The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic (29 page)

“You okay?” Jack asked, stepping near and looking at her closely. She felt as though she was about to shake to pieces, but he seemed perfectly fine.

She tried to shrug but with her body rattling away, it wasn’t obvious. “I guess I never get used to some parts of this life. Headless bodies and bone prints, those weren’t in the job description.”

“And neither were helicopter crashes,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. It wasn’t the most comforting thing. They were now armor to armor and for the first time she noticed that his had dozens of little holes in it, each large enough for her to fit the tip of her pinky in. She wanted to ask about them and at the same time she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know what had driven him to decapitate a defenseless man. What would happen if she didn’t find his reasons compelling enough? Would he forever be a murderer in her eyes?

It was best not to know. “I think I just need some light,” she said, digging for her phone…her
new
phone…the one that one of CaptainVance’s men had handed over without question. It was smashed beyond repair. She had survived the helicopter crash, but for some reason it hadn’t. And neither had the man who had given her the phone. He had been one of the ugly piles of jutting bone and torn flesh that lay crumpled in a pool of red.

Seeing the phone triggered her shakes to go into overdrive and she was forced to sit as her muscles turned to jelly.

Jack squatted down next to her and brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face. “It’s just a phone, darling. And if you want light, I can help.” From his pocket he brought out a pinch of dust and gently blew on it. The grains leapt from his hand as glowing embers of gold. Soon the entire tunnel was bright enough to read by. “You see? No problem.”

But there was a problem. The now dead phone that belonged to the now dead soldier had a picture of a pretty woman, holding a pretty baby, as its screen background. Now there were a thousand cracks running through their faces. Seeing them caused Cyn to break down in tears and she wasn’t exactly sure why. She didn’t know the soldier beyond the fact that he was one of Vance’s
Raiders
. And there had been many pretty women killed in the last year and a half and she was sure that many had pretty babies.

So why was this one special? Why was this woman and her baby making her cry?

“It’s the adrenaline from the crash running through you,” Jack said. “It can mess with your emotions.”

“Or it’s all of it,” she replied. “I think it may be time for me to…”

A voice from up the tunnel cut in on her. It was Captain Vance and he was still limping; a bad sign. “Please tell me that guy without the head is your cousin.” Jack shook her head, making Vance sigh. “At least tell me he was a bad guy, then.”

“Bad enough,” was all Jack replied. “What kind of casualties are we looking at up there?”

“Four dead and four in critical condition. The rest of us are a little nicked-up, but we’ll survive.”

Jack grunted, a sound, Cyn knew, that meant he had already put the dead and wounded behind him. As always, he was focused only on Cyn. He truly cared only about her. The world could burn and as long as she was alright, he would be fine. It wasn’t healthy and yet he could still function in an environment of constant danger which would destroy a lesser man.

“What were you saying?” he asked her. “It’s time for what?”

She wanted to tell him that it was time to quit, to run away, only she couldn’t. Her simple job of being there for Jack was vital. If she left so would he, and no one else could do what he could.

“It’s time for a vacation,” she answered. “Once this is done, we are going somewhere blue and tropical and far away.”

He grinned. “Sounds good, but in the mean time we have to figure out why Robert was interested in St. Martin.” The three went down the tunnel, which ended at a large pit the size of a backyard swimming pool. Jack went down into it and studied the dirt walls and floor.

“What do you make of this?” he asked Cyn and tossed up a bit of what looked like rock to her.

She ran her hands over it only to feel bits break off. “Wood, probably from a coffin. This must be the site of St. Martin’s original tomb, but since there isn’t another sacrificed body, it’s safe to say that they didn’t find any more bones. If that was indeed what they were looking for.”

Jack poked around a bit more, sending his particles of light here and there to illuminate one part of the pit or another. Eventually, he came out, looking thoughtful. “What do a Roman centurion, St. Gregory, St. Martin and ancient Egyptian funerary texts have in common?”

