by C L Walker
“Because she’ll order me not to and I’ll obey.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.” She deepened her voice and spoke slowly. “I’m Agmundr, and I’m good with words. I can do whatever I want. Now die.”
She was right, and I’d said more or less those words to her when she held the locket. But I couldn’t fight a direct, simple order without a good reason, and I didn’t want to disobey Erindis. As long as she wasn’t in obvious danger I wasn’t going to be able to help her.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Everything is complicated. Man up.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Sack up?” she said. “Grow a pair? Wait, be a man. That works.”
“If I try and she orders me to stop then Invehl has no further reason to hold her. When he hurts her I’ll kill him, but that will be too late.”
Erindis couldn’t die, no matter how many times Invehl threatened to kill her. But she could be hurt, and I didn’t want to be the direct cause of more pain for her. My whole life had been about sparing her pain and I’d just discovered I’d made her existence hell. I wouldn’t add to that unless I knew there was no other way.
“Then you’re screwed,” Bec said. She took the bottle from my hand and poured some of its contents into a glass. “Drink up and go do what you have to.”
“You’re taking this too well,” I said. “I’m destroying heavens.”
“I think you’re just letting them float away, but I don’t care. I wasn’t getting in anyway.”
There was a refreshing simplicity to the way Bec saw the world, but it was too close to the way I had always seen it and I knew I had to stop listening to her.
“You’re broken,” I said. “Inside. You know that, right?”
She pouted and pretended to start crying; it was very convincing. “That’s so mean.” She dropped it and smiled, turning to a different emotion like flipping a switch. “I’ll get over it.”
“I’m sorry about your vampire problem,” I said. “Maybe I should have killed them all.”
“Nah. Then I would have had to deal with whatever moved in to fill their niche. It would have been too much effort.”
I downed the drink and shook the glass, demanding more. Bec was happy to oblige.
“I didn’t think you’d be back so soon,” Roman said from the door.
“Me neither,” I replied.
He looked like he was about to die; pale skin and dirty hair, rumpled clothes. He leaned against the door for support and eyed me like I might bite him.
Seeing him gave me hope; he was alive and he was going to help me. He knew things I didn’t, and hopefully we could piece together what Invehl was up to and put a stop to it before it got Erindis hurt.
“I’m not helping you,” he said. “I’m done with all of this.”
Chapter 14
“Every time you turn up in my life bad things happen,” he said. He hadn’t moved from the doorway. The sound of cars passing by in rush hour traffic filled the bar.
“Bad things happen anyway,” I said. “Bad guys do bad things, and good guys stop them.”
“You sound like that assassin.” He took a deep breath and tilted his head back , closing his eyes. “Oh gods, I just said that.”
“Stop worrying about how weird life is and get in here,” Bec said. She waved a beer at him as bait.
“I can’t.” He had one foot outside, as though he needed to be ready to run. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You got stabbed,” Bec said. She lifted her t-shirt to show the scar in her side where an angel had stabbed her to get my attention. “Big deal, join the club.”
“If it helps,” I said. “I’ve been stabbed quite a few times.”
Roman stomped up to the bar and slammed his hand down. The tiny bowl of nuts jumped.
He pointed his finger at me an inch away from my face. “You can’t be hurt. And you, Rebecca, were stabbed with something that automatically cauterizes the wound. You’re already moving around fine and that walk I just did, from the door, has me almost passing out.”
He sat on the stool beside mine and Bec handed him a beer. He took a drink, grimaced at it, and drank more.
It felt good to be with them again, even if the situation was dire and neither of them wanted to get involved. They were the first friends I’d had since being cursed. They might have been the first friends I’d ever had, given my upbringing.
“So,” he said when he’d drained the beer. “You’re destroying heavens now.”
“Looks that way.” I finished the glass and waited for Bec to fill it up. “That or risk hurting my wife.”
“The wife who is many thousands of years old.”
“And doesn’t like me very much. Yes, that one.”
“Alright, then.”
More drinking, and I knew I was stalling and I didn’t care. The calls from Invehl meant he was angry, but Erindis was his only leverage and if he didn’t believe that I would hurt him if he touched her then she was never safe. He could yell all he wanted; I was going to follow orders.
But first I needed to get some idea of what I was actually doing.
“How much did you hear?” I said.
“Pretty much everything. I was standing outside the door listening through the crack.” He shrugged. “I’m a coward, and it seemed easier than actually coming in.”
“Tell me what he’s doing.”
“No idea,” he said. I must have looked irritated because he raised his hands and practically choked on his beer. “Honestly. You got me. This is way outside my wheelhouse. The only reason Bec kept me around the first time was because I knew a little bit about you.”
“You’re a professor of religion,” Bec said. “This sounds pretty religious.”
“Not that kind of religion,” he said. He’d emptied his beer and now began tearing the label off. “I can make some guesses, but there’s a lot of research I’ll have to do first.”
“How long?” I said.
