The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic (25 page)

Chapter 24

Tours, France

Jack Dreyden

With a groan and a little cough that had just enough strength to expel the stale air from his lungs, Jack clawed at the dirt, fighting simply to roll over. It was another labor to sit up. Once again, he was drained as deeply as he had ever been drained. The Mother had fought him tooth and nail in order to open a gate into hell…or so it had seemed at first. When he started the spell, he foolishly thought that he was in a battle with the Mother of Demons herself and like a fool, he thought he was winning.

In reality, he hadn’t been in a battle at all and if he had been, he wouldn’t have had a chance at winning. Jack had been a hero only in his own mind, and once the fourth set of spells had been completed and he had been rendered impotent with all the strength of a mewling kitten, he had been shown the truth: the Mother of Demons had allowed him to “win.”

Only in retrospect was he able to see that she had been toying with him and had allowed him to complete the spells only because she had wanted him to. One of the key components to opening a gate into hell was the literal begging for the Mother’s assistance and it was up to her to allow the gate to be opened or not. Why she had let him complete the spells, he didn’t know, but he didn’t think she would ever let him use the spells again.

She was an angry and jealous bitch of a demigod and couldn’t stand being told “no.” The least bit of resistance was blasphemous to her, especially if it came from a man. It was an affront to her and Jack figured that she was busy planning some sort of terrible revenge and just at that moment, he couldn’t have cared less.

The very fact that the Mother would deny him access to the gate into hell was so fantastic that he secretly cried in happiness.

Finally, he was done with this.

There was nothing so horrible as bringing unwanted souls back from the netherworld. Even the dreadful pain that the Mother had thrust upon Jack earlier, what felt like he was being force fed tumors, was nothing compared to the horror of opening a gate into hell. But the tumors were a close second. What she had done to him was beyond description and he could still feel the pain in his innards radiate out as he took little sips of air. It hurt to breathe and it hurt not to. His nerve endings were on fire and he felt bruised on the inside.

But the pain wasn’t the reason why silent tears slid down his cheek to drop onto the floor of the graveyard. The pain would fade and in fact it was already fading. He cried in pure happiness. If he never painted those bloody glyphs again, he would die a happy man.

Next to him, Cyn was stretched out in the turned up dirt with her arms flung above her head. Her face glowed white and stood out in stark contrast to the dark earth. Although she was very much alive, she looked as pale as death, and her beautiful blue eyes stared out of her skull seeing nothing, not the beauty of France and not the horrors he had brought into the world: all around them were tens of thousands of foul half-beings. They were creatures that stank of decay and fetid grave dirt and they were shuffling through the graveyard, coming right at the two of them.

She didn’t seem to care. “Are you okay?” she asked, finally turning to look at him, her eyes half-lidded.

“Yeah, sure,” he said as he passed a hand across his face, swiping at the tears quickly so that she wouldn’t see them. He also tried on a smile but could only force the corners of his mouth up by a few millimeters. “Just a little tired is all. Can you give me a minute?”

She nodded and, thankfully, closed her eyes, seeming to drop into sleep. That was a blessing; he didn’t want her to see this part of his life. “One last time,” he whispered as he slowly groaned his way to his feet.

The power he had over the ghouls and the demons made him different. It made him ugly. It took something evil inside of him to control the evil without and it was an utterly disgusting feeling to command the dead, to rule them as king. It made him feel as though he was a demon himself.

He struggled to take a deep breath and then when he was calm, he sent his will out among the multitude of undead, feeling their warped souls, feeling their evil, taking a part of each of them inside of him. And there were so many of them. He knew their exact number: 42,869 ghouls and 141 demons. He could feel their minds and their temper and, as always, there was some resistance to overcome. Sometimes it was just a little, while at other times the creatures were as unruly as a class of children with a substitute teacher.

It was from the demons that he always had the most trouble.

