The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic (33 page)

Jack did what he could, but he had to conserve his strength; and he couldn’t risk sacrificing his life or Cyn’s for a doomed cause. He fought his way back into the middle of the knot, where he found a man he recognized: Tarisio Onisto, Cardinal-priest of Santi Simone. His olive-skinned face was haggard and pale; his blessed sword was covered in black ichor and notched up and down its length.

“I fear that I have failed his holiness,” the cardinal said, grabbing Jack’s hand and pulling him close. “It seems that I will be a shepherd no more. Guide them back. Keep them safe.”

“What do you mean?”

The cardinal only smiled and then raised a hand to the heavens saying: “I am the Lord’s wrath. I am the Lord’s holy wrath. I am the Lord’s life-giving light.” His smile began to falter and his jaw twitched. “I would turn away, Mister Jack and do not look.”

That was an impossible request. The cardinal’s eyes were glowing as if there were a spotlight burning in his head, and there was a glow coming from his mouth that was white and hot and blinding.

Jack was still staring when, out of the blue, Cyn tackled him, knocking him to the ground and covering his face with her body. Even with her on him, he could feel the light of the Lord burn as it blasted out of the cardinal.

The dead withered in a vast circle. A thousand of them turned to ash—and so did Cardinal Onisto. His skin became a fine, white powder that blew away to the south and then his bones went next, just so much dust. In seconds, his vestments crumpled to the ground, empty.

Cyn crawled off of Jack as soon as the cardinal was no more. He had blasted the dead in a great circle and those not destroyed were cowering with their hands across their faces. The soldiers and clergymen wept, some going to their knees and crossing themselves.

Some glanced at Jack; when the cardinal’s light was burning the night, only he had screamed in pain and only he had clawed at his armor as if it had been on fire. The moment Cyn stood, Jack scrambled to his feet and looked back at where he had been sprawled on the ground, fully expecting to see scorch marks and he did.

There was a circle of black burned into the ground, a circle of glyphs. For a happy moment he thought that the Mother’s evil gift had been burned out of him, but it was a short-lived moment. The spell was still there as evil as always.  The scorch marks were only God’s reminder that he was carrying the blackest sin around in him.

As if I need the reminder
, he thought, unhappily and then yelled: “Back to the lines! Form a square. Fighters on the outside, clergy on the inside. We fight as a team and we will live as a team.”

It was Cyn who actually led them back to the lines. She was safer in front. The greatest danger came from behind as the living corpses came on, snapping at their heels. They learned to fear not just the Holy sword but also Jack’s avenging fury. The cardinal’s death weighed heavily on his conscience. It had only been a minute earlier that Jack had been unable to sacrifice himself because he was “too important.”

Now, he felt as though he was just another sword. He had been humbled by the cardinal’s ultimate sacrifice.

They made it back to the lines, which had swollen to three hundred men—three hundred dead men in Jack’s eyes. They were all very powerful in their own right and yet the way of evil was too easy. Robert took his power at the edge of a knife, and it came as easily as drawing that red line in the flesh. These men had to fight and bleed and cry, and sometimes they had to give their very souls just keep back the evil for a brief time.

There were helicopters overhead and there were dead men among the living, sprawled in poses of greatest anguish. The venture was futile. The Pope had made a tremendous mistake coming here and in Jack’s opinion, the only thing left to do was to retreat. They had to stop bringing in more men and start getting those that were here out. It would mean men left behind. It would mean a last few sacrificing themselves for the rest.

The Pope didn’t see it that way. His Holiness came rushing up as soon as they reentered the lines. “Did you see Robert out there? He was right there when we landed.” He pointed to a lone body that was so much different than the others. This one had been opened up with a delicate and horrible touch. There were two circles of glyphs painted next to it.

Jack stared, forgetting himself. “No. He was here? Which way did he go when you showed up?”

Romanus pointed nearly do west. For a moment, Jack wanted to head in that direction and leave the horde in the hands of the Pope and his small force, but then he remembered the sacrifice of Cardinal Onisto.

“We need to evacuate these men,” he said. “You need to stop landing men and begin saving the ones you have.”

“At what cost?” Romanus asked.

Jack thought he understood the question. “At the cost of a few who will hold the LZ open for the rest to escape.”

