Beyond

The door to the store slides open with a barely audible whoosh as I approach. I scan the store with eyes so tired they burn. My chest is tight with the rage smoldering in me. I find what I’m looking for, a short kid with tousled brown hair. He is folding bath towels. His name tag proclaims his name to be Chaz. He looks up as I move towards him, a smile creases his acne riddled face as he says, “Welcome to Bed Bath and Beyond, how can I help you?”

“I need a magic bullet.” I say in a low, conspiratorial tone.

He leans in, still smiling. “Making smoothies, eh?”

My eyes narrow. “No, I need to kill a wizard.”

He pauses for a moment and looks around, then his smile grows. “Follow me.” He says as blackness oozes across his eyes.

I shudder but fall into step behind him. Dealing with the Empty is never pleasant, but I had no other options this time. He leads me through the store, past overpriced cookware and a stack of those rotisseries from the infomercials. When we reach the back wall of the store he stops and looks around again, satisfied no one is looking he takes a key out of his apron pocket. It looks ancient, cast from some sort of black metal and formed of hard angles. He slides it into the wall and turns it. The wall seems to turn to liquid and runs down into the floor, revealing a corridor behind it. The corridor is made up of massive blocks of roughly hewn stone and lit with flickering torches that burn with odd green flames.

Within a moment we stand before a large door of dark wood with bands of black metal running across it. Chaz reaches out and pounds on the door. There is silence from inside and Chaz turns to me, flashing a nervous smile and pounds on the door again. This time there is a muffled rustling noise from behind the door and then a voice like the scraping of a knife on bone calls out. “Enter.”

The door swings open and Chaz gestures for me to enter, his black eyes burrowing into my back as I walk past him. The room inside is dimly lit and cluttered. Books sit in huge stacks around the room, a quick glance reveals they range for ancient leather-bound tomes of eldritch knowledge to tattered mass market paperback books featuring men with rippling muscles and torn shirts on the cover. Various tools and collections of alchemical equipment litter the tables. There are several racks of weapons against the far wall, containing everything from swords to assault rifles. In the middle of the room is an old worn looking armchair with a small television set sitting opposite it. An ancient old man is pulling himself up out of the chair, turning off the tv with a wave of one hand and smoothing the wrinkles out of his peach bathrobe with the other. Black eyes peer from underneath shaggy white eyebrows.

“Why have you disturbed me?”

After a moment of awkward silence Chaz steps forward. “This one wishes to do business my lord.” He says as he indicates me with a nod of his head.

“And what business is it that brings you to me mortal?”

I draw a breath and clear my throat. “I need to procure the means to put an end to a child of Merlin.”

His black eyes regard me coolly for a moment before he purses his lips and arches a brow at me. “And you believe that not only do I have such an item, but that I would risk angering the wizard community by selling it to a mere mortal?”

“I do.” I say, knowing full well this gamble could go sideways at any moment. “I think you want to see as many Wizards rotting in the ground as you can for what they’ve done to your kind.”

“Really? You presume much human! What do you know of MY people?”

“I know that over the last two centuries the Empty have been hunted and killed by Wizards and that it happens with the approval of the Council.”

He scowls, I can’t tell if it’s at me or if it’s due to the memories the discussion must be dredging up in him. Without a word he spins on his heel and stalks away into a darkened corner of the room. Chaz and I are left to look at each other. He gives me a shrug and a smirk but seems otherwise unperturbed. After a moment the elder Empty returns. He has a large leather-bound tome tucked under one arm and a coffee mug in the other hand that reads “World's Best Final Boss” He takes a sip of the steaming liquid and stops at a workbench off to one side. He waves a hand for me to come join him, not bothering to actually look at me. I make my way over to him, wiping the sweat from my palms on my jeans as subtly as I can. If the Empty think they have the upper hand in a negotiation like this there is no limit to the price they might set.

I stand across from him and wait quietly and calmly for him to speak. “I have many options to aid you in your task, what do you know of magic?”

“I know that it exists, and it is dangerous, but I never acquired the training to employ it on my own.”

“Hmmm, I see…” He flipped through the tome; I could see some of the pages as he passed them. They were covered strange equations and symbols; I could only assume it was a collection of spells. He stopped on a page dominated by a drawing of a sword. “How is your swordsmanship?”

“Passable, though I prefer something that affords the target less chance to fight back.” I watch as he scans through more pages. “If it helps, I’m an excellent shot with most firearms.”

He stops and stares at me for a moment. “Why does it always come down to guns with you people?” He flips through the tome until he finds a page covered in sketches of bullets. “I don’t mind telling you this won’t come cheap.”

“It never does.” I sigh heavily. “What’s your price?”

He a grin spreads across his face revealing razor sharp teeth sticking out at all angles. The overall effect is nothing if not unnerving. “A year.”

“A year?” I laugh. “Jesus you people are predictable, do you actually think I would agree to terms so vague?”

