CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Center Of The Circle

 

NERGAL.

The tall, broad-shouldered man steps forward. Long wild beard hanging down to his bare, muscled chest. Flies nest in the kinks and curls, fat black bodies catching what little light there is to catch. His own scalp is bare—his legs swaddled in leather strips and torn rags. Bare feet slap against the concrete as they approach.

And all around are the bodies of dead teenagers. Children. No longer wearing the features of animals. All human. All dead.

“Worry not,” Nergal says, his voice deep, crisp, but there lurks an almost regal trill to the words he speaks. “They were dead long before you came. I just borrowed their bodies to house my Sebittu. My seven protectors. I will have to find new... volunteers.”

Cason cannot stand. Not yet. But he forces his hand to the pocket. Where the trigger for the bomb waits. He slumps a shoulder, lets the pack slide off.

“You bested them all,” Nergal says, now standing tall over Cason. The man—the god—smells of ozone, of streets after a rain, of an infected wound, of musk and flesh and electricity and death. Flywings buzz. “You have the beast in you. Wants to rise to the surface, doesn’t he?” Nergal runs a callused thumb over Cason’s brow. “Here. And here. The marks of that beast. Fading. But they’ll come again.”

Cason has no idea what the man is talking about.

Doesn’t much care, either.

Frank’s gonna miss the show.

“You brought my wife and son back to life,” Cason says.

“Did I?” The god seems bewildered. “Oh. Good.”

“I want to thank you.”

“Of course you would.”

“I got you this.” Cason shifts a shoulder—lets the bag hang off his forearm.

Nergal stares at it like it’s naught but a fossilized turd, as if to say, this is my gift? He sneers and scratches the beard—flies take flight before roosting once more in the dark twisted folds of hair. Cason thinks, he’s not going to take it, but then, sure enough, Nergal—the god of storms, the Lord of Cutha, the inadvertent king of the underworld—reaches down with a hand and haughtily raises the bag in front of his face to give it a long sniff.

Cason grits his teeth, breaks free from his subservient position, and leans backward—

Just as his hand spins the dial on the remote control in his pocket.

Boom.

The air pops—a brief wind shoves Cason back—and there’s a flash and a bang. His ears ring and a stray thought flits through his mind: blowing up gods is getting to be a real habit—and then he’s crab-walking backwards and scrambling to stand.

When the white smoke clears and the middling darkness resumes, lit only by the faltering barrel fire, he sees the broad-shouldered shadow of Nergal the Storm Lord standing there. Silent. Trembling.

All around, little white pieces of burning paper float to the ground.

What Cason expects: Nergal slides into component pieces, like a cartoon knight sliced into chunks by a swift-cutting sword.

What Cason does not expect: Nergal brushing himself off as if nothing happened.

The latter is what happens.

“That was no gift,” Nergal’s voice booms. A voice that seems genuinely surprised, as if incredulous that any would dare give him anything less than a chest of the richest gold, the finest silver, the rarest gems. It was an attitude Cason remembers in Eros—his boss always seemed to expect the world to bend to his will. And it almost always did.

Little pieces of paper smolder in Nergal’s beard. Flies gather to extinguish the cinders of the smoking adabs.

The bomb didn’t work.

That’s not good.

“You made a terrible error,” Nergal says.

And before Cason can do anything else, the Lord of Storms is standing before him. From ten feet away to ten inches, in the space of a single heartbeat.

Cason does what Cason does. He fights. Throws a punch. Connects with Nergal’s face—the god’s head snaps back and a cloud of flies coughs into the air. Gut punch. Knee-kick. Elbow to the throat. Nergal stands there. Takes each blow the same way a building takes a bird flying into its side: with complete and utter disinterest.

One more, for good measure—a deal-closer in the ring, when he was afforded the rare chance to pull it off. Cason snaps a high kick to the side of Nergal’s head.

The god stops it.

He reaches up like a lord waving to his serfs and catches Cason’s ankle. Balance gone, Cason’s other foot skids out from under him—

Nergal reaches with his other hand, grabs Cason’s knee. Then, one hand low and one higher up, he twists.

The bone snaps.

He drops Cason like a sack of potatoes.

Then Nergal steps on the other leg. Lends it his full weight—an inhuman weight, the weight of a horse, a truck, a mountain.

The bone creaks. Grinds. Then snaps.

Cason screams like he’s never screamed before. Not in the ring. Not ever.

Nergal grabs him by the scruff of his neck and carries him like a mother cat carries an impudent kitten.