Summoned to Destroy

by C L Walker

  I fought the feeling, as I had when I’d felt it from Erindis. It was difficult in my current state, battered and broken, but it wasn’t impossible.

  “I have to have more,” he said. He put his hand on my head again and closed his eyes.

  Nothing happened. The tattoos paid him no mind.

  He grunted and moved his hand down my back, running his fingertips along the symbols, sigils, and runes. He found one he liked but I could already tell it wouldn’t do anything when he laid his hand flat and tried to extract it.

  They weren’t reacting to him anymore. Something about his new power disinterested them. He stepped away, scowling at me.

  “What are you doing?” he said. “How are you doing this?”

  “I don’t think they like you anymore,” I replied, though I had no idea.

  “I need more power.” He looked around the room as though there might be some hiding in the empty darkness.

  “Perhaps you’re full of the wrong kind of divinity,” Erindis said.

  Invehl focused on her like a shark on prey. “That’s it. That’s what it is.” He kissed her hard before turning Bannon. He handed him the remaining two jars. “Hold onto these. Don’t try them, or anything stupid like that. They’ll kill you.”

  “Yes, my lord.” He took the jars carefully, throwing his knife on the ground.

  “I can shape reality,” Invehl said, and as if to prove it the room around us changed. It grew larger and better lit. Windows erupted from the floor to show an ocean on the other side. Light from a setting sun flooded the room.

  “You got what you wanted,” I tried. “Just let us go.”

  “No, Agmundr.” He lifted off the ground and looked down on me. “I’m going to use my new power to take all the heavens at once. I can control them now. And when they’re done I’m coming back here and stripping your skin bare.”

  He vanished. Bannon carefully put the jars against the wall and picked up his knife. He didn’t attack me or say anything; he was on guard, ordered by his god to protect the jars, and for once he was showing some self-control.

  I locked eyes with Erindis, still held in place by the soldier beside her. I saw in her face a reflection of what I was feeling.

  We had lost, and things were about to get a lot worse.

  Chapter 33

  Someone was screaming outside. There had been gunfire from moments after Invehl left and now someone was sitting in the street outside whatever building we were in and they were screaming. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, only that they were in pain.

  “Is that worth your new strength?” I said to Bannon. The soldier hadn’t moved in the twenty minutes since his god had left.

  “I would follow him even if he hadn’t blessed me.” Bannon remained stoic, looking ahead and trying to ignore me. I’d been saying things, anything I could think of, and he’d ignored almost all of it. But not this.

  “You’re a man of faith, right? Well let me tell you what faith is, in your context.”

  “Shut up.” He wasn’t happy with my chosen conversation. Good.

  “See, for some people faith is the belief in something unbelievable, but you know your god is real. You’ve met him. Now, he’s an insufferable dullard, but he’s real. So what is faith for you?”

  “I’m going to cut your tongue out if you don’t keep it in your head.”

  “Your faith is different. You have faith that your god will look after you, that he has your best interests at heart, and that the world he wants to create will be good to you.”

  “I’m warning you.”

  “It won’t, though. I’ve seen it so many times. I was alive when gods were everywhere. When every village had some little god servicing it. You won’t know what that’s like, but let me tell you, it was terrible.”

  “Last chance.” His knuckles were white on the hand holding the knife.

  “You,” I said to the soldier holding Erindis. “You’re a man of faith too, so this applies to you as well. Your god has given you an order, and your leader is about to break it. What do you do?”

  “He said shut up.” The other soldier didn’t like me speaking either.

  “Gods are sadists, but how could they not be? They have ultimate power and no consequences. When they speak everyone listens, and that makes you arrogant. Not without reason. I’ve been there, surrounded by a world that I could bend to my will with little effort. It’s intoxicating.”

  Bannon was at my side faster than I could follow, his knife at my throat. He let the blade bite into my skin a little before speaking.

  “You can die now, right?” His breath smelled of beef jerky. “If you say one more word, just one, I’ll saw your head off. Understand?”

  I nodded, smiling at him in a way I knew he’d hate. He backed away and returned to his spot, guarding the little glass jars containing my former tattoos.

  “They’re idiot children,” I said. “You’d be better putting your faith in yourself.”

  Bannon’s blade was in my throat, cutting. I couldn’t breathe. The pain was intense, blasting every other thought from my mind. I could barely focus on the room enough to see the other soldier appear and drag Bannon off me.

  “He was supposed to live,” he told Bannon. “The colonel needs him.”

  “Get off me,” Bannon said. When the other man wouldn’t he yelled and threw him across the room. He bounced off the wall beside the large windows.

  The soldier was up in a moment. “Sir, you need to calm down.”

  “That little…he can’t talk about the colonel that way.”

  “He’s trying to make you mad. He’s driving you crazy so you do something stupid.”

  I tried to speak, to stir things even more, but my vocal cords were cut and I was almost out of oxygen. Erindis saw what I was trying to do, though.

  “He doesn’t need to speak to make Bannon stupid,” she said. “He’s been infected by Invehl, and trust me, that man has been hit in the head a few too many times.”