On a psychic level, one that was unknown and unknowable to science, he battled the greatest demon he had called forth. That was the way these things went about a third of the time. In their world, the demons were petty and petulant princes and few creatures ever had the temerity to make any demands on them and so when Jack began issuing orders, the strongest of them pushed through the crowd to challenge him.

The creature had chosen what was probably the finest corpse in the cemetery to wear: a woman who looked as though she hadn’t been in the ground for more than a day. The dead body was tall and slender. Its skin was pale but unmarred, so that the cause of its death couldn’t be ascertained. It was covered in a light pink dress that looked splendid, in spite of the fact that it was stained with dirt. The body had gobs of brown hair that had been meticulously styled for what had been thought was a final internment.

The body really was one of the better ones Jack had ever seen and he had seen far too many to ever count. Yes, the body was great, all except the eyes. It did not have eyes. The lids had been glued shut to simulate sleep, but the demon had popped open the holes in the woman’s skull and Jack could peer in at the complete emptiness of the corpse.

“You have your orders,” Jack said, trying to avoid looking the demon in its borrowed face. Locking “eyes” and staring into those empty pits was disturbing. The demon came right up to Jack, who was suddenly very aware that he had lost his blessed sword somewhere in the cemetery and that he was too drained even to perform the simplest bit of magic. Right then he couldn’t have pulled a rabbit out a hat.

“Go!” he snapped, pointing past the demon in the direction of Robert’s army. The demon shook its head and smiled with oddly red lips. The corpse’s makeup was also disturbing. Whoever had made the woman up in preparation for her funeral had tried too hard to simulate life, and the effect made Jack feel queasy.

The demon could sense the effect its body had on Jack and pressed its advantage, getting close so that Jack was also assaulted by the perfume that had been liberally applied before she went into the ground. Beneath the sachet was the sickly-sweet aroma of decaying meat.

“You are weak,” the demon said, speaking in a terrible growl that was again made more horrible by the fact that it spoke with the high voice of the woman. “You cannot command Ghulat. Ghulat was strong when the world was young. Ghulat made kings and feasted on queens. Ghulat…”

“Ghulat needs to shut his trap and get moving,” Jack barked. He had heard all sorts of demon bragging in his time and it was wearing. “Find the greatest of Robert’s demons and drag it to hell. That’s the only thing you need to be concentrating on right now. You came through the gate. You accepted the contract now fulfill it.”

The demon Ghulat snapped the woman’s teeth closed hard enough to break the front ones off, so that when it smiled, all Jack could see were jagged points. The demon then went through a ritualistic display of fury by tearing open the woman’s face and chewing off her overly-red lips.

This actually helped Jack, who found it easier to deal with the demon now that it looked much more like one.

Now came the actual battle. From an outside point of view, it was extremely underwhelming. The two fought with their minds. The demon was ancient and had battled wills for thousands of years. His mind was a tough knot, an old root that would never wither, while Jack was young, barely tested, and exhausted.

Still Jack was a sorcerer, which helped and yet he did not win the battle simply because of that. He won mainly because of the contract that had yet to be fulfilled. The demon wanted to break it and the only way he could was to first break Jack’s mind. The attack came quickly and it came without mercy. It felt like Jack’s brain was being compressed, crushed inwards by a vice.

He started to sweat, and his head began to pound, but he stuck to his guns. “Go Ghulat. Do as you’re told.” Ghulat redoubled its efforts and there was what felt like a spike of iron in Jack’s mind, but it didn’t last as Jack laughed in the face of it. “You are a joke, Ghulat. Go and be a joke somewhere else.” It had been a forced laugh and yet it had its desired effect. Ghulat threw another tantrum as it realized it had no choice but to obey. Once it did, the others followed suit and left to hunt down Robert’s army.

Then Cyn and Jack were alone in the cemetery and the silence was unnerving.

