Summoned Read online

  “You’re something, you know that?”

  Phil was deigning to talk to me again. I grunted in reply.

  “I mean, I read the warning on your box and I’ve heard stories of what you can do.” He was excited, his voice rising in pitch as he babbled on. “I knew what to expect, but I didn’t, you know? I mean, how could I?”

  “Where are we going?” I wasn’t interested in his admiration or fear, or whatever odd mix of emotions he was feeling in the wake of his escape. I only wanted to know what he would have me do next, and when he planned on returning me to the locket.

  “We’re going to Fletcher and we’re going to wipe his smug smile off his face.”

  “Fletcher is your sworn enemy?”

  “Yeah.” Phil nodded and licked his lips. “We’ll leave a mess for the girls to find on Monday.”

  “What did this Fletcher do to you to warrant your anger?”

  He laughed. “I’m not angry, big guy. This is business, that’s all. I took some of his clients and he got mad, and this is how we play.”

  Play? My new master seemed to be trying to find the quickest way to make me dislike him, and he was succeeding rapidly.

  “He took it too far this time, but I’m going to finish it.”

  “You took his clients.” I was prompting him, but he wouldn’t realize, he was so wrapped up in his own ego.

  “Yeah. I snatched them right out from under him. He’s good, but I’m magic.”

  Information appeared in my mind at the sound of his voice, explanations for the odd concepts he was using. I saw images of boardrooms and men in suits like his. I saw the wealth they fought over, the deals and the odd tactics they deployed in their corporate combat.

  Phil had cheated by using magic. And now he wanted me to finish it for him.

  “You are a child,” I said, my voice low and angry. He didn’t seem to notice. Then again, my voice was like that most of the time.

  “Monday I’ll take the rest of them,” he continued, celebrating a win that hadn’t happened yet. “All his clients, his office, everything. Stupid prick.”

  “You are playing with powers you cannot possibly understand to win prestige and money.”

  “Yeah, of course.” He still hadn’t turned to look at me, or he might have lost the stupid grin on his fat face. “That’s what it’s all about. Winner take all and to hell with the loser.”

  My fists were held so tight that they were starting to hurt, and the bullet wound in my shoulder was aching. I wanted to kill him, to tear him apart. He’d started his little war and now he wanted me to finish it. There were no lands at stake, no people, nothing of value. Only money, and he saw it as a game. I had killed men, soldiers like myself, for his game.

  But I couldn’t do anything about it. The tattoos covering my skin would come to life if I tried to act. They would restrict my movement and bring me pain, and moments later I would do whatever the little man told me to do, whether I wanted to or not. I had once fought my captivity, but I knew better now.

  We pulled up outside another building, this one taller than the last. The lobby was an enormous, brightly lit space. Two men with handguns patrolled the base of the building but it was otherwise empty.

  “Fletcher is within?” I said. My eyes were boring a hole in the chair that separated the two of us.

  “Probably. And if he is he’s a dead man.”

  “You should not ask me to do this.”

  “What?” He finally turned to face me, a flash of confusion breaking his idiotic grin.

  “I have torn armies to pieces with my bare hands, and brought nations to their knees before me. You should not try and use me for your trivial games.”

  His grin changed to a cruel smile and he let his eyes wander over my body. He liked what he saw through the open, blood-splattered robe. Not as a man looking at a man he desired, but as an owner looking at his slave.

  “You’re my bitch,” he said at last, when he’d gotten his fill of me. “You’ve had nations on their knees and together we will do it again. I’ve got some amazing ideas for you, if you can do what they say you can.”

  “You are not worthy,” I said. The words were heavy in my mouth, a death sentence he didn’t recognize.

  “Shut your mouth and do as you’re told.”

  His confidence kept him from seeing the threat on my face and in my voice. His arrogance kept him from realizing that his time was about to be over.

  I raised my hand, requesting permission to speak. He chuckled and nodded.

  “If you keep me from speaking then I will be unable to warn you if I see danger coming your way. There have been masters who regretted doing it in the past.”

  “Sure, big guy, whatever you say. You can speak.”

  “You’re going to piss yourself as you die, you sniveling child.”

  The smile faded from his face; I honestly don’t think anyone had ever spoken to him that way before. Somehow he’d gotten through life being as irritating as he was and nobody had shown the foresight to slap him down.

  “You belong to me, Agmundr.”

  He pronounced my name wrong, the syllables stumbling into each other in his unsophisticated mouth.

  “I follow your orders,” I replied. “I don’t belong to you.” It was a distinction without a difference and I knew it. From the look on his face he did too.

  “Shouldn’t you be kissing my ass? I can set you free if I want to.”

  I laughed at the idea; he thought I was some kind of violence-genie and he could use one of his wishes to release me from my prison. He wasn’t the first to tempt me with the impossible, but he truly didn’t know what he was talking about and it sounded more ridiculous from him than it did from most.

  “What is the plan?” I said when my amusement had died down a little and he had started scowling. “You’re going to send me into a building full of innocent people in the hopes that I can find the target of your childish anger?”

