by Ben Zackheim
“Rebel, what do you think you’re doing?”
She glanced over her shoulder and raised her voice just enough for us to hear. “I’m going to talk to Merlin.”
Chapter 33
“Sheeeeeiiiit,” Dino said with a nice big whistle at the end.
I wanted to go after her, but I knew I’d get nowhere. She was off to fight another kind of battle. One that only magicists could pull off. But that didn’t mean I was going to just stand there and watch.
“That fuckin’ wizard became a tree?” Dino asked. He crossed his arms and studied the massive thing towering over us. “You think he’d teach me how to do that? I want to be a tree!”
“Dino, shut up, I’m trying to think here. She’s walking into a clusterfuck. We have to be ready to help her.”
“So pull out one of your relics then.”
“I’m trying to think of which one I could use but somebody keeps distracting me.” I gave him the evil eye. Dino ignored me and muttered to himself. I couldn’t make out what he said but I’m pretty sure it had to do with him wanting to be a tree all of a sudden.
The sceptre was a good choice. My bond to it was strong. But I didn’t understand its powers yet.
Or I could use the spear. It always hit its target. But I didn’t like the idea of throwing it at an enemy who might have the ability to grab it out of the air and keep it for himself.
As Rebel reached the tree’s base, I decided to hold both relics at the same time, the same way I’d done when I’d healed myself. I opened the portal and reached in for the sceptre. Yit handed me the spear. I nodded to her in thanks.
Dino tapped me on the shoulder. “You got a plan yet, Kane?”
The relics didn’t respond to me in any way I could understand. When I’d tended to my wounds back in Paris, it was as if I’d been guided by a teacher who wanted me to learn. But as I stood there, helplessly watching my partner put her head on the chopping block, I felt nothing. I opened the portal and put the relics back. I didn’t want them to be vulnerable, and if that cave made me feel anything, it was vulnerable. I paced over the mossy floor.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Dino said. “Stop worrying, Kane. She knows what she’s doing. She gets attacked, we’re right here to help.” I didn’t want to get into it with him. Trolls can argue all day. I wanted to save my energy and my focus for the fight I knew was coming.
Rebel took a seat cross-legged in front of the tree and looked up at the branches. Several leaves drifted down and fell all around her. I clenched my fist. Was it an attack? I reached for my Glocks from habit. I switched off the safety. Dino put a hand on my shoulder. “Dude, chill. You don’t want to mess this up. She’s doing good.”
I kept the safeties off. I recalled the story of Merlin’s Oak, a tree in Carmarthen, Wales that held the fate of the town in its hands. What other tricks did the wizard have up his cloak. Just how powerful was he? I shook off the feeling that I was watching a private moment. Well, I tried to shake the feeling. But whatever Rebel was doing was something that required vulnerability, tenderness.
“I think she’s apologizing,” Dino whispered.
“She’s apologizing to him? He should apologize to her.”
“Maybe he is, dude. I’m just guessing, jeez. It’s a vibe, y’know?”
“Sorry, Dino. I think you’re right. I don’t feel any danger. I don’t get it, though.”
The troll shrugged. “Magic.”
“Fucking magic.”
A cool breeze flowed through the cave. It carried two small birds who gently touched down on the tip of a branch where they bounced together and watched Rebel with us. I don’t know how much time passed. Hours maybe. Then, with no fanfare, Rebel stood and walked back to us.
“Was it him?” I asked. I knew the answer, but it was still too difficult to understand. She nodded. She looked up at me and it took me a second to register that she was crying. Rebel was crying.
The world really had come to an end.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine. I can feel my connection growing stronger.”
“Connection to Merlin?” Dino asked.
“No, to magic.”
“Those don’t look like tears of joy to me, Rebel,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
She found a perch on a boulder and sat, shoulders drooped, clearly exhausted. “Merlin hates you, Kane. He hates you so much. He wants to see you suffer.”
