Dark Game (Merikh Book 1)

by C L Walker

  Get up.

  The world came slowly into focus, reality swimming out of the murk. I was still in the hall. Foster was standing in his office doorway, watching me.

  Get up, anyway.

  He was watching me as my mind made contact with my limbs and ordered them to move, relaying the command over nerves that weren’t working properly. It was like playing a bad video game, every movement telegraphed an age before the action.

  I felt my ribs moving in ways they shouldn’t have.

  Get up, you waste of space. Get up or die, but do something.

  I rose slowly, pushing myself up on arms that felt as weak as a newborn’s. Foster watched me, never moving to stop me, confident that he could take me if he had to.

  When I managed to sit up, he finally spoke.

  “You had me, Merikh.” The blood flowing from his nose had stopped. He looked well. Even his nose wasn’t broken anymore.

  “You’re a fool,” I managed to croak. My ribs slid around inside my chest and I had an almost overwhelming urge to cough. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to fight it.

  “Seems so.” He crouched beside me, his hands crossed on his knees. “I’m usually pretty good at reading people, and I thought you were smarter than this. I offered you whatever you wanted in exchange for something you can do with such ease. A life of luxury and privilege, better even than my own.”

  “I’m an idiot.” I tried to continue the slow journey to my feet but he placed a hand on my shoulder. It was the hand of a giant, with strength so far beyond my own it was laughable that I’d ever tried to kill him. I stayed where I was.

  “Yes, and now you’ll die. But I’ll take care of your friend first, as a lesson. You’ll arrive in the nether with the worst memories, and that will be my parting gift to you.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Be careful, I might.” He shot me that annoying smile, now terrible with the coating of blood he hadn’t bothered to wipe off.

  He stayed with me until he got word that they had Mouse. My heart raced at the news, adrenaline flooding my system, but I couldn’t fight that single hand on my shoulder. That inexorable force keeping me down.

  When he was done talking to his goons, the hand holding me down gripped my shirt and lifted me off the floor with ease.

  He took me to an empty room upstairs and presented me to Mouse like a cat bringing home a rat. I was dropped on the floor at her feet. To her credit she didn’t react, but I did, screaming as a fresh swell of pain ripped through my body.

  She had two goons on her, holding an arm each, but she wasn’t fighting. She knew the situation and was biding her time. I could do the same.

  Another goon dragged me away from her and left me against the wall, giving me a view of the room that would make sure I could watch Mouse die.

  “Did you hear what I offered you?” Foster said to her. He was in her face, blocking her from view. “Did you think about what you turned down or are you just so stupid it never occurred to you that doing as I asked was an option?”

  “We don’t like bullies,” she said. It made me smile, which hurt.

  “I’m not a bully, you stupid woman.” He had her chin in his one hand and the other raised in the air. “I am the prime disciple of Garehl. I’m a king among kings.” He slapped her and the sound echoed for ages.

  I could feel myself healing but it was happening too slowly. It would take hours before I was able to stand, maybe days before I could fight. I forced myself up, anyway. If we were going to die I planned on doing it with the same confidence Mouse was showing. The same pride.

  “Let me tell you something about the afterlife you might not know.” Foster stepped aside so he could address both of us. My peripheral vision was blurry and he faded away. Blurriness improved him, and it let me focus on Mouse. “There is no heaven or hell when we die, kiddies. Just the nether.

  “The nether is a lovely place, with strict rules and timetables. It’s a place that punishes us all in some way, whether we were good little boys and girls or bad. That punishment comes with us from here, because the gods are dicks and they hate us.”

  “Shove it up your ass,” Mouse said softly, never taking her eyes off me.

  Foster laughed. “If I hurt you before you die then you’ll get hurt when you get there. Endless pain playing the same tune I pushed you out of the world with. And you”—his blur spun in place and focused on me—”will experience an eternity of watching her suffer. That’s my gift to you; I’ll kill you quick because I know what’s waiting for you.”

  He reached out and placed his hand on Mouse’s chest, between her breasts. He was watching me and grinning as he whispered something under his breath. There was a blinding light, a star in his hand that outshone the meager light coming in through the windows. It entered her and her head jerked back, her mouth open in a silent scream. Foster was laughing and all I could hear was the blood rushing through my head.

  Mouse closed her mouth and returned her gaze to me. As Foster’s confused face turned to her, she smiled at me.

  “Well,” she said, still not speaking to Foster, “that was anticlimactic.”

  “What the hell?” he whispered again and the light returned. This time when it entered her, she didn’t react.

  “Seems like you’re all bluster and pyrotechnics, Foster.” Mouse had a grin to match Foster’s now. She was still looking at me and I could tell she had no idea what was going on, and that she still expected to die. But she was going to enjoy the moment, anyway.

  “How are you doing that?”

  “What, feeling a little impotent, are we?” she said, and one of the goons holding her allowed the slightest of smiles to appear.

  Foster raised his hand and when the star entered the goon, I got to see what it was meant to do. The goon stepped back as the power inside him began to burn its way out. Slowly at first, his suit blackening and his eyes turning red. He scratched at his chest when his skin began to melt.