  He really didn’t like being called childish; the tattoo over my heart began to glow in response to the anger it felt coming from him.

  “I’m going inside,” he said through clenched teeth. “If he’s there I’ll signal and you’ll come running.”

  “As you wish.”

  He left the vehicle and slammed the door, then stomped away into the cold evening. I kept my eye on him until he entered the building, then turned to the opposite window of the car and focused on the city beyond.

  There were shadows there, waiting for me to stumble. One saw me watching it and disappeared. Another appeared on top of a building nearby.

  I raised my right hand and held it up for a few seconds, then waved for them to join me. If they were going to be chasing me around then I might as well find out why.

  A humanoid shadow appeared in the seat beside me. When he spoke I recognized his voice and felt the hatred that ran through his every word.

  “Agmundr. Have you come to kill us again?”

  Chapter 4

  “I thought I was pretty clear on this,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea to kill you the first time.”

  Seng had once been a god, one of the little ones that served a single tribe in the endless forests of the old world. Once I was done with the main pantheons I had started on creatures like him, because my master at the time hadn’t specified when I should stop or if he only wanted a certain type of god killed.

  “So you say.” His voice was as ethereal as the rest of him and it was difficult to make him out, even though I could tell by his tone that he was practically screaming at me.

  “Where is your lovely wife?”

  Seng’s mythology hadn’t been that different to most of the old gods: holy in-fighting and intrigue, scandal and relationship angst. It had quickly become apparent to me, as I worked my way through countless examples of his kind, that most of the gods were little more than the childish dreams of small men.

  “She has found something more interested to fill her time. We have eternit
y, Agmundr. Did you think we would spend all of it following you around?”

  “I was starting to wonder.”

  When I was done with the slaughter and my master at the time realized what he had wrought, he had sent me back to my prison. It took centuries before someone was brave enough to summon me again, and Seng and the other shadows of the gods had been there waiting for me. Their attention never rose above taunts and threats, but they still had some power. One day I would be weak enough for them to act, and that was all they were waiting for.

  “I apologize,” I said, though I knew it would make no difference. “My actions were not my own.”

  “How many men have you killed since you were released from your vessel? You have been free in the world for the blink of an eye and you have ended the existence of a handful of men.”

  “Free is a strong way of putting it.” My fists were clenched again but this time it wasn’t in anger; I was frustrated, as I always was when I had to deal with my past.

  “You have a way out.”

  This was their taunt, Seng and his woman. This was what they spent their time dreaming of over the centuries of my incarceration. They wanted me to give up and allow myself to die, and they had an eternity to convince me.

  “That isn’t an option.”

  “So your mate gets to live but mine must die?” Seng’s voice held no emotion. I couldn’t tell if he really cared or if he was simply reading from a script they had come up with while I was away.

  “It is the one good thing I can do, Seng.”

  “The hero Agmundr. Should I feel sorry for you? Should pity be my response to your plight?”

  “I don’t care what you feel, Seng.”

  His chuckle was like a breeze blowing through the branches of a tree, but even that soft sound was more than I wanted to hear.

  “You brought this on yourself. Your death is long overdue.” He paused before delivering his final, obvious line. I hated him for it. “As is hers.”

  I lashed out, sending my fist through the smudge of darkness that was all that remained of the god. He dispersed as I drove my forearm through the car window and dented the door.

  They knew how to rile me up, knew how to get me to react even though there was nothing they could do. Mention Erindis and I could no more control myself than I could escape my life. Their strongest power was now their knowledge of my past, and they used it with precision.

  My master was returning from the building. He was still stomping, and the look on his face took some of the sting out of Seng’s actions. He was annoyed, which pleased me endlessly.

  “I told you to come when I called,” he said, loud enough for me to hear him through the thick glass. Or perhaps I was hearing him through the hole I’d put in his shiny car.

  I opened the door nearest him and stepped out. I took my time straightening, letting him get a feel for my size. Annoyingly, he didn’t step back like a sane person would have.

  “You are going to have to learn respect.” He punctuated each word by poking me in the chest. I imagined what it would be like to tear his fingers off.

  “Your enemy is here?”

  “He’s waiting upstairs.”

  “I assume he has men at his disposal?” Despite myself, my bloodlust was rising at the thought of the coming violence. It was why I’d been chosen for binding.

  “The remains of his little mercenary band are waiting for you.”

  “And the innocents?” I nodded toward the guards patrolling the lobby. “What should I do with them?”

  “I don’t care.” He gave it more than a moment’s thought and continued. “No, you know what? Kill them too. Make it bloody. It’ll sell the story when the cops get here.”

  The knowledge of what a ‘cop’ was arrived in my mind, along with enough information about the state of law and order in this strange future that I was able to piece together what would happen when I was done with Phil’s orders.

  “Your world is practically divine, compared to anything I’ve ever seen before. Surely you don’t need this?”

