Dark Game (Merikh Book 1)

by C L Walker

  Did I want to do more than slit his throat and watch him bleed?

  I stepped into his kitchen, ostensibly to see if there was anyone else I had to worry about. At this time of night, if he’d had a partner waiting for him, he or she would have been with him in bed already. But it never hurt to be careful.

  His kitchen was a mess of fast food containers and empty beer bottles, and the tiny space reserved for his enormous TV was covered in unwashed clothes. This guy didn’t have anyone waiting for him. He was all mine.

  I walked slowly back to the bedroom, taking my time. I told myself I was savoring it. I’d completely forgotten that I’d wanted to question him about his colleagues and perhaps single out the one who’d actually hurt Mouse. Instead, all I was trying to do was get myself to act at all.

  I couldn’t do it. Standing in the mess of his life and seeing him as a person was sapping my will to strike, and I couldn’t stop it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop it, and even the image of Mouse wasn’t keeping me focused.

  Something was wrong with me, something about the town and the situation was making me lose focus. Maybe the magic was having an effect on me after all, I thought. Maybe I was losing my way.

  I’m not a complete idiot. I knew what was happening; I just didn’t want to admit it. I was venting, lashing out because that’s what I know how to do and not because it made any sense. Seeing that, feeling it, was painful. Painful, and unavoidable.

  I stood in his bedroom door for a while, my knife gripped in my hand so tight my fingers hurt after. I wanted to do it, and it would be so easy.

  I turned and left, leaving his window down but putting the screen back up.

  I was at the base of the stairs when I noticed Trevor Foster waiting for me at the mouth of the alley.

  “You couldn’t do it?” he said, shaking his head like he was disappointed.

  I was Mark, the IT guy from the bank. “I don’t want any trouble, sir.” I bowed my head and tried to step around him. He stepped with me, forcing me to either stop or get within touching distance. I stopped.

  “I know why you’re here.”

  “I’m sorry about the other night,” I said quickly, putting as much of a whine in my voice as I could after the night I’d had. “I should have stayed out of your business. You and the lady have your thing, and it’s not my place to get involved. Sorry.”

  I was trapped. I could have turned and run, and it would have fit my character, but I didn’t think that would go over well. Something else was going on here, and I had an itch forming in the part of my brain that tells me something unpleasant is about to happen.

  “I know who you are, son.” He moved back to the wall and leaned against it. I wondered if he minded dirtying his expensive suit. “Or rather, I know why you’re here.”

  “Oh, and why is that?” I could feel the IT guy from the bank fading from my features.

  “You’re here to kill me. I don’t know who hired you, though I can guess.”

  The IT guy was gone. I changed stance and my heart rate quickened in preparation. I remained silent, waiting for him to tell me what the near future held.

  “This is an impossible task for you. Just an FYI, in case me beating on you didn’t clue you in.”

  “I’ve had people suggest that before.”

  “Sure, but I’m a different kind of challenge. And I think you know that.” He put his hands in his pockets and smiled. “Luckily for you, I have a better idea. I’d like to hire you.”

  This was a surprise. I dropped whatever shred of pretense I was holding onto. “My employers don’t appreciate it when I switch sides.”

  “If you do what I ask, I can guarantee you steady work and solid, regular payment. We’re always looking out for new talent.”

  “Like your goons?”

  He nodded. “Sure, but you provide a more specialized service, one that’s hard to come by. You’ve failed so far but I suspect that’s more because you weren’t told what to expect than due to any failing of your own. Our enemies are inept and incapable of planning anything properly.”

  “Enemies like the waitress?”

  “Exactly. She’s a god with an eternity of experience and the best she can come up with is to hide in a diner and call you to do her dirty work. It’s pathetic.”

  “She didn’t hire me.” I didn’t know this for a fact, but I would have been surprised if it turned out to be her.

  “Then it’ll be another one. Diligence or Temperance. Their acolytes, anyway. They’re all the same when you get down to their foundations. Flawed and horribly out of place in the modern world.”

  “What is your proposal?” I wasn’t planning to take him up on his offer but I didn’t want to fight him yet, either.

  “I want you to kill the waitress tomorrow night, or Friday morning at the latest. Make it quick but messy. In exchange, I’ll pay you ten million dollars.”

  I took a moment to think. We were getting fifty thousand for Trevor, a huge number for a small time politician from nowhere. Ten million was a joke amount, something people offered in movies. I shook my head.

  “You want more?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Like I said, my side is better suited to the modern world. We have money to burn.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?” I was filling time with the question, giving the cogs in my head the opportunity to work through the proposal.

  “She’s a god. I don’t have that kind of juice.”

  That confused me. “I’ve seen you kick her around. I’ve seen your people kick her around.”

  “Intimidating and harming are two different things. I can keep her down but I don’t have the power to actually harm her. Best I can do is make her life unpleasant.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “That isn’t surprising. Take me up on my offer and I’ll explain it all, promise. I’ll give you a primer on the world you’ll be living in, and complete information on all your targets. We’ll pay you so well, you’ll run out of things to buy and we’ll give you enough back-up to protect you from any counterattacks or revenge seeking. We’ll give you the kind of life your kind can’t even dream of.”