“You are short sighted in this. The cost is greater than a few men left to die. What of the thousands or millions that the demon horde will devour when we flee? Or do you still plan on raising more evil to combat the evil in front of us. Evil begets evil, Jack.”

“Or I’m fighting fire with fire,” Jack countered.

Romanus smiled, showing old world teeth, dark and crooked, but friendly. “I value your soul above all others, Jack Dreyden. A thousand men could die here today, but if I lose one soul then I have failed. Do you understand? Cardinal Onisto only died, nothing more. We will stick to the plan and bring in more men. We will dig in and allow our enemies to wreck themselves against the wall we create.”

“And if we all die?” Jack asked.

“Then we all die,” the Pope answered simply.

Too simply for Jack’s tastes. While they fought and died, Robert would get away and then who would be left to fight his next horde? A few ragged survivors? This was the flower of the priesthood that was being sacrificed on the altar of good intentions.

Jack couldn’t allow that to happen. “I’m not going to stay and watch the slaughter. My fight is with Robert. Your fight is with common sense.”

“I’m sorry you feel this way,” Romanus said. “You are free to come and go as you please, but you should know that if you leave it will lower moral. We need you, Jack.”

“And I need to fight a fight I can win.”

Chapter 32

Naples, Italy

Jack Dreyden

“Find me the closest cemetery to this one,” Jack whispered to Cyn as he strode away from the Pope. “I’m going to save him even if he doesn’t want to be saved.”

The perimeter had shrunk so much that only one chopper could land at a time and it was so small that there was no way the pair could get on a helicopter as it was about to leave and not be noticed.

Men stared; they began to whisper and point. They were calling him a coward, Jack was sure and, just like the Pope, they wouldn’t be happy in the manner in which he was going to save them. That was too bad.

Cyn and Jack jumped on board the first helicopter to land. Cyn went to the cockpit and yelled: “Fontanelli cemetery. We have to go here.” She pointed at her phone’s screen.

The pilot shook his head. “No. To Vatican. We pick up…uh, a soldiers. And a papas.”

“No priests,” Jack said. “Fontanelli, first. Do understand? Drop us off and then you can go to the Vatican. Capiche?”

After a moment, as the pilot assessed Jack and his gleaming sword, he answered with a single word: “Capisco.” He then pointed for Jack and Cyn to go back to the cargo area. When they were seated, the helicopter jerked upwards at a slant, nearly spilling Cyn off the side.

Jack caught her and held her tight as they flew over the battlefield. It was frightful sight seeing the hundreds of thousands of dead swarming toward the little hill. In the distance were a scattering of blinking lights; helicopters heading in. They were so few in number that he found it sad.

“How can Romanus think he can win this?” Jack murmured. “Maybe he could if he had all four thousand of his men right here, right now. Even then the casualties would be outrageous.”

“He has faith,” Cyn answered. She had her legs dangling two hundred feet above the army of undead. She leaned back into Jack, showing that she had faith in him to keep her safe. So far he had kept her safe and yet, he was the first to admit that so far he had been lucky.

The chopper cleared the boundary of the cemetery and for some reason did not go higher. It remained at two-hundred feet for a few minutes heading northwest over the city of Naples, and then it started circling slowly, a searchlight beaming down on a church perched on the side of a steep hill. There wasn’t a cemetery in sight.

“What’s he doing?” Jack yelled to one of the crew members. “We need to go to Fontanelli!”

“Si, Fontanelli,” the man yelled back, pointing down at the church. “Fontanelli.” There was no room to land and so the pilot swept the chopper east two blocks and set down on a soccer field.

At first Jack refused to leave the chopper. Why strand himself in the middle of Naples when he needed to get to a cemetery? Then Cyn said: “It’s underground. Like the catacombs, ok?”

Jack felt he was a relatively brave man and yet the idea of going down into the earth to raise the dead gave him a case of the willies. Of course that wasn’t something he could let show, especially since Cyn appeared altogether confident.

“Well, that’s different,” he said, stepping down onto the deep, green grass. With a wave to the pilot, they hurried out from beneath the spinning blades and toward the hill dominating this part of the city. It was struck in gloom and altogether quiet, which was very much in contrast to the rest of the city.