  He died without screaming because the power had cooked his throat closed.

  “Are you a god?” Foster said. There was a tremble in his voice. He had the ancient dagger in his hand and it was shaking. “Or their plaything?”

  Mouse’s lips parted with a reply, probably something witty and crude, or at least crude. Foster stabbed her in the chest and stopped her from finishing the thought.

  I was on my feet and moving toward them, even as Mouse looked down to see the blade sticking out of her chest. He’d hit her heart, I knew. I couldn’t tell if the killing blow would succeed this time.

  I launched myself at the remaining goon, every muscle movement a flash of agony, every breath the end of the world. I was blind with the pain and the fear for Mouse, and I killed the goon without noticing. My fingers dug into his throat, took hold, and tore out the meat. I turned to Foster.

  “You’re next.” My voice was rough, barely audible, but he heard me. He was just too preoccupied with Mouse to care.

  She remained standing and there was no blood coming from her wound.

  “She’s a true vessel,” Foster said under his breath. I barely heard him over the razor wire tearing through my veins. “Brought to me in my hour of need.”

  He finally looked at me, his face that of a man who’d just won the lottery.

  I lashed out at him, taking advantage of the wonder on his face and trying to catch him off guard.

  He caught my hand, crushed it, and tossed me aside as though he barely noticed I was there.

  Mouse was frozen in place, but she was alive, and I was standing again. Somehow the pain was keeping me going, feeding me. I lurched toward Foster again.

  “Come one step closer and I’ll kill her,” he said. I ignored him and took another step. “I know what she is now, and I know how to kill her.”

  I took another step anyway. The image of the dagger in her chest gave me strength enough to ride the pain.

  “Fine,” Foster said.

  He reached out, took hold of h
er neck, and snapped it.

  She fell to the floor and the dagger clattered away from her, trailing blood. I’d stopped moving and Foster turned to face me.

  “Did you expect to escape this? Maybe even to beat me?” He shook his head. “That isn’t how the world works, assassin. People like me win, and people like you do what you’re told or you die.”

  He hit me and I fell back to the floor. My eyes somehow never left Mouse.

  “I’ve never met a true vessel, and you brought her right to me. Did you know what she was?” He kicked me and I went tumbling until the wall stopped me.

  Mouse was dead. No more comebacks, no more fighting. She lay on the floor in her own blood, her neck at an unnatural angle. She was dead, so I was done here.

  The pain still kept me going, the agony somehow buoying me up instead of destroying me. I was back on my feet and running for the stairs with Foster shouting behind me. I couldn’t hear him.

  I ran into one of his men in the hall and shouldered him aside. I didn’t have time to fight. I didn’t know how long my strength was going to last.

  I ripped the front doors open and ran into a heat I couldn’t feel on my skin, heading for the woods.

  The Knight: Interrogation

  Indahn, the god of diligence, ground its teeth. It couldn’t know the source of its discomfort, nor how painful its headache would become when the secret interrogation was over.

  He was a Chinese man, and he sat at a large boardroom table surrounded by others in expensive suits. Ahn hovered behind its child, a tendril extending from its glowing core and entering Indahn’s head.

  This was the third of Ahn’s children they’d visited, and none had so far been involved. The knight stood at the large floor to ceiling windows, watching the strange world outside. He didn’t know what city they were in – they all looked too similar to him – but it was magnificent. Towers built on the side of a mountain overlooking a large bay, with another enormous city on the opposite shore. It was filled with the same pointless grasping as the rest of this world but sometimes he just wanted to enjoy the spectacle of it all.

  It also helped to keep his mind occupied. He knew Indahn would have no information for Ahn. Ehl would be the first to get anything from the gods under its control, and then things would get interesting.

  He felt Ahn’s shock through the chain and turned to find the god had vanished. The chain rattled as it prepared to drag him away, but he got a chance to see the look of relief on Indahn’s face before the world snapped away.

  It was replaced with an empty room in a house, with two bodies on the floor and Trevor Foster glaring at an empty doorway. Ahn was in one of the bodies – the woman who called herself Mouse – and Ehl had taken the other corpse, a man in a suit with his throat ripped out. They waited until Foster left before getting up.

  “Where is Wanehl?” Ahn asked as soon as the human had left the room. The woman’s neck had been broken and the god didn’t heal her before rising. Her head rested on her neck at an odd angle.

  “Wanehl is no longer mine,” Ehl said, lifting the man’s body into the air and depositing him on his feet. Ehl didn’t heal the man, either, and his voice came from the ether rather than through his ragged throat. “Despair is now yours?”

  “Not mine,” Ahn replied. Foster was shouting in the hall outside and the knight heard men running their way. Ahn glanced at the door and time froze. “He cannot have denied us both.”

  “You aren’t playing the game, Ahn.” Ehl was furious, stalking toward Ahn as though they might be about to do battle physically. It came to a stop inches from Ahn’s borrowed face and yelled. “You dare to try something like this, now? Must we tear this world apart because you can’t stand losing?”

  Ahn’s voice rose but never exhibited any of Ehl’s apparent emotion. “I had nothing to do with this.”

