by C L Walker
He lifted it from his desk and held it up to the light like wine, then sniffed it. When he was satisfied he unrolled it and tried to read what was written there. I panicked for a second; what if he could read the words and they let him know it had come from a hell?
Stop it, I told myself. Endless frightened speculation isn’t going to change anything. You’re in now; shut up and prepare for anything.
“With this our little plan changes,” he said. He put the scroll down and walked around the desk to take up his position leaning against it. “With this I can get through that gate myself.”
“So we can leave?” I said sarcastically.
He smiled. “No, Agmundr. Now we double production. We ramp up. We can meet back at some central point and hand over what we need – for you divine power, for me heartstones – and then go back in. Over and over. We’ll be finished with the whole mess in a month.”
He didn’t know how many heavens were waiting out there. I hadn’t know; I’d closed more than a thousand gates on earth, but there were many thousands of heavens and hells. I’d sped through more than that just in the last few days.
“What do you think?” he said. “Are we going to be partners in this, or am I going to have to drag you kicking and screaming?”
I needed him to do whatever he was going to do with the scroll so this could be over, but he had his back to it and clearly had no intention of using it until I was gone.
“Show me how you get your power from the heartstone,” I said without thinking. “Show me, so I know what I’m getting into.”
He looked puzzled, with good reason. “What are you talking about? What difference does that make?”
“I don’t know, do I? Show me and I’ll give you my answer.”
He picked the scroll up and tapped it in the palm of his hand like a baton. He didn’t want to do it in front of me, and now I was genuinely curious what he had to do every time I gave him one.
“You’re a strange man, Agmundr.”
“I am an old man, and slow to change my ways.”
“I can see it.” He held the scroll tight to his chest, crushing the ancient paper as though the seed of an afterlife wasn’t important to him at all.
“So? Do we have a deal?” I said.
“I have done it,” he replied, tossing the scroll back on the desk behind him. “The faith is mine and the heartstone is spent.”
Nothing was different. Nothing had happened. Had I picked a hell that was too nice, too close to a heaven? In trying to hide what I was giving him did I give him what he wanted after all?
“All I have to do to bind all that faith to me is hold it,” he said. He tapped his chest. “And the connection is made automatically. It isn’t even something I have to think about. The heartstones want to do this. They were made to do this.”
“So you have what you wanted?”
“I do.”
He changed as I watched, slowly becoming more…there. It was as though my vision of him had been obscured and he was lifting the veil. He became more permanent and stood out from everything else.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said, reaching out to touch my arm. “When I first thought of this I didn’t know if I could work out how to do it, how to take the faith once I had the heartstone in my hands. But then it just connected and suddenly there was another soul worshipping me.”
“I am happy for you?”
“So, what do you say? Partners?”
Nothing happened. He was the same as before. No, he was better than before, stronger and more powerful. I had given him what he wanted and gotten nothing from it.
Roman was going to have a lot of explaining to do.
“I don’t think I can be your monkey, Invehl,” I said at last. If nothing was going to happen then there was no reason to keep up the ruse. “You’re a petty, ridiculous little god. Being around you makes me feel pity for the people who have to suffer you all the time and I have no interest in joining their ranks.”
He hadn’t lost his smile as I spoke, as though he’d been expecting it. He pushed himself up onto the desk so his legs hung in the air.
“I thought you might say something like that. I hoped it would be different, but I figured you’d be a dick about this.”
“Then let us go. You have what you want. You believe you can enter the heavens by yourself now. You don’t need us.”
He walked back around his desk and looked out the window, taking his time and making me wait. He looked unreal before the vista, as though everything but him was fake somehow.
He took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds, then let it out and took another breath. When he was ready he turned and breathed out quickly.
“I think I’ll keep you around for a little while longer. When I’m more sure of this, when I know I can face whatever is out there, then we can talk about what to do with you and your lovely wife.” He sat and waved at me. “Go away. I have things to do before you and I pass through the gate together for the first time.”
I needed a plan, a direction. I couldn’t be shackled to this insane god anymore. The thought of it was driving me crazy. I wanted to tear him apart and be done with it but I knew it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t have worked before I fed him all the power he wanted, and it certainly wouldn’t now. I didn’t know what to do and I stood in his office, unwilling to leave.
And then his nose started bleeding. Just a little, not enough for him to notice at first, but enough to get my heart beating faster in anticipation of what was coming.
“Did you hear me? I said leave.”
It could have been nothing. It could have been the extent of the effect the hell heartstone had on him; just a nosebleed and nothing more. But I hung onto the rekindled hope and held my place despite his irritation. I waited to see if something else would happen.
He took another deep breath before raising his voice. “Get out of my sight, Agmundr. That’s an order.”
“Are you not feeling well, little god? Is something wrong with you?”
He stared at me, anger building moment by moment, and then he understood.