  I knew he wouldn’t listen; my masters never did. He ignored my words as he contemplated the coming battle.

  “Listen to me,” I said, grabbing his arm and forcing him to pay me mind. “This isn’t something you should do. I promise you will regret it.”

  The shadows of dead gods twitched at the corners of my eyes, watching me and judging.

  He stepped back so he could look up at me to deliver his orders. “Go inside and find Fletcher. Kill anyone you have to. Clear a path for me to his office and make sure I can get there safely, but don’t kill him.”

  “You’re saving that for yourself,” I said.

  “Oh yeah. That prick has it coming.”

  “I have warned you.”

  “Do as you’re told, Agmundr.”

  He pronounced my name incorrectly, but I expected nothing less from an amateur magic weaver and professional dullard.

  “As you wish.”

  I stepped past him and headed for the gleaming building and its brightly lit entrance.

  Chapter 5

  The door slid open when I approached and the guard behind the large front desk looked up at me. He was watching some sport I didn’t know on a television, which I recognized because it was important to Phil.

  In that moment I had all the anger I needed to do battle with the man behind the desk and the one creeping up on me from the side. I had more than enough steam to blow off, and Phil’s orders practically requiring violence made a good excuse. I was a killer of men and women, my death count legendary, and these men were standing in my way.

  “I am going upstairs,” I said. I stopped walking when I was halfway between the door and the desk. Only my eyes moved as I scanned the area for more potential enemies. “Do not try to stop me.”

  “We’re closed,” the guard moving up beside me said. “You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

  I let my eyes linger on him for a moment. My robe had fallen open and I knew he could see the blood dried on my chest from the long-healed bullet wound.

  “I have to go upstairs. You can allow me to go or you can stand in my way. It would be wise of you to restrain yourself.”

  It was a gamble, that the men would listen to my warning and abandon their posts rather than try to stop me. In their position I would have attacked in order to get the upper hand early. I would rather have killed an intruder who threatened me than entertain the idea of letting him go.

  But these men were not like me and I hoped they would go a different route. I hoped they would look away and let me follow my orders without ending their lives. There would be men upstairs who would shoot at me before I had a chance to warn them, and I would have to kill those men. But I hoped the guards could be reasoned with.

  The one standing nearby drew his weapon and held it ready, aimed at the floor.

  “Get down on your knees,” he said. When I didn’t comply he tried again. “I said get down.”

  I turned slowly to face him with my hands in view at my sides. The man behind the desk had drawn his gun too, but he hadn’t risen from his seat.

  “I have killed men tonight and soon I will kill more. You are welcome to place a telephone call to the police once I have gone upstairs, but I am going upstairs.”

  I could see Phil out of the corner of my eye. He’d left the car and was heading toward us, and I knew what he’d do when he arrived. He hadn’t realized he’d changed his order, and probably still thought I was going to kill the men. If he gave me another direct order to kill the guards I would no longer have a choice.

  “Sir, get down on your knees.” The standing guard was now aiming his gun at me. I could see the shake in his hands as he contemplated what would come next.

  A moment was coming when a decision would have to be made. My master would get to the door or the guard would fire and I would have to hurt these men. I would be left with no other options. My tattoos began to squirm at the promise o
f violence hanging in the air.

  I turned and began walking toward the bank of elevators, ignoring the feeling of weapons aimed at my back. Perhaps the men would fire, in which case they would have sealed their own fate. But I chose to gamble that the guards weren’t seasoned killers, and when the moment came they would choose to back down rather than take a man’s life.

  I pressed the tiny button on the wall and the door slid open. I kept my eyes firmly ahead of me and stepped inside, afraid that even looking at them would be provocation enough.

  A complicated tune was playing within the elevator, an odd sound that came from an instrument I didn’t recognize. I pressed the button for the floor near the top of the building where the man Fleming was waiting for me.

  “I’m surprised,” Seng said from the empty air beside me. “I expected a different outcome.”

  “I’m a complicated man,” I replied.

  “You are the least complicated man that has ever lived.” Seng’s voice was fading as we rose higher; creatures like him were not meant for the technological marvels of this future world.

  “You’d be surprised.”

  A bell sounded and the door opened. I spotted the men waiting for me. There would be no further discussions.

  Chapter 6

  Two men were in cover behind a long wooden desk. Another two were waiting in the corridors leading off to either side. My quarry would no doubt be down one of these.

  The tattoos over my heart squirmed in anticipation at the mix of fear and excitement coming from the office.

  I launched from the elevator, trusting surprise to keep me from harm for the first few moments. I guessed that even with the inclusion of the powerful rifles Fleming’s men wielded there were few men willing to open fire without first seeing who they might be killing.

  I made it as far as the desk before one of the men in the corridors reacted. His shot went wide, and a piece of the wall behind me exploded into dust. I reached over the desk and grabbed the arm of the man nearest to me before dragging him out of cover. His rifle caught on the shiny wood that had been his hiding place and he left it behind to clatter on to the polished stone floor.