Summoned to Destroy

by C L Walker

  Chapter 39

  I felt nothing different, but Invehl did. He rushed in and stood over me, glaring and sputtering, unable to form a coherent thought.

  “What did…you can’t…what?”

  I let him ramble, enjoying his discomfort as the green nimbus surrounding him faded away. His connection to the many heartstones he’d taken was gone and he was back to being his normal self. He was still one of the new gods and was still going to crush me, but I’d beaten him and that was all that mattered.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus, and I did the same just in case. But there was nothing there to find, no overlap with the other heavens and no gates waiting for us elsewhere in the heaven. We were alone, and we were adrift.

  “That was unpleasant,” he said, finally managing to put together a full sentence.

  “I told you,” I replied. My wounds were healing slowly. Not fast enough to save me. Blood pooled around me on the floor.

  “I’m going to make you pay for this in pain.” He lifted me and threw me across the temple. I slammed into the wall and crumpled to the floor, instinctively protecting the wounds he’d inflicted and curling into the fetal position; not that it would do any good. I still had the broken spear in my hands and I jabbed the hole his punch had left, setting off an explosion of fresh pain.

  He kicked me, breaking some ribs and knocking me out for a moment. The darkness was a blessed relief from the constant pain, but when I returned he was still there and still kicking me.

  At least I wasn’t going to have to put up with him for very long, I thought as the damage increased. My ribs were dust and my internal organs were pulp; my head felt ready to explode and the world was too dim to see.

  I’d threatened to torment him forever, but it seemed he’d be spending his eternity alone.

  Or, almost alone. The wolf stood in the doorway, covered in blood and missing most of his fur. An ear was gone and half his face was burnt beyond recognition, but he was standing and he had a blade in his hand.

  “Invehl,” he said, his voice a whine in the rapidly dimming world. “Your end has come.”

  The god sneered at me, reaching down and lifting me from the ground by my hair. He turned with me this way and approached the damaged angel.

  “I’m going to make both your lives endless and unbearable,” he said.

  The wolf prepared himself, taking up a fighting stance and raising his blade. Invehl walked faster, eager to begin his destruction.

  I took the half of the heartstone that was the head of the spear and stabbed the god in the back, through his heart and out the other side.

  His blood was nothing compared to what it had been, but it was still the blood of a god. The tattoos fed and began healing me, even as I was thrown to the floor. I looked up in time to see Invehl turning on me, pain and rage flooding him.

  And then he fell to his knees, blood fountaining from his mouth.

  The wolf moved in and with one swipe removed his head. It fell to the floor beside me, staring at me.

  The god’s soul was free and searching for another vessel, but the only option was mine and I wasn’t open to him. He was incorporeal, barely detectable even by the tattoos, but his scream rocked the heaven as he realized he was done, dead.

  His scream faded a moment after he did, and I was alone with the wolf. The little power I’d managed to get from Invehl had only been enough to keep me alive; I was as battered and broken as the angel. We laughed anyway.

  “That was what happened,” he said. He was too big to fit through the door but he reached a hand inside to help me up.

  I walked slowly outside, blinking at the bright sunlight. The heaven was silent around me except for the sound of tents flapping in the breeze.

  “I don’t suppose he left any food when he kicked everyone out?” I said. “After all that I could eat for hours.”

  “Coffee would be nice, too,” the wolf said.

  “You know about coffee?”

  “I live for coffee, Agmundr. And not that frothy mess they make on earth these days. No, I want one that’s been steeped like a fine tea, with a dollop of honey and just the slightest hint of goat’s milk.”

  “That sounds unpleasant,” I said. I crossed the bridge over the pool and sat on the edge beside the water. I splashed myself, washing some of the blood and sweat off.

  “You’ve grown soft, that’s all. It’s a drink of men.”

  “You’re not a man,” I said. His wounds were healing slowly, his fur inching back to normalcy. “Why aren’t you healed yet?” I asked.

  “I’m saving my strength,” he replied. He sat opposite me on one of the tiers that used to house the nobility. He looked as bad as I felt, tired and weak.

  “We’re going to be stuck here together for a long time, angel. I don’t think we’re going to need whatever energy you’re saving.”

  “I’ll be stuck here.” His words were said softly but in the silence of the amphitheater they were impossible to miss.

  “You’ve got a way back?” I said, misunderstanding him for some reason.

  He reached his healthy arm out and pointed his claws at the air, then slashed downward. The air tore in response, like he’d punctured reality and ripped it apart.

  “That’s the void,” he said. Beyond the hole in the air was a beige emptiness, like static on some old TV. The air from the heaven whistled through the hole, escaping.

  “How do we travel through it?” I said. I was on my feet and standing before it, though I didn’t remember walking there. I held my hand up to the edge for a moment, then reached through to see what would happen.

  The tattoos brought up a shield as my flesh began to burn off. It wasn’t like fire but like intense cold; the flesh blackened in an instant and steam rose from it, and then it was flaking away.

  I pulled my hand back and the wolf and I watched it heal. The hole closed in a snap as though it was never there.