The easy answer and likely the true answer was: “Nothing,” Cyn replied. “As far as we know, neither saint ever went to Egypt. I don’t think St. Gregory ever left Europe. The Romans were everywhere. The connection is likely there…except that particular Roman lived right around the time of Christ, while St. Martin lived three-hundred years later and Gregory was a hundred and sixty years after that.”

“What I want to know,” Captain Vance said, “is what do Chinese sorcerers have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing,” Jack told him. “And it’s not the right question. It’s only adding an unnecessary variable.”

Feeling drained, Cyn sat down on the lip of the pit and let her feet dangle. Vance and Jack joined her, one on either side and they each took turns reading from Vance’s cell phone. He had looked up both saints to see if there was a connection. Gregory was a biographer, turned bishop of Tours who was “canonized,” or sainted, after his death. Martin began life as a Roman soldier who later became a pacifist. He eventually became Bishop of Tours and was also canonized after his death. But what they had to do with a long dead Roman soldier and funerary texts was impossible to discover with what they knew.

“Maybe we are adding our own unnecessary variable,” she said. “Maybe Egypt has nothing to do with this. If you take that out, we have a link between the three: St. Martin connects the soldier to Gregory. Maybe the connection has to do with Rome.”

Jack thought this over for a time. “It’s possible. Gregory never went to Rome and the soldier likely never made it to France.”

“So St. Martin is the key to their connection, like Cyn said,” Vance stated.

“Except St. Martin was most famous for his sudden turn against war,” Cyn noted. “Why would Robert care about that?”

The idea made Jack snort. “He wouldn’t. He would only care about what caused him to turn from war. There is a more obvious connection joining the three: Jesus Christ. Robert could be
very
interested in something from that era.”

“The Holy Grail!” Vance cried, suddenly. “He has to be after it. Doesn’t it give you immortality?”

“I doubt it,” Cyn said. “The cup of Christ was a metaphor for the belief in everlasting life after death. Besides, how would a soldier end up with it? And if it did make a person immortal, how did he die?”

Jack laughed. “I admit I was thinking about the Grail as well. What about the
True Cross
? The cross Christ was hung up on was drenched in his actual blood and, mythologically speaking, there are many tales concerning its power.”

The three were silent for a time, the men thinking and Cyn pouring over the phone. She tried redefining her search adding the term “Holy Grail
”
along with the names of the two saints and when that didn’t bring up anything, she tried the same thing with the words “True Cross.”

“Damn it. I’m not getting anything out of Google,” she complained.

“It’s a computer so garbage in equals garbage out,” Jack said, gazing into the pit. “We need something deeper. What we are looking for is a secret so deadly that St. Martin took to it to his grave, perhaps literally.” He pointed around them at the pit.

What Jack said struck a chord in Cyn, but not about Martin. There was something about St. Gregory, some little tidbit that stuck in her mind and was gnawing at her. “There may be a different connection between Gregory and the other two and maybe even the funerary texts,” she said speaking as fast as the words popped into her head. “According to several sources, Gregory would actually write himself into the biographies of long dead saints, acting as if he had been there and seeing things first hand.”

Jack caught on. “Gregory was a sorcerer!”

“Or just a clairvoyant,” Cyn said. “And maybe he saw something.” She typed on the phone’s miniature keyboard, entering:
St. Gregory holy relic
. “Whoa, I got something and it’s something Robert would definitely be interested in: the Lance of Longinus.”

“The what?” Vance demanded, trying to turn his head at a screwed up angle to see the phone’s display.

Cyn pointed the phone at him, but Jack answered before he could begin reading: “It’s the Spear of Destiny! The Holy Lance. When Christ was on the cross, possibly right at the moment of his death, one of the Roman centurions pierced his side with a spear and out flowed blood and water, but it wasn’t water that came out. It was part of Christ’s soul.”

“You don’t know that,” Cyn said, fearing that what was being said was bordering on blasphemy.

“You’re right, I don’t know; however by the way Robert is going after this thing, I think he believes it. This leaves us with two questions: what kind of power does the spear have? And what’s he going to do with it when he gets it?”

