Summoned to Destroy

by C L Walker

I opened the back door and climbed out without asking for permission. I waited a few feet away while the others followed, their eyes scanning the buildings around and the darkness of the empty space where they thought a gate to heaven was waiting for them.

  They were going to the afterlife, but not to one of the heavens.

  The tattoos erupted with red light as I powered toward them. The first two didn’t realize what I was doing before I’d smashed their heads together. By the time the next closest two were reaching for their guns I was already in between them. I punched one and kicked the other in the midsection, sending them both flying to the ground.

  That left O’Leary and the driver. O’Leary had been expecting something and his gun was up and ready. I paused to appreciate the scared look on his face.

  “What was that you were saying to me in the van?” I said. “Or do you have some new insult to offer, now that we’re out in the fresh air?”

  “You can’t do this,” he said. His hands were shaking. This was the correct response to what was happening.

  “Clearly I can. You should pay more attention.”

  “You’ve got to follow orders.”

  “How are you reporting back to base?” I said.

  “I’ll shoot you.”

  “And I’ll catch the bullet and use it to gouge out your eye. How are you communicating back to base?”

  The driver had slipped out of the van with a rifle in his hands. O’Leary was between us but he was going to be a problem.

  “You may have noticed that I haven’t killed any of your friends yet,” I said, gesturing to the hurt, but living, soldiers around me. “I’m trying to be a better person, O’Leary. I’m trying not to do more than I have to. It’s a religious thing, which I’m sure you understand.”

  “Religious thing?”

  “Sure. I’ve had a spiritual awakening, of sorts.” I took a step toward him to keep the driver from getting a clear shot. “I don’t want to hurt you just because you’re stupid. You haven’t actually done anything more than chatter like an imbecile at me. That’s not worth dying for, is it?”

  Whether he realized it or not, he shook his head. The driver disappeared around the other side of the car, thinking I hadn’t seen him or expected him to defend his friend. Mortals are idiots.

  “I’ve killed a lot of people, O’Leary, and I think I’m done. But, as you saw earlier with your friends in the warehouse, I will still kill you if I feel I have to. Do I have to, O’Leary?”

  The driver popped his head out and drew it back. I had a split second before he tried to shoot me.

  I dashed toward him, sending enough power to the tattoos in my legs to get me there in a heartbeat. When he poked his rifle out I was ready; I took it from him easily and punched him. He fell face-first into the dirt.

  I turned back to O’Leary. “Communications.”

  He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and tossed it on the ground.

  “How long have you been at that little base of his?” I asked.

  “Two months,” he replied. His voice was cracking, and he was letting his pistol barrel drop down. All good signs.

  “How long has Erindis been there?”

  “She was always there. Listen, man, I’m not a believer like these guys, or like Bannon. I’m just a guy who got offered a sweet gig. Some serious Stargate type stuff. I’ve got nothing against you and I’ve got nothing against your girl.”

  “Does he hurt her?” I said, ignoring his speech. “Does anyone?”

  He shook his head. I believed him, but it was time to put an end to the questioning.

  I made it to him before he knew he had to raise his pistol. I grabbed his head and slammed it into the van, taking his gun as he fell.

  The phone only had one number in it: Colonel.

  “What?” Invehl said on the other side when I dialed the number. “Are you guys back already, or is he giving you shit?”

  “I’ve decided not to accept your generous offer of an escort, little god.”

  I could hear his heavy breathing on the other side, but he held his tongue.

  “They’ll make their way back to you when they wake up, though some of them may need medical attention.”

  “You’ve lost your goddamn mind, Agmundr.”

  “I’ll get you what you want.”

  “I’ve got your wife.”

  I wanted to crush the phone, but it wouldn’t have made me feel better.

  “I wasn’t joking about what I’ll do to you if you hurt her. You have a plan and it involves threatening her. Fine. Do that. But know that if you actually follow through on your threat…”

  “You’ll kill me. I get it. You win. You have one day to bring me a heartstone. Then she dies.”

  “I don’t think you believe me when I tell you what the consequences will be.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “That wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. One day, Agmundr.”

  He hung up and I had to close my eyes and breathe for a few seconds to keep from shooting everyone around me.

  I searched their pockets and found sandwich bags with the exact same amount of money in each. I took the lot and pocketed the pistol. I found a cab on the street and told them to take me to ACDCs.

  I had to come up with a plan and I knew I wasn’t smart enough. Luckily I knew some people who were, assuming they would still talk to me.

  Chapter 8

  Stepping into ACDCs was surreal. I’d last seen it in a vision as I was returned to my prison, a vision that showed my wife attacking my friends to steal the locket I was bound to.

  I realized I thought of them as friends. I wasn’t sure they felt the same way, was pretty sure they didn’t, but it pleased me that my view on them had changed.

  ACDCs was a room with a stage on one side and a bar along one wall. Seats were set up on the wall opposite the bar and posters for bands hung everywhere, including on the ceiling. Behind the bar was someone I didn’t know, a heavy man with a beard he clearly spent a lot of time grooming.

