The Hammer of War, Chapter 58

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 0

STR – 88(300)
DEX – 80(300)
VIT – 202(300)

—

“Thank you, Amir,” she said. She smiled then. Small. Real. It didn’t light anything up. It just sat there on her mouth for a second like a thing that had finally arrived too late for the party.

She jumped off the ledge.

The moment her heels tipped, I moved.

I didn’t think about the street or the witnesses or whether the roof edge would hold. I just stepped into space, pulled the [Wings of Sanguinius] when gravity had done enough, and let them take the rest. The feathers unfolded through coat and shirt like they weren’t there. The air bit hard. The wind took my hair and tried to peel my eyes. I ignored it and focused on the girl dropping fast below me.

I reached her ankle.

Her skin was cold. Her body jerked from the catch. I swung beneath and up again and brought her close in one smooth motion. I pulled her into both arms and lifted until her chest settled against mine and her head found my shoulder. She didn’t scream. She didn’t claw. Her arms slid around my neck and stayed there. Her eyes looked past me at nothing.

I climbed, not fast enough to draw attention, not slow enough to make her think about the ground. The city laid itself out and the towers glimmered from all the lights streaming from their windows. I fly in circles around the blocks, before going higher. The cold hit our faces and then our ears and then our hands. The feathers shrugged it off. She blinked and the deadness didn’t change, but her mouth relaxed a little. I took another lap and felt her fingers grip more deliberately.

“Are you an angel?” she asked.

“Just a man with special powers,” I said. “Good timing, mostly.”

She turned her head a fraction and watched the wings move. The feathers slid and locked and cut. The air folded around them with every beat. I wondered how the real Angels would take this if they cared. I’d seen fallen ones and one of them had been kicked out of the sky and into the street. I didn’t know how long I had before the others noticed me. I couldn’t fix that from here.

“Thank you,” she said. “For catching me.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“I wish I could forget it,” she said. “All of it. Otherwise I don’t think I can keep going.”

She didn’t cry. She didn’t shake. Her voice was dead. Aera seemed long past the point of giving up. Could I do something to fix her? She wanted to forget.

That would require a ton of therapy, which wouldn’t make her forget but simply allow her to deal with it. Or straight up mind control, which….

[Mindshackle Scarabs] could do it. 

“I can do that,” I said.

She turned her face into my shoulder. “How?”

“I can’t right now,” I said. “It’s a long story and it’s boring, but I can do it–make you forget. Give me three days. You hear me? Three days. I’ll buy the thing I need and I’ll pull out the bad memories. It’ll be gone.”

“That sounds crazy… but then you have wings and we’re flying; so, maybe not.” Her fingers tightened on my collar. “Three days.”

“Three days,” I said. “Don’t hurt or try to kill yourself for three days.” 

“Promise,” she said.

“Pinky swear?” I said.

She pulled one hand free, found my smallest finger in the wind, and hooked it. Her grip was small and strong. I hooked back.

“I promise,” she said. “I won’t do it for three days.”

“Good,” I said.

We circled once more and then I brought us home. I came in high over the block and dropped onto the balcony we never used in daylight. The door was open. Alexandra sat with a cup of tea on the small table, eyes on the steam. She wore the coat she preferred when she wanted to signal that visitors were a nuisance. She watched me land and didn’t stand up.

“Why did you bring her?” she asked.

I set Jung Aera down on her feet. She wobbled and then caught herself on the railing. I kept a hand at her elbow until I was sure the legs worked.

“She tried to step off a building,” I said. “I told her I could erase the part that’s killing her. In three days.”

“People step off buildings every day,” Alexandra said. She sipped. “If they truly wish to end their lives, they should endeavor to do so for a great cause.”

Jung Aera turned her head. She looked at Alexandra’s face the way people look at knives in a kitchen drawer. Then she looked back at me. She didn’t argue. She didn’t care about philosophy.

“She was abducted and raped three nights ago,” I said. “The police turned her into a statement number and a waste of time. Her family told her to stay quiet. You know the rest.”

Alexandra set the cup down and tapped the saucer with a fingernail. 

“I see,” she said.

“I’m going to use [Mindshackle Scarabs] on her,” I said. “She can keep the rest of her life. She can breathe without carrying that specific weight. We don’t just hunt the predators that hunt humanity. We patch the damage where we can.”

“We should help humanity in general,” she said. “Not individuals.”

“We can’t help humanity in general right now,” I said. “We have two people and an army that scares the neighbors. We help who is in front of us until we can help the rest.”

She held my eyes a second longer and then looked at Jung Aera.

“You will have a room,” she said. “A bed. A shower. Clothes that fit. Do not leave the apartment without one of us. There’s a lot of food in the fridge. Sleep as much as you want to. If you hear something below this floor that sounds wrong, you did not hear it. If something pounds on the wall, it is not your problem.”

Jung Aera nodded. “Okay.”

Alexandra looked back at me. 

“You have no War Points,” she said. “So your promise relies on a dungeon or another hidden quest. The Khornate is next.”

“I’ll go tomorrow morning,” I said. “Earliest I can.”

Alexandra nodded. She stood, picked up the tea, and moved aside so we could pass into the living room. The condo’s quiet wrapped around the three of us. The city noise died at the glass.

I showed Jung Aera the spare room we’d furnished for those nights we couldn’t go back out. It held a bed, a wardrobe, a table, and a chair. The sheets were clean. The lock worked. I opened the wardrobe and pulled a soft shirt and sweatpants and set them on the table. I opened the drawer and set a toothbrush and a sealed bar of soap next to them. The bathroom was five steps down the hall. I showed her the door and the towels.

