Merciless

by Robin Parrish

  Someone tapped Devlin on the shoulder from behind.

  He turned. There stood the wrinkled, aged, balding face of a man he hadn't seen in almost thirty years. A man he'd thought to be long dead.

  As he reacted in surprise at the sight, the other man balled up a fist with his one hand, reared back, and punched him in the face.

  The storm in the skies above briefly subsided, the earthquake quelled. But the earth was still dark, the skies still enraged and threatening. Oblivion was not yet vanquished.

  "Alex ..." Grant called out, his voice weak and his strength waning.

  She was there at once, a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes pouring love and warmth into him.

  He smiled at her, took her hand with his remaining one, and squeezed it. "I'm so sorry. For everything. This is not what I wanted for you. For us."

  "Grant..."

  "Payton?" Grant said.

  A moment later, Payton stood at his feet. His sword was still stuck into the grass several feet away.

  "I need you to take your sword," Grant said softly, "and kill me."

  "What?" Alex cried.

  "It's the only way," Grant said. "They brought Oblivion into this world by binding him to a human being. The only way for him to pass out from this life again is for death to take the one he's tethered to. He'll go kicking and screaming, trying desperately to maintain his purchase on this reality. But he'll have no choice but to return to wherever he came from."

  "No, Grant!" said Alex, tears spilling from her and touching his cheeks. "Please, no ... You died on me once already. I don't know how to let you go again-"

  "How do you know this will work?" Payton asked. He blurred and then reappeared, holding his sword.

  "I just know," Grant replied. "For the world to live, I must die. And it has to be now, before Oblivion comes back. I can already feel him starting to awaken and stir inside me ..."

  Daniel joined the three of them, kneeling on Grant's other side, opposite Alex, resting his weight on his good foot.

  "Hello, old friend," Grant said, throwing him half of a smile.

  "It's good to see you," Daniel offered. "I overheard ... Grant, you don't deserve this."

  "We all deserve this," Grant corrected him.

  "But why don't we just Shift you and Devlin again, and let Devlin die with Oblivion?" Daniel asked.

  "Because Devlin will never surrender to death."

  Alex wept loud and long, oblivious to what others thought or felt.

  "I need you to be strong, Alex," Grant said. "For me. This power is too great, man was not meant to wield it. It has to be this way."

  "But I never ..." Alex whimpered. "We've never even kissed."

  "Then do it, now, before the end," Grant said softly. "The Bringer, Guardian, Oblivion just let it all end with me."

  She leaned in and pressed her lips firm against his. He closed his eyes, squeezing out tears, and lifted his head off of the ground to press his own mouth into hers. He felt overpowering emotions leaking out of her, and in those feelings were love, joy, desire, anguish, rage, and desperation, among so many others. He felt everything she felt, and he wanted more than anything to pick her up in both arms and run away from all of this with her, to just be with her for the rest of his mortal life.

  He couldn't keep one heartbroken, heaving sob from shaking his shoulders, but he swallowed the rest. He pulled back from her.

  "Do it, Payton," Grant said, pushing down his internal conflict. "Do it now."

  "It isn't fair!" Alex cried, and her body collapsed on top of his. "I don't want you to go!"

  "I don't either ... I don't want to go." His voice sounded like that of a child, yearning, longing for acceptance, approval. Love. "But ... but you love me?"

  Alex raised up and looked him in the eyes. "I have always loved you. I loved you before I knew you."

  Payton raised his sword, ready to strike. But Alex threw out a hand, stopping him.

  "Payton, kill me too," she said. "I don't want to live anymore if this is what life has become. I don't want to be here."

  Grant stroked her chin and forced a smile.

  "But you are here."

  Alex pulled back, unsure if she wanted to watch this.

  Payton was going to get his wish at last. He was going to kill the Bringer.

  She hated him for it.

  Daniel wasn't watching either; he was staring at something on the ground nearby. He turned back to face Grant, and suddenly he blinked.

  "No, you can't-" he began.

