Godsend (The Circle War Book 1) Page 2

  August knocked his hand away. He had half a mind to grab his sword and cut straight through the bastard’s neck.

  “This is an important time for you,” Coburn said. His eyes dared August to act. “So many directions you could choose. You should consider your future.”

  “And what if I don’t want a future like this?”

  Coburn’s eyes shifted toward the girl before coming back to August. “Then it would be a shame to see you go.”

  Outside, police sirens blared in the distance. Coburn straightened the lapels of his coat.

  “Find your own way back to base,” he said. “You won't be going with us. Use the time to decide what it is you want. I will expect an answer when you return.”

  He stepped into the shadows and turned down a dark intersection.

  August leaned over, feeling nauseous from shock and anger. He cocked his head and caught a glimpse of the girl’s lifeless legs. I never even got her name. A puddle of blood collected around her knees.

  Without looking back, he took off down the alley until he got back to Church Avenue. After dodging a few honking cars, he waved down a taxi and ducked inside.

  “Where you headed?” the driver asked in a thick Nigerian accent.

  August let out a heavy breath. He grabbed the comm device on his arm and ripped it away from the fabric, tossing it through the open window. “The hell if I know.”

  The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Sorry,” August said. “Uptown, please.”

  “Anywhere special?” He caught the man looking at his swords.

  August tapped one of the handles. “Costume party,” he said. “Just get me over the bridge. I’ll tell you where to stop.”

  The driver shrugged and pulled away.

  They were barely into Manhattan when August had the driver drop him off on a side street. He wasn’t totally sure where he was, but it didn’t matter. He wanted time to think, and the old office buildings had plenty of dark gaps between them he could use to get his head straight.

  He chose one and settled into a quiet spot out of sight of the street. When he looked down, he caught a glimpse of the white embroidered Phoenix logo on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “What the hell am I doing here?” he wondered aloud.

  Footsteps echoed down the alley to his left. He took out his swords, ready to scare away whoever it was.

  A woman wearing the same flowered dress he’d seen earlier stepped into a window of light cutting across the alley. She had tawny brown skin with straight shoulder-length brown hair framing her face. Her blue eyes had an unnatural electric quality that made them stand out in the darkness. She never once looked at his swords.

  “You’ve been following me,” he said.

  She nodded. “For some time.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want what you want,” she said.

  “Cheetos for life?”

  “To take you away from here.”

  He sheathed his swords. “No offense, lady, but I’m not in the mood for crazy. Take another pill and go back to bed.”

  “You are August Dillon,” she said.

  He gave her a second look. “Do I know you?”

  “No, but I know all there is to know about you. You were born to Tom and Barbara. Your father left before you could speak a word and you were raised mostly in the absence of your mother. You have trained as a fighter since an early age. You are strong, determined, intelligent, and wasted in a life that uses your talents for ill.” She stepped closer. “More than anything, you are a good person.”

  Right. She talked like a reject from Masterpiece Theater, but she had to be from Phoenix. No one else knew that stuff about him. “You had me until the end,” he said. “I’m not a good person. Good people don’t do what I do.”

  “Perhaps that is why you wish to leave.”

  He scoffed. “Is this some sort of HR intervention? Because this really isn’t a good time.”

  “My name is Meryn,” she said, “and I have come to ask for your help.”

  For a quick second, he almost believed she was sincere. He shook his head. “Look, Meryn. I don’t know how you got here, I don’t know why you’ve been following me all night, and I sure as hell don’t know how you got a hold of my Phoenix profile, but—”

  “Think of something,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Say what?”

  “Think of something. Picture a scene, something I could not possibly know.”

  Even though he tried not to, his mind immediately jumped to a well-worn memory from his childhood, of sitting with his toys surrounded by pictures torn from comics, with his name scrawled across the capes of his favorite characters. He arranged the evil villain’s army of action figures around his hero—who had blond curls just like his—and then took them down one by one while he made jokes about their names because…

  “Because villains make mistakes when they are angry,” Meryn finished.

  He stared at her in disbelief. “You can’t know that.”

  She smiled. “Will you hear me now?”

  “Wait a second, how did you do that?”

  “August, I need your help,” she said again.

  “Help with what?”

  “This world—your world—will soon become a battleground,” she said. “I want you to help defend it.”

  “Battleground?” he asked. “Lady, who are you?”

  “A god to some, one of the nine immortals of the Circle, in truth. Our Circle is led by Amara, the oldest and most powerful of my kind. Amara has…lost her way. She believes it is her divine duty to rid us of our immortal curse. She would commit genocide.”

  This woman is insane.

  “I know how this must seem to you,” she said. “But by the time you have proof, it will be too late. Amara has created a weapon on this Earth that will grow into something so powerful, nothing will be able to stop it.”

  “What kind of weapon?”

  “A man,” she said.

  “A man’s not a weapon.”

  “To the gods of the Circle, a man is our only weapon. We choose our champions and our champions fight for our lives. I’m asking you to fight for mine, and for the lives of the people of this world.”