His smile falters. “One can hope. Fine, let us solidify the terms.” He slides a rolled-up piece of parchment out of the fuzzy interior of his robe. “One year of your life and no I don’t mean of your actual lifespan.”

I arch a brow at that, most of them want to take your life force and squirrel it away to add to their own. “Then what DO you mean?”

“Memories. I find myself increasingly bored with the offerings on the television.” He gestured vaguely to the small television set. “I take it from your general bearing that you have led an…eventful life?”

“That would be putting it mildly.”

“Then I wish to draw from those memories.”

I think about it, what he could take. Was there anything I could really say I’d miss? My life had always been one struggle after another. “Acceptable.” His grin returns. “But you may not remove any memory that would be relevant to my current mission.”

“Agreed.” He whispers and one hand lashes out too fast to track.

The hand fastens to my forehead and begins to glow faintly. I find myself reliving one horror after the next. Losing friends in the war, my mother dying of cancer when I was a boy, one after another then they parade behind my eyes before disappearing altogether. In a few seconds I find myself standing there, tears wetting my cheeks and not being able to nail down exactly what had made me cry. “Exquisite.” The old man murmurs.

He snaps out of his reverie and straightens his robe with his free hand before putting the hand into one robe pocket. I sniff and wipe the tears from my cheek with the back of one hand. He just stands there basking in stolen memories and sipping from his mug. The smug bastard.

“You have your payment, now hold up your end of the bargain.” I snarl at him.

He draws the hand from its pocket and holds it up for me to see. Pinched between thumb and forefinger is a bullet. A .308 round to be exact. As he passes it to me, I inspect it. The entire surface of it is carved with elegant overlapping designs. “Forged and carved by Brokkr and Eitri themselves.” I can’t help but smile. “This will cut through any defense your Wizard can put in its way.”

I pocket the round and nod to the old man. “Thank you.” He gives me a quizzical look over the rim of his mug.

“What did this Wizard do that you would sacrifice so much to destroy them?” He asks as I turn to walk away.

“He betrayed me. In my line of work that can’t be allowed to go unpunished.”

Two days later I lean against the wall rimming the rooftop of an apartment building, looking through the scope of my rifle. The window I’m looking through reveals the interior of a small apartment. It is cramped inside the apartment. Moving boxes are piled up all around the place. The little shit was planning to run, which is smart, but he had taken the time to pack. Which as it happens was an unbelievably bad idea. He shuffles from room to room, carry boxes to add to stacks and stuffing items into open boxes as he goes.

I dial his number on my cell and listen to it trill in my ear bud. I watch as he tries to find his phone. His asymmetrically cut black hair flopping as he moves. After a moment he locates his phone and the light from its screen illuminates his face and arm as he picks it up. His arm is ringed with tattoos that I’m sure he thought were a clever idea at the time, but I can’t quite imagine he could have been able to justify the ones on his face. Especially since most of them were tribal designs and the one spanning his forehead was “thug life” in gothic script. “Fucking douche.” I mutter to myself.

“Hello?” His voice crackles in my ear, but I can tell he’s nervous.

“Good evening, Sam.” I say cheerfully.

There is a pause. I watch through the scope as he begins making frantic gestures with both hands. A blue flash emanates from him as he finishes the spell. “Well, hello. Didn’t think I’d hear from you again.” He says, his voice sounds steadier now, the spell must have been a ward of some kind.

“I imagine you wouldn’t have been.” I say evenly. “Given that the last time you saw me was when you shoved me into that pit full of Deep Spawn.”

“You’re not still mad about that are you?” He was looking around now, trying to figure out if I was nearby.

“I knew you spell slingers were cowards, that part didn’t surprise me.” I thumb off the safety. “But pushing a man into a pit full of ravenous piranha men and then running away with all the loot. Now that’s low.”

“Well, to be fair someone had to distract them, or they would have left the pit and chased us back through the portal.”

“I told you when I hired you that I can put up with a lot of shit.” My voice was beginning to take on an edge. “But the one thing I won’t tolerate is being fucked over.”

“Look, I’ll tell you where the gold is hidden, all you have to do is walk away.” His voice trembled a little.

“Oh, don’t worry I already found and emptied you stash houses.” I move the crosshairs over his face. “I’m just here to settle the rest of the debt.”

“Well, I hope you’re ready for a fight little man!” He began to shout into the phone. “I’m warded out the ass and the second I set eyes on you I’m gonna reduce you to…”

He doesn’t get to finish the sentence. I squeeze the trigger and there is a white flash from the barrel as the round is flung out of it. The bullet glows and leaves a trail behind it for the split second it takes it to close the distance. His ward snaps with a thunderous crack and a blue flare, then the back of his head smears across the wall behind him.

“Fucking Wizards.” I grumble as I quickly break down the rifle so that I can get clear before the cops show up.