Summoned to Rule

by C L Walker

  “More coffee?” the waitress said. I tried to wave her away but she didn’t move, holding her place and waiting for my answer.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Then you’re going to have to leave,” she replied. “This area is for paying customers only.”

  I held my coffee cup and sloshed the bitter, burned contents around for her.

  “You’ll have to buy some food or something. That’s a takeaway cup and we didn’t charge you the extra for having it here.”

  I turned and locked eyes with her, keeping my voice low in case the Chaos men were keeping an eye on the street.

  “Go away,” I said. “There’s nobody else in here and you don’t want to piss me off. I’ll buy some more coffee when I’m done with this one.”

  “Sir,” she started.

  I pulled the wallet I’d picked up from the man whose throat I’d punched and gave it to her, then turned back to the scene on the street corner. They had finished talking and the man was getting into the car.

  “Those guys are always around,” she said, not getting the hint and going away. “The guy in the car runs them, I think. Are you some kind of PI or something?”

  I searched the fragmented memories my last few masters had given me to complete their orders, but I couldn’t find any references to the word PI. I shook my head.

  “You look like a PI,” she continued. “Like one of those old ones, you know? You need a trench coat or something, but you’ve almost got it down.”

  “Please go away,” I said. The car hadn’t moved and I really wanted to know what was going on inside.

  “If you pay me I can help you.”

  I turned to her again, this time actually bothering to look at her. She wore black jeans and a black shirt with the business name on it. Her black hair had purple highlights in it and she looked like someone had been slapping her around. But there was a hopeful look in her eyes that drew my attention more; she’d seen an opportunity, she thought, and she was running at it.

  “How often do they do this?” I said.

  “The car on the corner thing? Every day, just about. In a few minutes the shot caller will get out and the car will drive away. There’s not much to see, really.”

  “That doesn’t tell me anything.” I eyed the wallet in her hands; she had it open with some of the bills pulled out.

  “Um, OK, so…the car drives around the block and parks, every time. The rest of the corner crew will have cleared the street by now, so I don’t know what he does while he’s there, but I think the big boss gets out and does something. Then he leaves.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe.”

  “Then that’s how long I’ll be in here.” She tried to hand me the wallet back and I shook my head. “I’d love another cup of this coffee, please. Make it extra hot.”

  “Liar,” she said, laughing as she turned away. “Nobody loves nothing about this coffee.”

  As she’d predicted the guy with the phone got out of the car and it pulled away, turning at the end of the block. I accepted my new take away cup and thanked the waitress, then stepped out onto the street.

  There was an art to intimidation, but I had never had to learn it. When I was just a man I’d been the biggest, strongest man, and for the rest of my long life I’d been the most powerful being in any given room. Intimidation had been easy.

  But I had studied the art, seeing it in the actions of others when they followed my orders or tried to make me back off. I understood the basic premise, and I decided to apply it to my current situation.

  The three men were still on their corner. The shot caller was on the phone, arguing with someone, while the other two were standing around waiting for him. None of the other members were anywhere to be seen, off clearing streets for the big boss.

  I crossed the street and got as close as I could without being noticed. They were preoccupied and sure of themselves, cocky enough to think they didn’t need to be worried on their own streets.

  The nearest man, a tall guy with the circle-A tattooed on his forehead, saw me first. I kept walking, smiling as he turned to deal with me.

  I threw the fresh coffee in his face. He screamed and it gave me time to get closer. I punched him with my good hand and advanced on the second man.

  He had his gun out but it wasn’t fast enough. In his surprise he hadn’t been ready for a simple frontal attack. I grabbed his gun and yanked it from his hands, then smacked him in the head with it. He went down as well.

  I aimed the gun at the shot caller.

  “I’ll call you back,” he said. He put his phone in his pocket and tried to look brave, puffing his chest out and looking me in the eye.

  “Your boss,” I said. “What is his name?”

  “Anarchy.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not a person’s name. That’s a nickname, or a stupid tag to paint on a wall. What is his actual name? The one he was born with?”

  “Anarchy.”

  I moved forward as quickly as I could and tried to slap him with the arm on my wounded side. He raised his hands in defense, managing to get them between my attack and his face. Even wounded, though, I was stronger than him; my slap bowled him over, leaving him scrambling to get up from the ground.

  “Try again,” I said. My arm was killing me and I could feel fresh blood dripping down my side. I didn’t have a lot of time before I’d have to get the wound seen to.

  “I don’t know his name, alright? He’s the god of anarchy so that’s his name.”

  “You believe he’s really a god?” For all the pain in my left shoulder, my right gun hand was steady and he was staring at the barrel.

  “Of course not. But he’s big and he’s scary, and the other guys believe it. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to deliver a message for me,” I said.

  “You’re coming for him. Yeah, I already heard.”

  “Then you serve no further purpose,” I said. I refocused my aim to his chest and he raised his hands in anticipation of the shot, but I pretended to rethink it, lowering the gun. “Maybe you can still have some use. Why does he want me so badly? What is his problem?”

