by C L Walker
“Killing Alex Farris means nothing,” I replied. Bec had ordered me to stay in the bed and we were running out of time. “What Seng is planning will endanger you.”
“First sign of danger and we’ll run.”
It was a viable plan: when the gate opened there would be signs and even once Seng had taken his fill of the souls it would take time for them to advance on the city. But running meant I wouldn’t be there to take my fill as well, and that was now all I cared about.
“It is too risky,” I said. I couldn’t outright lie to her but otherwise I could say pretty much anything. “The vampires will be looking for you, and there’s no guarantee you can escape Seng. I cannot allow you to come to harm.”
That was too close to a lie – I’d let her come to harm if she stood in my way and I could work how to do it – but it all hinged on the interpretation.
“What do you propose then?” She had a glass of strong-smelling liquor in her hand but I hadn’t seen her drink any yet. “Should I get you a cane so you can hobble over to him and let him kill you?”
“More vampire blood would be a good place to start.” I didn’t know what she was doing to get it for me, but I’d only need a little more to bring me back up to strength. Then I could get my own if she pointed me in the right direction.
“That well is dry, I’m afraid.” She settled back in the comfy looking chair and crossed her legs. “I’ve burned what few bridges I managed to make in this town.”
A voice sounded from the short, dark hallway outside. “I might have an idea.”
Merikh stepped inside, his hands up to show he had no weapons. I was out of bed anyway, fists up and blood pumping. The pain that had been my constant companion vanished at the sign of a threat to Bec.
“Calm down, Jumbo,” he said, though he stood his ground.
He looked healthier than he should have, as though our fight had been months earlier and not a couple of days before. As far as I could tell his mouth was back to normal, with all his teeth where they should be. He had some bruising and I thought I saw him favoring his right leg, but it might have been my imagination.
“How are you alive?” I said.
“Those angel friends of yours are strong, but so are you and how did that work out?”
“They are more than strong, assassin.”
“Sure, but their other skills don’t work on me.”
I didn’t know what to do, but it didn’t look like he was there to fight. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I sat down on the bed, groaning at the strain that came over me now that I thought the threat had passed.
“You’re just going to trust him?” Bec said. The glass in her hand was shaking.
“He seems sincere.”
“I am, and I think I know how to get you some of that angel blood. If you’re interested.”
“How did you…?” Bec began, but then Roman arrived.
He walked into the room without looking up, stepping to the side to move past Merikh before noticing he was there. When he did he jumped back into the wall and dropped the book he’d been carrying.
“How did you get in here?” he said. His hand was creeping toward his pocket, where I suspected he carried a defensive charm.
“I walked in the front door.” Merikh moved away from us to take up a position in the empty corner of the room beneath the faded posters of bands I didn’t recognize from Fletcher’s memories.
“No, you didn’t,” Roman replied. He had his hand in his pocket now, clutching whatever he had stashed there. “I warded the door. I would have known.”
“Sorry, professor. Magic doesn’t work on me.”
“What? And how do you know who I am?”
Bec joined in. “And how do you know about the angel blood?”
He smiled, clearly pleased with himself. “I bugged the bar the first ten minutes I was in here. I’ve been listening to you guys chat since you got back.”
I liked him, despite the time he’d tried to kill me. He was a good fighter and he was resourceful. And he’d stood up to two angels and lived to tell the tale. I decided to let him live.
“You have a plan?” I said.
“No,” Bec cut in before Merikh could speak. “We’re not talking to the guy that tried to kill me.”
“I wasn’t after you. I was sent to kill him.”
“See,” I said, grinning despite the pain at the sight of Bec’s confusion. “And I don’t have a problem with him, so you should be fine.”
“I’m not, though.” Her glass had stopped shaking in her hand, so I figured she’d be alright.
“Let’s hear him out,” I said. “If he’s spinning us a tale or trying to kill me again I’ll crush his head. Fair?”
“Sounds good to me,” Merikh said, clearly not taking my threat seriously. “You gave my boss a serious brain bleed that killed him last night, so I find myself at loose ends. I’ve been following your angel friends around town and I figure we can jump one and get you some medicine.”
That was what I really needed, not paltry vials of vampire blood. With even a small amount of angel blood I’d be healthy enough to fight again, and I’d have an angel to get the information I needed.
I really was starting to like Merikh.
“So, you’re just going to change sides?” Bec took a small sip of the drink, finally giving in to it.
“I’m not a big fan of people trying to end the world.”
“How did you…oh, right, the bugs,” Bec said.
Roman was looking from Merikh to me and back again, over and over like it was a nervous tic. He knew something and it was driving him crazy. I decided if he kept it up I’d find out what his problem was. Though he was a nervous man normally, so it might have just been a stranger barging in.
“Seng isn’t trying to end the world,” I said. “He’s going to destroy the city, probably, but he wants to own the world.”