The two went to the tree Jack had fallen out of and sat on its trunk, not speaking to each other; not seeing much beyond the tips of their boots. Jack was thinking about the land. What had once been beautiful as well as hallowed had been abused and likely would never be built on again. It would gain an evil reputation and would be called haunted.

The land was ruined, which was becoming something of a hallmark of his. He left destruction in his wake. “In Robert’s wake,” he uttered. When Cyn cast a look at him, he tried on a grin. “So that was the Mother of Demons in real life. Pretty scary.”

Cyn’s eyes darted away. “That was part of her. She’s bigger than that, probably bigger than we can imagine.”

“You want to tell me about her?” Jack asked. “You guys were talking for some time.”

“Not yet,” she answered. “It was a lot to take in…more than I could handle. Well, almost more than I could handle, and that reminds me. I know you trust me to fight my own fights, but next time, if you have the chance to shut the gate then bloody well shut it. The Mother almost had me.”

Jack patted her armored leg. “But she didn’t. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? You faced the Mother of Demons one on one and came out alive and unscathed.”

She shook her head. “Not completely unscathed. She showed me many things and she fed her power into me. It wasn’t right and it’s making me sick. I can feel it churning my insides, making them dark. I have to get it out of me but I don’t know how.”

“You can try magic. We both know you have the ability. I can teach you the lightning spell easily enough and there are plenty of targets around here.” He waved an arm at the trashed-out cemetery.

“No, I don’t think so. Magic is not for me. I won’t do that to my soul. I won’t destroy it for target practice or for fun.”

He brought out a knife and said: “Then there really isn’t any other option. I’m drained and I need a boost just in case we find Robert at the center of this mess…speaking of which, how do we get the helicopters back? The pilot really wasn’t any help.”

Cyn dug in a pocket and held up a cell phone. “This little gadget is called a phone. It’s right handy and allows you to communicate with people far, far away. You should get one.” She was smirking as she said this, but then her eyes caught sight of the knife and the smirk became a tense grin and she clasped the phone in both hands. “I don’t know if I should give you this power. It’s not wholesome. It’s hard to explain, but it won’t feel like I would be giving you a gift this time. It’ll feel like I’d be giving you a disease.”

He made a face. “A magical venereal disease? Sounds gross.” Her smirk came back and as it always did, it made him love her even more. “Seriously, if there is an issue with this power that the Mother gave you, it would be better if you transferred it to me. I can either dump it with a little target practice, or use it against whatever we find at the center of all of this.”

Reluctantly, she agreed and so he cut the inside of their wrists with the knife and then they joined their souls touching new blood to new blood. It was a connection unlike the others they had experienced together—it stung like nettles under his skin. And worse, it made him feel as though he was going to puke all over her. There was indeed something horrible in what the Mother had given her and Jack knew immediately what it was.

It was power, a fantastic amount of power that fully revived him…but it was stolen power. Cyn had been given what Jack, at one time in his life had craved: souls. Inside of her were the shredded remains of dozens of souls. It was horrible feeling them squirm inside of him and worse, he could feel the necromancer in him spring back into life, becoming greedy for more. That part of him did not care about right or wrong, it only cared about its all-consuming hunger.

Jack tried to keep a neutral look on his face; however, Cyn was connected deeper than the surface and knew what he was feeling. She tried to pull away.

“No,” he insisted, holding her flesh bound to his through an act of the mind and not of the body. “You can’t have this evil in you. It’ll ruin you. That’s why she gave it to you. She wanted to tempt you with its power. She wanted to warp your soul.”

“What about your soul? You may not care about it, but I do.”

Again she tried to pull back, using more of her own strength, which Jack found surprisingly powerful. Nonetheless, he was stronger than her and he was stronger than that evil part of himself that he had thought had been killed for good. “My soul has already been dirtied by this sort of thing and a little more won’t hurt.” That was a small lie that they both pretended was the truth. He took the power of the Mother from her and when he had siphoned it all off, he made to pull away, but, out of the blue, she let a little of herself into him as well.