by C L Walker
“Where are they, Mark?” I asked, taking a step toward him. I knew what was about to happen and so did he. I only hoped I could get close enough before he acted.
“My real name is Merikh,” he said. His hands were tightening into fists and releasing, over and over. He was getting ready to fight.
“Where are they, Merikh?”
“They disappeared into a hole in the air.” He shook his head. “I swear. It seems the only jobs I can get are magical ones.”
A hole in the air? I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and holding it. The world faded away in moments, replaced by the blood rushing in my head and heat on my skin. I concentrated, trying to do what had once come so easily to me. Without the tattoos I wasn’t sure it would work.
There, a flicker in the darkness. It was like someone turning mother-of-pearl in the dark until it caught the tiniest bit of light, only for it to fade away again as quickly.
“What’s he doing?” Merikh said. He didn’t sound worried, which was a mistake when facing me.
“Beats me,” Bec replied. “Why don’t you stand down, or whatever term you’d prefer, and tell me what I can do to get you to stop?”
“Pay me a lot of money? That’s normally how these things go.”
I stood in the dark, surrounded by an infinity of emptiness, Bec and the assassin vague impressions at the back of my mind. I gave it time and the flicker returned: a gate, one that I had closed thousands of years before. It led nowhere special but it was open and it shouldn’t have been.
When I closed the gates and trapped the hollow men and the souls of their religions I had expected them to reopen as soon as I managed to kill my master. Instead the elder gods upheld the seals and kept the angels from returning.
Something had changed. If the elder gods stopped powering them the seals would fail over time, some more quickly than others. I had closed the gates so I was sure I could cross them, but they must have been abandoned for some time for the hollow men to have escaped.
“I saw this guy tear someone’s head off,” Merikh said. “I don’t think there’s an amount of money you could offer me to risk letting him near me.”
“You should rethink that,” Bec said. “I’ve just inherited a lot of money.”
“Nah, I think I’ll pass.”
I opened my eyes as I started to run. The world took a moment to reform around me. Merikh already had a pistol half drawn from a holster under his jacket. Bec stepped behind me. The sun beat down on the dust of the vacant lot.
He fired and the bullet grazed my arm. I was halfway.
He fired again and this time it hit my shoulder, exploding with pain that I had to ignore. I was almost within striking distance.
At the last moment he twisted aside. I reached for him and he deflected my hand, bringing his pistol up to fire again. I slapped it out of his hand and suddenly he was backing away, his hands rising into a fighting stance. The gun fell to the ground, too far away to help him.
“Old fashioned way it is,” he said. The stupid smile was still on his face.
“Shut up,” I said, and attacked.
Chapter 15
The assassin moved like a dancer, his skill and the serenity of his attacks betrayed by the strength behind them, the brutality of his advance.
I was backing away from the start, deflecting what I could but being hit more often than not. A blow to the face that rocked my head back and gave him an opening to strike at my still tender side. A short kick to my shin that left dazzling pain in its wake.
I managed to stop my retreat only for him to jab his finger in the fresh bullet wound in my shoulder.
I growled as fire swept from the tiny hole. I caught a glimpse of blood on his fingers as he shifted position, readying another attack.
I could die, I realized in a moment of clarity. Not at the hands of a vampire or an army, but rather beaten to death by a single human fighter. This man was about to stomp me into the dry, cracked ground and I was letting him.
I channeled my pain and fear, focusing it and fighting for clarity. He was simply a man, well trained but ultimately mortal. I had faced gods and risen victorious.
I rushed him, taking his fresh abuse without trying to defend against it. He was a better fighter than I was and trying to match him would lead to my defeat. But I was bigger, much bigger, and I knew I was stronger. I could take more damage before going down than he could. All I had to do was land a single punch and the fight would even out.
He twisted out of my grasp and punched my side again. While I had healed from the stab wound there was still enough pain there for me to stagger and almost fall.
I spun around, baring my teeth, the red mist falling over my eyes as the assassin rushed in for another round.
His fist smashed into my jaw as he twisted again, but I reached my arms out to my sides and rushed him. This time he wasn’t fast enough.
I grabbed his hand and drew him to me as I sent my fist smashing into his face. Bones cracked and a scream erupted from the assassin’s broken face. The pain gave him strength too and he managed to pull free of my grip and stumble away.
I gave chase, giving him as little quarter as he had offered me. He was having trouble seeing through his blood and pain and I made use of it, kicking his leg and breaking that as well. He fell to the floor and I leaped, aiming to crush his head with my boots.
Even broken and half-blind, Merikh was a better fighter than me. He rolled aside and wrapped his legs around mine, pulling me off balance and sending me to the ground on my back. He was on top of me faster than I would have thought possible, his fists raining down on me, blood dripping from his destroyed face.
I was too tired, too hurt, too human. I fought the fear that for once I wasn’t going to win, knowing it wouldn’t help me, but the punishment was never ending and I couldn’t think.
