Summoned to Destroy Read online

  “A djinn, right?” The reply came from O’Leary, another soldier. I wasn’t sure but I didn’t think many other black men were called O’Leary.

  I sat on a bench in a cold room. They hadn’t provided me with clothes yet but I had the tattoos to keep me warm. The room was bare but for the bench, and the three soldiers tasked with guarding me stood opposite, observing me.

  They wore uniforms I didn’t recognize and I realized I hadn’t received the memories from Erindis that I normally would have received from a new master. She had given me nothing new, no guidance on completing her orders, no new view on the world.

  It made sense; she had been forced to summon me and hadn’t had a mission in mind. She’d done as she was ordered and that was all that had been expected of her. With no mission in mind there had been no memories required.

  I was left only with the remains of what I had acquired when Fletcher, the last man to summon me, had given me my mission to protect his daughter.

  “What do you think is going on in that giant head of his?” Bannon said. “He’s what, a thousand years old?”

  “More, I hear,” the third soldier, Foley, said. He was a scrawny man and his clothes didn’t fit. I could tell by the way he moved that he was as much a fighter as the others, but the giant glasses set him apart from the other two.

  “Bullshit,” Bannon said. He took a step toward me but stopped, still unsure of his safety. “He’s been trapped in that ugly piece of jewelry. He’s been in prison.”

  “Maybe he’s thinking about getting some,” Foley said. He laughed. “That’s what I’d be thinking about.”

  “No,” O’Leary said. “I think he’s working out how to finish what he started upstairs.”

  I wasn’t. I already knew exactly how to finish what I started, how to twist what Erindis had said to fit my own objectives. It was what I did, finding loopholes in my master’s orders and exploiting them to get what I wanted. I could have crushed these men and been on my way and there was nothing they could do to stop me.

  “Is that what you’re doing, freak?” Bannon said.

  I was going to have a problem with Bannon if I had to spend much more time around him. He was clearly the leader of this impromptu squad and a bully, but I was a foot taller than him and I could have snapped him in half without the tattoos. With the tattoos powered, as they were now, I could have killed him with a glance.

  “Let’s find out,” he said. He stood to attention opposite me, pushing O’Leary out of the way and putting his hands behind his back. “Stand, Agmundr.”

  He got my name wrong, pronouncing it as it was spelled and mangling it further with his strange accent. But I knew what he wanted and I did as I was told. Erindis had ordered me to, so I stood and waited for whatever was coming next.

  “How strong are you?” he said. The other two were looking at him like he was crazy, because he was. They’d all seen what I could do.

  “Maybe we don’t have to do this, this time,” Foley said. He was fidgeting with his glasses, resettling them on his nose.

  “Shut up,” Bannon said. “Answer me, freak. That’s an order.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said. My voice made Foley and O’Leary jump, but Bannon held his ground. “You can’t order me to speak, or think, or want or need. Just do.”

  Bannon’s smile widened. “Alright. I see. Don’t defend yourself.”

  He stepped forward and punched me in the face. His ring tore a gash in my cheek that stung immediately, but I didn’t react.

  “The colonel isn’t going to be happy with you breaking him,” O’Leary said. “Let’s just calm down.”

  Bannon turned on the black man. “Calm down? Did you see him up there? Did you see what he did? I don’t need to calm down; you people need to get more angry.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This little man cannot hurt me.”

  I was provoking him and I knew it. I knew what he’d do and I welcomed it. He couldn’t really hurt me, not with the amount of divine energy coursing through the blood-tattoos. I wasn’t scared.

  He reacted to my words the way I knew he would, turning and immediately attacking me. His next punch glanced off my jaw, and the one after landed just below my ribs. He’d intended to freeze my diaphragm and have me choking on the floor. I disappointed him, remaining steady.

  “You’re playing with fire,” Foley said. He’d backed away as far as the room allowed and had his back against the wall.

  “Shut up,” Bannon said. “Get on your knees, djinn.”

  I was going to enjoy hurting these men, especially Bannon. He was a weak man trying to act big, a sad example of humanity.

  I dropped to my knees and awaited the next attack.

  “Listen,” O’Leary said. He stopped talking for a moment when Bannon glared at him but couldn’t hold his tongue for long. “You saw him upstairs. He can kill us.”

  “No, he can’t.” Bannon’s fists were ready, and he had a hungry look in his eyes. “His girl told him to chill, so he’ll chill.”

  “Think about it, man,” Foley said.

  “I think your friend wants to bed me,” I said. “Look at the lust in his eyes.”

  Bannon threw everything he had at me, kicking me in the face before grabbing the back of my head and trying to finish the job with his fists. He aimed his boot between my legs and let loose, and still I didn’t move. I was bleeding and I was bruised, but I was upright and apparently unaffected by his barrage.

  He was out of breath as he moved behind me and drew his pistol. He put it against the back of my head. I could feel the metal shaking in hands that had grown tired beating me.

  I directed some of the divine power to the tattoos at the back of my head, just in case. I was willing to let him have his fun but I wasn’t suicidal.