  “Why?” I could dream pretty big, but he was right. That kind of money was more than I could picture.

  “Because you’re immune to her. Your kind are the greatest weapons we could have in this fight and you’re the first one I’ve ever heard of that is willing to pick a side. You’re a unicorn.”

  “And you want to put a saddle on me.”

  “Something like that.”

  His smile was starting to annoy me but his proposal was amazing. Could I do it? Sure, but Mouse would take some convincing. She had rules, and I didn’t think Foster was the kind of guy who was going to be happy with us turning jobs down. He was the kind of guy who wanted to own us.

  “I’d like to think about it.”

  He pushed off from the wall. “Of course. Just keep the timeline in mind.” He extended his hand and I paused for a second before taking it and shaking.

  “Tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Or early Friday. I need time for her body to be discovered, but not too much.”

  I nodded and his annoying smile turned into a grin. He nodded back before stepping into the street and raising his arm. I heard his BMW start up down the street.

  “How should I contact you?” I asked as the car pulled up.

  “Any way you like.” His grin was a permanent feature now. “I own this county. Nobody is going to say a damn thing if I meet with you before she dies and you disappear.” He laughed. “Hell, after Friday night, nobody is going to remember you exist.”

  He climbed into the back and the black sedan pulled away.

  Chapter 12

  I got back around 2am, parking the car I’d stolen back in its spot and locking up. The van was where I’d left it but it was empty. Mouse’s blood was a dark stain on the passenger seat.

  I knocked on the back
door of the diner and Claire opened immediately.

  “Where did you go?” she said as I stepped into the back room. She was calm and even had a slight smile but it was a rebuke, nonetheless.

  “I had something I needed to do.”

  “Your friend was dying.”

  “And I’m an idiot. Where is she?” I didn’t wait for an answer, entering the diner proper and spotting Mouse lying on the floor, swaddled in blankets. Blinds covered the windows to keep nosy passers-by from seeing something they weren’t supposed to. I hurried to her side. “What happened?”

  She was breathing and the bleeding had stopped. When I touched her arm her eyes opened and she looked up at me. Her smile hit me like an electric shock, relief washing away the tension I’d been feeling since my badly thought out errand.

  “Hi,” she said. Her voice was weak and her hand was shaking when she raised it to grab my arm.

  “Hey. How are you doing?” I felt like crying, like somehow the fate of this woman was more important to me than I’d ever realized. And she was alive when she shouldn’t be, when I’d seen her bleeding to death beside me and I didn’t know what to do.

  “Our waitress friend says I’ll be on my feet by sunrise.”

  Claire spoke up from behind the counter. “She shouldn’t go running around getting in gunfights for a few days, but she’ll be fine. The new tissue needs time to strengthen and integrate.”

  “You’re fine?” I asked, as though only hearing Mouse say it would make it real.

  “I am. Turns out magic can do good things, too.” She let her hand fall back to the blanket and fixed me in her strengthening gaze. “Where did you go?”

  “It isn’t important.”

  “Did you kill them?”

  She knew me well, even with a hole in her side and on her way to death. I shook my head.

  “But you tracked them down?”

  I nodded.

  “You let them go?”

  I nodded again, unable to meet her eyes. I wondered if she’d think I was weak, or if she’d be annoyed that I hadn’t managed to get her the justice she deserved. As well as she knew me, I realized that I still didn’t have her entirely figured out.

  “Good,” she said, and relief washed over me again.

  “I smell Foster on you,” Claire said, intruding on the moment. “Care to share that story?”

  “Not with you,” I replied.

  “I’m on your side,” she said. “Besides, unless you leave I’ll be able to hear anything you say, anyway. And I wouldn’t advise you leave.”

  “Is it something we need to talk about now?” Mouse said. Her voice was getting weaker the more she spoke.

  “No, we can talk in the morning. It’s nothing important.”

  “Okay.”

  She went back to sleep in moments and I joined Claire at the counter. She had a coffee waiting for me.

  “Thanks.” I raised the mug. “For this, and for what you did.”

  “My pleasure.” She leaned on the counter and I remembered sitting in the diner the night before, when I thought she was a normal woman and this was a normal job.

  I snapped back to the present. “You told me you wanted me to do something in exchange.”

  “It can wait until you’ve had some rest.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  She only paused for a second before going on. “When you kill him, I need you to search his body for a dagger. It might not be there but it will be somewhere nearby. It’ll be rusty and old. Something from a museum. You’ll know it when you spot it. Bring that back to me and your debt is paid.”

  “Is this dagger going to help you win your war?” It popped out without me thinking. I hadn’t decided until that moment if I wanted to discuss with her anything Foster had told me.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Did you hire me to kill him?”

  “I didn’t.” She seemed to be telling the truth, but if she was a god she could probably fool me.

  “What about Diligence or Temperance?”

  “You had an interesting conversation with Trevor, then? You think you know everything now?”