It was one in the morning and yet the city was alive, not with gunshots or screams, but with car horns and the slap of running feet. The city was being evacuated. Every street was filled with people and cars, every street except the one heading to Fontanelli. People moved away from it, casting nervous glances up at the hill; many of them crossed themselves and a few spat on the ground in its direction.

“That’s not so comforting,” Jack said with a little laugh.

“Just superstitious people,” Cyn replied. “Lucky for us, if there were demons in there, we’d know.” Jack laughed again, this time at himself. Cyn didn’t seem to notice. She was staring down at her phone as she walked. “Wow. There may be four million corpses in there. The cholera epidemic and the plague are said to have filled the caves with corpses. Mostly indigent paupers who couldn’t afford a real grave. Four million…they must be bloody deep caves.”

They were. They found the main entrance unguarded but locked. After a quick opening spell, the two slipped down into the dark—there were no light switches and Jack was forced to use a touch more of his power as he blew on a handful of dust filling the immense caverns with glowing particles of light. There were many caverns carved into the hill and a tremendous number of bones, all of which were stacked in rows, set out as if on display.

And what a sickening display. Skulls were stacked in great piles; sometimes shaped in pyramids and others in towers that went to the ceiling of the caverns fifty feet over their heads. Sometimes they were just ill-shaped mounds. Frequently the stacks of skulls were set on a lattice of smaller bones. There seemed to be a great number of femurs and arm bones, but few ribs and fewer hand bones.

“Will this even work?” Cyn asked as she knelt down to inspect the closest pile. “I can’t tell if there’s a full skeleton in any of this.”

“Let’s hope so,” Jack answered. “Do you have any idea which way north is?” She didn’t and they had to go back outside and orient on the North Star to get their bearings. Once they did, Jack began the first spell with a slice of his wrist. The blood came out of him in the exact number of drops needed to form the twin spells—the glyphs were perfect, their edges exact.

“That was…that was way too easy,” Jack said. “
She
wants me to do this. I can feel her eagerness.”

“And look at the glyphs,” Cyn said, pointing with one hand and clutching her shotgun to her chest with the other. “Are they pulsing or is that a trick of the light?” They both knelt down to look at the glyphs from the side and they did seem to move and swell slightly. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” she said.

Jack reached out and touched the nearest glyph; it was his blood and yet it felt foreign. Standing up, he went around the twin circles, silently mouthing the words he had written. “It’s the usual spell, there’s nothing different about the wording. It should work like it always does.”

“But what if the Mother has set a trap in the…”

He stopped her with a raised hand. “Then we deal with it. If we want to save Romanus, then we do this here and now. Our only other choice is for you to do the spell.”

“You know I can’t do it,” she said, stepping back. “You know that I won’t.”

“Then we do this and we fight the Mother. We’ve done it before.”

Cyn reluctantly agreed and they moved to the furthest cavern in the eastern part of the underground complex and repeated the spell with a new cut. The blood ran even faster now. The same was true in the southern cavern and again in the west. Jack cut the back of his left hand and the blood shot out in a painless spray.

Without any effort, the four sets of spells were complete. Now, there was only the final spell, the one that Jack would draw on his own flesh. It would link all the previous spells and would allow him to control what came through the gate.

There was only one problem; the spell was necromancy. Out of nowhere it created an unholy demand within him. It was a lust for blood and souls that he hadn’t felt in a year and a half and it suddenly made him dangerous. “You should go,” he said in a strangled voice. “Get out of here before…” His hand was suddenly on the hilt of his Holy sword and it was half drawn before he could stop it.

Cyn’s eyes went wide when she saw the blade. “What is it? Is She in you?”

He couldn’t answer her. Cyn was too close to him and he was almost overcome with the need to kill. It was so fantastic that it began to control him. He couldn’t stop his eyes from going to her throat where the blood pumped just beneath the surface. He needed that blood and he needed the soul, and he would tear open her flesh with his teeth if he had to.

She saw the evil look and saw his hand struggling with his sword. “You can have my soul,” she told him. “If you need a soul to open the gate, then take mine.” She dropped to her knees and lifted her chin so that her throat was wide open to him. He could kill her in a flash, but just like that, he suddenly didn’t want to.

“I could never,” he said, speaking partly to himself and partly to her. It was a lie and it wasn’t—just then it was both, but with every passing second it became the truth once again. The ugly desire for her soul was only a fading echo within him. Necromancy could only use a stolen soul, not one gifted.