  I approached him and waited while two of the customers got out of my way. I rarely had to ask people to move.

  “Where’s Bec?” I said, dragging his attention away from an attractive young woman at the end of the bar.

  “Who’s asking?” he replied. He was instantly suspicious but not aggressive, which I thought was a good balance for his position. Bec had dealings with people who wouldn’t appreciate someone trying to start something just for wanting to talk to her. Like me.

  “Agmundr.”

  His eyes widened in recognition. “She’s out back with…someone.”

  “Thanks.”

  I didn’t ask permission to leave the bar through the door at the back and he didn’t object. In the hall beyond there were toilets at the far end and a door leading to a room used for drunk performers and storage. Raised voices came from within.

  “You’re pushing the wrong person,” Bec said. She had the same emotionless tone to her voice as normal, but I could hear the strain despite that. Something was wrong.

  “Listen, we just want to know where he is, that’s all.”

  I waited outside the door, unsure whether rushing in was the best option yet. She wasn’t my master and I didn’t have to defend her anymore, and there was a good chance she wouldn’t want me to. I didn’t want to put a foot wrong given our new situation.

  “If you don’t get your hand off me you’ll regret it.”

  That was enough for me. I entered the room and found a tall man with pale skin holding her arm tight enough to raise bruises. His back was to me but Bec saw me enter.

  “What are you going to do?” the man said.

  I reached around and put my hand over his face, then yanked him away from her and ran his head into the doorway. He bounced off and fell to the floor, bleeding and angry.

  “You’re going to regret that,” he said as he scrambled to his feet.

  I let the tattoos on my arms and face glow for a second in response
.

  He recognized them, his next words dying in his mouth. He gave Bec another look and then ran down the hall, slamming the door to the bar.

  “I could have handled that,” she said, rubbing her arm. “I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

  That was Bec; I’d rescued her from danger and she hadn’t known if I was still alive, yet upon seeing me in her bar she was unimpressed and unemotional.

  “I wasn’t expecting a hug or anything,” I said, though I sort of had been.

  She smiled and it looked fake, but I appreciated it anyway. I leaned down and she gave me a hug, then stepped back to continue rubbing her bruised arm.

  “Who was he?” I said.

  “Some vampire rebel, unhappy that I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Me?”

  “They’re having a thing with Artem. They think you’re the power behind the throne.”

  “I was, kind of.” I’d killed the former king when he wouldn’t leave me alone, and Artem had taken control.

  “They’re not happy with some of the decisions he’s been making and they’re looking for someone to blame. They think you’re the guy telling him what to do.”

  “I’m sure he can handle it,” I replied. I didn’t know if Artem was a good king or not, and I didn’t care. As long as he kept his people from bothering me I didn’t need to have anything to do with his reign.

  “You do that a lot.” She pointed to the blood on the door-frame. “Slamming people’s heads into things.”

  “It’s efficient. And it means I don’t have to clean blood and bits of skull off my hands as often.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I’d worried about Bec when she was my master, that her emotionlessness would make her use me to inflict harm on people. I’d had masters like that before, people who couldn’t see the suffering they inflicted because they didn’t see other people as people. Masters like that were worse than those who had me hurt people but felt bad about it. I used to kill them all anyway, but there was something about at least caring when you orphaned a child.

  “Why are you back?” Bec asked. She sat on the edge of the single bed in the corner and waved at the only chair.

  “I wanted to make sure you guys were alright.”

  “And?”

  “And I need to ask a favor.”

  “We’re fine. I still bleed every night from the stabbing, and I get headaches from where that bitch clubbed me, but I’m surviving. Roman just got out of the hospital but they say he’ll be fine.”

  When Erindis came to steal the locket she’d stabbed Roman and beaten Bec to the ground. I wasn’t sure if she’d done anything afterward; I was relieved to find that they had survived.

  “And the vampire problem?” I said.

  I had a ticking clock in the back of my head and I needed to get moving, but these were the sorts of things people who cared asked about when reuniting with friends. Or so I’d observed.

  “It’ll be fine. Probably.” There was the strain in her voice again. It was something I wasn’t sure I would have picked up on before but I heard it clearly now.

  “Do you want me to do something about it?”

  “Do something, like kill every vampire in the city?” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or if she thought I’d actually do that for her. Depending on when she asked me either could have been true.

  “Perhaps something less genocidal,” I replied.

  “I’ll have to get back to you. They’re fighting in the streets, and there’s someone out in the suburbs apparently turning hundreds of people. Artem thinks he’s got a full-scale war coming. You might be useful then.”

  Well, I thought, at least I could be useful.

  “You had a favor to ask,” she said.

  “I need Roman. I’m mixed up in something and I need to work out what’s happening before I make any moves.”

  “The bitch who stole the locket?”

  I had a gut reaction to her calling Erindis a bitch. I suppressed it, but it was there.

  “She is being held captive.”

  “And she’s your new master.”

  “She’s my wife,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure if Roman had told her what he knew of my story but I saw it on her face in that moment. She knew who Erindis was, as much as any mortal did.

