by C L Walker
They weren’t shooting me and I knew why: I was their prize. They’d forced Erindis to summon me and if they had to kill me then they would have failed. They had to face me with their bare hands, or perhaps knives, but they couldn’t kill me.
I laughed in the face of the three soldiers closing in on me. I could see that I’d rattled them and put a pause in their step. I capitalized on it, rushing them. I knocked one over with an outstretched arm and let the second run into my chest. He bounced off me and crashed to the ground while I dealt with the third.
This one raised his pistol and fired, but his shot went wide and I still had the rifle I’d been using as a makeshift club. It hit him in the side of the head and broke his neck.
It also bent the rifle. I threw it to the floor and stomped on the leg of the man who’d rebounded off me. He screamed at the same time as Erindis.
I spun to see what they were doing with my wife. The soldier escorting her had a pistol to her head and he was forcing her to come back into the light. He used her for cover, afraid that I would fire on him.
“Stand down, Agmundr,” he called, mangling my name as though he hadn’t just heard Erindis say it.
I stalked across the open area, ignoring the rifles pointed at me. The soldier stopped moving forward and went into reverse, dragging her with him.
“I said stop.”
“If you hurt her I will kill you slowly,” I said. I was almost close enough to attack. “And I’ll kill your family and friends. I’ll kill everyone who has ever known you.”
“Stop,” he tried again, desperation in his movement and his voice.
I yelled as I ran at him. “I will destroy you.”
He pushed my love aside and tried to shoot, but I was too close. His pistol was in my hand before he’d brought it to bear and aimed at him before he knew to start screaming. I fired and watched the back of his head explode.
Erindis was on the ground beside me, terrified, her eyes wide as she tried to take in the entire situation at once. The remaining soldiers were coming up from behind and I couldn’t take care of her.
I screamed an incoherent battle cry as I rounded on the approaching enemy. They stopped in their tracks and raised their rifles to fire.
“Everybody calm down.” The voice came from behind me, from in the darkness my human eyes couldn’t penetrate. I couldn’t see who was coming but I could feel him.
A god, the divine energy creating a bubble of prickly power around him that the blood-tattoos covering my skin reacted to. They squirmed, desperate as a drug addict for a fix.
“You are the leader?” I said. I had my back turned to the rifles, but they weren’t going to fire.
“I am,” the man said. He was Asian, with dark skin and a warrior’s physique. He’d been a soldier at some point, but now he wore an ill-fitting suit.
“Then stand down,” I said. I looked down on him and he didn’t show any fear. That was a mistake. “Let us leave and I will let you live.”
He smiled. And then he attacked.
He moved faster than the soldiers, faster than any human. His divine spirit powered him the way the tattoos had once powered me, making his mortal body do things that no other could. His fist connected with my stomach and the force of his punch rocked me.
But I was fighting for Erindis and I had fought gods before, with or without the full power of the tattoos. All I had to do was hurt him, make him bleed, and the tattoos could feed on his power. Once that happened the fight was over and he was dead.
I telegraphed an attack, a punch to his face, while aiming my foot at his shin. He blocked the first and missed the second, but I merely scraped down his leg and otherwise had no effect.
“Are you feeling alright, Agmundr?” he said, too amused with himself for my liking.
I moved in to grapple him and he grabbed both my arms and held me in place. He was smiling at me, supremely confident. But I was closer than he realized.
I slammed my forehead into his face and felt the satisfying crunch as cartilage and bone fragmented under the force. His blood bathed my skin and the tattoos drank in his power.
I could see the entire space, the shadows gone in the light of the red glowing symbols that covered me. The god looked up at me, blood streaming from the mess I’d made of his nose, fear in his eyes for the first time.
“I warned you,” I said.
I punched him in the face and worsened the damage I’d already done, driving him to his knees. Soldiers were running at my back but I had the blood of a god for the tattoos to feed on and I could do anything. I raised my arm and fire erupted from it as I spared a moment to face the humans.
They screamed, diving aside, splitting up to blunt the intensity of the magical blast. I turned back to find the god on his feet, his hands up, ready to fight.
“Let’s see what you can do,” he said. His face was already healing but I knew it wouldn’t matter.
“I killed a god yesterday,” I said. “I enjoyed it.”
He attacked, moving precisely, his skill evident in every movement. I let him come, let him land his first blows. They were absorbed by the shield the tattoos erected around me but even so they pushed me back. I laughed at the waste of power.
I hit him in the face once more and he flew away from me, landing on his back ten feet from his starting point. I was already running to finish the job.
Gunfire erupted from the warehouse behind me and I felt bullets bounce harmlessly from my back. I was powered, protected; I had killed entire pantheons of gods when the blood-tattoos were glowing and I wasn’t afraid of these pathetic mortals.
The god rolled aside and I stomped after him, cracking the concrete with each foot fall. He moved faster than a mortal but I moved faster still, channeling all my stolen power into catching the man who had hurt my wife.
“Stop.”
Her cry froze me in place for a moment, her order locking my muscles and giving the god a chance to escape. But I was fighting for her, fighting to save her, and the tattoos wouldn’t hinder me in that pursuit, no matter what she said.
“Agmundr,” she called as I dashed toward the god again. Bullets continued to hit me and the god was on his feet, battered and bruised but ready for more.
“Your wife is calling,” he said, sneering the words as though they were insult.
“She’ll forgive me,” I said.
I threw a punch that wouldn’t land and watched the god play into my hands. He blocked it, grabbing my arm to pull me into a hip throw that would have had me on the floor and at his mercy.
I let the tattoos off the leash. They exploded with the last of the stolen power, a wave of magic that tore through the god’s flesh and blasted him away from me. He collided with the far wall, bouncing off and lying still.
I turned to Erindis in triumph, still ignoring the sporadic gunfire of the remaining soldiers. Enough of the damaged god had landed on me to refuel the tattoos. I was practically invincible.
Erindis was on her knees, her hands clasped before her as though praying. She showed none of the jubilation she should have shown, none of the awe at what her man had done. She looked scared and lost and I didn’t understand it.
I turned my attention to the soldiers and red lightning crackled along my naked body.
“Agmundr,” Erindis tried again. “Stop fighting.”
The tattoos died, their power unresponsive and out of reach. The god was rising from the ground, his smile obvious despite his broken face.
“I can end this,” I said to her. My voice echoed in the enormous space.
“Do as they say,” she said.
“I can protect you.”
“If you do as they say I won’t be harmed.”
The words were the final nail, an order that justified me allowing them to live. I could have twisted it to continue fighting, I could have interpreted her words to mean something she didn’t intend. It was my way, how I had defeated every master over the millennia.
But it w
as Erindis speaking the words. My love, my reason for being cursed. She was everything and she wanted me to stop and I had to. Tattoos or not, I had to do as she ordered.
The god healed before he reached me. He nodded to his men and the soldiers moved in.
“Do whatever they say, Agmundr,” Erindis said.
I let the soldiers take my arms and kick my legs out from under me. I allowed them to drag me away from her, into the dark and to some stairs. I watched the fear on her face as she looked up at the god standing over her.
The soldiers kicked me down the stairs, and I let myself fall.
Copyright © C.L. Walker 2017
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any process without written permission from the copyright holder.
Published by C.L. Walker