  “I don’t know, man. He just said you’re the bad guy and we need to kill you.”

  I raised the gun again and he took a step back, desperately looking away as though that would stop the bullet.

  “OK, sorry. He wants your skin, man. The guy wants us to skin you.”

  That at least made a kind of sense, and told me something about Anarchy. He knew who I was, which wasn’t a surprise, but he also knew the source of my power.

  “Deliver a message for me, please.”

  “Yeah, alright.” He was shaking and I felt a little sorry for him. “Anything, man.”

  “Tell him if he wants my skin he should come and fetch it himself. He can keep sending you people, and I’ll keep killing you. In the end we’ll see each other, either way.”

  “I got it. I’ll tell him.”

  “Give me your phone.” I held out my left hand and suppressed a groan when the muscle froze for a moment. I needed to go.

  The man handed me his phone. I gestured for him to get on the ground and he did as he was told.

  I turned and walked away. I didn’t have the strength to face any more fighting, not with the amount of blood I’d lost. I had to get some medical attention, or, preferably, some blood for my tattoos to feed on.

  I returned to the coffee place. The waitress was waiting for me at the door.

  “That was insane,” she said. “You just walked up to them and…”

  “Yes. I’d like you to do me a favor, if you don’t mind. If you see anything out of the ordinary, anything that deviates from the normal routine, please call me.”

  I recited the number of the phone Bec had given me and she typed it into her phone.

  “You’re so cool,” she said.

  I smiled and left. It was flattering to have her so excited
by what I’d done, but I was a little worried that the shot caller would see where I’d gone after my business with him was done and try something with the waitress. It was too late to do anything about it now, though.

  Giving her my number had reminded me that my phone had been buzzing in my pocket for an hour. I pulled it out and stared at the unknown number on the screen. There were ten missed calls and three voice messages. I fumbled with the on-screen buttons until I got them to play.

  Halfway through the first message from Buddy I put my hand up and called for a taxi.

  Chapter 15

  “You took too long,” Buddy said when I got out of the taxi.

  “I had something to do. What is he up to?”

  We were at the entrance to a medium-sized public park on the edge of downtown, the kind of place that mothers brought their young children to during the day, with joggers on the many paths from dawn to dusk. A large concrete square sat in the green, a utilities hub of some kind.

  “He’s gone inside.” The angel was rattled, his eyes unable to stay still in his head. For an angel he had always been fragile, but he was on the verge of panic now.

  I slipped Roman’s jacket off and gave Buddy a look at the blood staining my shirt. “Yes, about this. I’ll need some of your blood.”

  “Sure. Of course.” He took an ornate dagger out of a sheath under his coat and cut his arm. I put my hand against the wound and let the tattoos feed.

  The healing began immediately, every scrape and bruise I’d picked up since returning itching for a moment before vanishing. The bullet wound took only a few seconds. I caught the bullet as it dropped out of the closing hole.

  “I think this is a vampire nest,” Buddy said. “The demon was mumbling something about killing all the leeches.”

  Buddy’s frantic calls had all been about a random demon, a creature that couldn’t survive long on earth without a body, stepping through the gate. He hadn’t listened to reason and didn’t seem to care about his well-being.

  “The vampires can take care of themselves,” I said.

  “It’s daytime.”

  The sun was on its way down but it was still bright enough that some people were playing ball games nearby. If I hadn’t known a demon had recently appeared it would have looked normal, boring.

  I was strong again, the tattoos powered and ready for me. I took my hand away and Buddy healed his own wound. The life-force I’d taken was a small part of what he had in him and he wouldn’t suffer because of it.

  He turned, ready to head for the broken metal door in the front of the concrete block. “I think it would go a long way to furthering your cause if you helped them.”

  “I’m more interested in what made a demon decide this was a good idea.”

  I walked to the door, ignoring the looks of the few people who’d noticed the amount of blood covering me. The city was going to have to get used to the sight if I planned on staying; it was something that happened to me fairly often.

  The metal door had been blasted off its hinges. It lay on the ground inside, blackened and buckled. I stepped in and the tattoos lit up, showing me the way inside. A metal staircase led underground before us. The walls were tagged with the symbols of vampire houses and bloodlines.

  “Vampires it is,” I said, and started down the stairs. The tattoos lit the way; at the bottom of the stairs was a corridor leading away into the darkness, with metal doors on either side.

  It was easy to see where the demon had gone by following the trail of destruction. The first two doors were hanging off their hinges. The rooms beyond were covered in putrid gore.

  “Why would a demon want to do this?” I said. “What could he gain from it?”

  Buddy didn’t answer. We moved on to the next room and found the same again; any vampires that had been sleeping away the day were dead, splattered against the walls.

  At the end of the corridor was a larger chamber. This had been dug out of the rock beneath the city. Where once there had been a chamber large enough for junction boxes and pipework, now it was as big as a cathedral, with a long flight of stairs leading down to the rough floor. Even with the light of the tattoos I couldn’t see all of it.