Chapter 28

Tours, France

Jack Dreyden

Cyn’s smirk was nowhere in sight; her lips were a thin line on her face, which usually meant that she was angry about something. “What?” Jack asked, taking an innocent tone.

“Your assumption about Christ’s soul, that’s what. The Gospel of John clearly states
blood and water
came from the wound, and you know that.”

“Yes, I know what it says, but perhaps John didn’t know what he was seeing,” Jack answered. “I’m sure it wasn’t blood and water. Think about what happens when you mix blood and water. When you have more water than blood, you get bloody water and when you have more blood, you get watery blood.”

She looked unconvinced, strangely so. He went on, arguing what he felt was a worthless point: “Maybe it was the power of Jesus then. He had not been conquered or overcome in a fight so he probably died with much of his power still inside of him and it had to be released somehow. That’s what makes sense to me. If everything that was written about him was true then he could have hopped off that cross and wiped the floor with the entire Roman army.”

“But he wasn’t like that,” Cyn said, her odd anger calming. “He was a pacifist.”

“Just like St. Martin,” Jack replied, trying to get the conversation back where it had begun. “Martin started life as a Roman soldier, he then becomes a Christian and then, years later, he suddenly turns pacifist in a time when there just weren’t any pacifists. Why? Vance, what would you do if you suddenly came across a powerful weapon, one that was a serious game changer, one that could make you Emperor of Rome.”

The soldier shrugged. “Easy, I’d use it. Wait, are you thinking Martin finds this lance, what could be the ultimate weapon and then just says: no thanks?”

“He was tempted,” Cyn said in a quiet voice. “He was tempted and didn’t give in. Then maybe he kept hold of the lance so that no one else could use it for evil purposes.”

Captain Vance wore a look of disgust, as if the idea was repellent. “What about the Roman soldier, the one back in Lebanon? He wouldn’t have done that. Anyone who is callous enough to stab a man hanging from a cross is the sort of man who would definitely use the spear for his own gain.”

“Not if he had a conversion,” Cyn replied, “Which is exactly what happened to the centurion, Longinus, at least according to historical documents.”

Jack hopped up from the edge of the pit and stood with his toes hanging off the side. “It’s a good hypothesis, Cyn but we could be wrong. Let’s just look at the facts as we know them: we know that Robert left Egypt and went to dig up a Roman soldier, but came away with nothing. Next, he comes to Tours and raises St. Gregory, and then takes a pitstop to come here to see St. Martin. He checks his tomb and then digs a big pit, once again after someone or something.”

“I say this argues in favor of the lance being Robert’s goal,” Cyn said. “If we subtract the lance from the equation then nothing makes sense. All the connections fall apart. Without the lance in the picture, there is nothing about St. Gregory’s history that would stir Robert to this sort of action.”

After a brief hesitation, Jack said: “With everything I know about Robert, I agree. And if we accept that he raised Gregory for information about the Lance of Longinus as true then it follows that he would head straight for the lance. I guess that’s here.”

Jack expected this to be the end of the conversation; however, Cyn’s face clouded. “There is a hole in the theory. Although he had never been there, St. Gregory wrote that he had seen the Holy Lance in Jerusalem. If St. Martin had it in Tours a hundred and fifty years before Gregor was born, why does he mention Jerusalem?”

“To throw people off the scent of the true lance,” Vance suggested. “If the lance is as powerful as you two say then it’s great only if your side has it and is willing to use it. If not then you live in constant fear that someone will find it or steal it.”

Jack nodded in agreement. “That or St. Gregory did indeed have a vision of it in Jerusalem, perhaps at a much earlier time, since it seemed he was able to see into the past. One thing makes sense: something that Gregory told Robert led him here. I have to say that the lance or some other artifact being here in Tours is the only thing that makes sense. Robert wouldn’t spare a second on a saint unless there was something in it for him.”

“I agree,” Cyn said. “Robert is after power. The one question is: did he get it? Did St. Martin have the lance buried here? Can you tell, Jack?”

