by C L Walker
The hollow man’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “Yes, all three.”
I stepped forward to hear him better and saw the moment he realized I wasn’t my normal self. He must have noticed me limping, or my general weakness.
He was on his feet and running for me before I registered the change. By the time I was paying attention he was beyond the fake magic circle and his cold hand was wrapped around my throat. Merikh was moving to save me, the assassin’s reflexes faster than my own. The angel raised his free hand and sent a blast of energy at the assassin.
Merikh didn’t slow down, didn’t react in any way to the destructive power of the hollow man. He only had a short distance to cover but it gave the hollow man time to look his way for a moment before his hand was removed from my throat.
“How?” the hollow man said, even as he was tossed back into the circle. “How?” he said again, as Merikh took up a position over him.
“Stay down,” Merikh said, his voice too calm, like the moment before a lightning strike. It had the same inhuman quality as the hollow men, or Bec, sometimes. The angel did as he was told.
“I don’t think I believed you,” I said, rubbing my bruised throat. “About magic not working on you.”
“I couldn’t have said it more often without becoming a bit weird about it.”
I looked down on the angel, still afraid of me, still my enemy, and still sympathetic. Merikh had punched him in the face and blood was oozing from a gash along his cheek, and as badly as I wanted to steal his power and heal my wounds I couldn’t bring myself to move forward. The hollow man had lashed out at me in desperation, seeing an opening and acting on it.
I had grown weak. I let the realization seep into my consciousness, accepting it so I could deal with it and move on. I would need to decide what to do about it, whether to crush the new emotions or ignore them, but for now I had something more important to finish.
“The key,” I said. “Does he have all the pieces?”
He shook his head. “One remains. We are moving to attack the fortress it is kept in and reclaim it.”
I had time. I could traverse the gate without the key but I would still have to deal with Seng, and he’d be powerful enough to hurt me when I did. If I took part of the key away from him, however, then he wouldn’t be able to open it at all, and I’d have the power to myself.
“Who has it?” I said. “Where is this fortress?”
“It is owned by a company with no leader, who are keeping it in the hopes of making a profit on it in the future.” The hollow man named an address that didn’t make sense to me, and Merikh repeated it for Mr. Jones to record.
“Now what?” Merikh said, turning to me. This left his back exposed to the hollow man, but he didn’t seem concerned.
“Now I get my power back and go fetch the piece of the key.”
Merikh stepped aside. I had the angel on the ground before me, ready for me to take my fill and end his life. I could use the blood on his face to heal my wounds and then tear out his heart for the rest. It would be easy, with Merikh helping me.
I couldn’t do it. Something about the angel’s helplessness was stopping me, and I couldn’t push past it.
Merikh turned back to the angel and spoke into the silence. “Why are you following Seng?”
“He is a god.” The words hung in the air as though the statement required no further explanation.
“And?” Merikh said. “He’s also a homicidal, power-hungry dick.”
“But he is a god. And he is the only one who will talk to us.”
The angels were servants, created to do the bidding of the divine. I could see in the confusion on the hollow man’s face that he saw this as self-evident, as the natural order. He didn’t know what else to do, couldn’t fathom a world where he didn’t follow orders.
The poor creature had simply been forced to follow a bad god.
I stepped back and shook my head, bringing on a dizzy spell. I needed to stop thinking of them as people, as having thoughts and feelings and motives that mattered.
They were the enemy, and they needed to be destroyed.
I stalked forward and the angel cowered. I reached down to take what I needed.
And froze. The hollow man had his eyes closed tight, his hand raised to defend himself. I’d stood over many people in the millennia my life spanned – men, women, children, human and not – and I had never had my hand staid before. If I wanted it I took it.
I backed away again, defeated as easily as if he had turned his angelic power on me in my weakened state.
I felt bad for him! I wanted to help him, not kill him. I wouldn’t fight by his side but I couldn’t end his life.
“You alright?” Merikh said. He stood between the angel and me, once again turning his back on the enemy. “You look a little flustered.”
“I can’t,” I said. They were the only words I could muster in the face of the incomprehensible thoughts storming through my mind. “I can’t.”
“Fair enough.”
As I continued backing away Merikh turned to the angel and held his hand out. I was sure he would do what I couldn’t and end his life, but instead he helped him up. He took a cloth from his pocket and wiped the blood from the angel’s already healed facial wound.
When the assassin spoke again it was softly, without the menace that had been there before. “You go tell your boss that we’re coming for him, alright? Get out of here.”
The angel thought it was a ruse, that we were toying with him for some reason. I thought so too, expecting Merikh to lash out at the last minute, perhaps laughing as he did.
The angel walked away, his back hunched as he watched us intently. When he was ten feet away he turned, rose a foot off the ground, and sped away, back toward downtown.
“Why did you let him go?” I said as Merikh walked toward me.
“Here,” the assassin said. He put the bloodstained cloth in my hand and stepped back.
The tattoos woke up, drinking in the power of the angel blood in a moment. Bones shifted within me as muscle tore and re-healed, as pierced organs closed up. In a moment I was reborn.