“What did you do?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “No idea. Something bad, I hope.”
“What did you do?” Blood was creeping out the sides of his mouth now and he wiped his face with his sleeve. When he saw the red on his jacket his eyes shot up to me and he repeated himself. “What did you do?”
“I think I might have killed you.”
He’d been breathing hard and now he was bleeding. That told me he had internal damage, that something in his chest was broken. He could feel it and he was worried but trying to hide it from me. And now there was blood pouring out of him. He might be a god but he lived in a human body and that body was failing him. What it was doing to his divinity, I couldn’t see.
I walked around the desk and approached him, bringing the tattoos to life. They erected a magic shield, just in case, but I didn’t think it was going to be necessary.
“You…poisoned it. Somehow you poisoned a heartstone.”
“No,” I replied, putting my hand on his chair. “It was perfectly fine.”
He tried to dislodge my hand but found he didn’t have the strength. He tried to stand and I pushed him back into his chair with ease. A child could have done it.
“Then what?” he said. His eyes were rolling up into his head as he started crying blood. “It wasn’t a heaven?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
I sent a blast of magic at the window, shattering the glass and letting in the wind that whipped between the buildings.
“What are you doing?” he said, trying again to get up. This time I didn’t even have to push him back. He didn’t have the strength.
“Ending our arrangement, little god.”
I put my hand on his chest and pushed him out the window. He didn’t even scream on the way down, but I watched to make sure he didn’t move after he landed.
An alarm went off and
I turned to find the young man in the suit standing in the doorway, his mouth agape.
I grinned at him. “Where’s my wife?”
Chapter 30
The assistant was more than he seemed; a powerful shield appeared around him, a protective bubble while he worked on an offensive spell.
I raced to him and slammed against the shield, throwing as much of the divine energy running through the tattoos at it as possible. His shield evaporated and he was thrown across the office and into a wall.
“I asked a question,” I said as I approached his prone body. I didn’t know if I’d killed him or not and in that moment I didn’t care. Invehl was gone but Erindis was still vulnerable.
The man stood, looking surprisingly well for someone I’d just attacked.
“Our god of envy will return and you will pay for your insolence,” he said. He was being serious and didn’t appreciate it when I laughed in his face. “You will suffer.”
He didn’t see me dash toward him and wasn’t aware I had done so until my hand was wrapped around his throat. Feeble shields appeared and were slapped away by the tattoos immediately as I lifted him off his feet.
“Where is my wife?” I said. He kept his mouth shut, defiant to the end. “Your god might return and I might suffer for what I’ve done. But he won’t be here before I end your life.”
“I am a prime disciple of envy, and I—”
I cut off his air and let him hang a foot off the ground for a moment while I considered my next step. I knew she was probably in the building, which at least narrowed down my search area. I could check every room in the place if I had to, powering up and speeding through as though I’d frozen time around me. But that meant spending more of the magic Invehl had given me, which left me with fewer options if I had to fight.
And there was the chance she wasn’t there at all. Invehl had been expecting me to do something, even if it was only verbal defiance, so he might have moved her.
No, I needed the young disciple to speak. He was trying to gasp, clawing at my hand slowly squeezing the life out of him. I watched him squirm for a little while longer, pretending to enjoy his suffering.
“Where is she?” I said as I allowed some air into his lungs.
“I don’t know,” he wheezed. He saw the look on my face and started babbling. “I don’t know. She was meant to be in her quarters but the map says she isn’t. She’s in the building, but we don’t monitor the other floors as closely. The system isn’t installed yet. She hasn’t left, though.”
“Turn off the alarm.”
“I can’t. I can’t, I swear. It’s tied to my god, triggered by him. He did it.”
I had to run. I closed the disciple’s throat again and waited for him to pass out, then dropped him on the floor and ran for the stairs.
I was going to have to waste the tattoos’ power. I willed them to comply, channeling energy into spells that made me faster than anybody else. The world around me appeared to slow down to a crawl, and then to stop. I ran down the stairs and to the next floor to begin my search, sending the tattoos out to check from the bottom up; they would be quick but magic took time, especially at the speeds I was running at.
The building was thirty floors of offices and apartments, most still under construction. I made it through the top three before seeing anyone else. Three soldiers with automatic weapons held ready to fire. They were frozen in place, statues to me. I stopped long enough to punch them before moving on; from my perspective they barely moved when I hit them, but they’d feel the whiplash when I slowed down.
Another two floors and I was burning through the tattoos’ energy faster than I liked. If I ran into enough soldiers, or a few disciples, I was going to lose. Erindis was nowhere and I had three-quarters of a building left to search. The tattoos had found nothing on the first few floors.
And then there she was, standing as still as everyone else in the hall before me. Bannon had a gun aimed at her head and she appeared to be yelling. Five men stood around her with weapons of their own, all ready to kill.