I tried to lash out and he trapped my arm with his knee. I raised my legs to try and grab him but he was latched on too tight. He was everywhere, all at once, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
He looked up and away from the punishing attack, and then he was gone. I raised my head, dazed and bleeding, to find Bec ten feet away, the gun in her hands. Merikh was little more than a blur to my aching eyes as he made his way to her, weaving to keep her from getting a straight shot.
I dragged myself up and wiped the blood from my swelling face. By the time I’d found my feet he’d reached her and the fight was over.
“Stay where you are,” he said through the broken hole that used to be his mouth. What teeth remained jutted from bleeding gums and his words were barely comprehensible.
He had Bec in an arm lock with one hand while he pointed his gun at her with the other. She was bent over, neither able to rise nor fall to the ground for fear of tearing her arm off.
I couldn’t reach him in time to stop him from killing her. I wasn’t sure I could defend myself if he decided to continue fighting when she was gone. I stood in silence for a moment, glaring at him and wheezing.
“You’re a scary guy,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting that.” Though his legs were shaking his hands weren’t; if he wanted to kill her he could do it easily.
“Do what you came here to do,” I said. The dormant tattoos wriggled at the words, but they couldn’t help me defeat my enemy. Nothing could.
“I should have known better than to take this job,” he continued. “Last minute, high reward, kill one guy. I knew something was off.”
“Guy?” I said. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. Or perhaps I’d damaged his brain and he’d said it wrong.
“I should have taken you out from a distance.”
“Why didn’t you?” I said. “Why risk it?”
“I had to know if you were a bad guy or not.” He saw the skeptical look on my face. “It’s a thing an old partner of mine insisted on. It’s annoying, but it helps me live with myself.”
“He’s not a bad guy,” Bec said through clenched teeth.
“He tore someone’s head off,” Merikh said. “That’s a bad guy. In fact, I thought I was going to have to rescue you until I saw you following him around like a puppy. What is that, Stockholm’s? You know Stockholm’s isn’t real, right?”
“Kill her and be done,” I said. “I’m too tired to do this anymore.”
“I’m not here for her.” He raised his pistol and aimed at my head. “She was just in the wrong place and time.”
I closed my eyes and tried to think with the few seconds that remained of my life. Last minute, high reward, and he was there to kill me, not Bec. What the hell was going on?
I could feel the gate behind me, practically screaming to aid my escape. There were hollow men on the other side, but at least they wouldn’t know I was coming.
“Who hired you?” I said without opening my eyes. I needed to keep my focus on the gate or I’d lose it.
“Some guy. Does it matter?”
“I just want to know who I have to kill later.” The gate appeared behind me and I reached out with my mind, holding it open.
“Your killing days are done.”
I stepped back and through the gate.
Before I’d been ordered to close the gates anyone could use them, if they were devout enough and had the permission of the relevant gods. I’d killed the gods, though, so the only things keeping people out became the seals I placed there. But my seals wouldn’t stop me.
I opened my eyes on one society’s view of heaven: and endless plain of the greenest grass broken only by fifty-foot statues of fish-people placed haphazardly to the horizon. I could make out people still walking in circles, completing the only task their religion required of them before a reincarnation that would never happen. There should have been tens of thousands of them but only a few hundred were visible. Thousands of years and these few still hadn’t given up hope.
The hollow men stood in a group a mile away, their guest the center of their attention. They hadn’t noticed me.
What I needed was a gate to a parallel heaven. I’d even take a hell if there was one handy. I closed my eyes again and focused on the darkness, hunting for any sign of salvation.
In addition to the gate at my back I felt the tiniest impressions of gates a long way away, but they were overshadowed by one that shone in the darkness like a sunrise. I opened my eyes for a moment to confirm its location; the hollow men surrounded it.
In the darkness of my mind it was a dull red scar in the air, lighting up the world by virtue of overwhelming power. It was sealed and the lock I’d placed on it was closed, but I knew what lay beyond it.
At the dawn of time, long before I was born, civilizations had founded a brutal view of the afterlife, and this hell was one of the earliest. Even I had walked its halls carefully, fearful of the long-lived evil of the place.
And now the hollow men were interested in it. I didn’t think they’d be able to open it, but I also didn’t know how they’d escaped their heavens. I couldn’t fathom a reason for them to be interested in it, either; they would find no friends beyond the seal.
I opened my eyes to find two hollow men looking my way. One tilted his head to the side, evaluating me. Then they took to the air and I knew I had to run.
On Earth I wasn’t a match for the angels but in a heaven I was truly doomed. I closed my eyes, found the gate back to the empty lot, and stepped back.
Merikh was hobbling away on his broken leg and Bec sat on the ground with her hands tied behind her back. He heard me arrive and had his pistol aimed at me in a heartbeat.
I ignored him and walked over to Bec.
“Where did you go?” she said. Tear tracks ran through the dust on her face.
“Heaven. We have to leave.”
I grabbed the plastic ties holding her hands together and tore them open before helping her to her feet.