  He bent down and whispered in my ear. “I’ve had your girl. We all have. Bitch loved it, too.”

  A lesser man would have reacted, would have given him what he wanted. He thought he wanted me to attack him so he could order me to stop and thereby get some kind of victory. I knew I would kill him, though, and that wasn’t what Erindis had intended.

  He pushed the barrel against my head a little harder, trying to get me to move out of the way of the cold steel, but I held my place despite the effort he put in.

  He continued walking around me until he stood before me again, the gun held tight in his hand.

  “Turns out, I don’t care what the colonel says.”

  He raised the gun and fired, and I finally had to act.

  I caught the bullet, powering myself until I was fast enough that they turned to statues. The bullet spun in my hand for a moment and I watched it, wondering what my next move was. I could kill them and wait for the next guards to come down and find me surrounded by the bodies. I could keep playing their stupid game, letting them hit me and try to shoot me. I could just leave.

  But Erindis waited for me somewhere upstairs and she’d given me an order. I couldn’t…no, I wouldn’t disobey her.

  I let the tattoos power down and the men came back to life. Even Bannon looked at me in surprise when I held up the bullet for him to see.

  I handed him the bullet. “Continue on this path and it will end badly for you.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Bannon said. I’d taken the wind out of him and now he looked lost. He should have been scared, but it was a start.

  The god, their colonel, was standing in the door with something under his arm. Somehow I hadn’t noticed him.

  “That went better than I expected,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  The men snapped to attention, unable to meet their leader’s gaze.

  “Your men were being little boys,” I said. “You should punish them for their reckless behavior.”

  “I will.” He seemed too happy; I would have been furious if my men disobeyed my orders. “Get out.”

  “Sir,” Bannon said, beginning to object. He saw the look in the god’s eyes and saluted
instead. “Sir.”

  They left, hurrying out of the room before the god changed his mind.

  “I brought you some clothes.” He handed me the package under his arm. I opened it to find pants and a shirt, and flimsy looking white shoes. “I apologize for my men, but you did just go on a rampage.”

  “You will see worse before this is done.” I pulled on the clothes, more to put the god at ease than because I cared.

  “Still, boys will be boys.”

  He spoke with the same above-it-all confidence every god did until they were brought low. His ill-fitting suit, I now saw, was made to look that way on purpose, so as to show off how well built he was. He could have easily adjusted it to suit his body better but he had to make sure people knew who he really was.

  “My name is Invehl. I would like to have a civilized discussion with you, Agmundr.”

  The divine power coming off him was stronger than I’d felt upstairs, but nothing like the gods of old. He wasn’t one of the pantheons I had killed under orders so long ago, but one of the new gods who’d been born into a world I’d cleansed. His power was less and it was subtle, with no heavens or angels to call his own.

  “Are you listening to me?” he said. He didn’t like that I wasn’t treating him as he thought he deserved; his smile was faltering.

  “I’m working out how many pieces to leave you in before I kill you.”

  His laugh was a bark in my face. “Such bravado in the face of complete failure. So very old-world.”

  “You don’t want to have a civilized conversation,” I said. “You want to offer me a place in your army. You want to assure me that I can be a free man so long as I do what you say, because I’m going to do what you say anyway. You want to get me to believe in whatever pathetic cause you’re hounding so I will follow orders and not try to kill you the first opportunity I get.”

  He paused before answering, unsure what to say next. I could see I’d called it, laid out his entire argument before he’d even made it. Even the smartest humans were arrogant enough to believe they could surprise me, and gods were a lot worse.

  “I have your lovely wife,” he said at last. “I would have summoned you myself—”

  “But gods can’t summon me.”

  “No, unfortunately. So here we are. I have a hostage and you have an enemy to rail against, and neither of us are happy about the situation.”

  I sat on the bench again and looked him in the eyes; with me sitting and him standing, our gaze was level.

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” I said, keeping my tone even and calm. There would be time for more fighting later, but for now I needed to work out what was going on. “Kill a rival god, or destroy a pesky army? You should know I am not what I once was.”

  “No, you’re not. The end of days really popped your bubble, didn’t it?”

  “I am still enough to best you.”

  “You think so?” he said. He raised his hand as his power extended out to wrap around me. I was lifted off the bench and suspended in the air. “I just wanted to see what you could do upstairs. I could have ended it at any time.”

  I still had his power running through the tattoos. I could have freed myself and shown him he had no control over me. A younger me would have done just that, and probably picked another fight with him to prove a point. But I was smarter than that, better able to control myself. I kept my power hidden and let him have his fun.

  He put me down, disappointed that I hadn’t reacted differently.

  “So?” I said. “What petty grievance would you like me to rectify for you?”

  “The end of days changed you,” he said.

  I could hear the speech coming. I wanted to shut him up and tell him to get on with it, but given his arrogance I decided to let him go in the hope that he’d tell me more of what I needed to destroy him.

