As Kevan keeled over, Brookes’ knee smashed into his face and a fist sent Kevan flying across the room.
Kevan landed hard. He spat up blood onto the hardwood floors and held his chest. Something was broken inside him.
August sat against the wall. Shit. He didn’t know how he was going to get past them. Kevan had all the explosives on him. He only had his trusty Glock.
He heard whispers in the hall and then slow footsteps. He saw the man’s shadow on the adjacent wall. August readied his pistol and as the man was about to turn the corner, August jumped out and filled him with lead.
Before the machine gun rounds could hit him, August leapt back out of the hall. He sat back against the wall. There were two of them behind the machine gun, they sat in front of a closed door. The door where Sara should be.
He needed to get past them. He looked around. He had nothing. Just a pistol.
“Come on out,” the guard said.
No way in hell.
There was a hole in the wall where the machine gun was shooting. It led into another room. August looked closer. A storage room. Full of gas canisters.
August wondered how stupid they really were.
He stepped back, nearly far enough to hear the fighting in the main room. He took off his jacket and balled it up. He hoped it work.
He threw it into the other hall, near the hole in the wall. Bullets tore into it and then he heard a ping. A canister rocketed out and down the other hall and then he heard a boom that shook the house.
Kevan stared at Brookes, who was waiting for him to get up. Kevan felt stupid. He needed to think of something, he needed to concentrate.
He felt his handgun’s cold metal against his back. It couldn’t kill Brookes but he could use it. Kevan struggled to his feet.
“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” Brookes said.
Kevan put up his hands again and looked at the wood branch on the floor. This time he let Brookes move first. Brookes’ fist flew at him in a blur, but Kevan stayed calm.
Kevan dodged his fist like a swan, ducking and weaving past his attempted blows. Waiting for the perfect opening. And found it. Kevan’s fist flew at Brookes face.
Brookes saw through it and leaned forward. Kevan’s fist skidded across his face as Brookes fist laid into Kevan’s shoulder.
The hit spun Kevan but as he spun around, he brought his leg up flying into Brookes’ face.
Blood and cartilage exploded in Brookes’ nose as he stumbled back. But he recovered quickly and leapt for Kevan, yelling.
Silver flashed in Brookes’ face as Kevan pulled out his pistol and fired at Brookes’ face. Brookes jerked right and slipped.
Before he could hit the floor, a rod of wood smashed into his face and Brookes fell down limp.
Kevan dropped the broken branch onto the floor and bent over to catch his breath, rubbing his shoulder.
A moan came from Brookes.
“Still not dead?” Kevan asked.
Brookes jumped up as if nothing had happened. He wiped his face with his shirt. “Nice trick. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced pain.”
“Now experience death, fucker.” Kevan raised his arms again.
Brookes laughed. “After all the shit I’ve done and been through, I would’ve never expected to hesitate at the sight of a gun. Maybe I do still have some humanity left, after all.” Brookes raised his hands. “But it’s not going to happen again.”
Kevan had one play left.
Hands met in the middle as they fought. Fist and elbows flew. As Brookes’ fist hurled at Kevan, Kevan dodged and danced around them. Brookes did the same.
In fact, that was all Kevan was doing. He was on the defense. In his year of training, he had learned how to move to the dance of a fight, but not much else.
He was getting tired. Brookes was a machine, he didn’t move one foot out of place and didn’t slow down, at all.
Kevan’s body couldn’t keep up.
Brookes kicked back Kevan’s leg and sent a fist into Kevan’s gut. Shit. Kevan saw it as it approached. He was about to meet his end.
One more play.
Kevan reached around his back as Brookes fist cratered into his stomach. Blood erupted from Kevan’s lips as his body went flying across the room.
Leaving an activated grenade in his place.
Brookes’ smile was wiped off his face as it went off.
Dust and debris flew into the air as the heat from the explosion covered Kevan.
The smoke was settling, there was a ringing in Kevan’s ear. He struggled and failed to get up. Blood dripping from his lips.
He was sure that all of his ribs were broken, with an added bonus of ruptured organs. At the very least, none of the fragments from the grenade hit him.
He looked up. In front of him was the overturned stone table with his pistol in front of it.
Behind the table was Brookes, with half of his face and body charred, his pupils eyeing the gun. Brookes didn’t want to fight anymore. He wanted to end it.
“Shit,” Kevan said.
They both jumped to their feet and ran for the gun. A shock ran through Kevan’s body as his injuries worked against him.
Brookes moved fast as Kevan gritted his teeth through the pain. Kevan wasn’t going to make it in time.
Brookes’ feet skidded to a halt as he picked up the gun and pointed it at Kevan.
Before he could fire, Kevan screamed and leaped legs first over Brookes and grabbed his head and dropped down over the stone table.
Kevan’s back slammed hard onto the hardwood floors as a sickening crack snapped off behind him.
Kevan rolled over to his side. “Fuck.” He was hurt, badly.
