When that was done, Merc had the men wash the brushes and set them out to dry. More villagers had come out of their homes to watch the walls get painted. They observed the whole thing nervously, unsure of Merc’s intent. He knew they believed he was some shot caller from the mine, since he was able to get the thugs to comply with so little effort.
When the day was almost over and the afternoon shadows were long, Merc walked into the jungle, using the eastern trail. Following him were the remaining thugs who’d spent the day painting over the murals commemorating their violent deeds and revered members. Men from the town followed at a greater distance.
A mile into the jungle, they came upon the big pits that had been used as mass graves. Merc stood at the edge of the first pit. The man whose balls he’d injured yesterday limped forward, shoving his way through the men.
Before the guy could speak, Merc looked into his eyes and said, “Tell me your soul wants to change. Tell me your heart can heal.”
The man didn’t answer because Merc didn’t want a verbal response—he wanted to hear how the man’s spirit answered without the cover of ego and lies. The man held no remorse for his past actions and had every intent of continuing on the same path, not only because it was the one most familiar to him, but because it was what brought him joy.
Merc held a hand out and indicated the pit. The man limped down to the bottom of it and lay down.
Merc repeated this with each man. Only one showed any remorse at all, but that one craved change. Merc let him go. When it was over, ten men lay shoulder to shoulder in the mud. Merc shut his eyes and set a circle of energy over the pit with the intention that only people with dastardly hearts be allowed to enter. And once inside, those very same people must stay until they die.
When he was finished, it was dark outside. Some of the townsfolk carried flashlights or rough torches. They parted so he could leave, but they stayed behind to peek over the edge of the first pit and look down at the members of the gang who’d caused such harm to their village.
The man from yesterday, the father of the girl Merc had saved, came up to him. “That isn’t all of them. They rotate in from the jungle all the time.”
Merc nodded. “The pit will take care of them. You no longer need to live in fear.”
The man stopped walking, his shock and confusion palpable.
4
Guilt weighed on Merc. Over the last week, dozens of men and women had led themselves down to the grisly deaths the pits offered, preferring death to change. He knew he was no better than any of them, with his powerful ability to kill. It was why Liege had enforced his rule that Legionnaires not mix with regulars, that mutants watch and observe but not get involved.
Merc wished he’d stayed compliant with that mandate. But if he had, how many more girls would have been trafficked from this town? How many more sons would have been lost to the crime in the jungle?
When night came, he made his way to the pits. No one followed him. Had he run out of people with black hearts to judge? He hoped so. The priest from town walked down the dark path toward him—or toward the pits. The padre looked ghostly in his long white robe.
Merc kept himself from being seen, listening as the priest said a long prayer over the dead and dying. Then he surprised Merc by saying, “I know you are here.”
How? Merc asked.
“I’ve prayed for many long years for God to send help. He finally did. He sent us you.”
No, He didn’t. I’m evil.
“You’ve given the village hope. That’s not the work of Satan.”
I’ve killed all these people.
“You’ve only brought them to their fate, one determined by every choice they made, every path they took.”
You can’t absolve me.
“God can absolve you. He has often sent mighty warriors to battle evil here on Earth.”
Merc went silent. He realized that communicating directly into the priest’s mind was just furthering the padre’s belief in what he was saying.
Merc was not sent by God. And he had done terrible evil here.
Eventually, the priest returned to the village.
Merc considered opening his mind to his team, but he was too ashamed to let them in. He’d blocked them since he’d saved that girl. He didn’t know how much longer he could wait for Santo. The old bastard probably wouldn’t show now that Merc had buffed everything up here.
It was time to end what he’d inadvertently begun. More bodies were in the pits now than the day before, this time without his having led them there. The trenches had taken on a life of their own, summoning the cursed from the jungle.
The cursed.
That was what this was. He’d created a curse that now operated independently of him. He had to stop it, but how?
He closed his eyes and spread his arms, then tried to summon the energy of his intent back to himself. Didn’t feel like it worked. He tried again and again, to no avail.
At last, he realized he couldn’t reverse the curse because the truth in his soul was that he didn’t want it reversed.
Night was advanced when he returned to town. Somehow, he’d lost hours at the pits. He stopped in the main café and slumped into a chair. He’d waited long enough for Santo to show himself. He’d tried several times to penetrate the protection surrounding the mine, its works, and guards, but had not been successful. The longer he stayed here, the more of a mess he made of things. He should hand this off to Lautaro, Liege’s top guy in the northern section of South America, and bug out.
He sipped a beer. It was easy to keep himself from garnering attention simply by pulling the shadows in around himself. He didn’t want to completely hide himself because he wanted to be served a long string of drinks.
From his seat at the corner of the café, he heard a woman’s giggle. A sexual, throaty sound meant for a lover. His advanced engineering gave him enhanced hearing, but he doubted anyone around them could hear what he did.