  “It changed everything,” he said. “Before the elder god Ohm returned to destroy the world most of us didn’t even know the elder gods existed. We do now, and we know what they did for us. They kept us in check, kept us focused. Now, though, they appear to have abdicated responsibility for us. They’ve left us to fend for ourselves.”

  “You’re sad because your parents were distant and now they’ve abandoned you?”

  “We are back to fighting in public again,” he said, ignoring me. “Our wars were always fought in secret and through proxies. Now it is all about who can hurt the others the most. And then the old heavens began to open and there were angels all over the place, and things really went crazy. There are creatures dragging themselves out of the hells that are going to turn the tide of our wars without respect for who is actually the better god.”

  “And? What would you like me to do about it?”

  “You sealed the heavens shut the first time, yes?”

  I nodded. The new gods were aware of my actions; it was why they’d kept a lower profile than their slain brethren.

  “I want you to do it again, but more permanently this time.”

  I sighed and shook my head. This god was delusional and ill informed. He wanted me to do something nobody could; my seals hadn’t held the first time, but had been kept in place by the elder gods. They were opening now because the elder gods no longer cared. I couldn’t keep the seals closed if I wanted to.

  “I want you to destroy them,” he said.

  That got my attention. Destroy the thousand heavens? That was the work of someone far greater than I had ever been. That was the work of someone greater than all but the elder gods themselves.

  “You realize you’re full of it, right?” I said. “Can’t be done.”

  “Yes, it can, and I’ll tell you how. I can’t get into the heavens to do it myself, but you can. They’re your seals closing the gates and I’m betting you can just walk through.”

  I could, but the fact that he wasn’t sure was important. It meant he hadn’t been following me and didn’t really know anything about me beyond what he had discovered since I was summoned. It gave me something I could potentially use later.

  “Every heaven has an anchor, of sorts,” he said. “A center point that holds it to our world and stops it from…I don’t know, floating away.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, though I didn’t know any better. My job had been to punch the problem until it went away and I had never cared for the cosmology behind it.

  “These anchors are called heartstones. Without them the heaven will detach from earth and go find some other world to connect with. I want you to travel to the heavens, one by one, and bring me back the heartstones you find within.”

  I didn’t know if he was crazy or not, but he seemed to believe it and he had no reason to lie to me. He thought it was true, and it might have been.

  “What happens to the souls in the heaven, once I remove the heartstone and their home floats away?”

  He looked confused, and I knew the answer before he said it.

  “Who cares?”

  There it was, a god’s eye view of the world. He didn’t know the answer and had no desire to find out. The souls who would be trapped were not his concern, so for all he cared they could all die.

  “I have some questions before I agree,” I said. He looked amused that I felt I could disagree at all, but he nodded. “How long has it been since Erindis retrieved me from my former master?”

  “About a month.”

  “Did she survive?” I’d seen Bec beaten and Roman stabbed, but I’d been drawn into my prison before their fates were sealed.

  “I have no idea.” He saw the look on my face and raised his hands. “Sorry, but I don’t. I will get someone to check for you.”

  “Don’t bother, I’ll do it myself.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re not going anywhere I don’t want you to go, and you’re going to be guarded the whole time.”

  This god was irritating me. All I wanted to do was take him apart and go find Erindis, but without knowing what was happening I
couldn’t risk her life. She might have been his only leverage, but to me she was more important than anything else in the world.

  “I will travel where I please and do what I want.” He began to object and I spoke over him. “This isn’t up for negotiation. If you want me to do this thing for you then you will have to live with my terms.”

  He was shaking as he stepped back, looking as annoyed as I felt.

  “You don’t get to dictate anything to me,” he said, his voice rising as he went on. “You are mine. You do what I say. Understand?”

  “Yes.” I understood; I just didn’t agree.

  “Good. Anything else?”

  I didn’t know how hard to go, whether I should risk his anger or not. I didn’t know him or how he worked. I hadn’t kept up on the dealings of the new gods.

  “If you hurt Erindis I will kill you,” I said. “If you use her pain to punish me, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  “Again, Agmundr, you don’t get to dictate terms to me. I am in charge here and you will do what you’re told. Besides, you couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t want you to.”

  “You are not the first god I would have killed,” I replied.

  “That was a long time ago, and as you said, you’re not the man you once were.”

  “You would not be the first god I’ve killed this month.”

  That shut him up. He watched me for some sign that I was lying, or joking, or something. But he wouldn’t find any; I had killed Seng, an ancient trickster god, days before Erindis stole my prison from Bec. I had killed him, and I would have no hesitation killing this Invehl.

  He came to a decision, walking to the door and turning his back on me. It was over-confidence, but I wasn’t ready to end him yet.

  “Come upstairs when you’re ready. I want you to start as soon as possible.”

  “No.” My voice stopped him in place. He spun around to face me and I smiled at the anger on display. “No.”

  “You…you don’t get to—”

  “Shut up, little god. I don’t obey you. I obey the one who summoned me, and that’s Erindis. Bring her here so that we can talk and I will consider your request.”