  I kept quiet, letting the silence ask my question again.

  “No, I don’t think they did it, either, but I don’t speak to them. None of us speak to each other anymore, and I’m the only one who knows there’s something going on here.”

  “I thought you didn’t know what he was planning?”

  “I don’t, not entirely, but I know things about Trevor. I can guess what he’s up to.”

  “Care to share?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she replied. “If you weren’t so stubbornly immune to me, I’d be able to give you a quick history lesson, but as it stands I’ll just say that if he’s summoning what I think he’s summoning it’ll end badly. He’s messing with something he cannot possibly understand.”

  “But you do?” I wasn’t sure what to make of this god and her very human demeanor. Was this all an act for my benefit, or was this what a god really was? Just a more powerful version of one of us, with a snazzy title.

  “Only a little, and that should terrify you. I know more than you can possibly understand. I’ve had a hand in shaping the world. I’ve been at the center of creation since the beginning, and what he thinks he’s doing is frightening enough for me to come down here.”

  “Thinks he’s doing?” I finished the coffee and when she didn’t answer I tried another avenue. “If you know what he’s up to and you’re so sure it’s a bad thing, then explain something to me. He worships one of you, right? Wrath? Why isn’t Wrath down here stopping him? Or isn’t that how the power dynamic works?”

  “Power dynamic…” She chuckled and shook her head. “We cannot see what everyone is doing all the time. We aren’t the beings of your myths. Garehl is unaware of Trevor’s plans or I assure you he’d be down here as quickly as I, and he’d be as frightened, too.”

  “Tell him.”

  “That isn’t how it works, I’m afraid.” She must have seen my growing impatience because she continued. “If I bring him into this then there will be a transfer of power between us. My position will be weakened and his will be strengthened. If he then acts on the information I give him that transfer will intensify. By the end of it all I’d be even more of a shadow than I currently am, and I can’t let that happen.”

  “So that’s a worse fate than whatever Foster is up to?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” She sighed and reached over to the coffee pot, topping me up before continuing. “You know how you have an aversion to something? Heights, spiders, whatever? That’s how we feel about each other on an instinctive level. We are built for the conflict between us. I have given them much of myself over the ages, too much of my power, and I can’t give any more. The world would have to be ending for me to do more, and we aren’t there.”

  “Good to know.”

  We sat in silence for a while, me sipping the coffee and her lost in whatever thoughts a weakened god thinks. I still wasn’t sure I believed what she was saying, but there was no reason to behave as if I didn’t. Neither she nor Foster had any power over me, but if I told her about his offer she could still hurt Mouse. I couldn’t have that, and I couldn’t make the decision without Mouse’s input. So we sat in silence for a while.

  “You love her,” Claire said. I must have looked over my shoulder to check on Mouse without noticing.

  “Yes, I think so.” It was an odd thing for me to admit, like I was sharing some sexual kink I didn’t want the world to know about. The feeling was new to me and strange, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about it. “But not like that. Not romantically.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I thought I was stubbornly immune to your power. How can you know what I mean?”

  “You’re immune, but she isn’t. I wasn’t prying, but with what I did I touched her soul and some things are unavoidable. She feels the same, if it helps your
discomfort.”

  It didn’t, but knowing Mouse and I were on the same page did feel good. I was trained to read people but she had remained a mystery since I met her in Fairbridge. I think that might be why we worked so well; I couldn’t manipulate her. I had to take what she said at face value and trust her. An odd idea for me.

  Claire gave me a blanket and suggested I catch some sleep in the booth near Mouse while she went home to change. I fell asleep in moments and woke only when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  My eyes flew open and I reached for a blade, but it was Mouse. She stood over me in her bloodstained clothes looking as healthy as she ever had.

  “I’m hungry,” she said as she stretched. “Where’s the food?”

  “I’m sure we can find something.”

  The sun was beginning to creep around the blinds but with the lights off it was still dark inside and it took me a few minutes to find the switches. Once I could see what I was doing, I checked the fridges in the back room and pulled out some ham and cheese. The bread was stale but Mouse wolfed down the sandwiches, anyway.

  “How do you feel?” I asked when she was done.

  “You need to stop asking me that. I’ll answer it this one time, and unless I say different you can just assume it’s still the answer. I’m doing fine.” She ran her fingers over her bloody clothes. “I could use something else to wear. Something that isn’t disgusting.”

  “The van is waiting where I left it, but we need to talk first. Is that alright?”

  “If you start treating me like a fragile butterfly, I’ll smack you in the head. Capiche?”

  I nodded and couldn’t help but smile. She was fine, as she’d said. “I spoke to Foster last night. He was waiting for me outside one of the deputy’s homes.”

  “He offered you something.” She didn’t ask me again if I’d killed anyone.

  “He wants to hire us to kill Claire, and make it look messy.”

  “Tell him he can bite me.”

  “You should listen to the offer first.” She waited and I laid it out for her; what he wanted me to do and what he was willing to pay, the future he saw for us if we joined his side. I left my opinions out of it so she could make up her own mind.