Read Online Dark Game (Merikh Book 1) by C L Walker - Free Book Online

the knight's neck begun to rattle. He examined Walter DeLacy, wondering how the man was able to stand in the face of such power, such anger.
    “Follow your master, traitorous knight,” the assassin said. A moment later the courtyard was gone.
    When the knight reappeared it was to a drab and tiny room. A young man lay in a bed with his blood crusting the sheets. He moaned and shook with a fever.
    Ahn was in the body of a tall black woman, a beauty whose appearance was only magnified by the heavenly possession.
    “Where are we?” the knight said, though he feared he knew.
    “The boy is Merikh and this,” Ahn gestured to the woman it wore, “is Angelica. She calls herself Mouse; I suspect for ironic purposes.”
    “What is wrong with him?”
    Merikh had clearly taken a beating, one that left him close to death. But there was something else affecting him, something working within his body, attempting to change the outcome of his convalescence.
    “He is healing, from wounds he shouldn't come back from. If I didn't already know he was immune, I'd think there was magic at work.”
    “So Walter DeLacy lied?”
    “No.” Ahn stepped closer to the bed and held out its hand, stroking the boy's fevered skin. Merikh recoiled from the touch. “He has all the hallmarks of Walter's deal, but weakened. Where Walter and his people would be able to shrug injuries such as this off without concern, Merikh very nearly died. His healing is torturous and slow; he came near to passing into the nether. Right up to the edge.”
    “Then what force protects him from you?”
    “It is a shadow of Walter's gift, amplified somehow. All of the drawbacks with only some of the benefits.”
    The knight waited for Ahn to continue and when the god didn't, he risked a question. “Will you kill him? You are already killing his friend Mouse.”
    “We will be gone soon. I am empowering her as a true vessel, and she will experience no ill effects from our visit.”
    The knight wanted to ask why the god didn't do this with every human it possessed, but he already knew the answer; those human lives didn't matter, and this one might.
    “So, will you kill him?”
    “I cannot, at least directly. I could pull this building down on him, or compel the woman to take care of him in his weakness, I suppose.” It paused, as though considering it. “But I am too curious. There is so little in existence of which I am not aware, and the same is true of Ehl. Besides, if neither of us have acted on the world then this is happening without our explicit sanction, and therefore is outside our purview. If I don’t like the outcome I can change it.”
    “You would risk forfeiting the game,” the knight said, using the phrase the gods used when referring to the entirety of creation.
    “Perhaps, unless we chose to do it in concert.” Ahn moved around the room, casting its borrowed eyes on the dinginess. It was probably examining the atoms of the room and couldn't muster an expression beyond boredom.
    The game the gods played was simple: creation was in motion, working under its own steam and toward its own ends. Never guided or influenced by either Ahn or Ehl, yet moving toward a conclusion that would favor one side over the other. Whichever side won, or rather whichever of their children won, decided the game.
    He still didn't know what they were playing for, but he knew it wasn't dominion over the Earth. Either god could create a new Earth at will, based on their conversations with one another. They played for something greater than the sum of everything the knight knew and loved, a fact that kept him awake in the brief moments he was allowed to rest.
    “What do you think is happening?” Ahn asked unexpectedly. For all the god mentioned wanting his opinion, it rarely ever asked for it.
    “I couldn't hope to guess.”
    “Then what use are you?” Ahn said, apparently distracted by a smudge on the glass window.
    “I will try,” the knight said quickly, terrified