“Seems like a bad guy to me.” Merikh took a tentative step forward and when nobody jumped him, or jumped away from him, he took another. The room wasn’t very big and this put him close enough to do some damage if he attacked. If he’d wanted to attack, though, he could have done it more easily without coming in at all.
“You can’t fight,” Bec said to me. “You can barely walk.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Merikh said helpfully. “I’ve got you covered till you get better. Owe me a favor later.”
“Sounds fair,” I replied.
“No,” Bec said. “It sounds crazy. He’s an assassin who tried to kill you.”
“He said sorry.”
“I didn’t, actually. I am, but I hadn’t said it yet.”
“He has now.” I smiled at the anger on her face; it made her look more normal and less like the emotionless machine she’d been since I met her.
“So, do we have a plan?” Merikh seemed as eager to get going as I was. “I’ve got a van outside you can probably fit in, though you’re almost as big as this giant I know.”
“I’m not leaving,” Roman said. His eyes were still racing between us and he looked more nervous than usual. “I don’t want be in a car with you two.”
“That’s fine,” I said as I pushed myself back off the bed and to my feet. My body went crazy for a moment, letting me know it didn’t appreciate being asked to move yet, but I managed to stay on my feet and the dizziness passed in a few seconds.
“Let me get changed,” Bec said.
“No,” I replied immediately. “You’re staying here until I’m able to defend you.”
“You don’t get to boss me around, Agmundr.”
I shook my head. “I can’t go anywhere you don’t want me to, so you know I’ll be back. If we run into something that can kill us then it can kill you too. If we don’t then I’ll be back with the tattoos intact, not to mention my wounds healed. You should stay here.”
“Besides,” Merikh said. “My partner is in the van and he doesn’t like girls. He doesn’t like guys, either,
but he especially doesn’t like girls.”
I grabbed the clothes Roman had scrounged for me and hobbled out of the room to put them on. The others fell into an awkward silence as soon as I left.
This was it, the beginning of my plan to get my tattoos working again and save Erindis. All I had to do was face an angel and not die, and trust a man who’d tried to kill me and almost succeeded.
I chuckled; without the tattoos powering me, my life was somehow stranger than when I had them.
Chapter 26
We sat on a low stone wall outside a large building whose purpose didn’t interest me. The sun shone in bursts between the buildings and the air smelled of exhaust. Merikh had bought us both coffees from a man with a cart on the sidewalk.
I’d come to the decision that one of the truly great things about this civilization was its coffee; there was an endless supply at reasonable cost with amazing variety. The best I’d ever had – at a pub in Italy hundreds of years earlier – had been piss by comparison.
“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “I’m going to trust your word.”
“Thanks. But?”
“But if you try anything I’ll tear out your guts and have you wear them.”
“So colorful,” he said, smiling.
Merikh’s partner was around the corner in their van. He was an Eastern European man who’d insisted I call him Mr. Jones and stopped Merikh from telling me his real name, as though knowing it would somehow give me power over him. He’d shaken his head when I climbed into the back and said hello. I didn’t think he liked me.
“Here he comes,” Merikh said, using his coffee cup to point to the hollow man making his way down the street. “He’ll stop outside the bank and take a few notes, then move on to the next part of his route.”
“Have you discovered what they are doing with the notes?”
He shook his head. “It seems to be a holding pattern for them, something to do when they’re not following orders.”
I remembered the hollow man I’d killed, telling me that all he wanted to do was help people again. I wondered if Roman was right and they were taking notes toward that end, but dismissed it as irrelevant; no matter what they wanted to do in the future they were a threat now.
A car stopped nearby and a man leaned out of his window. He was angry at the person on the sidewalk, screaming incoherently and waving his fist. He didn’t get out to vent his anger, though. A policeman watched from nearby, bored.
“I don’t understand your world, Merikh.”
“Me neither, for the most part. I just started experiencing it a year ago.”
“Tell me, then, why that man didn’t leave his car and beat the other man. He was angry and he could have done it if he wanted to. What stopped him?”
Merikh laughed. “You’re a weird guy, Agmundr. He didn’t do it because that would have a been a dick move, and people don’t generally want to be dicks if they can help it.”
I hadn’t seen much of the world during my last summoning in the late twentieth century, but during the one before that I’d spent most of my time following a baker around. The world I had seen then had been as I expected it to be, the strong dominating the weak.
This world didn’t appear to operate on those rules. It was as though everyone had decided to be nice – or not be dicks, as Merikh suggested – and dealt with those who didn’t conform.
“Did you kill all the normal people?”
“No. This is just what the world looks like when you don’t have to punch people just to stop them from punching you.”
“You punch people,” I said. “You make a living punching people.”
“Bad guys. Not just anyone. There’s a difference.”
“Not really.”
The hollow man was taking notes outside the bank, observing everyone walking past him and recording whatever he needed to. His eyes crossed over us twice before he recognized me.
He put the notebook away slowly, watching Merikh and me. Merikh raised his coffee cup in salute.