  Grant held up a hand to silence him. Then he motioned for the doctor to lean in close.

  Daniel complied, and whispered words were exchanged. Alex couldn't understand what they were saying. Probably mutual apologies for the way things had turned out and how they'd treated each other in the past.

  When it was over, Daniel pulled back and stood to his feet, an uncharacteristic display of emotion coloring his face. But he didn't turn away; he watched with an unreadable expression on his face as if debating whether or not to say something more.

  "Do it," Grant asked one last time. "'The Bringer shall be slain at the hands of the Thresher."'

  "I'm sorry," Payton said, his jaw set. He lifted his sword high above his head.

  "I love you," Alex said, and then turned away.

  The last she saw of Grant was a peaceful, resigned smile.

  The deed was done. The act Payton had been waiting ten years for, accomplished at last. But now that it had come to it, Payton found no satisfaction in its execution.

  There was a time he would have found that odd.

  He paid his last respects, grasping Grant's left handreceiving an odd scratch on the back of his hand from Grant's fingernails in the process-and then letting it go. He rose from the body and walked away, leaving Alex and Daniel to weep over their fallen friend.

  The dark clouds in the sky above them began to roll back. The black volcanic-type rock that covered the ground was slowly withdrawing and the brown sand and dirt returning.

  A few feet from Grant's dead body, Payton found Devlin on his back, unconscious.

  Payton kicked him in the side, and Devlin stirred, looking up into the eyes of his protege.

  "You failed," Payton said, smoldering. "You. Failed. You worthless piece of rubbish. The Bringer is dead. Oblivion is gone."

  "But ... what?" Devlin stammered, backpedaling. "That's impossible, I don't believe you-"

  He started to sit up, but Payton placed a foot on his mentor's shoulder and pushed him back down to the ground.

  He held his gleaming silver sword pressed against Devlin's neck.

  "You and your people have brought nothing but pain and suffering to the human race for thousands of years. You are personally responsible for the loss of more human lives than anyone in history."

  "Payton, listen to me-"

  "The wages of sin," Payton said softly, lightly, "is death."

  He struck.

  Everyone could feel it in the very air they breathed.

  Time was passing once more.

  An hour after Grant's death, the first ray of bright yellow sunlight streamed down and touched Alex. She sat on the edge of one of the Citadel's higher platforms, staring at nothing, trying to think of a reason to go on living. She had no more tears left in her, no more strength, no more life.

  How could it have come to this? The whole thing felt wrong. She had been so sure that she would save him, that Grant would come back to her and everything would be all right again.

  Grant was the "good guy" after all. Wasn't he supposed to "live happily ever after"?

  ... with her?

  Little by little, the DarkWorld dissipated. The fiery clouds vanished first. At the same time the earthquakes had stopped and the rain as well. And then to the wonder of all, the scorched earth was receding, reverting to normal soil. She'd even heard one of the Loci mention something about hearing that the seas and oceans were filling with water again. The changes to the earth had been m
ystical, and once the cause of them was gone, the natural order was returning.

  One thing that would never come back was the lives that had been lost. Whether they died at Oblivion's hand or from the various forms of madness that his appearance had caused, death was an unchanging constant.

  Much like how she felt inside. Alex was vaguely aware of the initial swells of hope and contentment spreading throughout the city. People were just beginning to walk out into the sunlight, realization dawning that everything they knew was becoming whole and right again.

  Nothing would ever be right again for her.

  Not without him.

  There was no normal. No happily ever after. No rosy sunset to ride off into with the man she loved.

  Daniel had refused to leave her side at first, immediately after it happened. But the old handless man had come to them and dragged Daniel away after ten minutes or so. She hadn't seen him since.

  Several of her friends came and went-Ethan, Nora, Hector, others-offering to do for her whatever they could. Alex mechanically gave them her thanks, never making eye contact. She repeated to each of them her desire to be left alone, if only for a little while.

  "Alex?"

  Daniel. She didn't look up.

  "Alex, I need to talk to you," Daniel said softly.