“How long what? I’m not doing it. I told you, I’m out.” He saw my face again and this time he moved closer. “Do whatever you’re going to do, Agmundr. I’ll accept my fate and move on happily. But I am not helping you.”
I slammed the glass on the bar and it shattered. None of it cut me, of course. I knew how to threaten people and I knew how to hurt them, and I could make Roman help me whether he wanted to or not.
Instead I took a breath and calmed down, like Erindis had when we were fighting. It wouldn’t help me if I went crazy, and that was the only way I was going to get him to do what he was told. So I decided not to tell him to do it.
“Please, Roman,” I said. “She’s my wife and I love her, and I can’t get her out of this without knowing what it is. And until I can get her out without hurting her I’m going to keep destroying heavens, or setting them adrift, whatever that means. I can keep it small at first, but it’s going to escalate to something big before this is over.”
“I can’t.”
“Please, help me.”
He was grinding his teeth, which I thought was a good sign. It was better than yelling “no” at me and running away.
“That’s not fair,” he said. “Acting human, with feelings and everything.”
“Yeah, dude,” Bec said. “Low blow.”
He slammed the bottle on the counter. It bounced off and out of his hand before rolling down the bar for Bec to grab.
“That was embarrassing,” he said.
“Yes,” Bec replied. “Very.”
“I’ll help you, Agmundr. But if you get me stabbed again, or kidnapped and tossed around the sky of some heaven by pissed off angels, I’m going to…I don’t know…be annoyed.”
“As you should,” I said.
“Very annoyed.”
“I understand.”
“When do you need my theories?” He stood and tried to straighten his jacket, but there was no saving it.
“Would yesterday be too soon? I’
m off to get another heartstone and I’d like it to be the last one.”
“I don’t know. As far as any of us knew there were no heavens. Only the nether. Every mention of a better afterlife than that is laughed it.”
“You now know better,” I said. I stood as well; I had somewhere to be. “Look at the stories again and see if anything matches. Invehl said the heartstones anchor the heavens to earth, and I’ve seen that they are a kind of seed. Other than that I don’t know anything.”
“I will see what I can find.” He had a piece of beer label sticking to the back of his hand and I wanted to take it off, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate it.
Bec sighed and began cleaning up the glass I’d smashed. “The band is back together again.”
“If those vampires come back, let me know. I’ll take care of them.”
“They’re definitely coming back,” she said. “You know they are as well as I do. And you aren’t going to be here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. They aren’t the first to come here looking for trouble.” She smiled and I could see it was one of the fake ones. “Besides, I have friends all over this town. I’ll work something out.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I walked to the door, picking up one of the chairs the vampires had kicked over.
“Good luck,” Roman said. “Or, not, actually. Because of the destruction and homeless souls. Bugger it, I don’t know.”
“Thanks.”
I stepped out into the night and checked the area for vampires, then hailed a cab and started for the gate to heaven.
I had more time this time, if I wanted it. Invehl wasn’t expecting me back and couldn’t get in touch with me, and as long as I didn’t speak to him he couldn’t give me a deadline. He wouldn’t hurt Erindis, not without there being a potential payoff in controlling me.
I was going to find another small heaven, with only one soul to destroy. The thought made me sick, but there were worse options. And that was how I had to think of it. The least bad option.
Invehl was going to pay for the way I was feeling.
Chapter 15
The hollow man was at his post, standing before the gate and waiting for me.
“Are you going to stop me?” I said.
He just stared at me, unmoving.
“I’m going through the gate. You can try to stop me, but I’m still going through.”
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” he said at last. “Can you comprehend it?”
“I know.”
“I think you do know.” He took a few steps toward me and then stopped himself from advancing. His hand was up as though he wanted to grab me, but he wasn’t that stupid. “I think you know exactly what you’re done, and that makes it worse.”
“Tell me what the heartstones can do,” I said. If anyone beside Invehl knew, it would be an angel.
“You know what they are. You’ve seen what happens when you steal one.”
“But I don’t know what they do when I bring them back here.”
“Nothing.” He shook his head and turned away, unwilling to look at me. “They have one purpose and that purpose is lost when you take them.”
“That can’t be. There has to be—”
He attacked, spinning and launching himself at me in a moment. The tattoos were ready for him, though. I’d expecting him to attack me on sight.
A shield rose to greet him and he bounced off me. Even with his angelic strength he couldn’t beat my curse now that I had power, and the shield simply darkened in response.
Something about it didn’t feel right; I’d fought angels before. I’d fought this angel before, and they should have been a lot stronger. It should have been difficult to stop him, and I found myself looking down on him as he slowly dragged himself out of the dirt.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said.
He looked at me, his corpse-face giving nothing away. I figured he was planning another attack but there was no way to know. I did know, however, that he wouldn’t be able to stop me.
“Why are you so weak?”
“We are without a god,” he said at last. “We are without a defined purpose. And that’s all we are, really.”