“Do you think he’ll run?” he said. He finished the coffee and threw the empty cup into an open trash-can across the sidewalk.
“I hope not,” I said. “I don’t think I can keep up with him. I’m not sure I could keep up with a toddler at the moment.”
“I got this.”
He stood and started walking toward the angel, who paused for a moment to decide what he was going to do next. When Merikh stepped onto the road the hollow man made his decision and turned away, walking quickly back the way he’d come.
I rose, trying to ignore the endless aches and pains from my broken body. If Merikh was going to give chase I had to make sure I was somewhere nearby, if only to be there when blood was spilled.
I realized I had become as bad as a vampire, but knew this wasn’t the time to worry about it.
Merikh didn’t speed up or give chase, but simply continued following him at a steady pace, perhaps a little faster than the hollow man himself was walking. Enough to get closer without alerting the people around us that there was something unusual happening.
The hollow man began to jog, something I’d never seen their kind do before. It was almost comical with his long coat and stiff movements. Merikh didn’t speed up, letting the angel round the corner and get away.
“And now?” I said, raising my voice from the paltry distance I’d hobbled.
Merikh turned back and joined me on the sidewalk. “Wait,” he said, turning to face the road and putting his hands behind his back. He seemed far too pleased, I thought.
“Do we have to find another?” I said. Merikh held up his hand, annoying me.
“You got him?” Merikh said.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Come get us.”
Merikh was talking to his partner, I realized. He had a small device deep in his ear that I hadn’t seen. If he had just told me I wouldn’t have been ready to hit him.
Mr. Jones pulled up a minute later. Merikh waved me to the sliding rear door and climbed into the front passenger seat. The hollow man lay unconscious in the back.
“How did you do that?” I said as we pulled away. “He is an angel.”
“I told you,” Merikh said, grinning like a fool. “Their special powers don’t work on us.”
“I will require an explanation to that at some point.”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Merikh said. “It involves the elder gods and some regular gods, and a whole lot of fighting.” He looked back at me. “Then again, you might be the only one who would believe me.”
I found it hard to believe, but the proof lay before me. The hollow man was curled into a fetal position, unaware of the world. I’d never seen one unconscious before.
We drove out of downtown to a spot Merikh had chosen before visiting us at ACDCs. I was eager to steal some of the angel’s power to heal myself but I didn’t mention it; I was feeling ghoulish enough as it was; I didn’t also want to look like a drug addict.
“I’ll wait here,” Mr. Jones said, not looking at me as I dragged the hollow man from the van.
Merikh turned to his partner. “You’re going to have to get used to stuff like this if you’re going to work with me.”
Mr. Jones practically sneered at us. “You won’t kill a target unless he fits some vague definition of a bad guy, but you’ll take out what you’ve told me is an angel. Explain that.”
“Trust me,” Merikh said dismissively. Mr. Jones scowled, but he didn’t argue.
The spot the assassin had picked for our interrogation was a parking garage beside an abandoned train station. The place was in disrepair and covered in graffiti, and Merikh seemed sure we wouldn’t be disturbed.
I drew the circle on the cracked concrete, adorning it at the cardinal points with what I hoped looked like powerful runes; I had no idea how to weave magic, but I hoped the angel wouldn’t look too closely if we were frightening enough.
“This is new for me,” Merikh said, soundi
ng surprised.
“Me too.”
The hollow man’s eye fluttered open. When he saw us they opened wide, his head turning in desperation to find an escape.
He looked up at us and said, “Don’t, please.”
Chapter 27
I hadn’t paid any attention to what the angel looked like when he was unconscious in the van. They all looked more or less the same; the pale white skin of a corpse over motionless, emotionless flesh. They even dressed the same. They were faceless enemies.
The fear I saw on this one’s face should have made me happy. It stood between me and my goal, an obstacle to achieving what I believed was rightfully mine. In the past I would have crushed it without thinking and moved on to the next enemy, the next weak challenge.
Instead I felt something I didn’t like: pity. The words of the last hollow man I’d put in a circle rang in my head, his wish to help people coloring my former victory. Roman had read the notebook he’d been carrying and decided he’d been speaking the truth, and I’d ignored it.
I put sympathy out of my mind and focused on what I was there to do.
“How is Seng opening the gate?” I said. Merikh stood to the side and the angel’s head jerked between us, trying to keep us both in sight at once.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” he said. His voice had only the slightest hint of the terror on his face, which for an angel was more than usual.
“Then start. How is he opening the gate? What is the key?”
“The…the hell is old and the key is broken,” he began. He was out of breath, stammering. “There are statues that have been collected, three of them. Combine them and the key is active.”
Merikh joined in. “Your friends have been meeting with a bunch of rich people over the last few days. Do they have the statues?”
The angel nodded. He’d backed up to the edge of the circle but hadn’t touched it; in his fear he wasn’t aware that it wouldn’t do anything. As expected.
“Does he need all three?” I asked.