  "What's up, doc?" she asked humorlessly, still not facing him.

  "I'm not a doctor," he said quietly.

  Her brain didn't register this. She was too spent to really hear it.

  "Alex?"

  She sighed, looking up at last. "What, Daniel? What do you want that you can't leave me in my misery? What more do you think I can do for you, or for the others? I'm sorry the city is in such a fragile state, but you'll excuse me if I'm in no condition to spread calm just now-"

  An inexplicable smile spread over Daniel's face as he reached out and placed a hand over her moving mouth. "Shut up, will you? I'm trying to tell you something."

  Bordering on crushed and hurt, she stopped talking and looked on him, incredulous.

  He removed his hand and let out a nervous breath. "I still don't know exactly why he did it. I was ready, I was prepared. I knew what I was giving up, and it pained me, but I'd made my peace with it. The world was at stake, and I-"

  "One of us isn't making any sense, Daniel ..." Alex said, "and I'm starting to worry it might be me."

  Daniel smiled again, gently. "Devlin wasn't the only person here today who had the power to Shift human souls, was he?"

  Huh?

  She searched her weary mind. "Well, you would have been able to mimic Devlin's-"

  She broke off. Lifted her head fully and gave him her undivided attention for the first time, looking him in the eyes. "What are you saying?"

  "You remember the moment when he and I whispered to each other, just before the end?" Daniel asked. "That was right after he did it."

  "Daniel ... ?" Some tiny part of her heart fluttered, but she didn't dare believe . . . "Are you ... ?"

  "Just listen," he replied, taking her hand. "After it happened, he motioned for me to lean in so he could say something. I asked him what just happened, and he said that he wasn't sure it would even work with Devlin's Ring, since Devlin's silver Ring was of a different make, but apparently all such Rings draw from a similar power source.

  "Of course I protested, but he said to leave it. `She needs you,' he said. He said he was sorry for the wear and tear, but he joked that at least this would get me from A to B. And he asked me to let the others think it was me. That it would be easier, better for all of us this way."

  Alex's hand jumped up to cover her mouth, and a few tears she thought were long gone suddenly fell out of her eyes. But she was afraid to speak, afraid to do anything to break the spell cast over the two of them in this moment.

  "Just before I pulled away," he went on, his words coming out slower now, "he asked me if I loved you. And I said that for you, I would give up my life. He said, `Promise me you won't let one day go without telling her that.' "

  Daniel slid off of his perch and landed on one knee, still holding her hand in hers.

  "So I came over here ... to keep my promise."

  Alex's shoulders shook as she threw her arms around this man. This diminutive scientist who was no scientist at all. Her head rested on his shoulder, and even though it was a foreign shoulder to her, it was the first time in a long time that she felt like she'd come home to exactly where she belonged.

  The shoulder may have belonged to Daniel Cossick, but the man she held tight to was the one person in all the world whose life and happiness she valued more than her own.

  Sobbing giant tears and soaking Daniel's shirt, she decided that the package didn't matter, that the bones and musculature and organs and everything else tangible she held in her arms was transitory and meaningless. And she decided that leaning on this shoulder was something she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

  Some time later, after the cleanup had begun, the two of them finally made it out of the Old City and down to Amiel Yishai's tent city, which had become a crude headquarters in the wake of the DarkWorld's devastation.

  The Loci labored on bringing relief and aid wherever they could. Though many of them were still grieving over the death of the greatest of them, the death of Guardian, it wasn't unusual to see pained hugs exchanged between individuals wearing Rings of Dominion. Wilhelm was spotted playing with the local children while providing power to a bank of ambulances and their equipment.

  Alex spoke first as they wandered through the sparse tents together. "Why did you bring me down here?"

  "We're here to meet someone."

  "No more surprises, I hope," Alex remarked.

  "Just one," he said.

  "Hello, you two," said a voice somewhere behind them, a voice Alex didn't recognize.

  They turned. The strange old man with only one hand was standing ten feet away, smiling.