He heard crying from one of the doors in front of him. He forced himself to his feet. His family needed him.
He looked back at Brookes. Kevan had snapped Brookes’ neck over the edge of the table. Brookes’ eyes stared up at him.
“Fucker,” Kevan spat. He walked to the door and opened it. It was a small dark room. There was dried blood on the floor and his kids in a baby carrier. His wife was nowhere to be seen.
“The faithless have two choices when they’re captured.” Kevan looked back at Brookes. His fucking head was talking. He wasn’t dead.
“Why won’t you die?” Kevan said.
Brookes continued, “To either become enlightened, or to die. Your wife chose death. But that choice wasn’t really hers.”
“What did you do with her!?” Kevan yelled.
“When our captives don’t give up so easily, we transport them to somewhere where they will. Where we have methods of turning people.” Brookes head bobbled around, as if he was trying to get up. But he failed. The nerves to his lower body were cut. “Once she becomes enlightened, there’s no turning her back. We do something to people’s heads, we change them. And their only escape from it is death. Once we’re done with her, she’ll never be the one you fell in love with again.”
“Where is she?” Kevan picked up a wood shard and clutched it in his hand.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Tell me!”
“You’ll never get anything from me. One last fuck you. I’ve accepted death a long time ago. You—”
Kevan shoved the shard into Brookes’ eye and his voice silenced. His smirk was permanently left on his face.
Kevan backed onto the wall and slid down. His wife was gone. His kids’ wailed as he stared at Brookes’ last crooked smile.
Silence was in the air. August was sure that the guards were dead. He waved his hand in the last hallway. Nobody fired back. He stood to his feet and walked into the hall. The remains of the guards were splattered on the walls and ceiling. He couldn’t believe that had worked. But there was no time to worry about that.
He took a deep breath. Right in front of him was a choice he was avoiding. In a few short steps, his destiny would change forever.
What would he do when he’d met the love th
at betrayed him? Betrayed everything they’d worked for?
He took a step forward and remembered back to the day his father had uttered his last breath. August remembered wailing on his caved-in face. Remembering his father’s pleas as he begged him to stop.
He didn’t, but once the red had left his eyes, he stared at what he had done. At his father’s eyes losing their life. They stared past August, past the ceiling as if they were staring at someone looking over them.
He’d remembered the smile on his father’s face. The “thank you” that left his lips as the life went from his breath and the light left him.
Then he remembered back to when he was younger. When his father was towering over him as his fist raised and lowered into him. While he cowered in a corner, crying for forgiveness that was never going to come. As his father laid one last kick to knock the breath out of him.
As he was left alone in the corner the entire night. Not moving. Barely breathing. With nobody checking up on him. It was that father that said “thank you.” It was that father that had smiled when August was killing him. Not the one who claimed to have changed. To become enlightened.
The gods changed him into something he wasn’t. And death was the only escape.
After those days, August had always looked up from his corner, hoping for something to carry him up from the hell that surrounded him. From the hell his father brought, from the disinterest of his mother. And when he grew older, somebody finally saved him.
Sara. August raised his hand to her and she carried him up. Raised him from his darkness. And when he met her, he grew into a man. He learned to feel something more than hate. Something more than pain.
He reveled in her love, in her joy. She was the light in his empty sky. Whenever they kissed, it felt like they were lost in each other for an everlasting eternity.
As August took his final step toward the door in the hall, he remembered back to a time when Sara and he were driving down the coast. The sun shining in their eyes. The wind blowing through their hair. Talking about nonsense, about nothing really.
But then the conversation took a turn. August had seen a story on the news about an older married couple with the husband in a coma. They didn’t believe he would wake up and the wife was given a choice to either let them pull the plug or not. She allowed them to.
August said, “When we eventually do get married, if something happened to one of us, our lives would be in the other’s hands. What would you do if I were to go into a coma? If the doctors say I’ll never wake?”
“When we eventually get married?” Sara laughed.
“I’m saving up for the ring now.”
“You need to have a job to do that.”
“Come on, answer the question.” They had that discussion before. Their love was eternal. Unfortunately, money and job stability weren’t.
“I don’t know what I would do, really. I think you’d have to tell me what you want first.”
“But I asked you first.”
“And I gave you a non-answer.”
“Okay. I’ll go first...” He paused. He already had put a lot of thought into it. But he didn’t want Sara to think that he didn’t take long to make big decisions. “I would want you to pull the plug.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. I would be dead already. If I were to never wake then what would I be? I’d like to think that the Wavering Radiant is real and I’d be granted entry.”
“But there could be a chance that you could wake.”
“Still, it would be better for everyone if they could move on with their lives, if they wouldn’t have to worry about keeping me alive for years. Plus, what if I was to wake and I became a vegetable? I believe there wouldn’t be a lower hell to live in. It’d be a mercy to kill me.”
“So grim.”
“So, tell me your answer.”
Sara paused for a few seconds and then looked at August.