A man was walking down the alley next to the restaurant. He laughed as he greeted her, his arms spread wide. Merc thought about moving to a different seat, giving them privacy, but the heat the couple shared was like a magnet drawing him to them. He slipped from his physical body and followed the man toward his lover.
It was odd, his interest in their assignation. He didn’t have a sex drive himself—hadn’t since it had been engineered out of him in the genetic modifications he’d been tricked into taking.
His consciousness shot forward, into the man, melding with him. Merc felt the man’s body like it was his own. He looked at the man’s hands, wiggled his fingers. He had full control of him. He felt his thoughts, his hunger for the woman, his anticipation of a fast fuck.
Merc had walked into the man’s skin. He was with him, two men in one shell. The man gave the woman money. She folded it and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt, her very short, very tight skirt. She started to raise the hem, shimmying to get it done. The man got excited watching her. Everything he felt, Merc felt.
The man freed himself, running his hand over his dick before stepping between her legs and entering her.
Merc felt all of that. The man’s hardness, the penetration, the woman’s soft, wet body. She smelled sour, like old sweat and lingering sex. Merc was glad he could only use the man’s regular sense of scent and not his own full-powered mutant senses.
His host almost came after a few thrusts, but Merc wasn’t ready for this to be over. He made the man’s hands pull her shirt up, push her bra above her breasts and palm her generous curves.
“That’s extra. You know that,” she hissed.
“Charge me double,” Merc forced the man to say. As soon as his host’s hands were filled, he peaked.
“Señor! Señor!” A disgruntled voice yanked Merc back into his own skin. Merc reacted on sheer instinct. His hand shot out and hooked around the man’s neck, jerking him down to slam his face on the table.
The waiter gasped, as did several onlookers.
Merc looked around at them, shocked to find himself where he was after where he’d just been.
The waiter lurched to his feet. He wasn’t a man, just a kid. He was apologizing and begging forgiveness for waking Merc.
Merc released the air he was holding and sucked in another breath. He dropped money on the table and stumbled away, dragging shadows around him to hide himself from onlookers—they would have been horrified to see him disappear, but their minds could make sense of shadows covering a person, even if the shadows were where they shouldn’t be, like under a streetlight.
He walked, then ran to his rented room, slamming the door behind him. He fisted his hands and pressed his knuckles into his temples.
Jesus Christ. What had just happened? He’d felt everything that man felt, not just through his mind, but with his body. The man’s body had been Merc’s body.
Merc crossed the room, stripping his clothes off. He was disgusted with himself, disgusted to know that if he hadn’t been awakened by the waiter, he would have made the man go several more rounds with the woman. He was overwhelmed by the sexual desire he’d experienced—after ten long years without it. It wasn’t that he wanted the woman—it was that he’d wanted sex…and had felt its deliciousness.
He turned the shower on, but its hottest level was only lukewarm. He soaped himself all over. His dick was limp again. Even after what had just happened, he could not rouse himself for release—nor did he have any interest in doing so.
Flattening his hands against the shower wall, he let the water cascade over his back.
First curses. Now skin-walking.
He was becoming Brett Flynn.
And he couldn’t talk to his team about any of it.
It was late afternoon before Merc ventured out of his room the next day. Shame and self-hatred had claimed his soul.
He needed to get out of this place. He didn’t know where he’d go. Not the fort, certainly.
He took a seat at a different café than the night before and ordered an espresso.
A middle-aged woman from the village marched toward him. He looked away, ignoring her. She didn’t take the hint. He could have forced her to move in a different direction, but he supposed he’d done enough stealing of free will for a lifetime.
She came up to his table. Still he didn’t look at her. Speaking urgently, she said, “Please, as you are a messenger from God—”
Merc looked at her finally. “I am not a messenger from God.”
“He sent you here to save us.”
“He did not.”
“You’re here. And you’re saving us. It is God’s answer to our prayers.”
“I’ve done nothing at all to save any of you.”
The woman waved that off with an irritated flap of her hand. “I beg you, please bless this medallion. It was my son’s. He left it behind when he joined the gangs. I pray over it every night that he will leave them and return home now that there is peace. He was a good boy. He only joined because they threatened me and my daughter if he didn’t. They took him from me.”
Merc looked at the tiny silver, religious medal, then slowly dragged his eyes up to meet the woman’s pleading gaze. “I cannot bring your son back.”
“You could, if you would only bless this medallion.” She fell to her knees and clutched at his legs, weeping and mumbling about her fear for her son’s life if he stayed in the gangs.
Merc looked around them, seeing people watching them, drawn by the mother’s hysterics. He reached for her hands and helped her to her feet. He needed to put an end to this scene fast. “I cannot affect his free will. He must make his own life and his own choices.”
“Then pray with me for just a moment that he makes the right choices.” She held the medallion out to him.
Sighing, Merc took the little trinket. Energy was a living, breathing force—a very real thing. If his sending her son a burst of energy gave this woman ease, and in some small way helped her son, then what would be the harm wishing that the boy live the life he chose? Merc bent forward and kissed the trinket.