  He wondered if he was too deep in crazy to come back up for air. What the hell. Can’t hurt to ask. “Let’s pretend for a second that you’re not completely bonkers. If all this is true and I agree to be your champion, or whatever you call it…what happens then?”

  “You will not fight this fight alone, but for now, I would ask you to find this man Amara has chosen. If you can kill him before the war begins, we may be able to keep it from ever happening.”

  “Just me and my swords, huh?”

  “You will have other gifts,” she answered. A light flashed across her blue eyes.

  “Like what?” He suddenly became aware of the wall behind him as he tried to take a step back from her advance.

  Her skin began to shimmer, filling with small lights as bright as stars. The hair on his arms stood on end beneath his uniform as though he was standing next to a bolt of lightning.

  “I will give you strength,” she said. Her voice seemed to be coming from both inside and outside of his head. “You will have the power to heal from any wound.”

  His muscles vibrated against his bones. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  “Do you wish to leave this life behind?” she asked. Her words were hypnotic.

  He found his answer through a cloud of confused thoughts. When he spoke, his voice sounded far away. “Yes.”

  “And do you long to become the hero you dreamt of as a child?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Then give yourself to me.” Her skin glowed white hot. “I will make you more. So much more.”

  GODSEND

  CHAPTER ONE

  Three Months Later

  Coming back from the dead was worse than getting killed.

&n
bsp; To August, the rearrangement of muscle tissue felt a lot like someone using his guts for modeling clay. Fingers of electricity spread around the bullet holes in his chest, gradually pulling everything back into place while blood and bits of gravel oozed out of the perforations along his spine. It was enough to make him squirm, if only that were possible.

  The bullet slugs were the last to fall out before his wounds closed up. He wondered how long he’d been in the coma. A few seconds? A minute? Too long, whatever it was. If his hamburger was cold when he got back, he knew a dozen wannabe thugs who were going to wish they’d never left their mom’s apartment that night.

  His hearing returned in a high, rushing whine, just in time to catch the argument taking place around his formerly-dead body. The first voice he recognized belonged to Drago, the gang’s leader.

  “Somebody want to tell me what the hell just happened?” Drago asked.

  “I don’t know, man. He’s some kind of ninja or something.” The kid sounded like Flex, the one who ran off in the mismatched Chuck Taylors.

  “He ain’t no ninja. He’s a city boy who kicked all y’all’s asses. Where’d he come from?”

  Still out of breath, Flex sputtered twice before he could get his answer out. “We were searching through the train, just like you told us, right? Then this guy, he jumps out of a boxcar down the line like he’s headed to Pound-a-Burger, so we figured we’d take a look through his stuff, you know? See if he had something good.”

  “I told you to boost electronics, not some hobo’s backpack.”

  “Yeah, but TJ said there were swords in it,” Flex said. “Expensive ones. And I had a crate of car stereos in my hands, ready to go. That’s when he surprised us.”

  “What do you mean he surprised you? Surprised you how?”

  “He just…I don’t know, snuck up on us or something. TJ took off with the pack and came back here.”

  “So why didn’t you take care of things when you had the chance?”

  Flex didn’t answer.

  “Are you deaf?”

  “No, man. I just don’t want to say.”

  “I swear to God, Flex, I will drop you where you stand.”

  “Okay, okay.” Flex lowered his voice. “He was going to run after TJ, so I got my gun out. Then he…”

  “Then he what?”

  Oh, this should be good.

  “He took it away and hit me with it.”

  A quiet laugh drifted through the gang.

  “Shit,” Drago said. “And you couldn’t warn us?”

  “I tried, man, but he stuffed a bunch of packing peanuts in my mouth.” Flex raised his voice over another round of laughter. “What are we gonna do with him now?”

  “Can’t leave him here. Cops will find the body.” Drago sounded distant, like he was thinking out loud.

  “So what do we do?”

  “For starters, you can take care of those assholes before they wake up the whole damn block.”

  Some of Drago’s men were still nursing their wounds nearby. By August’s count, only two of them should’ve been able to stand. The others were going to be on crutches for a while. He probably should’ve taken out the guys with the guns first, but how was he supposed to know they were hiding semi-automatics in their back pockets?

  “Get the stuff.” The command returned to Drago’s voice. “Take everything we got and get it back to the trucks. Gimme the pack.”

  August's camping pack changed hands overhead. He could only listen as his katanas clanged against each other inside, a taunting reminder that he shouldn't have left them in the boxcar in the first place.

  An engine bellowed from across the yard. Oh, great. That’s just what I need. Unless the whistle belonged to another train he didn't know about, his ride was about to leave him in the dust, and then where would he be? Stranded, burgerless, and falling farther behind the man he was sent to catch. Faster, he urged his mending body. Must heal faster.

  “We gotta go,” Flex repeated.

  “I know. Lemme think.”

  “Drago, man, the body…”

  “Just give me a second!”

  Footsteps shuffled by August’s head as a pinpoint of light broke through the darkness of his vision. It’s about damn time. The stagnant blood in his veins started to move again, spreading along his extremities in a wave of pins and needles.