I lashed out at the five men, obliterating them with raw power. The world began moving again as the last of them exploded across the office space behind them.
Bannon hadn’t noticed me entering and he was still staring at the pieces of what used to be his men. I walked up and snatched the gun from his hand before he realized I was there.
“What—”
I slapped him and he flew across the room. Erindis turned to me in surprise.
“It’s time we left,” I said. I took her arm and steered her toward the elevators.
“What did you do?” she said. “What’s happening? Answer me.”
Whether she knew she was ordering me to speak or not, I had no choice but to tell her what had happened.
“I killed Invehl and a few of his minions.”
“How?”
“I fed him the wrong kind of heartstone and it broke him. We have to go.”
She was pulling away from me, trying to keep from getting on the approaching elevator. She was frightened and shocked, but I didn’t understand what the problem was. She was going to be free. The locket hung around her neck and her enemies were running scared or dead. There was nothing left to worry about.
The elevator arrived and I steered her inside. She tried to pull away and I tightened my grip on her arm.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
I let the doors close before releasing her. “I’m sorry. I needed you to move and I didn’t think.”
This was a lie, more or less. I knew what I was doing but it was because I didn’t know what she was thinking. There wasn’t enough time for us to deal with whatever was scaring her.
“We’ll leave here and find somewhere to hide,” I said. “A few days at most, and then we can escape the city and go somewhere safer.”
“Why?”
I didn’t understand the puzzled look on her face, the question that made no sense.
“Why, what? I don’t…I have freed us.”
“I told you not to,” she said, cold and distant. She’d put as much space between us as she could, standing with her back to the elevator wall.
“But that was when you were in danger. There is no danger now. I’ve taken care of it.”
The tattoos reported that troops were gathering in the lobby. An image of what we were about to face appeared in my head so that I could plan my attack.
“I was fine,” she said. “And I told you to follow orders. I kept telling you to follow orders.”
“But…listen, we don’t have time to do this right now.” The elevator was almost at ground level and I needed to be ready. “We can talk about this for the rest of time, but right now we have to get out.”
“No. I don’t want to leave with you.”
I could feel the soldiers and their weapons, the cold metal and explosives they carried. In that moment the coming battle was more important than what she thought or wanted. But still, her words confused me.
“Then leave on your own,” I snapped. “But we’re leaving either way.”
“I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t,” I said. The tattoos were glowing, preparing their defenses and powering me up. They cast a sickly glow to my love’s features. “There are men downstairs that are about to fire on us. I have to deal with this before I deal with you.”
“They won’t kill me.”
“No, they won’t, but it’ll hurt like hell. Just do as I say, this once, please.” The elevator stopped and the door chimed before opening. “Here we go.”
A magic shield expanded out in front of me, deflecting the first rounds fired at us. I was among the enemy a second later.
Twenty men had flooded the room, coming from their guard areas on the ground floor. Twenty highly armed and committed men, and I killed them in moments.
Magic lashed out at some, taking their heads off and blowing them to pieces. I raced through the rest, delivering blows that would cri
pple if they didn’t kill. I stood alone in the lobby before Erindis had the chance to look out of the elevator.
“We need to go,” I said again, trying to urge her to do what she had to do.
“Agmundr.”
The voice was thunder, rocking the building as lights and wall sockets exploded in overload. I turned to face Invehl, standing in the doorway as healthy as he’d been when my plan started.
“Invehl,” I said. “We’re going to walk out now. Try to stop me and I’ll hurt you again.”
“She’s just not that into you,” the god said, giggling crazily for a moment afterward. “Or are you too stupid to see that?”
“She is my love. I will defend her no matter what.”
He stepped into the lobby, more real than the reality around him, a god with more power backing him than I could easily face. But I would try, and if it meant I had to die then I was willing to.
“Agmundr,” Erindis said as she stepped from the elevator. I didn’t turn to face her, too worried about the god I would soon face. “Return.”
My heart stopped. The words meant only one thing and I spun to face her as the world began to fade away. She held the locket in her hand and out toward me.
She was locking me away again, keeping me from doing what I must. Endangering herself to stop me.
The world disappeared quickly and I was left with the thing that had kept me going for thousands of years: a vision of my love, wherever in the world she was.
She crossed the lobby to Invehl as Bannon ran out of the stairwell.
“You don’t need him anymore,” Erindis said, holding the locket out for the god.
“No, but this is a pity,” Invehl replied, taking my prison from her.
“Did he hurt you?” she asked.
“For a moment, but he also gave me more than I expected. It is enough.”
“Where is the asshole?” Bannon said. He had an enormous gun in one hand, a knife in the other.
“Here,” Invehl said. He tossed the locket to his henchman. “Dump that in some molten steel and throw the slag overboard in the ocean.”