“That does sound like Merlin,” I quipped.
“It’s not funny. He’s given me my connection to magic back. But he did it on one condition. I accepted that condition, but then he told me…”
I had a bad feeling about where this was going. “Rebel, what did you agree to?”
“He says he fears he won’t find his human form again before you die. He wants you to suffer. He wants me to tell you what you are.”
Chapter 34
“What I am?”
Dino stepped between us and held out his hands to stop us from continuing the discussion. He sensed the same thing I did. I was about to get the answers I’d been looking for since the Excalibur mission. “He’s a liar, Kane. A real mean motherfucker. I don’t think he’s…”
I held up a hand. “Zip it, Dino. Rebel, tell me what he told you.”
She wiped her eyes with her palms. It was a violent move, as if she were trying to hit the tears off her face. She stared over my shoulder, deep in thought.
I crouched down to meet her eye-to-eye. “What do you mean when you say ‘what’ I am?”
“He says you’re a seed.”
Dino and I glanced at each other. I could tell the troll had devised a dozen zingers but he was keeping his mouth shut.
I looked back to Rebel. “I’m a seed,” I repeated. Yes, it felt as ridiculous to say it as it was to hear it. “Look, Alix and Freya already told me that my spirit hops from body to body. This isn’t news, Rebel.”
“Just listen to me, Kane. You said Lucas told you about The Four. How they were created by one god. The Four weren’t meant to last forever. They were meant to exist as a rallying cry for our world. Fight, flee, nourish, protect. The Four were created to fail and succeed as best they could and sculpt this new world they ruled over. They mostly failed, so their powers dispersed over the millennia. All of this gave birth to other gods in multiple cultures, navigating their own way through life. Each culture with their own problems, strengths, priorities, whatever.”
“I get it. So what does this mean?”
“Let me think, will you? It’s news to me, too. I’m trying to put it all together.”
I held up my hands in surrender.
Rebel leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Odin was the most curious god of them all. His thirst for knowledge was endless. He gathered libraries of scripture, knowledge, relics. He arranged groups of scholars to think, debate, find more questions from the answers they found. With each piece of knowledge, he became more powerful. Most of the gods envied him. Many of them believed he was actually one of The Four. The only survivor. Even more thought Odin was the one god who crafted The Four.”
I had to speak up. The Spear of Odin was in my portal, after all. Maybe I could help her think things through, take some of the burden off of her. “Odin’s spear was covered in runes that had the key to untapped knowledge. He died and was reborn to discover what the runes meant.”
“He died. He wasn’t reborn. He…” Again, she paused to think about her next words. “He splintered off. I don’t know how else to put it.”
“He spread his seed,” Dino said with a chuckle. Both Rebel and I looked at him wide-eyed. “What? I’m just adding some levity to this life-shattering news!”
“No, Dino,” Rebel said. “You’re right. One part of him remained the Odin we know. The old guy with the eyepatch and the big ego. But most of what made him Odin was passed on, just as The Four’s powers were passed on.”
“To other gods? To people?” I asked.
“Accordi
ng to Merlin, some went to buildings, objects, relics I guess. Some went to gods, too. But only one human received the remnant. A baby boy. A newborn.”
My stomach sank. It was my turn to say out loud what Alix and Freya had told me back in Paris. I’d never had the guts to look it in the face this long. “I’m not a seed, Rebel. I’m a parasite. I travel from one body to another and I take them over. I kill them when they’re babies.”
“I need… I need to tell you more. For me to honor the deal, you need to know everything.”
“Go,” I said. I put on my brave face while my insides shivered like a puppy in a thunderstorm.
“It’s not your fault, Kane. You aren’t the vessel that passes the power from one generation to the next. Your father does that. All of the boys you… inhabit have one father. When your body dies, he sleeps with women to impregnate them with a body you can seed.”