  “We’re gonna set him on the tracks,” Drago said. “Let the train cut him into pieces.”

  Shit.

  August’s newly-beating heart began to race. Getting shot was one thing. Getting dismembered was a whole other ball game. Meryn said there was no coming back from that, and he wasn’t about to risk his shot at becoming the closest thing Earth had to a superhero just because a few random alley brats wanted to steal his stuff.

  Warm air filled his lungs just as Drago ordered his body carted away. August let out a hacking cough to stop them in their tracks. His hands landed in a smear of his own blood as he turned over to push himself up. After a wobbly first step, he wiped the dirt and blood from his face.

  His audience watched in slack-jawed silence.

  “Now,” August said. “Which one of you shot me first?”

  The words tore through the gang like gunfire scattering a flock of birds. They threw down their loot and took off screaming for the gates—all except for Drago. Standing beneath the lamppost’s cone of light in his muscle shirt and designer jeans, he gave August a cold look before he shouldered the backpack and ran off into the maze of train cars.

  August gave chase, stumbling drunkenly at first while his legs finished their recovery. By the time he made it over the first few train couplings, he was fully healed.

  The engine’s final whistle blared through the yard, combining in chorus with the sound of wheels grinding against rusted metal rails. Drago made it to the moving line of cars and cut up beside them, barely outrunning the train as it rolled along, picking up speed. When August got to the corner, he watched Drago jump into the car where he’d left his hamburger.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He sprinted to catch up with the train before it disappeared into the tunnel, lunging at the last second to grab hold of a flatbed car's ladder. The toes of his boots skidded across the track ties as he pulled himself up the rungs. The train rumbled into the darkness, drowning him in echoes.

  Once they were back out in the open, he climbed to the roof of the next car in line. The burnt orange slats of his boxcar were only a few hops away. He moved ahead slowly, staying low against the ceiling vents to keep the wind from knocking him off. When he made it back to his car, a quick peek over the edge showed Drago with his feet hanging out the open door. The hamburger bag was in his lap.

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Drago said as he reached for the burger.

  August grabbed hold of the car’s metal runner and swung himself inside, connecting with a boot to Drago’s chin that sent him flying into a stack of crates. The bag fell to the ground. “Mine,” he said. He kicked it beside his backpack.

  Blood streamed from a cut above Drago’s left eye. He reached for his jaw like he was afraid it had fallen off. His moans eventually gave way to curses.

  “Okay, kiddo. Fun’s over.” August pulled a fallen crate off of Drago’s leg. “I’d love to stay and punch you in the face some more, but Daddy’s got places to be. Let’s go.”

  Drago came off the floor holding a glorified steak knife in his hand. “Yeah, that’s right. Come on! You want some of this? You don’t scare me, old man.”

  “Old man? I’m not even thirty.”

  “Think you’re so smart,” Drago spat. “Wearing a bulletproof vest. You think I didn’t know? Huh?” He jabbed the knife forward.

  August started to argue, but thought better of it. “Listen, why don’t you put that thing away before you get hurt. Judging by that haircut, you’re not too good with sharp objects.”

  Drago’s eyes widened. He charged forward with the knife swinging wildly from his
side. August caught his wrist and dropped him with a shoulder to the chest before he ever got close. The blade fell to the floor. He grabbed Drago’s foot next, put a boot to the side of his knee, and pulled until the ligaments snapped. The screams were deafening.

  “Christ, you’re worse than Flex.”

  August kicked the knife away. All he needed now was a spot to deposit his freshly-handicapped friend. Looking through the door of the boxcar, the light from a street lamp reflected off a wide river running alongside the tracks up ahead. That’ll work.

  “All right, asshole, this is your stop.” He reached down and picked Drago up by his shirt.

  “Who the hell are you?” Drago asked in a whimper. His feet dangled over the ground speeding by.

  I’m August Dillon, August wanted to answer, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

  “You’ll know soon enough, I guess.”

  He tossed Drago into the middle of the river as soon as it came into view. The splash brought a smile to his face. He wondered if word would get out about him now that someone had seen his powers in person. Would they give him a cool name? Something menacing like “Ghost” could work, but with Flex and Drago as witnesses, he was probably staring down a future being known as “Sword-Man” or “Hobo Ninja.”

  As long as it’s not my real name, I’ll be fine.

  Stepping back into the car, he patted the handles of his swords before sitting down to dinner. His mouth watered at the prospect—two big patties, mustard, onions, pickles, chili, and a slab of fried cheese for good measure. It was the kind of meal that should’ve come with a side of defibrillator. He peeled back the grease-soaked wrapper.

  “Will you be making a habit of getting yourself killed in public places?” Meryn spoke.

  “Jesus shit!” The burger fell into his lap, staining his jeans in a mudslide of chili. He searched for her in the darkness. “Couldn’t you at least wait until I finished eating?”

  Meryn’s image was nearly translucent as she stepped from the shadows. She solidified in front of him, a practice that never failed to creep him out. Her skin morphed from shimmering white to her familiar golden brown. Even in the dark, her eyes blazed blue. They were the only thing about her that stood out as alien.