  “I can’t survive out there,” he said. “But you might be able to.”

  I held up my hand and its new, pink skin.

  He smiled. “If you’re prepared in advance, and you have enough power, you might be able to get back.”

  “And you?”

  “There is no way for me to survive out there, but your tattoos give you an advantage I don’t have. We make sure you have all the power I can offer and then you go.”

  “And you stay.” I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about it, whether I was willing to let him stay in the empty heaven so I could return.

  He nodded. “I’ve seen it, so you shouldn’t bother fighting me on it. You will go.”

  “Do I make it back?” I asked, though it didn’t matter. It was worth trying anyway.

  “No idea.” He stood, towering over me. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Now?”

  “The longer we wait the more we drift away from earth. We are on a lifeboat caught in a current and the sooner you get out the better your chances.”

  I desperately wanted to do it and I knew he could see it on my face. But I couldn’t just leave him behind, leave him to live for eternity in the emptiness and quiet.

  He didn’t give me a choice. He reached out and grabbed me, and I was too weak to evade his hand. Or, maybe, I didn’t try that hard.

  Angelic power flowed into me, blasting along the tattoos and heating my skin with its volume. I was fully healed in a moment; a moment later I was stronger than any other man. A moment after that the tattoos were storing what the wolf was giving me.

  He collapsed when he was done, too tired to stay on his feet. I crouched near his head and checked for a pulse, but he didn’t have one and when he opened his eyes he laughed at me.

  “I’m an angel,” he said. “I’ll be alright. Ready?”

  I wasn’t, but I had no reason to stay. I nodded and he shooed me backward. He reached out with a shaking hand and tore reality open again.

  “Will you be alright?” I said.

  “Go, Agmundr. This i
s what happens but if you don’t go it might not.”

  “I will remember you, angel. You will be remembered forever.”

  “Go, stupid human.”

  The tattoos knew what was coming; a shield came to life around me. I could feel the strength of it by how cold my skin was as the streams of energy required to keep it going left the tattoos.

  I took a last look at the wolf’s broken, burnt, smiling face, and leapt through the hole in reality.

  Chapter 40

  There was no movement in the void, no sense of any direction in which to move. Only the beige static covering a wall in the unimaginable distance and stretching for billions of light years.

  I stared at the hole I’d used to leave the heaven of my people. Sunlight shone through as the escaping air pushed me away, like an astronaut caught outside a space station. I didn’t look away until the hole suddenly closed and left me alone.

  It didn’t take long for my stimulus-deprived mind to come up with potential betrayal: had the wolf sent me away to kill me? Did he know he couldn’t kill me himself, so he’d decided this was the easiest way to do it? He’d be fine, he’d heal and survive, while I was stuck in the formless void, unable to move, let alone find a way back to earth.

  I tried to shake the thought but it wouldn’t go away. The wolf had been my ally and there was no reason for him to double-cross me. He’d lost his only companion by sending me away, hurt himself to give me the strength to survive.

  And yet the thought persisted, growing more powerful as the hours passed and nothing changed.

  The tattoos were spending all their stored power to maintain the magic shield protecting me. I was freezing, chilled by the loss of power, and shaking. I wanted to do something, anything, but if I did I’d run out of power sooner and the shield would fail. And then I would die.

  I wanted to go home. To my friends and to my wife. Bec and Roman would need help with the vampires, who didn’t seem capable of keeping their alliance together without someone there to force them. They’d start fighting and then my friends would end up in the middle because I had interfered without thinking. And I would be there to protect them.

  Erindis would have to deal with Invehl’s soldiers when he didn’t return. They knew she was involved in whatever happened to their god and they’d be looking for answers. They’d pounce on her and she wouldn’t be able to defend herself. She was stronger than I’d suspected but she was just human. She couldn’t stand against an entire religion.

  The void stretched for eternity in all directions, and I felt more alone than I’d ever felt. In the locket, when I’d completed my orders and my master put me back, time didn’t pass for me. One moment I was watching my master and then the next I was watching a new one. Time had passed, civilizations had risen and fallen, but I saw none of it. I had no time to feel alone.

  When I was returned to my prison I got to see Erindis for a moment, and I wondered if that would be true when the shield failed and I died in the void. If there was any mercy in the elder gods they’d give me that, at least. One last chance to see my love before I died.

  But they had no mercy, and I knew it wouldn’t happen.

  More hours passed, though I couldn’t be sure how many. Time seemed not to exist in the void in any meaningful way. I suspected that the shield was the only thing forcing me to experience it; a million years could have passed on earth, or seconds, and there was no way I would know.

  I made peace with it all at some point, after I started hearing the voices of my many victims but before the shield started failing. I decided I was fine with dying after all, and that everyone would be better off without me. My presence had caused all the hardship they had suffered. Perhaps my absence would fix everything as quickly.

  The shield grew dark as the tattoos ran low. They searched for more power and found only me, my soul, my essence. They would feed on it when they had to, when there was no other way to keep me alive except to slowly kill me. But I knew that would be a brief reprieve, seconds at most. And then it would be over.