  People lay in alcoves in the walls. Vampires, most of them unable to wake and face the threat even if they’d been aware of it.

  The demon was at the bottom, trying to get a large stone lid off a heavy square sarcophagus in the center of the room. He was humanoid, with grotesque muscles and short bristles covering his skin. Rows of tiny horns stuck out of his head and his three eyes glowed a sickly green. His legs bent back the wrong way, like an animal.

  Buddy didn’t shout a warning or wait for me to act; he dashed ahead and down the stairs, his movements a blur. He collided with the demon and drove them both over the rough sarcophagus. Buddy’s scream was accompanied by constant, deep snarling.

  I willed the tattoos to give me speed, then joined the fray. I rounded the sarcophagus to find them wrestling on the ground, the demon with his fangs buried in the angel. Buddy was trying to get free, punching and kicking as he writhed in pain.

  I grabbed the demon in one hand and Buddy in the other and tore them apart. The demon got a chunk of flesh and the angel screamed louder. When I let him go he stumbled back and fell.

  The demon slashed at me, tearing my chest open. The pain forced me to drop him and he leaped away and was running for the wall immediately. I gave chase, ignoring the intense pain as best I could.

  When the demon reached the wall he kept going, scaling it by digging his claws into the stone. He kept retreating, ascending out of the light cast by the tattoos.

  My wound was healing slowly and I was losing a lot of blood. Something about the damage was getting in the way of the tattoos ability to heal me. I staggered against the wall, looking up into the darkness and trying to see my enemy.

  He dropped from directly above, landing heavily on my shoulders and crushing me to the ground. Bones snapped as his fangs entered my shoulder. I squeezed my eyes shut, lost in the pain and unable to think.

  The tattoos reacted, sending an arch of red lightning out of my body and into the hell spawn. It jerked for a moment, trying not to let go, but then it was growling and running away again.

  “Get it together,” I said to myself, trying to see through the haze of pain. I was better than this, better than one demon intent on causing mayhem.

  I stood and focused on the wounds I’d received, practically begging the tattoos to do a better job of healing me. Their light grew in intensity but the wounds didn’t heal any faster.

  “Where is he?” Buddy said as he approached. He was bleeding heavily and obviously in pain.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “He keeps running into the dark.”

  “Then light the place up.”

  I ignored his frustration and focused on the problem. The demon was running along the walls above us and the sound gave us an idea where he was. We were both hurt and bleeding, but we were still a force to be reckoned with. We just had to get the thing to stand still for a second.

  “How fast are you?” I said. The skittering sound of the demon came closer before veering away again.

  “Full speed, but I might fall over.”

  “I think I am too. Go that way and I’ll go this way. Run if you hear anything.”

  We moved around the room in opposite directions, acting more as bait than anything else. We couldn’t get up to the beast and we weren’t in any shape to chase him either. There weren’t many other options, though I knew the sun would be down soon and we’d be joined by an army of vampires.

  Buddy called out, a garbled yell as the demon attacked. I sped toward him, forcing the tattoos to give me all the speed they could. I arrived in time to see the demon let him go and start running for the wall again.

  “No,” I said. I raised my hand and sent the red lightning out to strike the fleeing demon. He rose into the air and screeched before slamming into the wall that was to be
his escape route.

  I left Buddy on the ground and ran to the fallen beast. He was twitching and taking swipes at the air around him. I stood on his one arm and grabbed the other when he reacted and tried to slash at me. I crouched beside him and snapped both his arms, one at a time, then stood on his neck.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said. Buddy was getting up again, so I knew he was going to live. “What are you doing here?”

  “Orders,” he said, hissing past the boot on his throat. “Was told to.”

  “By who?”

  “Must kill the leeches.” The demon had three tongues and each of them reached out to lick my boot. “Must kill.”

  “You’re not killing anyone,” I said. I checked on Buddy again; he was walking toward me, limping and holding his arm.

  “Then must die,” the demon said. I looked down as he lifted his broken arm and stabbed his long claws into his eyes and deeper, into his brain.

  He stopped fighting me and lay still.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I said. Buddy reached us and looked down. He put his hand over his mouth at the sight, or perhaps the smell that escaped from the beast’s head in death.

  “He killed himself?” Buddy asked.

  “Why, though?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t want to give up his master.”

  “You have an idea who that might be?” I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “Peter.”

  It made sense that Buddy would think that, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think it was the demon who spoke through Imp-thing, either. It didn’t feel right; it was too random and badly timed. There were far better ways to screw up the work I’d been doing and they both seemed smarter than this.

  The sarcophagus lid slid open on silent tracks and Artem stood up. Ashe rose beside him.

  “Agmundr,” the king of the vampires said. “What are you doing in my chamber?”

  Chapter 16

  There was an anteroom at the back of the great hall. It was a small space, big enough for a handful of people, with a cheap meeting table and uncomfortable chairs. Buddy and I waited there while Artem and Ashe dealt with the mess, and the angry vampires.