Summoned to Rule

by C L Walker

  Chapter 21

  “This is your fault,” Ashe said. She was feeling better, it seemed.

  “I do not control people,” I replied. “What he chooses to do with the power he stole is his own fault.”

  It was the same logic I’d wanted to share with Roman, when he’d chosen not to kill me and then taken responsibility for any of my future actions. It wasn’t my fault any more than it was the fault of people who had their guns taken from them.

  “If you hadn’t come here,” she said. She paced across the wreckage of the hall, flailing her arms whenever she spoke to me. She had a lot of pent up anger and all she could think about was letting it out on me.

  “We need to come up with a plan,” Artem said. He was unnaturally calm, sitting with his back to one of the pillars. “He has taken our people.”

  “No he hasn’t,” Ashe said. “He can’t control people, just alter their emotions. He directed them out into the night through some combination of fear and anger.”

  “You can’t know that,” Artem said.

  She turned on him, leaning down to hiss her words. “He tried to do it to me. I know what he can do.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “I felt it too. He told me to kneel but what he tried to put in my mind was an overwhelming fear. It would have achieved the same thing, but there was no subtly to it. Bannon isn’t a subtle guy.”

  Artem waved at the dead around us. “I can see that. But he still has our people. If he didn’t they would be back here.”

  “They’ll be back,” Ashe said. She turned on me next. “And you need to do something about him in the meantime. You need to take care of your problems and stop bringing them to this court.”

  “Watch yourself,” I said.

  “Or what? You’ll destroy everything I cherish. You’ll empty a court I have spent two hundred years trying to be a part of?”

  “I have to go,” I said. I groaned as I rose, my muscles aching despite the best efforts of the tattoos to heal me.

  “Do you have somewhere better to be?” Ashe said, advancing on me with her claws out.

  “Come closer and I’ll think you’re threatening me, vampire.” I was sore but I was still me, and she would have to learn to stop threatening me sooner rather than later.

  “The high and mighty meddler,” Ashe said. She turned away and continued her pacing. She pointed at Artem. “And I never should have listened to you.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You told me to trust you. You told me to follow you. I am such an idiot.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said. “You have to go find your missing people and mount some kind of defense for when he tries this again. I need to rally my own troops and make sure my people are safe.”

  “You want us to fight your war for you?” Ashe was back in my face, looking up at me from a few inches away. “This is your problem. Fix it.”

  “You’re repeating yourself,” I said.

  She wasn’t impressed. “I have killed bigger men than you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  I began walking, forcing her to get out of my way or get trampled. She moved.

  “Wait,” Artem said. He got to his feet as well, though he did it smoothly and without groaning. “Will you need our services when you plan your attack?”

  “I don’t know that I’m going to attack yet. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “He had your tattoos,” Artem said. “On his head, but also in other places. How did he get them? Is this something that can be done to us, for defense?”

  It always came down to power, I knew. No matter the person, or species, all everyone saw when I entered their lives was the power they thought I wielded. It was tiring. I had to find Bec and Roman, if only because they were the only people who didn’t seem to want anything from me.

  “You’ll have to find out,” Artem said. “Even if you don’t want to share the secret. Who knows what else he can achieve before you face him again?”

  Roman wouldn’t know how Bannon got the tattoos, but Nikolette might. There couldn’t be that many people left who could do a thing like that, or Roman would have found someone to request help from who didn’t frighten him so much.

  I gave myself a second to ponder Bannon’s words; he’d told me Roman had tattooed him, which meant he knew enough about my life to know Roman was the logical one to lie about. He couldn’t know the hedge-mage didn’t have the power, couldn’t even see magic. But he knew enough to mention him.

  He’d been watching me, and watching my friends, and I hadn’t noticed. He was toying with me, playing a game as revenge for what I’d done to him, and I hadn’t seen him playing. I’d been blind to the danger, and now I was arguing with a couple of vampires instead of checking on my friends.

  “I really have to go,” I said. I stepped over the body of a vampire I’d just killed, and left the hall.

  I could count on Artem and Ashe to help me if I needed it; they hated Bannon now and they had no people to protect. There couldn’t be many more vampires in the city than those I’d seen in the hall; a human population could only support so many before vampires started killing them.

  I would have to check with Nikolette as well, to try to get the witches involved. With Bannon’s power I’d need to rope in everyone who could resist him, and I had a good idea of his abilities now. He could control the emotions of humans and normal vampires, but elder vampires were beyond him. Which meant Nikolette was probably fine but not her daughter.

  A nagging thought sprang to life as I walked through the club and out onto the darkened street: the demon had attacked their nest and killed the elder vampires first. It had to be a coincidence – Buddy had watched the demon leave and the demon had spoken of orders, which it didn’t look like Bannon could issue – but it didn’t feel like a coincidence.

  If I had a traitor amongst my people then I couldn’t rule out that traitor working with Bannon. What could any of my people gain by siding with a human? What had Bannon offered them to draw them away?

