a month.” He rubbed his palm over his head. “I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I owe you one. Thanks for whatever the hell you did to get me out.”
I pulled back the sword and held it up. “Gave you a new tat with this thing. You didn’t take it well.”
“Yeah, that would do it.” He sighed. “Sorry I tried to kill you. It wasn’t my idea.”
“And I’m glad I figured that out prior to skewering you through the head.”
He does not appear to pose a current threat. Marcus was as begrudging as I’d ever heard him. Now would be an opportune time to extract as much information as you can, while his defenses have been cut down.
“He’s not a prisoner, Marcus. Although I did kind of torture him into submission.”
Brax chuckled humorlessly. “I understand. It was the only way. There’s not much that can break that infernal bond once it’s been established, so I’m grateful you did it.” Indicating his chain brands, he added, “Pain is no stranger to me anyway.”
“Let me guess.” I let the blade go out but kept the hilt in my hand. “This is Rocca’s fault.”
An expression of frustrated defiance swept over Brax’s features like a flash storm, there and gone. “As always. If it was just her, I could take her on, no problem. She thinks she’s hot shit, but I know the score. In the grand scheme of things, she’s nothing serious.”
“What happened then?” I sat down in the street across from him, picking at crumbles of asphalt. It felt sort of weird to be acting like two kids on a playground, talking smack about the resident bully, but after our skirmish, we both needed a couple minutes of downtime. I was already resolved to recruit Brax if it was possible, and relating to him seemed like the strategy with the greatest chance of success. He was crazy strong, he had a brutal weapon, and he had beef with the gods. That was all I could’ve asked for.
Plus, he piqued my curiosity, and if anyone knew a good way to take down Rocca, it was him.
“I left Palo Alto on the run,” he began, staring up toward the star-speckled sky.
“Monk was dead, and I knew someone had to be on the hook for it. Everything would’ve come crashing down if I was caught. Not because of the human police—those guys can’t do jack shit to me—but because the gods would know exactly where to find me.” His black eyes hardened. “Every time I’m out of Asphodel, I have one goal and one goal only: to stay out as long as possible.” He shook his head. “I was starting to think it might work for good. I wasn’t being tailed. No one knew where I was, or so I thought. Until Rocca showed up with that damn chain. That’s when I knew how screwed I was.”
“I saw that chain,” I said. “It looked like she was using it to call a whole freaking army.”
“She was. The chain controls all Marked, which means any being with some of these bad boys.” He held his arms out to display the largest brand cutting across his chest. “When she uses it to call us, we have no choice but to surrender to her hivemind. That way, she can make us do whatever she wants.”
“You’re her slaves.”
“No other word for it.” He noticed his glasses lying a few inches away, and he picked them up without putting them on. “Here’s the messed-up thing: for a lot of them, it’s probably better that way. The Marked aren’t pious fanatics in service to a god they revere. The majority of ‘em are assholes on their best days, killers and destroyers on their worst. If they were allowed to run rampant here with their free will intact, this place would have burned to nothing long ago. They’re masters of the worst kind of chaos, the kind that’ll chew up and spit out anything that gets in the way. The chain is the only thing that can counteract that force.”
“Where do they come from?” I tried to imagine a whole realm of beings driven by the same war-hungry instincts as the centaurs in the park. The picture he painted was hard to comprehend.
“Asphodel, usually. No one leaves that festering shithole without a written contract and strict control anyway, so it’s easy for her to get whatever she wants. Once you’re in there, you’d do just about anything if it meant you could be free. Makes unconditional servitude sound like a damn good deal, especially if there’s violence involved.”
Asphodel’s inhabitants are derelicts without ethics or morals. They live only to serve their own base desires through instant gratification. Rocca exploits these flaws to her advantage.
I was still a little unclear on the concept of Asphodel. “Is it, like, jail for gods?” If my understanding was correct, that made Rocca the worst work-release program ever.
“The gods don’t ever come to Asphodel.” A trace of bitterness colored Brax’s voice. “It’s a forsaken place and for good reason. The only way to get there is to be banished.”
“And how does one get banished?” I took care to keep all accusation out of my tone, despite the fact that I knew he had ample experience.
He snorted derisively. “It’s not hard. The gods have never truly been beholden to any set rules, and since they’re gods, no one can police them. You can get banished for killing sprees, for slander, for looking at the wrong person in the wrong way. Anyone who falls out of favor ends in Asphodel. A lot of times, they don’t ever come out again.”
“Because they kill each other? Or themselves?”
“That place is in a constant state of all-out war,” Brax told me. “Eat or be eaten, kill or die trying. No one who’s been in there ever emerges the same, myself included. It flips a switch in you. I think Rocca likes it that way. She always grabs whoever she can when she’s down on a job, but Asphodel is her stomping ground.”
“You think she’s recruiting now?” I asked. The thought of fighting other humans under a god’s control churned my stomach, but it was a reality I knew we had to face. I was far too well acquainted with humanity’s seedy underbelly to believe we as a species knew better than to join up with the wrong kinds of gods.