  Ehl moved away, studying the room as it paced. “They cannot exist without us. Unless…”

  “Notice the dagger.” Ahn bent down to pick up the ancient weapon and the woman’s head fell forward.

  “This human is planning on summoning her,” Ehl said. It waited for Ahn to correct the woman’s head before approaching to examine the dagger. “Could Wan, who we can no longer call Wanehl I suppose, have joined her?”

  “She has not returned. We would know.”

  “Would we?”

  “Every part of creation would know.”

  The knight had hoped to delay this until after the summoning, until things were beyond changing. He waited in silence, no longer afraid of his thoughts, until Ahn turned its wobbly head to face him.

  “You hid this from me?”

  “I did. I colluded with one of your children and now he is no longer yours.”

  They were staring at him, an eternity of power and control forcing his eyes to the floor. Though he fought it, marshaling the strength that once led men to death to defend a kingdom, he couldn’t make himself look up.

  Ehl dropped the dagger on the floor. “The blade means she is a player in the game, even if she isn’t aware yet.”

  “We should act together. Put this to an end before it goes any further.” Ahn left the woman and her corpse fell to the floor. The knight wondered idly what Trevor Foster would think when he returned and found the bodies moved.

  It was moot though, if the gods erased the house.

  The knight drew in breath from between clenched teeth and said, “You cannot destroy the dagger, and she has been called.”

  “You monkey is taunting us.”

  “You can remove this house, these people. You can remove the entire town from history and it won’t change what has been set in motion.”

  “What do you know of it, knight?” Ahn hung in the air, a brilliant ball of blue energy. It approached him and he stepped away until he was against the wall and couldn’t retreat any further.

  “I am here to observe, and I have done so. Faithfully.” He was cowering away from the glorious light, terrified and amazed at the same time. “You used that dagger to kill her, before time. But her energy, her power and presence, live on. That dagger has tasted blood now, and not any blood but that of a true vessel. She will be drawn to it unless the ritual the acolyte of Wrath has started fails.”

  He collapsed to the floor, desperate to get away from the light, from the intensity of his master’s displeasure. He was spent, the stream of speech the last of his strength.

  “We can hide the dagger,” Ehl said. It had abandoned its body at some point, as well, and now hung in the middle of the room. It was a dull red and black energy, fractured and fit to bursting with power. “We can put it a galaxy away.”

  “But we cannot destroy it,” Ahn replied. It was so close to the knight that he could feel his ethereal skin begin to blacken and peel away. “Wherever we put it, she will find it.”

  “So you’re saying we should do as your monkey suggests?”

  “I’m saying that completion of the ritual is important.”

  “As long as it fails.”

  “Indeed.” The heat and light retreated from the knight and he opened his eyes. The gods were waiting for him together in the middle of the room. “The knight has given us the tools to end this.”

  “Wanehl,” the knight began, then corrected himself. “Wan, Despair, gifted the boy with a touch of his power before enhancing DeLacy’s gift. You can no longer touch him, and neither can Wan, but the assassin has all the tools he needs to stop this.”

  “Then why did you hide it from me?” Ahn’s voice was softer and no longer threatened to split the knight’s skull.

  He looked up at them. “I hoped you wouldn’t discover this. I hoped things would be different. I hoped…”

  “You have no idea what you are doing,” Ehl said, “or what you’ve potentially set in motion.”

  “He was desperate, I can feel it.”

  Destroy him. The knight knew the words were coming and he was ready to accept his fate. He’d known this was a possibility and
he was ready to face the nether.

  But the words never came. The gods remained silent, keeping their conversation from him now that they knew he was listening. They hung in the air, beings of unbelievable power, and they gossiped behind cupped hands like children. He would have smiled, had he not been so scared.

  “You will stay with me and continue to advise,” Ahn said. It was more emotionless than usual. “When the threat has passed I will destroy you, as you seem to wish.”

  Ehl made no effort to hide its emotion. “And I will find whatever remnant of your line remains and see that they suffer before I send them after you.”

  “As you wished.”

  Ahn and Ehl left and the chain rattled. Time resumed and men came into the room to check on the bodies. A moment later, the knight was gone.

  Chapter 15

  I made it through the woods and to a road before I collapsed. The sounds of pursuit were long gone and I knew I’d escaped. I spotted the road and a moment later I was down.

  The pain was still there, and more. Whatever had kept me going had allowed me to use my body despite it being broken. Muscles had snapped, bones had ground against each other, and organs had been pierced. Without the mysterious force to give me strength I wasn’t able to lift my hand to keep the sun out of my eyes.

  I lay beside the road and prepared to die. Most of the roads out there had one use, and if the farmer at the end of the road didn’t feel like going shopping I wasn’t likely to see anyone. My skin began to burn and I could feel insects getting in position for the feast I was about to become.

  It didn’t matter. She was dead. He’d snapped her neck and she’d fallen to the ground, her blood suddenly gushing from the chest wound.

  I was detached from it in the moment but I suspected I’d be angry if I ever got up. We’d been handed an assignment that was impossible to complete, targeting a man who was impossible to kill, and we’d been shown the futility of our training and experience in the face of magic.