Dark Game (Merikh Book 1) by C L Walker Page A

perspective.
    Ahn entered first, the tape and the charred remains of a wooden door falling apart as it approached, allowing them access without having to dirty their hosts. The knight followed Ehl, who still hadn’t deigned to notice him.
    Beyond the door was a short flight of stone stairs, out of place with the façade of the building, as though someone had built atop an older structure and left the original buried within. They descended to another door, this one entirely burned away. Though there was no evidence to show it, the knight knew this door had been old, heavy oak. A door carried over in the old sailing ships of the country’s teenage years and lovingly stored until the right location could be found for it.
    The room within was all old world, with stone walls and four pillars to hold the roof aloft. A depression in the center that had once held a small pool of still holy water was now blackened and abandoned. Through his connection to Ahn, the knight could feel the attention the police had given this one spot, the pictures they’d taken and the forensic wizardry they’d turned loose. This was where they’d found the remains of several people, once the fire had allowed them entry.
    “DeLacy believes the boy died here, in the fire?” Ehl said, moving to the right of the pool. It reached to put its hands in the girl’s pockets, but she was wearing a dress and it had to content itself with crossing it’s arms instead.
    “Until I told him otherwise.”
    “I can’t see him escape.” Ehl had closed its eyes, casting its gaze back through time to the night of the fire. “Or anything about him after this moment.”
    “Then whatever happened must have happened here,” Ahn said. It moved to the left of the pool and leaned over as though its host’s eyes weren’t up to the task of examining the gloomy room.
    “Cast further back,” Ehl said. “He intended to run before the altercation, but I can find nothing to say he had a plan.”
    “No. This wasn’t intentional. I believe he came up with something in the moment, independent of whatever made him special.”
    “He isn’t special,” Ehl replied, the girl’s voice somehow infused with the type of derision only a god could express. “He is an anomaly. A sign, perhaps, that we should end this all and begin again.”
    Ahn looked over at the young girl and for a moment the knight thought it might smile. Of course, Ahn didn’t smile, but there was something there, nonetheless.
    “Has the introduction of an uncontrolled variable rattled you?”
    “I’m winning. Why would I care what this boy does?”
    “Why, indeed.”
    The knight felt a shiver pass up his spine, a manifestation of the tension he’d been feeling since he’d gotten an inkling of where they were headed and what they planned to do. His eyes shot to Ahn as the god glanced his way, but it had more important things to concern itself eith than what its pet was thinking.
    One day though, the knight knew, it would pay attention. When that happened it would open him up and realize what he’d done, what he’d hoped to bring into the world, and whom he’d collaborated with. What it would do after that was unknowable, but it wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone involved.
    “Perhaps we should unpack his life further,” Ehl said. It skipped away from the pool, emulating the girl it wore. The visual was eerie and the knight looked away. “We could create a simulacrum of him up to this point and interrogate it.”
    “I’m not interested in the boy,” Ahn replied, as close to unguarded irritation as he’d ever seen in the god. “He couldn’t have done this on his own, and there are very few beings who could do anything without us knowing.”
    Ehl giggled like the schoolgirl it inhabited. “I’ve just checked everyone else who was in the city at the time, going back to their births, and I can’t see anything.”
    “More to the point, I can’t see anything missing.”
    “Indeed.”
    The