“I have a gun pointed at you,” Merikh said. His voice sounded more clear, somehow, but he still looked like a car had hit him in the face.
“We have bigger problems,” I replied. I made for the street, skirting the assassin even as I waited for him to fire.
“You have plenty of problems, and this is one of them.” He waved the gun around for emphasis.
I stopped a few feet from him, staring down the barrel of his gun in defiance. “If you think I’m a bad guy you’re right. In a former life I was the worst. The new worst is about to come through that gate and kill me, and probably you too, now that your usefulness has ended.”
He glanced toward the location of the gate. I almost believed he could see it, the way he zeroed in on the exact spot so easily.
“Let’s put our fight aside for a moment and run,” I said. “If you still think I’m worse than the people who brought you here to kill me then we can pick this up later. Otherwise, we’re out of here.”
I grabbed Bec’s arm and continued walking. I could feel Merikh tracking me with his gun.
“What’s happening?” Bec said when we hit the sidewalk.
I raised my hand for a cab. “The hollow men caught me snooping and we’re dead if they catch us.”
I felt the gate open as the car pulled up. Once Bec and I were inside I risked a glance back.
Merikh stood before the angels. He was talking but their eyes were on me. As the car pulled away one of them reached out to grab the assassin and he stepped back, preparing to defend himself. The gathering was lost to view as the cab sped up.
The sound of a gunshot barely broke through the odd music playing inside the car.
They couldn’t fly on earth. They would kill the assassin, of course, but by the time they were done we’d be far away. If I wasn’t going to die then I’d have to work out what they were up to and deal with it, if only to keep Bec safe until I could control who got the locket when she fell.
“You went to heaven?”
I ignored her, closing my eyes as the pain of the fight returned. I was in bad shape and the bullet wound in my shoulder was still bleeding, but I didn’t care about any of it.
I was starting to puzzle it out – why were the angels interested in an ancient hell? – when the world began to spin and I lost consciousness.
Chapter 16
I rarely got a chance to sleep, or to dream. When I was summoned I was usually set a task, and I used that task to turn the tables on my master. I would watch them die, deliver a warning to whomever I handed the locket to, and then return to my prison.
Even the few times when I’d spent years as a slave I’d rarely found a moment to truly rest. But in those few times, when the world was on fire and my master could think of nothing more for me to destroy, I always dreamed of Erindis.
I found myself in our wedding chamber atop the grand pyramid. Torches and candles lit the cold stone room, their flames fluttering in the breeze blowing through the open walls leading out into the night sky. The door was barred and I had a sword in my hand, whatever good that would do us.
An army waited beyond the city gates. Marrying Erindis to me had been her father’s final move, his last ditch attempt to save his kingdom. He’d married his princess off to a berserker, someone everyone feared for good reason.
“They have breached the gates,” the old cleric in the filthy robe said. He was strangely calm, but then his kind were professionally strange.
“You were meant to stop this,” Erindis said. She wore a gown of the finest material the world had to offer, and her long blonde hair had been teased and tortured into place atop her head. The silver locket hung around her neck. She should have been a vision, but the hatred on her face twisted her visage into someone else.
Her hatred of me.
I couldn’t understand it, simple as I was. I loved her, worshipped her in fact. I had done terrible things for her, raised enemy villages and torn their people to pieces. I had done everything in my power to turn the tide of the war.
And yet she blamed me. She despised me. I knew she hadn’t chosen to be with me but I’d thought things were differe
nt, that I’d shown my devotion.
“How long until they enter the pyramid?” she said, never shifting her eyes from mine. I would have killed anyone, including myself, to make her stop glaring at me.
“Minutes,” the cleric replied. He stood in one of the giant openings from which the breeze carried the sweet smell of the flower market below. “We’ve brought the last of the army within and they will defend the halls as long as they can.”
“They will run,” I said, ever blunt. “I know the men and I respect them, but they would be fools to do otherwise.”
“They won’t.” The cleric turned back to us and I was struck again by how calm he was. Did he know something we did not?
“They won’t hold forever,” Erindis said. She sat on the edge of the uncomfortable bed we had first shared all those years before. Her father was dead and her kingdom was gone. All she had left was an old man and her husband, and neither could comfort her.
“True, true,” the cleric said.
He turned back to the city and I swore I saw a smile on his wrinkled face.
“What are you planning?” I realized I didn’t know his name, but I was his king now and I didn’t need to know it.
He turned and smiled. “Me? Nothing.”
“You have made a bargain with the enemy.” I was guessing, going for the obvious answer as I always did.
“Not with the enemy, no.”
“Liar.” I stomped across the room, ready to beat the self-satisfied smile from his face. “You will explain or—”
“If not the enemy,” Erindis said. Her voice pierced the red rage that had fallen over me, dissipating it instantly. “Then who?”
The cleric smirked and stepped around me, moving to my wife’s side. He took her hand and knelt beside her.
“I am not simply your servant, princess. I am also the servant of a higher power, one that is interested in you.”
“Interested?” I barked, but they ignored me.