“No, I’m having a little trouble,” Jack answered, touching his chest where the Mother’s poison spell sat. “My insides are sort of mixed up with what the Mother put in you…”

Before he could finish his sentence, Cyn rounded on him, her eyes searching his face. “What? What did she do?”

It was too late to try to come up with some sort of lie and so Jack told the truth. “She put the three spells to open the gate into you, Cyn. It was a puzzle. She made it a puzzle that had to be solved and now it’s in me.” It was in him, demanding to be used…that part he kept to himself.

“That bloody bitch,” Cyn snapped, storming off to walk up the tunnel, stopping as the tunnel began to rise. “She couldn’t beat me and so she does this?” Her voice came back as a dull echo.

Jack wanted to tell her that “everything would be okay,” but he knew better. The Mother was crafty and even locked in hell she was certainly aware of everything going on, and it was certain that her meddling would continue.

“Think of it this way, Cyn: the Mother did me a favor. I can open the gate now without draining my power. It might come as a rude shock to Robert. Either way, for good or evil it’s done and I think it’s best to put it out of our heads and concentrate on this. For now, I think we need to move forward with the idea that Robert is after the Spear of Destiny or another artifact of similar power. If he has it already, we’re screwed, if not, if it wasn’t here, then we need to find it before he does. Any ideas?”

Cyn came back down the tunnel, her head down, her blonde hair spilling over the phone in her hand as she did some more research on the fly. “The lance was lost to history for hundreds of years, but a number of ‘true lances’ were discovered. No one has been able to confirm which, if any, is the actual Lance of Longinus. We’ll have to look at each. One is in Rome, another in Vienna, and the last is in a little town in Armenia.”

“Then we’ll alert each as to the possibility that Robert is coming for them,” Jack said. He turned to Vance. “I’m going to need to know where the lances are in each city. I’m going to want a plane ready to go at a moment’s notice, and I’m going to need permission to visit each. And I need the security around them increased by a factor of at least ten. And I’m going to need to know where the closest cemeteries of any size are in proximity to them just in case Robert beats us to them. And I want land cleared at each cemetery; north, south, east, and west, for helicopter landing points. Any questions?”

Vance shook his head. “None. Except, well what if he’s not after the lance at all or what if he’s already found it?”

Cyn answered: “If he’s found it, he’ll use it and we’ll know soon enough. If he hasn’t, then we can’t sit around waiting for Robert to act.”

“Yeah, I hate waiting,” Vance said. He was about to leave when Jack stopped him.

“And I’m also going to need new weapons and armor. And I’ll need some more Holy Water and Oil. Make it three vials of each this time. Got it?”

“Yes, weapons, armor, oil, LZs, security, and permission. Anything else, your highness?”

“Yeah, don’t be a jerk,
”
Jack said, but then grunted as Cyn elbowed him in the side. He quickly amended his request to: “Don’t be a jerk,
please
. And see if you can scare up some French food…please. I puked up that burger ages ago and I’m famished. Oh, and Cyn needs a new phone.”

She was quick to add: “Please.”

Vance waited a few seconds longer to see if Jack was going add any more requests and then, without asking, he snatched his cell phone from Cyn’s hand, punched a button, and began barking orders into it as he headed back up the tunnel.

Cyn watched him go, studiously keeping her eyes from Jack. “That spell in you is necromancy, isn’t it?” Jack didn’t answer which was answer enough for Cyn. “When were you going to tell me about it?”

“Never if I could’ve helped it.”

“Is the need bad?”

She had no idea how bad. Necromancy was so easy compared to sorcery. The power was right there, almost free for the taking, if one had no problem with murder, that is. And it was endless power; just take it and use it. There was no need to recuperate, there was no need for Jack to drag himself around as a fraction of a person for days on end.

Saying anything but yes to Cyn would have been a blatant lie. He tried to appear blasé. “The need is there, a little. It’ll probably get worse when I use the spell. Until then, I’m not worried.” That was true enough to pass. He had too many other things to worry about.