“You mean leech from. This seed analogy isn’t going to cut it, Rebel. If I were a seed, I’d be the little fucking sperm that always beat the other guys to the exit. All right, so who’s the asshole who runs around through the ages getting women pregnant?”
“Set.”
The breeze blowing through the cave was the only sound I heard.
Dino broke the silence with, “Damn.”
I shook my head in a vain attempt to think straight. “So Set does the whole ‘taking human form’ thing and sleeps with women to make hosts for me. Why?”
“He found out what you were, and he found a way to be a part of the process. He thinks you’re special. He believes you were the only human soul to receive that shard of Odin for a reason. To him, your role is to bring back the one god who created The Four.”
“Why would he want to bring back a more powerful god?”
“Merlin thinks it’s so he can kill him, her, whatever it is. To take its power. Then Set would be the god of gods.”
“So he can rule a decimated world,” I said. “Brilliant.”
“It won’t be decimated according to Merlin. Set wants to bring the world’s population back once he doesn’t have to watch his back.”
“I don’t get it,” Dino said. “He could have killed Kane when he was younger.”
“He doesn’t want to kill him, Dino. He wants to be Kane’s next and final host. That’s what this is all about. That’s what this war was started for. To destroy the world of man and get Kane’s essence inside himself.”
Dino stuck out his tongue and made a sour face. “Whoah, okay, let’s not get carried away here.”
“How will he take my essence?” Rebel broke eye contact with me. “Rebel? Tell me.”
“When he believes you’re of no use to him anymore, he’ll eat you.”
Dino made his yuck face. “Ew.”
I threw my hands up. “How do we win this one, Rebel? Set has laid out such a damned maze for us to follow. He’s always going to be a step ahead of us because we’re playing by his game’s rules. Even with the spells Lucas is translating, how can we stop Set when he has all the... knowledge?”
Shit.
Chapter 35
I guess my surprise showed on my face. “What’s wrong, Kane?” Rebel asked.
“The crown. The crown is the Book of Life. Thor said the crown contains all knowledge. We may be able to use it to understand Set’s end game. Maybe even stop him. How does Merlin think we can beat Set?”
“I don’t know. Merlin only wanted to give you enough information to suffer, not to help save the world.”
I gritted my teeth so hard it hurt. “I wish I’d never pulled that fucking trigger.”
Dino turned his puzzled look to me. “Trigger?”
“I killed his wife, Dino.”
“Oh, yeah, that. You totally should not have done that. Like at all.”
“It was an accident, but thanks for the opinion, Dino.”
Rebel shook her head. “He doesn’t hate you for killing his wife. Well, not only that.”
“You’ve got more to tell me, Rebel?”
“This is the last of it. I’m sorry, Kane. Your first… host, the newborn boy — he was Merlin’s brother.”
I threw my hands up. “Of course he was!” I turned to the tree. “I didn’t do this to your brother, wizard! Your fucking gods did! Asshole.”
Rebel continued. “Merlin and his family didn’t know about the...”
“Parasite,” I said for her.
“But the boy did. You did. You knew you were a vessel for something bigger than yourself. You became a wizard as well. A competitor to Merlin. But you went another way. You were a poor man with no aspirations to wealth or power. You were known as the pauper king. Selfless, giving, kind. Everything he wasn’t. Your influence was greater than Merlin could ever achieve in a thousand lives. After years of living in your shadow, he took out his anger at you by killing your wife. When you came for him, you were filled with rage, out of control. Just what he wanted. You walked into his ambush and died.”
Hearing her words was like having a repressed memory yanked out of my brain. “I remember,” I said. “Months ago, during the shield mission, I dreamt... or relived my search for him. I stormed into his village. I had a sword, armor. I remember it so vividly now. I searched for Merlin. I wanted to kill him. The villagers hid in the shadows or stared at me like I was walking to the executioner.”