  More time passed, though I experienced very little of it. I was blacking out, losing time. Or perhaps I wasn’t, and my mind was giving me something to focus on to relieve the torment of the coming end. There was no way to tell except the constant darkening of the shield, and the inevitability of the coming end.

  The shield finally darkened enough that I couldn’t see anything at all. It felt a little like the moment before I went back into my prison, but it stretched for longer and scared me in a way the locket never had.

  The shield failed and I fell into the void. I was beyond caring, as my flesh went bad on my bones and began to flake off. The pain wasn’t even that bad because the nerves were dead before the major damage was done.

  “You should have tried something.” I couldn’t see whose voice it was because my eyes had melted. As it was I could barely even hear the man.

  I tried to speak but there was no air in my lungs.

  “Even the assassin at least tried before giving up.” It sounded like an old man, tired and annoyed. “You get this one, Agmundr. We don’t involve ourselves in the world anymore. But then, I guess this isn’t strictly the world, is it? Whatever, you get one. This is our gift to you for a job well done.”

  And then there was light, and color, and air to breathe. I opened my eyes to find myself in the heaven with the fish-people statues, beneath a deep blue sky with the angel from the gate standing over me. He was almost fully healed, though he’d be scarred for some time. He reached down to help me up.

  “Now, how the hell did you get in here?”

  Epilogue

  The vampires had come to the rescue, both sides joining forces to take down the soldiers Invehl had left to guard the gate. They saw me as I stepped through and Artem nodded before leading them all away.

  Erindis was waiting for me in one of their trucks. I was limping and could barely lift my head to see her. She ran to my side and supported me, putting my right arm over her shoulders while the angel handled the left. The angel could have done it all himself, of course, but I loved that she was trying.

  They put me in the car and Erindis got in beside me.

  “Do you need protection?” the angel said.

  “No,” Erindis replied. “The threat has passed, angel. You can go back to your post.”

  He nodded and turned back to the empty lot and the invisible gate to the heavens. The car pulled away and I took the opportunity to sleep.

  I awoke with a strange thought: who was driving the car? It wasn’t Bec or Roman, or they’d have welcomed me back. And Erindis didn’t know anyone she could call, did she? So who was driving?

  I opened my eyes and saw what had happened.

  “Took you long enough,” my love said.

  She sat in a chair in one of Invehl’s empty warehouses. Soldiers stood to either side of her with rifles aimed at me and I was on my knees, my hands chained behind my back.

  “What?” I said, stunned and still weak. “I don’t understand.”

  She stood and when she spoke she used a stupid voice. “What…huh…I don’t get it.” She walked over to me and held her hand above my head. “This doesn’t work when you’re asleep for some reason.”

  I felt my skin rise as it had with Invehl. The tattoos were reacting to her as they had to the god and as she moved her hand down my back they stood out, desperate to be taken. She had another little jar in her hand, ready for when the unknown selection criteria were met and she picked one.

  “Why are you doing this, my love?” I said. I couldn’t even try to fight her. The chains on my hands and arms were pointless as she was my master I couldn’t hurt her.

  When she spoke this time her voice was soft and distracted. “Because I hate you, Agmundr.”

  I tried not to hear her but enough had happened and I was only so stupid. I had seen the signs, the odd smile in Invehl’s office and the memories she’d shared that told an incomplete picture. I had seen in them
what I wanted to see, but there were other ways to interpret them.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I said. I had accepted my fate, and accepted her feelings. “I would have done whatever you wanted. You only needed to ask.”

  She kept her hand over my back but twisted her neck to make sure I could see her face.

  “That’s sweet, but this is more enjoyable for me.”

  Images of our interaction, both in the modern world and in the past, flashed before my eyes. I saw the way she looked at me when her father had given her to me. I’d seen it as admiration and wanting, but it had been fear. Anxiousness. Our days together ruling the kingdom had been without conversation and I now knew her to be a confidant, opinionated woman. I could see what it had cost her to remain silent around me.

  The only time we’d behaved the way I now knew couples could, was when she was possessed by Ohm, and she’d said as much herself.

  Erindis found the symbol she liked and her body tensed as she forced it to rise higher. She put the jar against my skin and scooped it up. When she stepped back she had more of the dead blood of Ohm in her hand.

  “What will you do now, my love?” I said.

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped. Her looked showed me nothing but hate; not even pity. “You’re going back in your locket until I need you. You’re like a packed lunch.”

  She held the locket out and showed it to me.

  “Agmundr,” she said dismissively. “Return.”

  The world disappeared, reappearing a moment later as I watched my wife pocket my prison and point at one of the soldiers. He rushed off to a car I hadn’t seen parked nearby.

  She looked up at the roof above her head. “I know you can see me. I’ve always felt your eyes, forcing yourself on me. Get a good look, Agmundr. This is the last time you get this gift. When I summon you next time I will be ready to tear that power from your skin, and then I’ll have no use for you.”

  The world faded and I was swallowed by darkness.