They left the pit and found themselves in a dark city. The sun had finally set on what had felt like a very long day and yet he didn’t have time to decompress. He had an army of undead to command.

As Captain Vance made arrangements to fly them to inspect the three possible Holy Spears, Jack jumped on board a helicopter and ordered it into the thick of the fighting between his ghouls and Robert’s. Although he was worn from his fight with the sorcerer, he needed to take control of his army which was just starting to unravel as a fighting host.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long to get the situation back under control. In the scheme of things, this had been only a diversion, a means to keep Jack occupied. Robert had used just the right amount of strength to get what he needed.

“I’m tempted to tell you to leave them for now,” Cyn said. “Getting the spear has to be our top priority.”

“And leave thousands of demons to slip away in the dark?” Jack couldn’t have that on his conscience. “The spear should be fine for now. It’s not like Robert can take a commercial flight to Rome or Vienna. He’s going to have to drive which means we have time.”

By midnight, the battle was over. A few demons had escaped, but the great majority were in hell where they belonged. Jack ordered his army to return the bodies they had taken back to their graves and from there he commanded them to return to hell as well.

Then it was just him and Cyn, sitting on the stone wall of the cemetery, kicking their heels and holding hands like teenagers. They had just fallen asleep, leaning on each other when a military helicopter dropped down out of the sky. Captain Vance stood in the doorway taking huge bites out of the side of a baguette, the length of his arm.

When they climbed up into the helicopter, he tore off a chunk of baguette for each of them. “Dinner. Sorry, but I forgot the butter. We’re short on time. For some reason, the Vatican is being a pain about letting us see their spear. They want us to rule out the other two before we inspect their’s. So we’re going to Vienna first. We have a private jet waiting for us. I’ve never been on a private jet.”

“Neither have I,” Jack said, glancing in at a duffle bag crammed with new clothes for him, armor and a sword.

“Oh, you’ll love it,” Cyn told him, but in this she was wrong. The plane was a thirty seater and was nice enough; however once Jack had changed into his new clothes and buckled on his armor and had a sip of white wine offered by a pretty stewardess, he fell straight to sleep and had to be shaken awake two hours later.

Next to him, Cyn was equally bleary-eyed. “Are we here all ready?” she asked. “What about dinner?”

“You missed it,” Vance told them. When Jack stood and reached for his sword, the captain stopped him. “They want us to leave our weapons on the plane. I told the ambassador I’d talk to you about it, but that I wouldn’t make any guarantees.”

Jack buckled the sword in place. “And now you have fulfilled your promise. We’re bringing the weapons and when I say we, I mean you as well Vance. No one working with me can go about unarmed, it’s too dangerous.”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” Vance answered, slinging a shotgun over a shoulder. “I always thought that you were a prima donna, which you are, of course, but at least it’s working in our favor this time.”

Strangely, they weren’t greeted by military men in military vehicles. It was a limousine, long and white, which picked them up. The driver looked at the weapons and the armor with wide eyes, while the American ambassador, an ex-politician with a heavy, braut-fed gut and a double chin, fretted and gave assurances of their safety, and tried to explain the need to cooperate.

In answer, Jack crawled into the limo and put his feet up. “Tell them their choices are I come with my sword or Robert comes with an army of the dead.” Unexpectedly, the ambassador repeated Jack’s statement word for word into a phone. The stark choice settled the matter in their favor and soon they were being whisked through the dark streets of Vienna to the Hofburg Palace, home of the Imperial Treasury.

Jack had never seen such magnificence. The palace was huge, the size of a city block and was truly awe inspiring. It was a tourist’s dream. His head spun as the four of them, Jack, Cyn, Captain Vance and the American ambassador were whisked right past security and into a world that was difficult for him to comprehend. There wasn’t a blank wall or a straight line in the place. There wasn’t a moment for him to catch his breath. Everything was swirled and adorned and gilt and beveled and beautiful and, in truth, garishly over the top to the American’s sense.