Rebel nodded but she kept going. She wanted to end this history lesson as much as I did. Once she was done, her deal with Merlin would be sealed and we’d have the magicist we needed. “He didn’t tell me when he found out about who you are. My guess is he heard about Set’s stud adventures, did some digging, and put two and two together. Merlin’s jealousy didn’t die with you, though. He created the myth of King Arthur to explain the adventures and influence you had as the pauper king. Of course, he made himself a big deal in the tales. He made himself the man behind the king. He erased any memory of you and gave it to a king who never existed. He thought it was hilarious that his brother, the selfless pauper who pushed away fame and fortune would always be remembered as a king of kings.”
“History is written by the victors,” I said.
Dino shook his head. “Wow. What an asshole. I mean he takes it to, like, a whoooole other level.” Dino got on his tip toes and stretched his arm high in the air to show us just how high-level-asshole Merlin was. It wasn’t high enough.
“This next part isn’t going to be easy, Kane. The process of moving you to Set’s newest son was delayed for the body you have now. Merlin thinks that Set was distracted. He might have missed a step in his endgame. The transition didn’t happen until the boy was eleven. It usually happens at birth. It didn’t go well. The only reason you survived is...”
“Spit it out, Rebel.”
“Skyler. He saved you. He’d been monitoring the boy for years, waiting for you to take possession. If he hadn’t been there to take you to Spirit, Set would have had you under his control long ago.”
“Wonderful. The man I hate most, saved me when I was a boy. What a saint.”
Rebel shot me a meek look. “He’s no saint, Kane.”
“Good. Give me a reason to hate him again.”
“At the time, Merlin was as dedicated to destroying the vampires as we were. He allowed Skyler to take you under his wing at Spirit because he hoped you’d be an asset to destroy the undead. But he’d only agree to let you out of his control under one condition. Skyler had to name you Kane.”
“So what?”
“Merlin thought it would be funny for your name to be an acronym.”
Dino, of course, had to jump in with, “K-A-N-E. Kangaroos Are Noisy Ejaculators?”
I smiled, despite the weight of the moment. Rebel didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smirk. She just sighed and said, “King Arthur Never Existed.”
Dino leaned back and dropped on a boulder, mouth wide. “What. A. Fucker.”
I held up a hand. “Stop, Rebel.”
“Kane…”
“I said stop. I�
��m sorry. I need a break.”
I spotted a ledge across the wide cavern. It looked like the perfect fit for my tired, parasite ass. I walked away from my friends muttering, “God, I hate the gods.”
The whole world was swimming around me but I managed to get to the ledge. I sat down with a sigh that echoed loud enough to scare the birds off of the tree. I’m not sure why, but I felt relieved. The blackouts I’d been having made more sense. I found some comfort in the revelation that something went wrong when I took over my latest host. It could explain why I was losing myself at random moments. If all of this wasn’t some sick joke, then I’d leeched off of many people over the ages. Maybe they were trying to claw their way back to life through me.
I wished them luck.
I hoped they could hold off just long enough for me to kill Set.
I studied the tree. I tried to imagine how that beautiful thing could possibly be Merlin. I saw some similarities in the craggy bark, filled with ravines and notches. For a moment, I thought I could see the old man’s arms in the branches.
The wizard may have transformed into a tree, but there was nothing left of him. The man was gone, and in his place was something that would live for hundreds of years. If he was going to come back in his human form one day, he was one clever motherfucker. “I hope you have a world to wake up to, wizard,” I said as I stood.
Fuck Set. Fuck Merlin. It was time to take our refreshed magicist back to the states. Maybe Set had the crown of crowns. If we could get our hands on that relic, Rebel could kill all the gods.
I was game for that.
I opened the Swap Portal and gestured for the others to join me on my ledge.
“Come on you two. Let’s go kill my surrogate dad.”
Chapter 36
We swapped with three of my demons.
Unfortunately, Dino swapped with one who was hanging upside down from the ceiling.
He landed hard on the lobby floor and laughed as he rolled around in pain. Trolls have their own special sense of humor.