“You can shower,” I said. “You can sleep. You can call me if you need anything. I’ll stay in the next room over. If you have nightmares, that’s normal. If you can’t sleep, I’ll sit in the hall until you do.”

She stood in the doorway and looked at the bed like it might break if she touched it.

“Three days,” she said.

“Three days,” I said.

She nodded once and went inside. She closed the door.

I took a breath and found the smell of tea and metal and cold air, then set it aside and walked back to the living room. Alexandra had set her cup down again. She watched me with the same look she’d used in interrogation rooms two centuries ago.

“Your morality is expensive,” she said.

“Everything is expensive,” I said. “But the last thing I want is to lose my humanity on the road to saving humanity.” 

“You’d have made a poor Inquisitor.” She snorted. “Raynare is awake.”

“Good,” I said.

She walked to the far door and keyed the lock. We went down the short hallway we’d reinforced ourselves and opened the room we had built to hold monsters. The table sat in the center. The chains sloped over her body and kept the joints where we wanted them. She had a blanket to keep her from losing heat. I wasn’t a savage. I healed her head and throat a while ago so she could talk. Everything else we left as a teacher.

Her eyes found us and snapped wide. Fear ran through them like a current. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She knew exactly how little leverage she had.

“We have a new plan,” I said.

She swallowed. “I don’t like your plans.”

“That’s valid,” I said. “They don’t like you either.”

“The [Mindshackle Scarabs] will wipe her trauma. The Scarabs will also go in you.” I said.

She went very still. “No.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I told you what you wanted,” she said, voice sharp. “I told you about the spell. I told you about Kokabiel. I told you what the Grigori wants. I haven’t resisted since. I’ve been quiet. I—”

“You were quiet because we took your toe for mouthing off,” Alexandra said. “Don’t confuse compliance with virtue.”

Raynare tugged at the chains. It made a soft clink that didn’t change anything. She breathed fast enough that I thought she might pass out. She didn’t.

“If you put those in me, I won’t be me,” she said.

“You will remain useful,” I said. “Which is more than you can say for yourself before you met us.”

She stared at the ceiling and blinked once, hard. When she looked back, the tear hadn’t moved. She swallowed it and the wet disappeared.

“We didn’t kill you,” I said. “We could have, easily. You were a puddle on the street. He put a spear through your chest. We fixed what we needed for questions. If you want to keep breathing in this very comfortable room, then breathe. If you want to keep your tongue, then use it when spoken to. If you want to keep your head the way it is, then make yourself valuable without needing to be told.”

“What do you want,” she said.

“In the short term?” I said. “Nothing. In the medium term? Names of the Grigori who operate in this city. Apartments. Safehouses. Money men. What they eat and where they leave the bones. In the long term? No more debates about your position in this room.”

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Raynare looked at me. 

“I’ll talk. I’ll do anything you say,” she said. “Just… don’t mess with my head.”

“That’s up to you,” I said.

She closed her eyes and took a breath and held it. She let it out and opened them again. 

“All right,” she said. “Then I want something in return.”

“Bold,” Alexandra said.

Raynare’s eyes went to the toe we had removed. The bandage was clean because I’d had the Incubi clean it. She lifted her chin a half inch.

“Don’t cut any more parts off,” she said.

“That depends on you,” I said. “Stay polite. Answer quickly. Don’t mouth off because you think it makes you look strong. If you can do those three things, you can leave here with everything you brought in, minus one toe.”

“I want the toe back,” she said.

“We’ll see,” I said.

Alexandra stepped close to the table, set her hands on the edge, and leaned down until Raynare had to tilt her head to keep eye contact.

“If you run,” she said, “we will find you. If you hide behind your flock, we will erase the flock and then we will pull you from the heap. If you build a story in your head where you win by talking fast, destroy it now. The only way you keep any part of yourself unsullied is to do what you are told and do it quickly.”

Raynare looked past her at me again. “She enjoys this.”

“She’s enthusiastic. There’s a difference.”

Raynare shut her mouth and stared at the ceiling again.

“I don’t suppose I will get dinner,” she said.

We turned and left her. The door closed and the locks settled. The apartment’s quiet took the edge off the dungeon’s air.

Back in the living room, I picked up Alexandra’s tea and took a sip. It was cold.

“You were very gentle,” she said.

“I’m in a good mood,” I said.

“Because you caught a girl falling off a building,” she said.

“That helped,” I said.

She watched my face for a second and then looked toward the hall that held the spare room.

“She might try again,” Alexandra said.

“She won’t,” I said. “She swore.”

“She swore on a finger,” Alexandra said.

“That’s how people start,” I said. “I started with smaller things too.”

Her mouth compressed for a second and then relaxed. 

“You’re far kinder than I am,” she said. 

“Kindness is humanity’s most noble trait,” I said.

“I think… I agree with you,” she said. “But only up to a certain point. As noble as it is, we don’t have the resources to help every single person with a mental problem. Can you promise me that you won’t drag yourself ragged in a misguided attempt to do so?”

“I’ll try,” I said. “I’m gonna go and get some sleep.”

“Do so,” Alexandra nodded.

I checked the hallway again. The spare room’s door stayed closed. The line of light at the bottom had gone dark. Jung Aera had either shut off the lamp or never turned it on. I left my hand on the door for three seconds and felt the cool through the wood. I didn’t knock. I passed and entered my room, plopped down onto bed and slept. The moment I woke up, I activated the system and entered the [Khornate Dungeon].