  I was thinking of them as my people. Somewhere between their vote and the fight with Bannon I had decided I was their leader, or at least one of them in some way. They were my people and I wanted to help them.

  It was another strange feeling to pile on top of all the other ones I’d had since Fletcher summoned me. I was changing, and it kept taking me by surprise.

  I could still feel the core of rage within me, though. The red mist was ready to fall and I wasn’t sure if I could keep it at bay the next time I saw Bannon. No matter how many people I killed, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  Chapter 22

  I stood outside the apartment building Bec and Roman were hiding in for an hour before making up my mind to go inside. I had walked there to avoid being seen by anyone.

  I was a danger to them and to others. Bannon was hunting me and he had Chaos to act as his eyes and ears on the street. Until I dealt with him I couldn’t be sure I was ever alone.

  He knew things about me, like Roman’s interest in the symbols. That meant someone close was working against me. It had to be someone in the HND, I reasoned, because I didn’t know that many other people.

  I walked into the building and climbed the stairs. It was an old place, scheduled for renovations at some point. The only people living there were squatters, and I couldn’t be sure a member of Chaos wasn’t among them somewhere.

  I was being paranoid, but I had reason to be. Still, I couldn’t jump at every shadow or I’d be too busy to see the actual danger when it arrived.

  Bec let me in when I knocked. She’d come up with a complicated secret signal for me to use so they’d know it was me, but I’d forgotten it and apparently so had she.

  Roman was sitting at the worn and broken kitchen island, reading a heavy book. He looked up at me and went back to reading it, then looked back up when my image registered in his mind.

  I was covered in blood, and vampire blood at that. It wasn’t a
s bad as demon blood – it didn’t immediately putrefy and turn acidic – but it was nasty nonetheless. It coated my clothes and dripped off me as I walked.

  “What happened?” Bec said. She moved me to the ratty couch and had me sit down before taking a seat opposite me. “I take it things haven’t been going well.”

  I explained the situation with the vampires and kept nothing back; there was no point hiding things from them, not when their lives were at risk. Bec could handle it because she was unlikely to care, but I was expecting Roman to freak out.

  He didn’t, to my surprise. “So Bannon is Anarchy, and he joked that I helped him turn the blood into fresh tattoos for him. Funny guy.”

  I watched him, the nagging paranoia forcing me to evaluate his every word for signs of betrayal. There was nothing there, though. He was being himself, even if he wasn’t getting worked up about the predicament.

  “I don’t think you’re working to get me skinned,” I said. “In case you were wondering.”

  “That wouldn’t work anyway,” he replied. “If I was going to help Bannon out I would have told him that as a first step.” He smiled, at ease with me in a way he hadn’t been before.

  “So what are you going to do?” Bec said. She’d crossed her legs and was leaning on her knees. She was wearing loose fitting clothes similar to her work pajamas; she’d settled into the apartment and appeared happy to wait out whatever was going on.

  “No idea what I’m going to do. I was hoping Roman could shed a bit of light on everything.”

  “You want me to tell you how he’s doing what he’s doing?” He left his book and pulled a rusty lawn chair into position beside Bec. “I’m not an expert on this stuff.”

  “You’re the closest thing we have,” Bec said.

  “Thanks, but that doesn’t mean much. Alight, I don’t know how he’s doing it and I won’t without at least seeing the tattoos on his head. I can guess, but it won’t be much better than your own guesses.”

  “I need to know how to counter his control,” I said. “Or better yet, how to break his tattoos entirely.”

  “You don’t think you can take him?” Bec said.

  “I know I can, but there will be too much collateral damage.”

  “My, how you’ve changed,” Roman said. “The old you would have welcomed the fight and not given a damn about the people who got hurt.”

  I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I’d always secretly looked out for the people around me, but he wasn’t. I had spent thousands of years not caring what happened to people because from my perspective they were all dead anyway. I would have faced Bannon and not cared if everyone in the city had to burn to make sure he was dead. Now I was trapped by the danger posed to complete strangers.

  “Do you have any ideas?” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve tried to bring Nikolette into this because I don’t know enough. If someone like your cleric was still around then maybe I could learn what you need to know, but even with the witch I wasn’t sure we were going to succeed.”

  An image flashed through my head, of a mountaintop blasted level and covered in blood. An old man sat there waiting for me, and he’d been waiting there for thousands of years.

  It was one of the hells I’d seen in flashes as I ran through them, a hell that looked exactly like the last time I’d seen the cleric who marked and cursed me. I had stayed away for fear of what I’d do if it was his hell and that was actually him.

  “What if I knew someone who could tell you everything you needed to know?”

  “Then I’d say you’ve been wasting my time since you got back.” He was smiling, joking with me. I sometimes had trouble knowing when people were joking because they rarely joked around me.

  “I think I saw the cleric,” I said. “I think I found his hell when I was looking for one to destroy for Invehl.”

  “What did you do?” Bec said.

  “Nothing. I ran away.”

  “You ran away from the man who did this to you?” She found it hard to believe, and an earlier me would have agreed with her. But I wasn’t that person anymore, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be him, either.

