Summoned to Die

by C L Walker

  “Do you think you can do it?” Roman said after a minute of silence. “Kill yourself, I mean?”

  Bec had been surprisingly fine with the plan. I wasn’t sure if I was hurt by that or not, but I’d expected more of a fight from her. Roman had wanted me dead for a long time, but he seemed the most affected by it. Artem had remained quiet.

  “We know the tattoos can be removed, which means we should be able to break the bond to the vessel. If I can guarantee that I won’t just go back to the locket when I die then yes, I think I can do it.”

  “I meant, can you actually kill yourself?”

  “You mean, will I be able to when the time comes? Will I pull the trigger, so to speak?”

  He nodded and I tried to work out how to tell him how easy it would be for me. My life had been long and I’d hated a lot of it, and this wasn’t the first time I’d thought of ending it. After I’d spent a month killing hundreds of people a day for a master who barely cared, I’d desperately wanted to end it all, but I hadn’t. I’d once been forced to throw innocent villagers down a dry well one at a time until some rebels emerged. That had made me want to kill myself, but I hadn’t.

  I hadn’t done it all those times because I knew if I did it would kill Erindis. I hadn’t known I would simply be reborn at the locket, so I hadn’t done it.

  “Yes,” I said, keeping it simple. “It won’t be a problem.”

  “Why will it help, though?”

  “Because we are bound. The only thing keeping her young and immortal is me.”

  He knew this, and I knew he just wanted to talk about it. But it was an enormous thing for me too, and where he needed to babble about everything I preferred silence.

  “How will you do it?” Roman said.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “When?” he said, not getting the hint.

  “We need to shore up defenses on both sides of the gate. If I fail, or if killing myself doesn’t achieve anything, then she’ll be coming through. If she’s managed to become an elder-god, which seems unlikely, then there’s nothing we can do. But if not, we can try to defend as many people as possible. Once that’s in place I’ll find somewhere to do it.”

  “Do you think we can hold them off?”

  I decided to try ignoring him; hopefully that would send the message the conversation was over, and I wouldn’t have to yell at him and see his face scrunch up.

  The city outside the car was surprisingly quiet. Artem said there had been riots and the army was called in to put a stop to them. He said it was really Chaos and Doctor Keith’s men clashing in the streets, but the population didn’t know that and both sides were happy with the freedom the curfew gave them.

  It wasn’t great for the vampires. They had to hide during the day and nowhere was safe anymore. At night they were hunted as soon as they were spotted, and the government had weapons the regular vampire hunters couldn’t dream of. Artem was losing his court to violence from all sides, and there would come a point when he’d have to decide to run or risk dying himself.

  I saw three Chaos members on the corner of a prominent street in downtown, standing around like they owned the place. It was jarring; my first memory of the place had been the police presence, and how it kept everybody safe, no matter who they were.

  Whether Erindis was doing it intentionally or not, she was creating a world that Ohm would have liked. A cowed populace and only her people running the streets. Controllable, predictable, locked down.

  I wondered how much Erindis remembered of the world Ohm and I built, and if it could be influencing her decisions. I hoped that’s what it was, because if not then there was a chance Ohm’s influence ran deeper in my wife than she thought. And if that was true…I had to stop her quickly.

  “I didn’t mean to…” Roman said. He tried again. “When I shot you…I wasn’t myself.”

  “I know. I took care of it.”

  “I remember it, though. Like it was a dream, but I was in control most of the time. It was strange. I was me, but with certain thoughts and feelings amplified.”

  “I get it. Don’t worry about it. You’re forgiven for the thing you had no choice in.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  We drove out of downtown over the old Grantham Bridge, heading for Hillview. Roman had called Nikolette and she’d agreed to a meeting, but she didn’t want to enter the city anymore and we had to go out to her. I hadn’t been out to the nicer suburbs before and I was looking forward to seeing them. I’d found you could tell a lot about a civilization by the way it treated the average citizen, rather than focusing on the most powerful.

  “I miss normal,” Roman said as we drove slowly through Hillview. It was the middle of the night and the streets were empty, the lights out in the houses we passed.

  “This is my normal,” I said.

  “Normal was nice. Students and books. None of this life and death stuff.”

  “Sorry.”

  We pulled up outside the gate of a grand house with a view over the city. It had a turret attached to one wing and enormous grounds. It seemed to cover twice the space of the nearest houses; I wasn’t going to see how the average citizen lived after all, it seemed.

  Nikolette’s voice sounded over the intercom and the gates opened. We drove slowly up the gravel drive and stopped before the house.

  “She lives here?” Roman said, craning his neck to see the whole house. “Damn. It’s good to be a witch.”

  She was waiting for us at the front door. The vampire drove the car out to the street and parked a few blocks away. It was another of Nikolette’s precautions.

  “I sent the girls on a little holiday,” she said as we approached. “So we’ve got the place to ourselves.”

  “Do you know why we’re here?” I asked. I knew she would, but it seemed polite to pretend she wasn’t watching everything in the city.

