by C L Walker
One of Foster’s goons was standing a foot away with a rifle pointed at me. He was looking the other way, following the sound of the gunfire. I grabbed his rifle with one hand and drove a knife into his throat with the other. I pulled him outside, getting a quick survey of the interior as I did.
There were still three men waiting for me inside, but they were distracted. They were staring toward the rear of the bank and the sound of the Sawzall.
I dumped the body, drew my pistol, and stepped inside.
Chapter 22
The sound wasn’t as loud inside as I’d expected, but it was enough to cover my footsteps on the polished floor. I approached the nearest man – standing near the ATM I had never fixed – and slit his throat. I snatched his rifle and guided him to the floor.
I slipped behind the desk, where Patty had crouched so she could talk to me. The two remaining guards were losing interest, their body language telling me I had no time left. I couldn’t reach one without the other spotting me, and they were far enough apart for whichever one remained to make light work of me. Silence wasn’t going to be an option.
Oh well, you work with what you’ve got.
I dashed out onto the floor. The one standing nearest to Patty’s teller window saw me first, so he got a bullet from the rifle. I ran for the other guy even as he jumped at the unexpected gunfire and turned.
He saw me as I reached a good position to fire. He was jumpy and he fired his rifle as he raised to aim. I put him down before he got any closer to hitting me.
The back of the bank led onto the offices and the upper floor where the Sawzall was still making a racket. I approached the security door and quickly flattened against the wall beside it. I didn’t think my code would still work on the door and they’d let it close.
Someone hit the keys on the pad and the door opened. Another nameless goon stepped out of the hallway beyond.
“Someone get up on the roof and find out what’s going on.”
I was close enough to do this one properly, severing his spine as my knife cut stabbed into his throat. The effort of it brought fresh agony from the broken rib, but he went down quietly, anyway.
I entered the hall with my rifle up and ready. There was nobody waiting for me. I advanced, heading for the stairs at the end of the corridor. If there were more guys to worry about, they would be near the sound of my diversion.
Two men stood at the top of the stairs. They saw me as I put a foot on the bottom step and opened fire. I fell back, tripping and landing on my ass. My rifle was raised and ready when the first of them came into view.
The first bullet took out his leg while the second destroyed his face. I rose and stepped further back, switching corridor sides in an effort to hide my position. There weren’t a lot of options.
“He’s up here,” the man said, fear in his voice. “No, in the offices.” He was talking to someone on the phone, or through a headset.
“Up here” meant Foster was where I thought he’d be, down in the vault. I remembered all the packages his men had brought, regular morning deliveries as long as I’d worked there. This was where he’d been planning on doing it all the time, not at his house. I wondered why he’d left the dagger there if he needed it here, but I already knew the answer by the difference in the amount of energy flowing into it. At the house it had been enough to cover the building, while here it was little more than a thick mist.
I opened the door to the stationery cupboard and slammed it closed, then knelt and trained the rifle on the stairs. It took him thirty seconds to risk it, to check which door I’d hidden in. When he came down the stairs he joined his associate on the floor.
I paused, listening for any sound from upstairs, but the Sawzall was making too much noise. I had to go up and check before I went to find Foster, or I might have someone at my rear when I faced him. I made for the stairs, the rifle at the ready.
There was nobody else upstairs. I worked methodically, going from room to room until I was sure before heading back down the stairs. I’d left my bag in the way of the door at the end to keep it open. I smashed the keypad on both sides before letting it close; better safe than sorry.
The vault led off from a door behind the tellers. This one was meant to be closed, as well, but it had been torn from its hinges and was lying nearby. I stepped through and began down the stairs, wary of repeating the mistake of the men upstairs.
The metal gate at the base of the stairs had been torn open, as well, though it hung, bent and abused, from its hinges. The vault door stood beyond it, open and waiting.
“You might as well hurry up,” Foster’s voice echoed from within. “I don’t really have all night.”
I did as requested, keeping my rifle high and entering the vault.
I’d never been allowed in before so I didn’t know what to expect. I’d pictured a clean room with metal boxes along each wall and some sort of security features attached to every surface. I hadn’t expected to find a dingy chamber the size of a corner Starbucks with an altar erected in the center. The boxes were there, only they were huge and old, and stacked haphazardly around the walls. Foster stood before his altar in crimson robes.
Mouse’s body lay on the altar.
“A touch much, right?” Foster gestured to his robes. He didn’t seem to notice the gun pointing at him as he smiled at me. “It’s a necessary tradition, I know. But it itches like crazy.”
“What are you doing with her?” I said. My finger was pressing the trigger and his head was in my sights. I barely noticed Claire and Patty chained to the wall nearby.
“She’s a true vessel,” he said, as though that would answer everything. When I didn’t nod in understanding he sighed. “I was planning on summoning it into one of my men, and then providing it with a new host every time it killed the old one. This way”—he gestured to Mouse—”I don’t have to. Like I said before, this is fate.”