  Bannon launched himself at her but the other soldier was there to stop him. He stood in the way and Bannon did what I would have done for most of my life.

  He stabbed him. He’d been holding the blade for so long he didn’t even think about it. The soldier looked down at the wound in his stomach and reacted, punching Bannon in the face and sending him across the room.

  I had moments before they realized what they were doing, and I had no idea if my plan would work. If it didn’t I was a dead man, which meant Erindis would have to deal with the consequences.

  I lurched to my feet and fell over immediately, straight into the waiting arms of the soldier with blood covering his uniform. The tattoos fed quickly and began to glow. He realized what had happened, what they’d done, but it was too late for him to do anything about it.

  My wounds healed in a moment and my strength returned. I tore through the bonds holding my hands behind my back.

  “Stop him,” Bannon yelled behind me.

  I punched the soldier in the stomach and my fist broke through the stab wound and stopped in his guts.

  I hadn’t been sure their blood would do it; human blood didn’t, and there had been a chance their new super-soldier status hadn’t changed their blood. But the tattoos drew new strength from the man before me, empowering me enough to fight.

  I tossed the soldier at the windows and turned to face Bannon. He raced at me, his knife at the ready. I had time to prepare, but not much.

  He hit me like a truck and drove me into Erindis. She fell out of the room and into the darkness beyond. Bannon tried to stab me, his knife a blur. The tattoos erected a shield to stop him and the metal warped under the pressure.

  I grabbed his head and threw him away from me, into the opposite wall.

  The soldier was up and running for me but he was hurt, and I was ready. We collided and I used his momentum to run him into the wall. Bannon was the most dangerous and he was already getting to his feet.

  Their bl
ood wasn’t that potent, not even as much as vampire blood, but it had me up and fighting, so I wasn’t complaining. It didn’t give me much of an advantage over them, though.

  Bannon came at me, slashing with his knife and making me back away until the wall stopped me from going further. I saw the other solider in my peripheral vision as he reached for one of the glass jars.

  “Don’t,” I called out as Bannon scored his first hit, slashing across my chest.

  “Let’s see you fight this,” the soldier said. He knocked back a sip from the jar and stood, ready to go.

  “What did you do?” Bannon said. He held his bloodstained knife up, prepared to take out either of us.

  “It’s the only way,” the other man said. “You know what he is, what he can do.”

  He took a step forward and collapsed. The sound of bones breaking accompanied the agonized look on his face as he tried to rise, only to find his arms cracking. He was like a china doll dropped on the floor, spider web faults spreading over his skin and predicting his fall.

  “You idiot,” Bannon said. He ran to his friend’s side and tried to help him up, but when he put his hands on the man they broke through his skin and plunged into his body.

  “You’re both idiots,” I said. Bannon looked up at me with more hatred than I’d seen in one man. He saw this as my fault, saw everything that wasn’t going right as my fault.

  I kicked the other soldier’s head off and watched it shatter against the wall. When I was sure he was dead I focused on Bannon, still trying to pull his hands from the porcelain body of the soldier.

  I punched him in the face and the blood that flowed powered me further. He got his hands out but left the knife behind. I trapped his arms against his sides with ease and lifted him off the ground and ran for the windows.

  “No,” he screamed in my face, desperately trying to get free. “No.”

  I rammed him through the window and let him fall to the ocean below. I took a moment to make sure he didn’t do something surprising – like fly back up or something – and then went to check on Erindis.

  She was fine, standing in the doorway massaging the arm she’d fallen on.

  “Where is that?” she said, pointing out the broken window.

  “No idea. Not even sure if it’s on earth. Let’s go.”

  “Wait.” She moved to the wall and looked around for the jars. She found one, the one the unnamed soldier had taken a small amount from, but couldn’t find the other.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I wanted us to move, to get out before Invehl returned. I didn’t know how long it would take him to destroy all the heavens, or even if he could, but I didn’t want to be there practically powerless if he returned.

  “Invehl is going to burn through what he stole from you and he’s going to want more. We have to take this away from him now, while we can.”

  She ransacked the soldier, breaking him into more and more pieces as she tried to check his clothes. Minutes of fruitless searching went by and I was getting anxious. Bannon was yelling obscenities outside the window and the gunfire on the street outside had grown closer. The person screaming had stopped.

  “We have to go,” I said. I was coming down from the power I’d taken, running out and returning to normal.

  “I think Bannon has it,” she said, running to the window to look out. “We have to go fetch it.”

  “We have to leave.” I grabbed her arm and she turned on me, her face full of rage. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “What’s in that jar could change the world,” she said at last.

  “Sure, and if we survive we’ll go find it. Right now we need to run.”

  She came with me, though I could tell she didn’t want to. The room that was now bigger on the inside and had windows to the ocean was in an office park outside town. We stole a car and hit the road.

  I needed power to survive when Invehl returned, and I needed to check on ACDCs. There were people on the street with guns, attacking anyone who stood still too long, and that was exactly what the god had wanted. In his plans ACDCs had been at the center of his war and I knew that wouldn’t have changed now that he could control reality directly.