  Alex's jaw fell at seeing him talk, but then she got it. Of course. "Hector?"

  The old man smiled wider. "Hector."

  "So," Alex said conversationally, "you're finally going to tell us who you are?"

  "Do you really need me to?" the man replied. "You haven't guessed?"

  Alex grinned at the man next to her, the man who was most decidedly not Daniel Cossick. "I think I'd like to hear you say it."

  "My name is Frank Borrows," he said, his gaze going back and forth between the two of them.

  Alex nodded. It was huge, but not altogether surprising. "Grant's father. Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

  Frank looked at her companion and couldn't suppress a knowing smile. "Like father, like son, I suppose."

  Alex looked at the man beside her, and back at Frank Borrows. "So ... you know?"

  "I don't know anything," Frank replied. He said no more on the subject, but threw her a faint wink that no one but Alex could have possibly seen.

  "I owe you an explanation, both of you," Frank picked up the conversation.

  Alex sensed that he was about to tell his story, so she grasped the hand of the man next to her and settled in to hear it.

  "After all these years, after so much struggle and pain and sacrifice ... he really did it. I always knew he would. You have no idea what a relief it is knowing that it's finally done."

  His audience of two said nothing, waiting patiently for him to continue.

  "My son was destined from the moment of his birth to be the downfall of the Secretum of Six. He is the last in a line of sacred custodians, a line that stretches back for generations all the way to the time of Noah, and even further. The Secretum believed that no one in the `External' world knew of them and their plans, and that was exactly what we wanted them to believe.

  "When my son was born, I had already been made the latest in this line of protectors. My own father-the man you knew as the previous Keeper of the Secretum, Maximilian Borrows-was bypassed for the role, because the custodian before him knew that my father was an immoral man. My fath
er spent years bitter over this dishonor, and jealous of me, his own son.

  "While I was busy working for the Appointed, I attempted to infiltrate the Secretum and gain the confidence of one of their acolytes. Her name was Cynthia, and not only did I gain her confidence, I won her love, and she mine. She was born into the Secretum but disenfranchised with it and their secretive plans and manipulations. When I came along, she found the way out that she'd long sought. She brought me into the Secretum, I was given their brand, Cain's Lament, and I learned all that I could about the organization from the inside.

  "But what I saw was big enough and frightening enough that I knew this `secret society' had grown past the point where the resources of the Appointed could overcome them. We'd known of their existence and some of their manipulations of surface society, but the true scope of their aims was astonishing to me. So Cynthia and I came up with a plan; we would turn ourselves in to American authorities. In exchange for our cooperation and inside information on the Secretum, we would be assigned to a special military unit dedicated to taking the Secretum down. We were even given military ranks, though this was largely ceremonial.

  "Unknown to me at the time, my father learned of our actions, and Cynthia's true heritage. When she became pregnant with Grant's sister, she asked to be relieved of her duties so she could raise our children. My superior, a man who came to be my best friend, Harlan Evers, happily agreed. When Cynthia became pregnant again, a few years later, my father learned of the Secretum's belief that the one male child in all the world who was born from the line of Cain and the line of Seth both-a boy who resulted from the union of an External and a Secretum member-would grow up to become the Bringer.

  "My grandfather used this information to gain entrance to the Secretum, and he used his considerable influence and charismatic personality as well as his profound familial connection to the Bringer to seize control of the Secretum as its newest Keeper. His appointment did not go uncontested. He was an outsider from the line of Seth. The first to ever join the ranks of the Ruling Council. Devlin was next in line for the job of Keeper before my father came along, and I understand that there was a bitter rivalry between them.

  "But rather than following the dictates of the prophecy, my father secretly became obsessed with twisting the prophecy and using it for his own purposes. He wanted power, and he meant to use Grant to get it. He believed that, despite the prophecy's statement that Oblivion would be born in the Hollow, he could mold and shape Grant into taking control of Oblivion's powers outside of the Hollow, without bringing forth Oblivion himself.