Chapter 19

Chloe stared at the television feeling a sense of desolation as the reports added up. Storms, earthquakes, fires, the ranges, and breadth of the disasters kept mounting. The death tolls were horrific. She wanted to bury her head far away from it all and forget that it was happening. She couldn’t though, she was responsible for it all, and she had to stop it. Had to stop it before the death toll rose any further.

“He moves too fast as soon as a report comes in, he moves on. How do we catch him?”

“That’s what we need to figure out,” Durn said as he parked himself beside her on the couch.

“Trevor is the Redeemer do you think if he simply calls him back he’ll come?”

“And once he does then what? We don’t exactly have a giant sized choke chain to hold him back.”

Wasn’t that the truth? Without the pyramid to contain him, they had no way to imprison the thing. Brooks and his people had been trying to come up with some way to contain the creature since his escape. So far, they’d had no luck coming up with anything.

“I wonder …” she trialed off and frowned before she stood and stuck her head into the bedroom. “Tre?”

He looked up from the computer he was doing some research on, trying to find information on the Destroyer myth. “What is it?”

“Come here for a minute would you?”

He stood and followed her out into the living room. “Is there a problem sweetheart?” He propped himself against the wall with a frown.

“No not really. I was just thinking about this whole thing. If you are the Redeemer and you’re supposed to be able to control this thing, what if you call him back and simply tell him not to destroy anything else?”

He scowled at her. “And you think he’s going to listen? Just like that.”

She shrugged. “Well no, not just like that. You might have to argue a bit, but you are supposed to be able to have some control over him.”

He frowned, looking down at the floor as if he were considering it. He scuffed the toe of his shoe over the carpet. “That’s a big if Chloe. I mean the guy could annihilate us if he wanted to.”

“I’m not so sure he can,” she answered hesitantly.

His head snapped up and he stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Well I was thinking that the Pharos didn’t really control the thing. The Destroyer and Redeemer did. The Destroyer set it free and the Redeemer brought it back. So maybe it respects us more in some way. It would never have looked to the Pharos as any kind of authority, but the Destroyer and Redeemer were its authority figures. Sort of like its parents in a way.”

“So you’re thinking if we tell it “no” then it’s going to listen. I don’t think it works quite that way.”

“Maybe not, but we can try. What other choice do we have?” she argued.

Durn had been sitting by quietly while they discussed the option. “I think it might be a good idea to at least try it. But I think we should do it perhaps in one of the hangers out back. Doing it in here might not be such a good idea.”

Chloe sighed. “I don’t care where we do it; I just want to get it over with.”

Trevor grimaced. “Agreed. I’m not looking forward to facing that thing.”

***

Trevor stood beside Chloe in the center of the smaller hanger behind the military compound building. He wasn’t at all prepared to do this. Then again, how exactly did one prepare to face down evil?

Not by standing about staring around an empty hanger worrying if you were gonna die, he supposed.

“Well, let’s not stand around gathering dust,” he said with a grin.

Chloe sent him a scowl. He shrugged and took a step forward. Gathering courage he really didn’t feel, he shut his eyes and focused on the last image he had inside his head of the thing that had stood over Chloe and called to it with his mind.

He wasn’t certain if he should call out to it verbally or not, so he continued to call out silently. When he felt a sudden burst of heat against his face, slowly he cracked his eyes open and stared up at the thing before him in awe.

“Holy crap.”

The creature tilted its head in confusion at his words. “What is this ‘holy crap’ you speak of?”

Trevor resisted the urge to laugh. This thing could annihilate him. Redeemer or not. “Never mind. Figure of speech.”

“Why do you call me back, Redeemer. You cannot cage me.”

Trevor smiled and nodded. “Yes, I realize that. By what name do we call you?”

“Leveler.”

Trevor arched an eyebrow. Made sense, he basically leveled entire cities. “All right, Leveler. It’s nice to meet you.”

He cocked his head to the side curiously. It was an endearing trait, made him look like an oversized puppy. “You consider it nice to meet me?”

“I always like to meet new … people.” He hesitated a moment over the word people.

Leveler frowned slightly in confusion and lowered his body to the ground, folding his legs beneath his body until he sat cross-legged on the ground. “This is … different.”

Trevor followed suit and sat before Leveler. “How is it different?”

“No one has ever been pleased to be in my presence before this moment.”

Chloe appeared beside Trevor and sat down, smiling at Leveler. “We are different than those you’ve met before,” she told him.

Trevor nodded. “Tell us how you came to be.”

A deep V appeared between his brows as he frowned. “That I cannot answer. I simply am.”

“You don’t know how you were created?” Trevor asked him in a startled voice.

Leveler shifted his position a bit. His big body moving in muscular grace as he moved about. “I do not.”