“What are you doing?” I wanted to pull the trigger so badly, I’d forgotten my broken rib. I’d forgotten the girl and the god I’d come to rescue. But I wanted to know why he was doing it all and I figured he’d answer me more clearly than Claire had.
“There are gods,” he said, pointing at Claire, “and then there are gods like mine. But above them all, predating them all, there is another power. A greater power that is dormant out in the world. I’m here to finally summon it and give it a vessel.”
“You’re a religious loony,” I replied, meaning it sincerely. He was practically frothing at the mouth in his excitement.
“You’ll see, Merikh.” He took a bottle of ambrosia from a pocket hidden in the robe and sipped a little before screwing the cap back on and returned it to its hiding place. “Tonight is the beginning of something amazing and terrifying. Can’t you feel it?”
He began to raise his hand and I could feel something, like an electric current passing through the air. I felt a heat at my back that increased as his hand rose higher. It intensified until his arm was straight up and the heat became unbearable.
It was the dagger. I tore the pack off my back and threw it to the ground as it caught on fire. Foster lowered his hand and the dagger tore free of the pack and flew to him.
I fired the rifle without thinking. The bullet ricocheted off something and I fired again, and again. Single shots, perfectly aimed, and they all bounced away from him.
“There is more power in my hands tonight than I’d dreamed possible,” he said, staring at the dagger with wonder. “Do you understand what I’m going to achieve here? What you’re about to witness?”
“Your ego getting even more overbearing?”
His wonder slipped for a moment. “I could kill you right now. You realize that, right?”
“You’re a grown man dressed in a Jedi costume.” I dropped the rifle to the floor and let my arms rest at my sides. “You’re about as threatening as a child on Halloween.”
“Don’t you want to see it? The end of days, and the beginning of a new age? The dawn
of a world of wonders?”
“I’d settle for seeing you dead.”
He shook his head, disappointed. “So be it.”
His hand was suddenly raised, the dagger pointed at me. White hot energy shot from it and hit me in the chest, enveloping me, working its way inside me through my mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. For a moment, the entire world became nothing but that pure, unbridled power.
And then it was gone, and I was still standing, unscathed.
“Well,” I said, forcing a smile, “that was anticlimactic, wasn’t it?”
Foster shook his head again, a smile of his own in place. “We would have made a great team, you and I. We could have ruled the world.”
“Oh, do please shut up.” I attacked, stepping left as I punched right, driving my hand into his stomach with all the strength I could muster.
His hand was on my head before I could move, and a moment later I was flying through the air to crash into the dark metal wall.
“You’re immune to things that should terrify you.” Foster approached slowly, giving me time to get back up. “But you’re still just human. You’re physically vulnerable.”
He lashed out and I got out of the way. One moment he was six feet away and the next he was in front of me, his fist driving into the wall with a bong sound, like a large bell. I backed away and tried to work out how I was going to pull this off.
“Do you even know what you’re summoning here?” I asked. I put the altar between us and circled to keep it there as he advanced on me. “It’s got a lot of people very upset.”
“As they should be. I’ve spent my life chasing this.” He held up the dagger and the mist of energy in the room pulsed with the movement. “Do you know what it is, what was done with it? This was used to kill the creator of the universe, but the creator’s power is still free. It’s still out there for the taking.”
“And you think you can control it?” I stepped away from the altar, afraid he might launch himself over it and catch me unawares. Mouse’s face seemed almost alive in the light of the energy swirling through the room.
“Or die trying.” He stepped slowly around the altar, never chasing me in earnest. I wondered if we would simply stay in that loop, forever circling my dead friend.
“And what happens if you die? Do you know?”
He shook his head and grinned. “I don’t care, Merikh.”
He was in front of me in a heartbeat. A moment later, my world was filled with pain and I was lying on the floor beside Claire and Patty. I looked up at them, perhaps begging for help. They clung to each other, a small-town girl and a god, equally frightened by the scene before them.
He’d stabbed me in the stomach with the dagger. The heat of it had cauterized the wound but the damage was done and waves of pain overwhelmed me. I couldn’t get up as he walked slowly toward me.
“I’m tempted not to kill you, you know. I want witnesses for this, and you’d make a fine witness. My would-be killer watching my ultimate triumph.” He crouched beside me. “Alas, it isn’t to be. I will visit you in the nether when it becomes my playground, assassin.”
He raised the dagger theatrically, aiming the blade at my head. I turned to watch Mouse, ready to join her.
Foster paused at the sound of people running down the stairs. I turned in time to see the first of a wave, a tsunami of attackers.
The people of Midway had arrived, and they were all aimed at Foster.
The Knight: Intervention
The knight watched from the corner of the metal room as people ran down the stairs, some stumbling, to be crushed by the ones behind them.
Ehl spent its time shepherding the poor souls, standing in their midst and urging them on with glee on its stolen features, which were those of a deputy. Ahn stood quietly in the body of a housewife with blood covering her clothes.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to do,” the knight said for the tenth time. He didn’t want to watch the carnage any longer but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The gods had sent an army to interfere in Foster’s ritual, somehow timing it so that they arrived when the dagger had spilled its first blood.