“That was smart,” he said, hiding his shaking hands behind his back.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” she asked. She tried to give him her trademark smirk; however, it failed after a second. “Are you going to be able to complete the spell without killing anyone?”

Before answering, he closed his eyes and explored the remains of the spell that the Mother had tricked him into accepting. There was still plenty of power wrapped up in the remaining words. “Yes, but you should still go. She’s dangerous and she’ll be extra dangerous with you near. She’ll pit us against each other.”

Although she agreed, she hesitated. “Remember that you love me.”

A minute before, he had been on the verge of killing her, and yet he said: “I could never forget it.” They kissed lightly. He felt anxiety in her lips and the way her breath came in a little tickle as though she was afraid to spook him by breathing normally.

She hurried from the bone-filled cavern and he wasted no time. He yanked off his armored vest and then opened the shirt beneath. With a quick breath, he cut himself once again. The blood didn’t fly; it welled in the crook of his arm, looking black. Jack painted with his right index finger, drawing the glyphs on his chest.

When he was done, he spoke the words that opened the gate and there came a great metallic ringing sound and the rock within the circles turned jet black, and deep in the darkness motes of light began to race upward as the souls of the damned saw the way out of their hell. But then there was a shriek, a horrible sound that had the hair on Jack’s arm lift up.

The motes backed away from the gate, as did Jack. He snatched up his vest and was desperately trying to get it on when
She
suddenly came up out of the darkness. The Mother of Demons stood within the twin circles, staring at Jack. She was young and naked. She was beautiful in a way that defied logic. She was perfect, all thirty feet of her. She was huge; her head brushed the ceiling and her arm span ran the length of the cavern.

Her flesh was white and silver; she sparkled in the gloom. Her eyes were opals and her smile diamonds. Jack found himself staring, his mouth hanging open, drool beginning to collect at the corners.

Time lost all meaning and he would have happily wasted his life away and turned into an old man staring at her if she hadn’t chosen that moment to enter him. Effortlessly and without leaving the circle, she crossed over into his mind. There was a stab of pain and then there came what could laughably be called a contest of wills.

Hers was steel, while his was butter in comparison. In three seconds, he was crushed, his mind open to hers, his soul right at the surface, so vulnerable. It seemed as if she could reach out and snatch it out of his body if she wished. Her body and face was that of an angel, but what lay in her mind was absolutely horrifying. Pure terror ran throughout his body. It sapped his strength to the point that he couldn’t run away as much as he wanted to, and he desperately wanted to. His legs were jelly and his heart rattled in his chest so heavily that he was sure it would seize up altogether.

“I did not call you!” he screamed, his hysterical voice reverberating off the walls and echoing throughout the cavern.

The pitiful scream was all the defiance he could muster. In his ears it was pathetic and cowardly. The scream showed just how weak he really was before her; yet she could not stand even this toddler’s tantrum. Jack felt the pain of knives lance into the softest part of his stomach and then twist and turn. He fell, clutching himself, feeling his guts spill out through his fingers, feeling his hot blood pour onto the roughhewn rock floor.

But then the Mother smiled at Jack and it was as if the previous moment of terror had never happened. He sat up, trembling, sweat running into his eyes. He looked down at his stomach—the skin was unblemished. For a few crazy seconds, he sobbed with relief and felt the urge to actually thank her for not having really gutted him.

The Mother spoke: “You have done wonderfully my dear, Jonathan. I am so proud of you.”

He looked up, confused. “You are?”

“Of course. Look how strong you are. Look how brave. You have come such a long way since your father’s tragic death. No mother could be more proud of her son.”

Jack’s head swam with pride and confusion. “Thanks…but you are not my mother. My mother died and she didn’t go to hell.”

“Are you sure? Have you seen her in heaven? I think not. All you have is your father’s word and men are such liars.”

“My father is not a liar. My father was a good man.”

“Sometimes good men lie. Wouldn’t he want to spare you the pain of knowing that your mother came here to be with me? He would. He loves you. And I love you. I love all my children and that is wonderful and good.” Her voice was like velvet and he could feel the love come off of her; however there was an underlying note to the emotion that felt false. It was as if there was a “but” mixed in with the love.