  “I was scared. Of what I’d do to him. Of what it would do to me.”

  Roman was on the edge of his seat. “But you think he’s the guy who knows it all, right?”

  I nodded. “I was drawn to that hell in a way I wasn’t pulled toward any other. It was a special place, and I believe it was because the cleric was there, waiting for me to arrive. I think waiting for me is his hell.”

  “There are worse options,” Bec said.

  “For thousands of years?” I said. “People pick their own hells, so for him it’s the worst thing he can imagine.”

  “When do we leave?” Roman said. He already had his coat on – no dressing down for him – and all he had to do was throw on some shoes.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t want to face him. I didn’t want him to beg me to set him free, because I didn’t know what I’d do when he did. Would I leave him there to suffer, or kill him on the spot? I wouldn’t free him. I couldn’t, not after the life he’d cursed me to.

  “Here’s the deal,” Roman said. “You can convince Nikolette to help. That is an option, but it doesn’t guarantee anything and it risks things taking too long. It also takes you off the street and puts you in a lab setting.”

  “Because you’d need to study me.”

  “Exactly. Or we can visit this guy in hell and get all the answers we need.”

  “Roman is very eager to see the afterlives,” Bec said. “Buddy wouldn’t take him through the gate.”

  “Which isn’t fair,” he said. “Of the two of us I’m the one who should be going through. My whole life has been about studying old religions, and there’s a universe of their afterlives just sitting there to be studied.”

  “You won’t like it,” I said. “The heavens, maybe, but that’s not where we’d be going.”

  “Anything would blow my mind.” He stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. “Should we go now?”

  “Let him rest for a bit,” Bec said. “There are more clothes for you in the box over there.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “We should leave now, before something else happens. Thank you for the clothes, though.”

  “I knew you’d need them so I stocked up.”

  I changed in the bedroom and looked at myself in the cracked mirror hanging askew on the wall. She’d bought me clothes in abundance because she’d known that as soon as I came back things would get bloody. She was right, too, which made it even worse.

  I had a decision to make, when all of this was done. They had given me my freedom by having the boy, James, be my master. Perhaps my freedom would be best used to get as far away from the people I cared about as possible.

  Roman was waiting by the door like a dog before a hunt. I smiled despite the thoughts racing through my mind.

  “Take care of him,” Bec said, putting her hand on my arm. “He’s a little special.”

  “Can we please go?” Roman said.

  I liked her hand on my arm. I wasn’t sure I liked it the way she did, but I liked it.

  I squeezed her hand before leaving with Roman to explore the hells.

  Chapter 23

  Roman’s face as he saw the heaven of the fish-people statues for the first time reminded me how amazing what we were doing was.

  He was grinning like a fool, trying to look in every direction at once. The grass plain went on to the horizon, broken only by irregularly spaced statues of fish-people, and the souls who called this place their home. They wandered around aimlessly, walking until they were reincarnated. Only their god was dead and their heaven was closed to the world but for a few; their walk would never end and they would never know why.

  “This way,” I said.

  I walked to the hell gate that Seng had tried to use to empower himself. It was still invisible, still locked
away behind my messy seal. Roman shot me a questioning look when I stopped, unable to tell that we were on the threshold.

  “When we step over you will be in your first hell.” I grabbed his hand. “It’s very cold there, but we won’t be staying long.”

  “How long will it take to get where we’re going?”

  “The afterlives don’t work the way earth does. Time and space are stretched or squashed in places, and if you know what you’re looking for you can find shortcuts to cross them. I’ve been where we’re going and I know where the shortcuts are. It won’t take long, and you won’t have to spend much time in any of the hells.”

  “What if I want to? This is a dream for me. I’ve studied, I’ve read all about the beliefs of fallen civilizations. I could spend eternity here and be happy.”

  “You haven’t spent any time here and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I closed my eyes and the gate was waiting for me in the darkness. It was a ragged gash in the air before us, with a glob of raw magic sealing it shut.

  “I can take it,” he said, but there was a quiver in his voice.

  I took us through the gate and into the icy winds of the hell.

  “Back again?” Seng said. His voice was formed of the howling gale and the wild cries of the souls who were trapped there. “Still no reprieve, I suppose.”

  “Not yet, Seng,” I said.

  Roman couldn’t hear the dead god but he didn’t ask me about it. Whatever he assumed I was doing, he trusted me.

  We walked, following a path we could barely see in the darkness. High above our heads, I knew, demons were chained to the roof. The only one I’d seen free was the one who now waited in the HND.

  The shortcut required us walking on the right side of the narrow path and stepping into the dead bushes beside it at the right time. A few steps beyond that and we were a mile further down the road and before the next gate.

  I took his hand and stepped through.

  Another hell, this one so similar to the HND that for a moment I thought I’d done something wrong, chosen the wrong gate and ended up back in the heavens. A blasted plain that stretched to eternity, broken only by volcanoes spewing ash into the air.