First curses. Now skin-walking.
He was becoming Brett Flynn.
And he couldn’t talk to his team about any of it.
It was late afternoon before Merc ventured out of his room the next day. Shame and self-hatred had claimed his soul.
He needed to get out of this place. He didn’t know where he’d go. Not the fort, certainly.
He took a seat at a different café than the night before and ordered an espresso.
A middle-aged woman from the village marched toward him. He looked away, ignoring her. She didn’t take the hint. He could have forced her to move in a different direction, but he supposed he’d done enough stealing of free will for a lifetime.
She came up to his table. Still he didn’t look at her. Speaking urgently, she said, “Please, as you are a messenger from God—”
Merc looked at her finally. “I am not a messenger from God.”
“He sent you here to save us.”
“He did not.”
“You’re here. And you’re saving us. It is God’s answer to our prayers.”
“I’ve done nothing at all to save any of you.”
The woman waved that off with an irritated flap of her hand. “I beg you, please bless this medallion. It was my son’s. He left it behind when he joined the gangs. I pray over it every night that he will leave them and return home now that there is peace. He was a good boy. He only joined because they threatened me and my daughter if he didn’t. They took him from me.”
Merc looked at the tiny silver, religious medal, then slowly dragged his eyes up to meet the woman’s pleading gaze. “I cannot bring your son back.”
“You could, if you would only bless this medallion.” She fell to her knees and clutched at his legs, weeping and mumbling about her fear for her son’s life if he stayed in the gangs.
Merc looked around them, seeing people watching them, drawn by the mother’s hysterics. He reached for her hands and helped her to her feet. He needed to put an end to this scene fast. “I cannot affect his free will. He must make his own life and his own choices.”
“Then pray with me for just a moment that he makes the right choices.” She held the medallion out to him.
Sighing, Merc took the little trinket. Energy was a living, breathing force—a very real thing. If his sending her son a burst of energy gave this woman ease, and in some small way helped her son, then what would be the harm wishing that the boy live the life he chose? Merc bent forward and kissed the trinket.
The woman was ecstatic. She held it up to show everyone. She laughed and cried and swore that now her son would soon be home.
“Mother?” a man said from the plaza.
The woman’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open. She stared at the man in the street, then screamed and slumped to the ground. Merc knelt beside her as the man ran toward them. More than anything at that moment, Merc regretted his self-imposed isolation from his team. If Guerre were with him, his friend would only have to touch the woman to know how severe her condition was.
He must have dropped his shield at that point, for Guerre’s voice came through his mind, as clearly as if he were right there with them. Put your hand on her shoulder. I will tell you.
Relief flashed through Merc as he felt Guerre’s energy enter him. He set his hand on the woman’s shoulder, feeling the soft and warm heat Guerre used in medical emergencies. The noise around Merc was deafening, but he blocked it out, ignoring the shouting all around him, ignoring the man whose appearance had made this woman faint and who was now pounding Merc with questions about what he’d done to his mother.
His mother.
They’d just prayed for him to come home, and here he was. Shit. It was going to look like he’d had something to do with his return, when obviously he couldn’t have.
She’s fine. She’ll be fine. She just fainted. Guerre pulled away.
Merc stepped back from the woman and pushed through the crowd that had gathered. Liege had been on him, starting with their time in the training camps, to manage his own mind instead of letting his mind run him.
Control your emotions. Control your thoughts. Calm your anger. Steady your mind. Think before you act, before you speak.
All things a fucking kid should be told, not a forty-year-old man.
Merc went back to his room. Prior to his arrival, it had been a home to a family of four. He flopped down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. A gecko ran across his field of vision.
He wasn’t even a man anymore. Barely a human. He was a lab-created thing, an optimized killing machine.
He could have just kept his head down while he waited for Santo and worked on learning more about the mine. But no, that wasn’t good enough for the thing he now was. He had to listen to the horrors these people had survived. He had to let those horrors enter his soul and wake the sleeping demon that hungered for blood. He had to paint over the gang tags and art, stirring up all new levels of hell, like the curse that he couldn’t reverse.
5
There was a commotion outside a while later. Night had come. When Merc opened the door, there was only the woman who brought him his dinner standing there. She handed him his tray. He caught sight of a box and peered inside. It was full of religious items, crosses and medallions and cloths.
“What is that?”
“Antonella said you helped her prayers be answered. These are items from other villagers who have similar prayers for their loved ones.”
“I didn’t do anything to help Antonella.”
“You blessed her medallion.”
“I did not.”
“For years, she had been praying for her son’s safe return. Moments after you touched her medallion, her son was there. It was a miracle.”
“It was a coincidence. He’d already been on his way home before I ever talked to his mother.”
Her face hardened. She brought his dinner tray inside, then retrieved her box and set it next to his meal on the counter. “Then the other villagers wish for the same coincidence.”
“I have no control over their loved ones or what they do.”
She leveled a hard glare at him. “It is not a kindness to help one and not the others.” She left, leaving him alone with the box of devotional items.
He held his hand over it, sensing the currents of energy that connected the items to the ones who prayed over them and the ones they prayed for. He wondered if the owners of the items knew they’d created tangible bonds between themselves and the ones they hoped to reach. Merc let his mind travel along those ribbons of energy to their termination points. Men and women. Young, mostly. Some were dead. Some lived in fear and desperation. Some loved the existence they lived.
It would be better for that last group if no contact from him was made. It might feel like a summons, and they would just be coming home to their deaths.
But didn’t everyone meet his end sooner or later?
Not him. But then, he wasn’t human any longer, was he?
He envied the bastards their final sleep.
He held his hand over the box again, sending a communication that the dead visit their loved ones in a dream to say goodbye and that the living come home to do the same in person.
His appeal took a few minutes, and when it was finished, he was tired.