The woman was ecstatic. She held it up to show everyone. She laughed and cried and swore that now her son would soon be home.
“Mother?” a man said from the plaza.
The woman’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open. She stared at the man in the street, then screamed and slumped to the ground. Merc knelt beside her as the man ran toward them. More than anything at that moment, Merc regretted his self-imposed isolation from his team. If Guerre were with him, his friend would only have to touch the woman to know how severe her condition was.
He must have dropped his shield at that point, for Guerre’s voice came through his mind, as clearly as if he were right there with them. Put your hand on her shoulder. I will tell you.
Relief flashed through Merc as he felt Guerre’s energy enter him. He set his hand on the woman’s shoulder, feeling the soft and warm heat Guerre used in medical emergencies. The noise around Merc was deafening, but he blocked it out, ignoring the shouting all around him, ignoring the man whose appearance had made this woman faint and who was now pounding Merc with questions about what he’d done to his mother.
His mother.
They’d just prayed for him to come home, and here he was. Shit. It was going to look like he’d had something to do with his return, when obviously he couldn’t have.
She’s fine. She’ll be fine. She just fainted. Guerre pulled away.
Merc stepped back from the woman and pushed through the crowd that had gathered. Liege had been on him, starting with their time in the training camps, to manage his own mind instead of letting his mind run him.
Control your emotions. Control your thoughts. Calm your anger. Steady your mind. Think before you act, before you speak.
All things a fucking kid should be told, not a forty-year-old man.
Merc went back to his room. Prior to his arrival, it had been a home to a family of four. He flopped down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. A gecko ran across his field of vision.
He wasn’t even a man anymore. Barely a human. He was a lab-created thing, an optimized killing machine.
He could have just kept his head down while he waited for Santo and worked on learning more about the mine. But no, that wasn’t good enough for the thing he now was. He had to listen to the horrors these people had survived. He had to let those horrors enter his soul and wake the sleeping demon that hungered for blood. He had to paint over the gang tags and art, stirring up all new levels of hell, like the curse that he couldn’t reverse.
5
There was a commotion outside a while later. Night had come. When Merc opened the door, there was only the woman who brought him his dinner standing there. She handed him his tray. He caught sight of a box and peered inside. It was full of religious items, crosses and medallions and cloths.
“What is that?”
“Antonella said you helped her prayers be answered. These are items from other villagers who have similar prayers for their loved ones.”
“I didn’t do anything to help Antonella.”
“You blessed her medallion.”
“I did not.”
“For years, she had been praying for her son’s safe return. Moments after you touched her medallion, her son was there. It was a miracle.”
“It was a coincidence. He’d already been on his way home before I ever talked to his mother.”
Her face hardened. She brought his dinner tray inside, then retrieved her box and set it next to his meal on the counter. “Then the other villagers wish for the same coincidence.”
“I have no control over their loved ones or what they do.”
She leveled a hard glare at him. “It is not a kindness to help one and not the others.” She left, leaving him alone with the box of devotional items.
He held his hand over it, sensing the currents of energy that connected the items to the ones who prayed over them and the ones they prayed for. He wondered if the owners
of the items knew they’d created tangible bonds between themselves and the ones they hoped to reach. Merc let his mind travel along those ribbons of energy to their termination points. Men and women. Young, mostly. Some were dead. Some lived in fear and desperation. Some loved the existence they lived.
It would be better for that last group if no contact from him was made. It might feel like a summons, and they would just be coming home to their deaths.
But didn’t everyone meet his end sooner or later?
Not him. But then, he wasn’t human any longer, was he?
He envied the bastards their final sleep.
He held his hand over the box again, sending a communication that the dead visit their loved ones in a dream to say goodbye and that the living come home to do the same in person.
His appeal took a few minutes, and when it was finished, he was tired.
Of everything.
This had gone too far. More time here would only spiral things even further out of control. When any of the townsfolk saw him, they pleaded for help or favors or blessings. Had he the need, he would do the same, were their situations reversed, but they were making him into something he wasn’t.
He left his tiny apartment and went outside. His energy was too rangy to stay in. Something was different tonight. No one was in the main square. No one sat outside at the cafés. The streets were empty, and the town felt like it held its breath.
So, the evil he’d been fighting had decided to fight back. He spread his consciousness out into the town, trying to discover if this was an attack being mounted by regulars or if the Omnis were behind it. Enemies surrounded him. He was not hidden now. He shifted his energy, creating a force field around himself. He wasn’t as good at it as Liege was, but it was something they’d all trained to do.
The gunfire began instantly. For a nanosecond, he thought about dropping his personal shield and letting his enemies end him. But he didn’t. He laughed like a madman. Spreading his arms, he walked on the plaza, wholly unaffected by the hail of bullets. He twirled inside his bubble, like a kid in a rain shower.
O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc Page 4