#summoning dark

Sam Vimes opened his eyes, and looked around at the remains of the coach. From somewhere nearby came quiet sobbing; it sounded like Sybil, but that seemed wrong, somehow.

Sybil doesn’t sob, Vimes thought. She cries discreetly into a hanky, and then gives her nose a good blow and pulls herself together.

…what the hell is going on?

He sat up with some difficulty, and then the sobbing stopped and was replaced by a low, agonised moan.

Vimes turned his head around to where his wife was sitting, a few feet beyond the wreckage. She was battered and bloody, but she was upright and breathing, and he frowned.

That could have been nasty. We got lucky there.

But Sybil was staring at him like she’d seen a ghost. “Sam?” she gasped. “Oh gods, oh…Sam…” 

“I’m fine,” he grunted. “It’s alright. Are you ok?” He climbed to his feet and started walking towards her, but she shrank back from him and he paused. “Sybil? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Sam.” She covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head. “Look at yourself, dear. Just look.”

Vimes frowned and looked down, to where the front of his chest was now nothing more than a concave mess of blood and bone shards and viscera. He touched the mess experimentally, and felt nothing. He squinted, and in the middle of it all he could just make out an object that he’d seen once before, in one of Igor’s jars. 

That’s your heart, his brain supplied helpfully.

He prodded it. It wasn’t beating. 

Vimes would never have called himself an expert in anatomy, but he’d learned enough to know there was a term for when your heart stopped beating.

There was a bomb, wasn’t there? That’s what took us out.

Took me out.

“Oh.” He looked back up at his wife, who was deathly pale beneath the blood – the blood he was beginning to suspect was actually his – and asked, “Why aren’t I dead?”

Sybil let out a choked sound that was halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Your wrist, Sam. Look.”

He followed her gaze. Beneath the burned shreds of his shirt sleeve, the mark left by the Summoning Dark was glowing a fiery red. He held it up and stared at it as understanding dawned.

“You bastard.”

Inside his head, something dark and ancient grinned lazily.

You may die, it hissed. I will not.

You are me, Vimes thought. You don’t get to run around in my bloody body!

You weren’t using it anymore.

He felt anger bubble up inside him. Get the hell out! Right now!

…no. I don’t believe I will. 

Vimes wasn’t sure quasi-demonic entities could really be smug, but the remains of this one were certainly doing a good job of projecting self-satisfaction. Still, there wasn’t much he could do about it right now; he needed to get Sybil back home to their son, and then catch whichever bastard had tried to kill them both.

He he had closed his eyes whilst talking to the creature, and now he forced them open again. Sybil was still staring at him, and the look of distress on her face might have broken his heart if he still had one. But it was dawning on him that the anger was the first thing he’d actually felt since waking up; there was no fear, no grief, and his worry for Sybil was more of a thought; a mere memory of concern, rather than anything burning inside and driving him forward.

He looked around. They had been half a mile outside the city gates when the device had gone off, and evidently the explosion had drawn some attention because a handful of people were now running in their direction. 

Vimes glanced down at his mutilated chest again, and then scanned the wreckage. He spotted his greatcoat beside Sybil and crossed to pick it up, ignoring the way she flinched as he reached down beside her. 

“Sorry, dear,” he muttered.

She let out another sob. “Is it…is it still you in there, Sam?”

The coat was only lightly singed, and he slung it on and buttoned it closed, hiding the gaping wound where his chest had been. “I, er. I don’t know.”

“Oh.” She stared at him, wide eyed, and he gave her a smile that was intended to be reassuring; she looked away quickly, and he had to assume it hadn’t worked. But then she pushed herself up to standing, swaying only faintly, and brushed herself down. A moment later the first of the rescue party appeared, and Vimes was vaguely glad to see that two of them were watchmen.