  “I’ll help you, if you think it’ll help everyone else.”

  “I do.”

  “Then get in here and let’s work out how to kill you.”

  Chapter 22

  I liked the Sinclair house. It was huge, each room bigger than the whole of ACDCs. Even the small breakfast dining room was bigger than the bar, and it was a room dedicated to one meal.

  Roman was right: it was good to be a witch.

  Nikolette had four daughters, all tall, blonde bombshells. There were no pictures of any man in her life, but pictures of the rest of the family were plastered all over the lavish entrance hall. They traveled the world, too, and half the photos were of far-off destinations. They were smiling in all of them.

  A helicopter was buzzing the house, flying in circles over Hillview. They were looking for us, I knew. Nikolette said they’d never find the house with all the wards in place, but I was worried about our ride home. He was just a vampire in a car they clearly knew about.

  My mind was drifting. My body was too; I’d taken to roaming the halls instead of getting involved in their discussion. In my own defense, their discussion was very boring, and I wasn’t smart enough to follow most of it. I knew I should be involved but I wanted them to tell me what my next step was. They could leave me out of the rest of it.

  I’d decided to die. Letting myself think about it again in the quiet, dark hallways of the Sinclair house had the same effect on me as it had when I’d come up with the plan: nausea, a slight headache, and the feeling that the world wasn’t real somehow. It was like I could reach out and tear the facade from the world to see what was really going on.

  I wandered back to the breakfast kitchen. Being alone clearly wasn’t doing me any good.

  “I thought about that,” Nikolette said. “But the amount of power you’d need to even start is…let’s say it’s beyond me.”

  “That has to be the way, though,” Roman replied. “Otherwise the Big Bad wouldn’t be able to do it. When she started she was just a witch, no offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Now she has the kind of p
ower you’re talking about, but when she first did it she wasn’t charging direct from the void.”

  “I don’t see it,” she said. She turned to acknowledge me entering the room, then went back to the papers sprawled across the table.

  “What do you think?” Roman asked me. “Any idea where to begin with this?”

  “I think this is all very much beyond my abilities,” I said. “I’m more of a practical applications of magic kind of guy. Less so on the theory.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about. The tattoos had been placed on me thousands of years before and I had never had the slightest interest in how they worked. In that time I could have learned, I supposed, but why would I when the end of the world was always around the corner?

  “So we either find the biggest collection of magic ever,” Nikolette said. “Or we resort to chopping him into pieces to make it more manageable.”

  “If I could request something,” I said. “I’d prefer not to use that option.”

  “There has to be a way,” Roman said. He turned a loose piece of paper around for her to look at, then scrawled something on it I couldn’t see in the low light. “What about this?”

  I wandered away again. I was little more than a distraction to them and standing there made me feel useless. Walking around made me feel useless too, but it was a better kind of uselessness.

  I had discovered I was a creature of movement, of constantly attacking the problem. Leaving it up to others was driving me crazy.

  I looked out the window at the circling helicopter and thought about the ways I could disable it, or bring it down with my bare hands.

  If they just worked together, I thought. The witches, the vampires, and the government. If they got together and stopped fighting amongst themselves then they could create a force to be reckoned with. Erindis had an army, but together the people of Fairbridge could make her work for it.

  Erindis was coming. I could feel her somehow, like a storm coming in over the horizon, and Fairbridge was a tiny ship. She wanted me and she’d do anything to get me, including killing everyone around me.

  I turned from the window and went to the front door. Perhaps some air could make me feel better.

  The night was on its last legs. Birds had started singing in preparation for sunrise, warming their voices for a day of action. I couldn’t see what my day would hold, but I could guarantee it would be busy.

  A pernicious thought was worming its way around my head, digging into my thoughts and twisting them in ways I didn’t like. It colored everything happening in the other room, and the sacrifices everyone I knew would most likely have to make.

  I could run away. This wasn’t my problem; the human world hadn’t been my problem in a long time. It was my mantra for a thousand years, that the petty concerns of my masters were unimportant in the grand scheme of things. That human civilization would end and all their accomplishments would be forgotten. Their best hope had always been to enjoy the time they had and stop trying to be more than they were.

  It was a thing to say to people I hated, but it had always been true for me. If, in the long run, everything was forgotten. If, over the course of millennia everything was washed away by time. If the world itself would one day end, as it surely would, why bother fighting now?

  I could run away, and there was nobody that could stop me. I had all the power I would need for a long time, if I used it wisely. I could explore the world before it ended, and step through a gate to heaven when I had to. In the endless cosmos of the afterlives I could get lost and live for thousands of years.

  And everyone I knew would die. But they were going to die anyway, and if I ran then I could live. I could enjoy my life until there was nowhere left to go. Then Erindis could have her way with me, kill me or torture me or whatever she wanted, and I would die. But first I would get a chance to live.