  “Shit,” was all she said.

  “Yes. I don’t want to do anything that puts her at risk but I don’t know enough to know what might do that. Can you get him to meet me, or tell me where he is? I’ve got something I have to do tonight but I’ll be free again tomorrow.”

  Invehl might disagree with me going off on my own, but he would have to get used to it.

  “I don’t think he wants to talk to you.”

  “Tell him the world is at stake. And tell him I’ll owe him one.”

  “I’ll try. How can I get in contact?”

  I handed her O’Leary’s phone and she hit the buttons for a little while. When she handed it back I had her in the contacts list.

  “Colonel?” she said as I took it from her.

  “Homicidal maniac. Thinks he can destroy all the afterlives for power. Or something, anyway. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Sounds like a fun guy.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. We’d run out of things to talk about, and neither of us were good at small talk. I believed she liked me, in her own way, but we had things to do and being polite wasn’t going to get them done.

  “I’ll wait for your call,” I said as I stood.

  “Be safe.”

  I left the bar and checked the street for sign of the vampire. Finding nothing I hailed a cab. I gave the driver the address of the actual vacant lot where the only gate to a heaven that I knew of was. I’d have to destroy a different heaven to ensure I had a way back.

  My newly minted humanity wasn’t happy with what I had to do. I shoved it aside and focused on the mission. I’d feel ashamed later.

  Chapter 9

  There was an angel waiting at the gate. He stood with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. That changed when I starting walking toward him.

  “Agmundr,” he said. He wore what they all wore, a long coat with an old suit beneath. He had the pallor of the corpse he wore and he moved stiffly. When he smiled I thought it was the strangest thing any of them had done.

  “Hollow man.” They called themselves that, preferring not to use the term humanity had invented for them.

  “I didn’t think we’d see you again.” He walked toward me, stiff and quick. I stopped and prepared for the fight that was surely coming.

  “I have business through the gate,” I said. Power was massing in the tattoos but they hadn’t begun to shine yet. I didn’t want to tip the hollow man off to how prepared I was.

  He stopped a few feet from me, puzzled by something. “You don’t remember me?”

  I examined him. I had always thought they all looked the same, beyond the superficial. They were angelic spirits in dead bodies, mostly those of the elderly. The humanity of their stolen bodies differentiated them but not enough for me to care. Usually.

  “I think I do,” I said. He was the angel who had helped me and guided me to face his god, Seng. I’d left him broken and tied up to stop him from alerting my enemy. “You seem well.”

  “I am, thank you.” There was an eagerness to him that I had never seen in an angel before, more than a hint of emotion about him that was alien to their kind.

  “I need to go through the gate,” I said. I wasn’t sure anymore if we were going to fight but I also wasn’t sure what was happening. He was behaving very strangely.

  “Of course.” He turned and gestured toward the empty center of the lot. It was invisible but I knew it was waiting for me.

  “What are you doing here?” I said as we slowly approached it.

  “Doing what you instructed. Protecting humanity.”

  That wasn’t what I’d said, but I was happy with their interpret
ation. If it kept them from trying to kill me I’d be happy with any interpretation.

  “You’re guarding the gate?” I said.

  “Yes. Neither gods nor man should be allowed to spoil what lies beyond.” His voice was breathy, as though every syllable was a chore. I thought his body might have come from a smoker.

  “And me?”

  “You are neither, Agmundr.”

  “You might regret letting me through.”

  I was going to tell him about the heartstones and about what Invehl wanted me to do, and I didn’t know why. There was no reason for it and yet it was all I wanted to do. I wanted to confess. I wanted him to stop me before I did something evil.

  “I trust you know what you’re doing,” he said, unconcerned with my warning.

  I let it go. There was too much riding on my actions. Her life was riding on my actions. To let a silly quirk of morality derail me before I’d even begun was unacceptable. It was a strange feeling though.

  “If some soldiers show up, tell them to go away.”

  “They have already been here,” he said. We stopped before the space where the gate hung invisibly. “Many times, as has their god. Like I said, neither gods nor man should be allowed to spoil what lies beyond.”

  “Good man.”

  “I am trying.”

  I closed my eyes and searched for the gate. It spun in the darkness of my mind, flashes of mother of pearl appearing in a light that came from nowhere. I stepped forward into daylight and a fresh breeze on my skin.

  The heaven had repaired itself since I’d last been there. The endless grass plain was green and the sky was blue. A few thousand souls wandered aimlessly, endlessly walking amongst giant statues of fish-people dotted haphazardly to the horizon.

  I closed my eyes again. Other gates waited for me among the dead. The large, red cancer nearest me was one to a hell I had resealed a month before, but there were smaller ones, too.

  I struck out toward one of them. It was nice in the heaven, warm and quiet, with the slightest breeze carrying the hint of jasmine. I couldn’t spend an eternity walking around the statues but I could understand why some would.

  Distance worked differently in the heaven and I stood before the next gate in minutes, even though it had been hundreds of miles away. I closed my eyes and stepped through.