“I…I’m not sure what I would want to happen. I’ll leave the decision to you, to decide what’s best for me. If you’re providing a mercy or not.”
She smiled as August looked at her.
August’s feet stopped in front of the door. He held his pistol in his hand. Gripping it tight enough to hurt. This was it.
He kicked open the door. A guard was huddled crying in the corner. August forcibly relieved him from his duty with bullets.
August looked around. Sara was laying on the floor against the wall with her eyes closed.
“Sara?”
Her eyes opened. She jumped to her feet. “August!” She ran and tried to jump on him. But August pushed back and she fell to the ground.
August stared at the ground, his gun shaking.
“August…What’s wrong?”
He pointed his pistol at her.
“August…” she looked surprised. She got back to her feet and tried to get closer to him. “What are you doing?”
“Stop,” he said. She stopped.
“Put—”
“Why?”
“You have to—”
“Why did you do it? Why did you tell them where we were? You put our lives in danger!”
“You have to trust me, August. If we submit, then He will save all of us. Everything can be the same again.”
“You know that nothing will ever be the same again.” He kept his gun trained on her. He needed to fire. He needed to kill her. He needed to stop hesitating.
He needed to give her mercy.
But as he looked at her, he remembered all the good times they had together. He remembered everything they’d been through. He couldn’t do it.
He lowered his gun.
“That’s what my mother first thought, too, but Ifor told me she was doing fine.”
“What? What did you do?”
“I told them where my mother was. They told me she joined Ifor on her own will. He was right. They can save us!”
August raised his gun again.
“He will save us. He was always watching over us,” Sara repeated. Tears entered her eyes.
How could she? She got her own mother killed. The very woman who cared for Sara for most of her life. Sara loved her. And now, Sara would do the same to him.
She had to be put down. To prevent her from hurting anyone else. His father wanted it. And Sara would want the same.
“He spoke to me, he told me how to fix everything.” She smiled as she spoke, she was lost. Her tears slicked her face. There was no turning back.
At least, he could see her smile for one last time.
His finger squeezed the trigger.
“Please come with me,” Sara asked.
“No.”
“But I love you.”
In a single bang, a resonance forever shook in August’s mind, body and his very core of existence. Sara’s body collapsed to the floor.
9
Godkiller
The sky was the bluest it’d been all year. Cascading mountains filled the cloudy horizon. Queen sat naked on the edge of her pool. Brookes leaned back between her legs, the water covering his nude body.
Queen’s fingers massaged his scalp as she washed his hair. He stared into the sky, while Queen hummed an eccentric tune. It was something she had heard hundreds of years ago. She forgot from where. But it stuck with her.
“Close your eyes,” Queen said. Brookes closed his eyes on her command and Queen dunked him into the water and pulled him back up. She continued to move her fingers through his hair.
She adored touching him. She didn’t know why. Was it a curiosity in what made the humans so different than the gods, when they looked exactly the same? Or was it something more?
Later in the day, Queen lay on top of him, riding him with her hips. Brookes stared into her eyes. His eyes needed her, they lusted for her. And she needed him too.
She kissed up and down his neck and then paused. Usually at this point, Brookes’ instinct would take over and he would attempt to ravish her and she would r
avish back.
But his arms lay by his side. She looked into his eyes but they were looking past her. Was her charm gone? Had she given him so much that she no longer excited him?
“Why me?” Brookes said.
“What?”
“Why choose me? Why a human? When you’re so far above me?”
She stared into his eyes. She usually wouldn’t have allowed him to question her. But she hesitated. She didn’t know how to answer him. Why him?
She was so far above that she was below. To have sex with a human. The other gods were disgusted with her dirty habits. But she needed him.
The feeling he gave her. To her, their lust was like a sickness, a sickness she didn’t want cured. He was different than her other suitors, there was a feeling she felt for him.
Queen stared at Brookes. “It’s because I lov—”
* * *
Queen jumped up. Her sheets slid off of her sweaty naked skin. The blue from the sky reflected into her room. She rubbed her eyes; they were wet.
“What?”
Why were they wet? She had never cried before.
Yesterday, she had felt a certain soul pass. Brookes. He was gone. And there was no way she could save him from the abyss. She tried with all her might, but as the god of death, she knew that passing souls only went one way. To the Wavering Radiant. She lied to herself, telling herself that she’d felt nothing.
She had many human suitors in the past. So many humans she’d casted aside on a whim. So, why did she feel this warmth for the latest?
Her chest felt hollow, her stomach turned. She started to breathe in deeply.
Why was she feeling this way? Feeling this way for a human? A freaking monkey? She was sick. She hit the top of her head with her hand.
“I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick,” she kept repeating to herself.
There was a thought in the back of her head that she felt coming up. That she was trying to run away from. Tears started to fall onto her chest.
“Stop,” she sobbed. “Stop crying!” She tried to will the tears away.
Then the realization hit. She loved him. Brookes’. A human man. The only love she ever had. The only person that understood her. She screamed out, the tears pouring out.
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