  I could run away, but I knew what would happen if I did; I’d hate myself for as long as I lived. And I was going to live a long time if I didn’t kill myself first. I would hate myself and I would hate everyone for letting me run, even though they couldn’t stop me. I would hate, and hate would become my life, like many of my misguided masters over the years. It would consume me and I would become like them.

  I considered it, despite the downsides. The upside was life, and it was difficult to find a downside that weighed more on me than that.

  “We’ve got it,” Roman called from inside. “Agmundr, come see.”

  I took a deep breath, taking in the early morning smells and ignoring the pollution in the air that marred it. I had given myself a moment to consider my options, and now I had to get back to work. I could run, but that wasn’t what I did. I could live a long life, but to do that I’d have to give up, and what was the point of life if all you did was give up when your friends needed you?

  “Bloody humanity,” I said to myself as I went back inside. “Bloody stupid, pointless humanity.”

  Roman and Nikolette were smiling, passing a scrap of paper back and forth when I walked into the breakfast room.

  “We’ve figured out how to do it,” Roman said. “There’s a pattern, see? If we take out this point here, and here and here, then—”

  “Pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. He smiled and started to explain it to me, but I interrupted again. “Pretend I don’t care what you’re talking about. What do you need me to do?”

  “We understand the pattern now,” Nikolette said. She was calmer than Roman, but I could tell she was just as excited. “But we don’t have the power to do what needs to be done. To remove the tattoos as this Erindis woman can. But I think I know how to get the power we require.”

  “And that’s where I come in?” I said. I pulled up a chair and sat down. “What do you need?”

  “I’ll have to find it,” she said as she woke her phone up and started scrolling through pictures. When she showed me what she was looking for I stopped breathing. “I need to find this.”

  I could barely speak. “And then you can sever my connection to the vessel?”

  “I believe so,” she said.

  She shared a triumphant look with Roman, and I plastered on a fake smile to keep them from asking questions.

  The picture on her phone was a knife, a very old, rusted knife. It looked like it had been left at the bottom of an ocean for hundreds of years, but I knew it had actually been a thousand. It looked like it had been used recently, and the blood on it had only just hardened, but I knew the blood was older than history, and I knew where it came from.

  The knife was the one Erindis had received on her birthday from her father. It was the knife she had carried in the throne room when she’d been possessed by Ohm.

  It was the knife the other elder-gods had murdered her with, and Nikolette had a picture of it on her phone.

  Chapter 23

  Nikolette returned to ACDCs with us, guarding the car from being seen by the helicopter. The driver bared his fangs at her when she sat beside me, so I slapped him in the back of the head and he behaved himself the rest of the way.

  The few hours we’d been with Nikolette had seen the streets get emptier. Chaos had gone to bed, or their shifts had changed or something. Unmarked cars still patrolled the streets, though, and I guessed they were Keith’s men.

  “So I’ll track the thing down for you and try and get it here,” Nikolette said. “I can probably buy it, but it’s going to be expensive. I don’t suppose you have a lot money lying around, do you?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “My line of work doesn’t pay very well.”

  “Figures. How long do you think we have until she gets here?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “I think she’s stopping along the way, fighting with the locals or drafting them or something. The angels told stories of her killing them.”

  I didn’t tell her that a bunch of them had decided that wasn’t something they were interested in, and had decided to join me instead.

  �
��So anywhere from a few hours to a few days. About right?”

  I nodded. Roman looked sick.

  “Not to be too insensitive, but you can’t just give yourself over to her, can you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Alright, then we’ll do what we have to do. But anything you can think of to slow her down, do it. This thing popped up last year and vanished just as quickly. It’s not going to be easy to get ahold of.”

  We drove in silence the rest of the way, each of us thinking about the future, each of us with a different vision of it. Roman, I knew, just wanted to get back to his class and forget any of this had happened. Nikolette was a mystery to me, but I saw her as very target focused. I respected that; it was the way I thought, and it was something I could understand.

  My thoughts were all over the place, jumping from my imminent suicide to the fact that someone was going to have to kill Erindis once I’d done the deed. She’d be hurt once I was gone, weakened, but she’d still be stronger than most. I knew who I was going to ask to do it, but I wasn’t sure if even they would have the strength to pull it off.

  We pulled up outside ACDCs and got out. The vampire drove the car further from the main road and parked.

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” Nikolette said. “I’m the reason they’re not still crawling all over this place. I figured you’d need somewhere to come back to, and I wanted to make sure I spoke to you before they carted you off to some black site somewhere.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though I wondered if coming back had been a good idea.

  “Like I said, you’re welcome.”

  We went inside and a room full of vampires turned to face Nikolette as one.

  “Yeah,” Bec said, waving from the bar. “It’s a tough room. And they don’t drink, either, so it’s not like I’m making any money.”

  Artem pushed through the crowd from the table he’d been sitting at.

  “Ms. Sinclair,” he said. “I was hoping to see you.”

  “I very much doubt that, vampire.” She looked at him the way I’d look at a spider. “I suspect you’d be far happier if we went away forever.”