“You’re dying?” It seemed impossible, but I’d seen a lot of impossible things.
“Not dying, no. Just getting weaker. We will never be as weak as your people, but without our gods we are going to fall.”
“Then find a god,” I said without thinking. It seemed the easiest solution, but I hadn’t thought through what that meant.
“Like the one pulling your strings, Agmundr? Would you like us to obey a being like that?”
“No. But I don’t want you all to die, either.”
“How touching.” He limped back to his spot before the gate and crossed his arms. “We will defend humanity, as you suggested.”
“I didn’t suggest that. I said look to them for your morality, because they’ll be better than any god I’ve ever met. I didn’t tell you to kill yourselves.”
“If you’re going to go, then go.” He stepped to the side. “I can’t stop you and you know what your orders are.”
I approached the gate and paused when I was beside him. What little emotion he was able to show on his dead flesh was all dedicated to the disgust he clearly felt.
“Are you sure the heartstones are worthless out here?”
“They are worth a great deal,” he said. “They just aren’t powerful.”
I stepped through the gate and thought about what he’d said. Could Invehl be in it for the money? It seemed unlikely, but I had no other good ideas. The angel was right; humans collected the supernatural as much as they could, and there would be wealthy people interested in buying pieces of heaven. But I didn’t think Invehl was interested in that. He was interested in power.
I sped through the heavens again, not noticing any of them. There was water everywhere and happy, smiling people. Angels watched as I dashed through but they didn’t try to stop me, even when I passed through afterlives that I had carried a heartstone through not long before.
Invehl swore his plan was to stop the souls in heaven from migrating to earth, but I saw nothing to indicate that might happen. Nobody seemed interested in me, let alone the invisible gates I was using. Why would they want to leave when everything they’d ever wanted was given to them every day?
I arrived at a heaven that seemed deserted and for a moment I got excited; if I could take the heartstone from somewhere that had nobody in it to begin with then I could fulfill my orders and live with myself.
The landscape was a vast marsh stretching to the horizon with no breaks. Shallow water and low land as far as I could see. I sent the power of the tattoos out to find the heartstone, marveling at my good fortune.
“Not here, Agmundr.”
The angel was tiny, the size of an orange. He hung in the air near my head and waited for me to spot him.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I have seen your arrival. This is where I tell you this isn’t the place you’re looking for. There are many souls here and destroying this place will destroy you.”
“Why are you telling me this?” The tattoos hadn’t found the heartstone yet and the power they’d sent out was spread for hundreds of miles in every direction.
“I am telling you because that is what I am meant to tell you. Now, go.”
The angel fell into the water at my feet and I finally saw the inhabitants of this strange afterlife.
There were cities of mud beneath the still, shallow water. Ant-like creatures scuttled through the water, touching feelers and quickly moving on. If they noticed my presence they didn’t care.
Humanity’s afterlives were strange places, I thought. I continued my search.
More heavens, flashing by in a heartbeat as I mastered the best way to travel quickly between them. There were shortcuts I could take, ways of moving that seemed to speed my progress to the n
ext gate as though a path had been created to get me there. I entirely stopped noticing where I was for a time.
And then I found the heaven I was looking for.
A woman was bound to the front of a carriage with a bit in her mouth, like a horse. She was old and frail looking, but she struggled and strained, managing to drag the vehicle forward in painful inches.
In the driver’s seat of the carriage was a man with a whip. He had a cruel smile on his face and cackled when he cracked his weapon near the woman’s ear. They traveled down a rutted dirt track beside a raging river that cut through a valley that seemed to last forever.
There was nobody else in the heaven.
I approached the carriage and hailed the driver. If this was his idea of heaven then I would have no problem ending it.
“Hello, Agmundr,” the driver said.
“You’re the angel for this heaven?” I looked to the woman and the welts on her back, the blackened, broken teeth in her mouth. “This is hell.”
“Not for her. This is what she expected her afterlife to be. This is her paradise.”
“Why?” I could imagine few things that would make me happy for eternity, but servitude to a pointless and painful task was surely hell.
“She was a faith of one. Her holy book was in her head and her god was herself. She did amazing things in life, helped her entire village survive a war, and this is her reward. Suffer on earth so she can suffer in heaven.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No more crazy than anything else.” The angel pulled on the reins and the carriage came to a halt. The woman groaned as the metal bit in her mouth ground against her teeth.
“You know why I’m here?” I said.
“I do. This is where we fight and I die.”
I put my hand on the carriage and looked into the angel’s eyes. I wanted him to pay attention to me, to understand what I was saying and think about my words.
“You don’t have to do this. You can leave, and take her with you. Nothing is forcing you to be here.”
“That is what you are supposed to say,” the angel replied. “And this is what I am supposed to say. This is all preordained.”
“Dammit.” I crushed the wood of the carriage where my hand rested. “I’ve spoken to angels, quite a few of them. Why can they do as they please and you insist on running headlong to your death?”