  I just hoped I’d get there in time.

  Chapter 34

  It was easy to see the route Invehl had taken as he approached the city; everywhere he’d been he’d left chaos on his wake. Regular people were fighting over everything, from cars to wallets to each other. A group of men were even fighting over a prime spot on a street corner. Gunfire sounded in the night from all around us.

  The street outside ACDCs, however, was a warzone. Vampire faced off against vampire, hitting, biting and clawing at each other in a mad frenzy. It was like this one street was more important than any other for some reason.

  “It’s his subconscious,” Erindis said. “This is what he wanted and until the blood he took from your tattoos runs out, he’s getting it.”

  “Then let’s not be anywhere near him when he gets back and wants to take more.”

  She stopped the car in the middle of the carnage, across the lane leading to the bar. A vampire sped past in the middle of the street, chased by two others, their movements a blur in the dark.

  “You need to kill him,” Erindis said, turning to me and ignoring the fighting as though it couldn’t touch us. “Think of what he’ll do if he gets his way, if he absorbs all the faith from the heavens.”

  “It isn’t our problem,” I replied, though I didn’t believe it even as I spoke the words. I knew I needed to help because nobody would be able to, but I had to protect her above all else. Once she was safe I’d come up with a plan.

  “That’s an order, Agmundr.” Her words were more powerful than my will and the tattoos reacted immediately, trying to drag me from the car and set me on the course she wanted.

  “You aren’t safe here,” I said while I still had the chance. “You aren’t safe anywhere he can find you. And if I face him and don’t win, you’re dead.”

  “My love,” she said, the words setting my heart beating even quicker. “Without you nobody stands a chance. Go, do this thing and be who you are. This is what you were made for.”

  That wasn’t true, but the fact that she thought it meant more to me than anything. I gave her a quick nod and stepped out of the car, then led her down to the bar.

  Bec and Roman were standing in the back of the main room. The rest of the place was filled with vampires.

  “Tell your people to stand down,” Artem was saying to a woman dressed as extravagantly as all the other rebels I’d seen so far. She had long dreadlocks in her pale hair and a heavy coat that was too big for her, with sigils spray-painted across it.

  “You have no claim, Artem,” she replied. About half the occupants were her people and they muttered agreement. The other half were Artem’s people and they glared at the upstart rebels.

  “We’re all going to die out there if you don’t stand down.”

  “You just want to steal the throne.”

  “How long have they been doing this?” I asked Bec.

  “They were fine when they got here,” she said. She shot Erindis a dirty look, but otherwise didn’t comment. “About an hour ago they all went nutso.”

  “It’s Invehl,” Roman said. “Isn’t it? I’ve seen signs in the cards.”

  I barged into the middle of the fight, ignoring the angry looks from everyone I passed. The vampires gave me room despite their feelings, shuffling out of my way.

  “Enough, both of you.” I stared at each of them, daring them to speak again. When they didn’t I continued. “There is a god at large in the city. He is causing the chaos outside. Stop arguing and deal with it.”

  “Vampires don’t worship gods, outsider,” the woman said. “They have no effect on us.”

  “This one does. Aren’t you curious why this all suddenly started?”

  “We’ve been ready to take down the pretender for months,” she said, getting clo
se enough to me that I could smell the rose she’d sprayed on her clothes before coming out. “The pretender you put on the throne.”

  “Then why are the humans fighting?” I waited to see if anyone had an answer. They didn’t. “Everyone is fighting. This is the god of envy, and he’s making you all fight over things you normally just lust after. It’s what he does, only he’s doing it on a grand scale. Stop bickering and start fixing this.”

  “Yes,” Artem said. “Tell your people to stand down.”

  “You tell yours,” she yelled.

  “Shut up, all of you.” I put myself between them and turned to address the room. “Your leaders are children and if you follow them without thinking then you’re no better. Stop fighting. It’s tiresome and I have better places to be.”

  “Nobody invited you,” someone said from the crowd. It could have been either side.

  “Then make me leave. Join forces and calm down, then get rid of me. Please, I don’t want to be here. Just stop all this idiotic yelling at each other.”

  “Agmundr,” Artem said. “This is too important.”

  I turned to the rebel woman. Her fangs were out and I knew her claws would come next. “You think I put him on the throne?”

  She nodded slowly, as did her people.

  “Jeremiah wanted to kill me and I made him an offer.” I paused to make sure everyone was listening. “I told him to choose who would be king. Whoever left us alone got to live. It was a simple choice he had to make and he made the wrong one.”

  “So you admit it,” she hissed.

  “No. I wasn’t trying to install a king. I just wanted you people to go away.”

  “It amounts to the same thing.” She was smiling at Artem, as though her argument was won. Looking at the would-be vampire king I could see that he thought the same.

  “Does it?” I said. I stepped up onto the stage and once again made sure everyone was watching. I had the barest hint of the power I’d stolen from the super-soldier and I used it to make the tattoos glow. “Then I offer you the same deal.”