“Yet you’re bound to serve the Destroyer when you are called?”

Leveler gave a short nod.

“What would you do if you were freed?” Chloe asked him.

Leveler seemed to consider the question carefully. “That I cannot answer for you. It is something that I never thought of as a possibility for my future.”

“But if it were?”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I have only one purpose.”

Trevor scowled. “You can see no other purpose for yourself?”

Leveler frowned. “What other purpose could there be?”

Chloe gave a short laugh. “Bouncer?”

Another frown was her reward. “Why should I wish to bounce?”

She shook her head. “It’s a job. Hard to explain, kind of like a guard.”

“A soldier?” That seemed to perk him up.

Chloe seemed to consider it. “In a way. You guard the portal to a club and you bar the way to those who aren’t allowed entry.”

Leveler seemed interested. “This is an interesting idea you propose.”

Chloe smiled. “Yes and you wouldn’t have to destroy any cities or kill any mortals. You would also get paid to do the job. You would be your own person, have your own life.”

Leveler sat up straighter. “I would not have to be enslaved any longer?”

Trevor tapped an index finger on his chin. “You would have a boss you would have to answer to at your job, but if you disliked the job you could move to another one. You would not be enslaved, no. Things work much differently in this day and age.”

They watched Leveler as he bowed his head. Trevor glanced sidelong at Chloe. He wasn’t certain what Leveler was thinking. But he seemed to be thinking it over. They could only hope he would consider things and at the very least back off the natural disasters a bit.

A flash of light nearly blinded them and the pyramid appeared between them on the floor. Trevor looked at Leveler. He was offering them a token.

“Can you free me?” The hope in his voice was unmistakable.

Trevor knew they had to move forward carefully here. “If you wish it and you swear that you’re no longer going to be what you once were, we’ll try.”

Anger caused his eyes to flare blood red. “You will try? You do not know if you can do this and yet you offer it?”

Chloe reached forward and placed her hand over his. “No, we don’t know if we can, but we are willing to find some way to do it. We will continue to try until we succeed.”

Trevor saw the way Leveler concentrated on Chloe’s hand where it rested over his. It was obvious he wasn’t used to being touched. He wanted desperately to believe what she was telling him but he was afraid to hope. 

 Leveler lifted his eyes to encompass both of them. “I will give you the time you need. I wish my freedom.”

“Would you object to remaining here?” He looked uncomfortable with the idea. Trevor pushed the little pyramid toward him with a smile. “We’ll get together some comfortable quarters for you and you can hold on to the pyramid as well. We won’t try to chain you while we’re looking to free you, all I ask is that you don’t go out and hurt anyone else while we’re trying to free you.”

Leveler pursed his lips for a moment before finally nodding. “I agree to this.” He scooped up the pyramid before making it vanish. He then fixed his gaze on Chloe. “Will you teach me more of your new world while you are in search of my freedom?”

Chloe smiled and inclined her head in agreement.

They rose from the floor and moved to the far side of the room to speak with Agent Brooks.

He wasn’t at all pleased with the agreement they’d made with Leveler when they informed him about it.

“We have to house him here?” He glared across the hanger to where Leveler stood. Looking large and intimidating as he stared about the hanger.

Trevor scowled at Brooks. “Would you rather he headed back out and began destroying things again?”

Brooks scowled back at Trevor. “No, of course not.”

“Then this is the only choice we have! He stays here until we figure out how to free him.”

“And what happens once we free him?” Brooks sneered.

“Chloe is going to educate him about our world while we’re trying to free him. Once we free him, he’ll assimilate himself into our world. He’s agreed not to harm any more mortals.”

“Why let him keep the pyramid?”

“A show of good faith,” Trevor told him. Trevor wasn’t going to tell Brooks he also thought it was wiser to keep the damn thing away from Brooks and the FBI.

Brooks sighed, his eyes going to Leveler where he stood across the room. “Fine. We’ll get this place turned into a room for him. None of the apartments will be big enough.”

Chloe beamed at him before turning away and sprinting across the room to inform Leveler of the good news. The smile she gave the giant was radiant and seemed to stun the man. Trevor grinned, Leveler was going to have to get used to the warmth that was Chloe.

Trevor choked down laughter when Leveler stood stone still as Chloe hugged him. The giant looked as if he were extremely uncomfortable with the attention. Even after Chloe stepped back and bid him goodbye for the evening.

Trevor looked back at Brooks. “Get people in here as soon as possible and make him as comfortable as you can.”

They let Leveler know what was going to happen and then left him with the FBI people.

Chloe was going to make a phone call to her father to see if he knew anything about freeing Leveler. Trevor doubted he would, but it was worth a try. In the mean time, he would get back on the computer. He’d had a line on a library that possibly had a few old books that might have been old enough to contain a mention of the Destroyer legend.