“Hell yeah,” said Brax. “You little jackasses love this stuff. Did you know that? I’ve never seen her have a problem scouting from this realm.”
I groaned. “That makes way too much sense. What’s she trying to do with them?”
“She’s building up an army. Rocca’s a brute. The only things she’s got in her head are the drives to kill and conquer, and even though she’s not all that smart, she makes up for it in sheer strength. I’m not sure she knows the word ‘mercy.’” His eyes had taken on a haunted look as he talked about Rocca, the look of a man whose memories weighed a ton.
“Sure. Why this place, though?”
He shrugged. “She thought it’d be easy, that humans are weak willed and easily mastered. She’s going to fashion all her recruits into a massive army of Marked that will march across the coast unchallenged after she forces them to take out her competition.” An empty smile crossed his face. “There have been plenty of warnings that the army will be no match for another, more powerful god. And it’s true. If her soldiers were that much more powerful, she wouldn’t be in the shit now, having to fight for dominance. But Rocca doesn’t think that way. She only looks at things like numbers and physical strength in order to determine power.” Brax steepled his fingers and rested his chin atop them. “Still, she’s got a fighting chance at the moment. If the army gains steam, it’ll be hard to stop that momentum.”
I sat back for a minute to absorb everything Brax had just said, trying my best to fit it into the other knowledge I had. The most important thing was that armies appeared to be a common thing, and that meant it was more crucial than ever to spread word as far as we could. The more time people had to band together against the rising threat, the better our chances stood of coming out on top of things in the end. Looking at Brax just then gave me an idea, too; or rather, the solution to a problem with which I’d been wrestling since the decision was made to go on the air.
“Can you help me with something?” I put the question as bluntly as possible, and then I made it even blunter. “By that I mean, I need your help. And after we’re finished, we’ll find Rocca and deal with her ourselves.”
“I said I owed you, and I meant it, but even if I didn’t feel a debt of gratitude, I would do anything to get a shot at that bullheaded bitch.” Brax stood up, wincing as his body crackled. “Name your price.”
“Are you good to go?” I asked, somewhat skeptical. “You look like shit.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” Brax grinned. “I’ve been much, much worse.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” I stretched my arms and rolled my shoulders. “I was on my way to try and do some outreach when you showed up. We don’t know the state of the country or the world outside of New York, but it’s probably safe to say it’s not good, right?”
Brax nodded. “The gods will fight over every last shred of this realm, without exception.”
“That’s what I thought. And that’s why we need to put out a warning so that other people know what all of human kind is facing.”
“Extinction sounds about right.” Brax shouldered his hammer. “Unless you can put up a hell of a fight.”
“I know we can.” I led him toward Rockefeller Plaza, cutting on the diagonal across another street. The satyrs had long since cleared out, maybe because they’d seen us scrapping. “I was hoping that if you were there as irrefutable proof that this stuff is real as shit, the message might take hold a little deeper.”
This amused him. “Your flaming god-sword isn’t proof enough?”
“Not in the age of the Internet and photomanipulation. If I posted a picture of the Gladius Solis to anywhere on the web, I’d get a hundred trolls screaming fakery at me within the first hour.”
He conceded the point. “Fair. I’m not sure if my presence will ultimately help or hurt you, but I’ll be there.”
He is merely an accessory, an unnecessary but potentially useful enhancement, Marcus declared. It is unfortunate that I cannot be there in body to aid. I am incredibly convincing.
“Yeah, I remember how well that went last time. You were so convincing that they threw us in jail.�
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Brax smirked. “Maybe you and I have more in common than I thought.”
Never.
Chapter Twenty-One
“So, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure you’re you right now?” I asked Brax softly as we moved cautiously down the street.
“As sure as I can be,” he said. “I can usually feel it when Rocca is about to take over. Right now, she’s either nowhere near here, or she’s forged so many connections through the chain that she hasn’t noticed one fell off. I don’t care which it is, as long as she stays out of my damn head.”
We stuck to the deepest parts of the shadows. The closer we got to Rockefeller Plaza, the clearer I could hear other things creeping around us. Occasionally, shapes moved in and out of murky the night, but in general, things were way quieter than I’d imagined. Beleza was nowhere to be seen.
I nodded. “Tell me if you start feeling weird. I’d rather not be blindsided if she somehow manages to grab you again.”
He gave me a slight nod without a verbal response. The sunglasses remained in his hand instead of on his face, but even so, it was hard to read his expression.
“Cool,” I said in a failed attempt to neutralize the awkward silence. “Thanks.”
I would criticize your social aptitude, but Abraxzael does not make easy work of such things as conversation. You are lucky that I have been blessed with the gift of charisma.
I rolled my eyes. “Call me crazy, but I’m starting to get the impression that you two don’t like each other. How about we sort that out now, before we get roped into a fight?”
Brax glanced at me curiously. “Who?” His eyes traveled to the medallion’s chain slung around my neck. “Oh, you mean him? Yeah, we’ve never been the best of friends. He’s got some kind of bullshit vendetta against me.”
Feeling far too much like an interdimensional therapist, I asked, “Is that true, Marcus?”