“You want to go fetch him?” Merikh said casually, as though it didn’t matter one way or the other. He seemed equally unimpressed by my transformation.
“No.” I felt whole again, with the power coursing over my skin. I stood straight, strong; ready to fight. “We have what we need.”
“Good.” Merikh was smiling too much, as though he’d just won a victory. It confused me for a moment, but then I understood.
“You were testing me,” I said. Even as I’d warned him I’d hurt him if he worked against me, the assassin had been confirming something for himself.
“I had to make sure you weren’t a bad guy. Bad guys kill scared people if it makes their lives better.”
“That’s…” I shook my head and sneered at him. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You were going to kill me if I picked wrong, weren’t you?”
He nodded.
“But what if I saw something you didn’t? What if I know the hollow men better than you and decided he was lying? What if it was for the greater good to end his life?”
Merikh answered my questions by not replying.
“Your morality is broken, assassin.”
“It isn’t my morality, Jumbo.” He walked back in the direction of the van. “I’m just trying to work out how to use it.”
I followed him, still sneering, still angry.
“Yesterday I would have killed him,” I said.
“No, you would have tried,” Merikh replied, cocky as ever.
Chapter 28
The address the hollow man had given us was across town. The fortress they’d be assaulting was a storage warehouse filled with family knickknacks in lockable rooms rented by the month.
We were parked down the street. I sat in the back and tried to work out how I was going to get the piece of the key and stop Seng from openi
ng the gate. Merikh and Mr. Jones were coming up with a plan of their own.
“We know they use guns,” Mr. Jones said. He was agitated and his Eastern European accent was thicker, his words clipped and hard. “We’ve seen them. It’ll take more than the two of us.”
“We’ve got Agmundr,” Merikh said. He was getting more annoyed by the second.
“No offense to your new friend here, but he’ll be destroyed.”
“He has a point,” I said. I was only half listening; their constant bickering had faded into the background. Thankfully.
“It’ll be a quick strike,” Merikh said. “In and out. Worst case scenario, we feed Agmundr a little blood and he hulks out.”
Mr. Jones glared at me like I was the one who’d suggested it. I agreed with him despite myself, but I couldn’t see a better way to do it.
Four hollow men stood at the entrance to the building and we’d seen another four go inside, though the operation had already been underway by the time we arrived. There could have been an army within, for all we knew.
Merikh and Mr. Jones could see the magic infusing the warehouse and they said it was formidable; they could walk through it but they worried there might be more mundane defenses within to complement the magic. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so I took their word for it.
I didn’t know if I could hurt the hollow men anymore. Would I hesitate if I had to fight one? If one stood before me, about to kill me, could I even defend myself?
I didn’t know anything anymore. I felt like something was still broken in me, some part of my brain damaged beyond repair. But I knew that couldn’t be. The tattoos had done their work and I was back to my normal – if human – self.
“You ready?” Merikh said, dragging me away from my troubling thoughts.
I paid attention to the situation: five angels had emerged from the warehouse carrying a sixth. I couldn’t tell if the fallen one was dead or simply too hurt to walk. The lead angel had a large object in his hand.
“Straight attack,” I said. “You lead and I move in when there’s something for me to…feed on.”
“That’s about it.”
Mr. Jones shook his head, but he started the van. “You people are crazy.”
“Punch it,” Merikh said. Mr. Jones shot him a questioning look and Merikh shook his head. “Just go.”
The van leapt forward and was soon racing down the street. The angels either didn’t notice or didn’t care. We moved into the middle of the empty street, apparently giving them a wide berth before veering toward the group.
The van ran through the middle of them, scattering them to the ground. Mr. Jones and Merikh were out and fighting before I’d recovered from the crash.
They moved in the same way, as though the fight was choreographed, every move planned in advance. The angels moved faster than any normal human could match, faster even than the assassins, and yet they were ready. They were holding their own.
I had never been jealous of those who spent their lives perfecting their fighting techniques, had always seen it as a waste of time. Seeing Merikh and Mr. Jones fight, though, made me want to reconsider.
Merikh took a blow to the abdomen that sent him reeling backward. Mr. Jones leapt to his defense, deflecting the angel’s follow-up attack with a nose-breaking punch to the face. It gave Merikh the moment he needed to rise and face a different threat.
I knew I wasn’t good enough to face the hollow men. I was just a man, now, albeit a large one. I wasn’t fast and I wasn’t as strong as my enemy. I wasn’t entirely sure I had it in me to fight them at all, but I knew there was only one way to find out.
I climbed out of the van and jumped into the fight, cursing the elder gods and their ridiculous creation in the process.
The first two hollow men to face me backed away. It gave me an opening to attack and I took it, my heart pounding. I faked a punch to one side of the first angel while attacking the other, taking him by surprise and landing a punch with all my strength behind it.
The hollow man rolled with the punch and for a moment I thought I’d done him some harm. But he’d been reacting to what he thought was going to happen and not what had. He turned back to look at me, confused. Then he attacked.
