Persuasion

Part One

It shouldn’t have been dark.  By Sunday’s reckoning, it was only midday when he had woken up, and only an hour could have passed while he stood tense in a corner of his room, his gun in his hand, waiting for the feeling of something wrong, something intrusive, to resolve itself.  Even so, it had been getting steadily darker since he had woken in a cold sweat and reached out for his gun.  It got colder too; Sunday had begun to shiver half an hour ago, but he had not felt safe enough to leave the protection of two walls, even for the five seconds it would have taken him to grab the crumpled jumper lying, teasing him, in the doorway.
A ray of sunshine, somehow made faint and monochrome, formed the only source of light.  It only enhanced the shadows as they danced in threatening forms in circles around Sunday.  He knew not to waste his shots on them.  They could only hurt him in his mind, and only if he let them; nothing he could do would hurt them in the slightest.
It was a standoff.  Sunday could tell instinctively there was someone else involved, and he was waiting for him to reveal himself, just as the intruder was waiting for Sunday to slip up.  Assuring himself that he was ready, that he could wait indefinitely, Sunday held his gun tight, reflexively touching the safety every so often to reassure himself he could kill.
“Looking for someone?” a silky voice suddenly asked in his ear.  Forgetting to be cautious, letting his terror blow his reason to hell, Sunday jumped away from the corner, spun round, unleashed a hail of lead at where his head had been just a moment before.  Something grabbed him from behind; instinctively, Sunday released all the pent-up fear inside him in the form of a solid ball of searing light which tore through the enchantment surrounding the room.  The shadows let him go and, screaming silently with an ear-shattering noise, burned away into non-existence.  There was a sudden glare as the sun burst through the windows, illuminating the room like a bomb.  Sunday blinked in the sudden brightness and stared around him.  He was alone.
“Fuck you’re scary,” someone breathed from the doorway.  Without looking Sunday pointed and pulled the trigger; bullets dropped out of the end of the barrel like fledglings trying to fly before they had wings, one by one.  “Don’t bother,” the voice continued.  Dreading what he might see, Sunday turned round slowly, composing his mind for whatever horror might be awaiting him.
There was nothing there.
“Over here,” the intruder whispered in his ear.  Sunday could feel someone’s lips brushing his earlobe.  He jumped, and found himself suspended in the air with someone’s hands round his neck.
In appearance, he seemed normal.  Only his eyes, kaleidoscopes of pink and green, gave him away to the wary.  Pure white hair hung down his back, floating slightly as it neared the floor, slowly twisting from side to side like snakes in a breeze Sunday couldn’t feel.
With a casual flick of his wrist, the stranger hurled Sunday against a bookshelf.  Sunday crashed into it heavily, tearing skin off his back against the edge of a shelf; he managed to stay upright through great effort.  The gun, obeying some alternate law of motion, skittered out of his hands and over to the far end of the room.
“We’re done fighting,” the intruder said.  “You lose every time.”
“What do you want, Hhozyain?” Sunday snarled, tasting the blood in his mouth where he had bitten his tongue.  Hhozyain did not deign to reply immediately; he sat himself on the edge of Sunday’s bed and stared hard at Sunday.  Breathing raggedly, Sunday returned the stare, trying not to turn away.  At last he could not help it.  Cursing, he turned his head away.
“You lose every time,” Hhozyain repeated.  “I want you to kill someone for me.”
“Why can’t you do it?  You’re obviously much more competent than me.”
“Someone,” said Hhozyain, “decided that I was not going to be able to kill him, which is as much as you need to know.  Rest assured that I would much prefer to do the job myself, rather than leave it to someone of your low calibre, but in the circumstances…”
“I’m going to have to be your assassin,” Sunday finished.  He was disgusted.  “And what makes you think I’ll do whatever you say whenever you say it?”
“A very simple reason,” Hhozyain replied.  He reached inside his robes and withdrew a silver amulet; a circle of pure white metal, suspended on a thin green thread.  Sunday’s eyes widened in anger; he tried to make a snatch for it, but found his arm repelled by the air.
“Where did you get that?” he growled.
“Where do you think?” asked Hhozyain mockingly.  “A certain someone found herself in no position to think straight.  It was so fortunate that a person such as myself was willing to take her home and – take care of her.”  His face split into an unpleasant grin.  “She’s very sweet, your sister.  In many ways.”  Sunday was growling; a low, bestial growl which was almost too low to be audible.  Hhozyain’s grin spread even wider.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing she didn’t enjoy at the time.  And so devoted did she feel to her saviour that she gave him the first thing she could lay her hands on at the time to remember her by.”  He raised his eyebrows for the finishing touch.  “This trinket was the one thing you expressly told her never to take off, I hear.”
Sunday howled and threw himself at Hhozyain, who held out his hand, and Sunday was suspended in mid-air, only half human.  Scythes of bone were ripping through the skin of his lower arms and ankles; blood droplets hung in the air around them.
“I thought as much,” he commented, walking round Sunday and inspecting him from all sides.  Sunday could only move his eyes; hostile, now slit like a cat’s, they followed Hhozyain round the room.
“I also think we understand each other, my friend.”  He dangled the amulet right before Sunday’s eyes, just to make the point.  “While I have this little thing, you will do anything I tell you.  Or your sister won’t enjoy herself so much next time.  I hope we understand each other?”
Sunday found he could move his neck, and he did so, nodding slowly.
“I’m glad,” said Hhozyain.  “In that case, it is my desire that you should kill…”  He leant in close and breathed the name in Sunday’s face.
  Suddenly Sunday could see the web he was caught in.  At the same time, Hhozyain’s hold on him vanished, and he collapsed to the ground, his weapons absorbed once more into his flesh.
“Don’t forget this,” Hhozyain added as he moved towards the door, holding the amulet so it glinted in the light.  “I expect a result in a week.”
“What did he do ever do to you?” Sunday asked weakly, not shifting his gaze from the floor.
“Why don’t you ask him?” said Hhozyain.  “Before you kill him.”  He made a noise which might have been some form of laugh and then he was gone.  The room seemed somehow darker without him.