“He is tied to the process now,” Ahn said. Its voice was soft yet managed to carry over the din. The first of the god’s victims reached Foster and the disciple of wrath punched the possessed man back into the throng. “If he dies then he cannot carry it to fruition. There will be no one to guide her when she comes.”
“So you no longer need the assassin?” A group approached Foster, more wary than the first man, and were blasted by energy from the dagger. They fell to the floor, on fire and screaming.
“He still has a part to play. He will kill Foster for us before he dies. These people are a distraction.”
The knight finally looked away. Ahn and Ehl had spent centuries not interacting with the world, letting things run their course. When they did act on the world it was subtle, untraceable. He counted on that from the moment he realized he could cloud Ahn’s thoughts through their link. He’d planned for this all to happen without their knowledge, and assumed if they discovered it that they would be powerless to stop it. The rules of their game prohibited it.
“I will allow you to remember your family before I destroy you,” Ahn said absentmindedly. The knight turned to his master. “I may even return your name to you.”
“Why?”
“So you know what you’ve lost. I am not a sadistic being but I feel you deserve more punishment than simple annihilation.”
“That sounds remarkably human of you.”
The assassin stirred as the desperate energy of Despair finally came to him. It wouldn’t make him stronger or faster, or better able to fight the superior strength of Wrath’s disciple, but it would allow him his chance to fight back. That had been the knight’s plan all along, to allow the ritual to begin and then have someone he could trust take control of it. He’d wanted the terrible thing Ahn and Ehl were scared of to return to neutral hands.
“Your thoughts betray you, knight.” Ahn was barely paying attention to the room, casting it a glance every few seconds. “How did you hide this from me? More importantly, how did you keep your machinations with Despair a secret from Ehl?”
The knight had lost his will to fight. Seeing the carnage – another ten people had died in this fruitless attack, all so the assassin would have time to rise – had defeated him.
“You were easy. We are linked and that link grows stronger every year. And I have been here a long time.”
“So allowing your thoughts to touch on my own was a mistake,” Ahn said. “I will remember that for the next one. And Ehl?”
“You cannot see your children without exerting effort, and neither of you ever bother exerting effort. Wanehl found me a century ago, and we’ve been planning this ever since.”
Ahn shook its head in a very human manner. “So we almost allowed the game to be destroyed because we were too busy watching the big picture and didn’t spend enough time on the minutia. There’s a lesson there, I believe.”
The flow of people had slowed, and Foster was grinning like a maniac at the sight of the dead and dying around him. The assassin had risen but was barely able to keep to his feet.
“There will come a time,” the knight said, “when someone will discover you are here and work out how to destroy you.”
Ahn didn’t laugh, because it never laughed, but there was amusement in its stolen voice, nonetheless. “After all this time you still don’t understand, do you? We cannot be destroyed, not even by each other. That’s what this is all about.” It gestured to the room and the ritual in progress. “When we killed her she wasn’t destroyed. Rather, she was simply suppressed. We cannot ever be truly defeated. Your scheme could never work, even if you’d managed to keep it from us.”
“There has to be hope.”
“A very human thing to believe.” Ahn focused on the room. “Watch. I believe this is where it all finally falls apart. Everyone in this room wil
l soon be on their way to the nether, and the game can continue as it ever did.”
The knight didn’t want to look, didn’t want to watch the end of hope. But he turned, anyway, in time to see the assassin trip over the body of a fallen Littleton resident as he made his way to stop Foster.
Chapter 23
I slipped in blood and fell over one of the heavies from Littleton. My face smashed into the uneven metal floor.
Foster didn’t notice. He was moving toward Mouse’s body with the dagger held out in front of him. The energy flowing through the room pulsed like a heartbeat, quicker and quicker as he got nearer to her.
I pushed myself up. The weird power that had allowed me to escape Foster before was back, lending strength to my muscles when I should have been getting ready to die. My vision was blurring, though, and the pain was almost more than I could bear, but I forced myself to my feet and advanced. I pulled a blade from my belt and tried to aim through the haze threatening to swallow my consciousness.
Foster raised the blade as though to stab Mouse. My blade reached him first.
He cried out and the dagger fell to the floor. He turned to face me, my knife jutting from his back.
“Why aren’t you dead?” he said.
I attacked, faking a punch to his face as I slipped another knife into my free hand and drove it into his gut. He barely noticed as he grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the floor. He squeezed with enough strength to crush my neck, but that power prevented it. He tried harder, his smile turning to confusion as it had no effect.
I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t need to. I had a final knife in my hand and I drove it up under his chin and into his brain.
His eyes crossed and his mouth fell open as he let go of me. We crumpled to the ground together. The pulsing of the energy increased, as though it was excited by the sight of us killing each other.
Foster reached up to his face and removed the knife. It came free with a sucking sound and a fountain of blood. He began to rise again, his robe falling to the ground to expose his blood covered nudity.