One punch, aimed at my head, and I was on my back on the ground, the world spinning around me. Blood poured from a fresh wound and I could feel my cracked skull grinding against itself.
Merikh dropped into a crouch beside me and slapped me. I went to hit him back but he was too quick, disappearing before I raised my hand.
And then the blood-tattoos began to glow. His hand had been covered in angel blood, his action the quickest way to give it to me without breaking from the fight. I felt the power spread across my body, healing my fractured skull and giving me back the strength I’d enjoyed for eons.
I stood, back to my normal self, and surveyed the scene: Merikh was backing away from two hollow men taking turns trying to get through his defenses. Mr. Jones was flailing, tripping over the fallen angel and barely getting his hands up fast enough to stop a boot from crushing his head.
The fallen angel. I moved through the fight, fast enough to avoid the random attacks that came my way. If I was going to end this I would need enough power to face them all. I would need it to last.
I stood over the wounded angel and saw that he was alive, though his wounds looked bad. Supernatural fire had charred his skin and melted his clothes into his flesh. Half his face was missing and I could see his shrunken, gray brain through a hole in his skull.
There was no hesitation, no fear that I wouldn’t be able to do battle with my enemies. I reached down and buried my hand in the cooked muscle of the hollow man, and let the tattoos feed.
The world opened up to me, my senses heightened far beyond human. I could feel the tiniest movement in the air as the beings around me continued their battle. I could smell the metal of the gun someone had drawn.
I turned and checked the battlefield again, searching for the source of the smell. I spotted a hollow man standing in the doorway of the warehouse, a rifle raised to his shoulder. I could feel the magic coming off the weapon from out in the street.
I ran. Everything appeared to slow down as I moved faster than even the angels could manage. I targeted the gunman and was before him an instant later.
He fired the rifle and the bullet deflected from the shield the tattoos on my chest had raised. He looked up at me in surprise for a moment, and then I grabbed his weapon and broke it over his skull.
He went down but I was already back amongst the remaining hollow men. They fell as easily, and moments after the tattoos awakening, the fight was over.
“Hulk out,” Mr. Jones said. He had blood staining his shirt and he was out of breath, but he looked like he’d live.
“Told you,” Merikh said. He looked as though none of the hollow men had touched him, but he had their blood soaking his clothes and he, too, looked exhausted.
“Sorry,” I said as I checked the ground for the object the hollow men had brought out of the warehouse. “You were taking too long.”
“No problem,” Merikh said. He doubled over and began breathing more slowly, consciously calming himself. “You’re welcome to do that any time.”
I smiled but I had my back to him; it wouldn’t be appropriate for warriors to show affection at the close of battle.
The object they’d liberated from the warehouse lay beneath one of the angels I had taken down. He was trying to keep it out of view, curling his broken body around it and trying to crawl away.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. For the first time in my life it wasn’t an idle comment. I meant it, but the angel didn’t know that. “I’m going to take the…thing away from you, and if you try to stop me you will get hurt.”
He tried anyway, because that’s what he’d been ordered to do and he had no choice. I understood that now. I pulled the leather bag from his arms without breaking him any further.
&n
bsp; “So,” Merikh said, appearing at my side. He was no longer winded and I wondered how he’d managed it. “What’s inside?”
I pulled open the zipper to find a stone mask within, broken down the center and worn down with age. It looked fragile, and I was surprised it hadn’t broken during the fight.
“We should leave,” Mr. Jones said. He was still a little out of breath which, given what had just happened, was better than he should have been.
“You have to tell me who, or what, you people are,” I said.
“Just a couple of guys who couldn’t cut it as bakers,” Merikh said, laughing as he led the way.
I had Seng’s key in my hands. The little god wasn’t opening anything without me now. I could bury the stone mask under a building and waltz into the hell, opening the door and taking what I wanted from within.
I settled in the back of the car and let my imagination run with the image of the tattoos fully powered with reserves for decades. Another image appeared alongside it, though.
The city in flames, damned souls roaming the streets, finally free of their hell. It was going to be a side effect of what I was planning, and for some reason I couldn’t erase the unease it brought me.
I put the thought aside and cradled the bag in my lap.
Chapter 29
I dreamed of Erindis that night.
The moon shone bright enough to show me the great empty world around me as my horse fell, too exhausted to continue. I disentangled myself from the animal and started running. I was crossing the great plain as fast as I could, though I knew I couldn’t hope to get to her in time. I had to try anyway.
A year had passed since the elder god Ohm made her offer, and we had remade the world. Where once tribes fought for dominance there was now only her. Our kingdom stretched to the edge of the world and we were happy.
Something changed in Erindis when the god gave her power. She became more confident, more regal, and she loved me in a way she never had before. She was my equal, where before she’d been a frightened young woman doing her duty.
And then the other elder gods had arrived. Two of them, glowing balls of energy appearing in our throne room while we watched the execution of the most recent rebel prisoners. The world had frozen in place but for Erindis and I before they spoke.