Roy pushed up from the floor and by reflex evaluated his hearing, his balance, his wounds and—and this was the wildest guess—how much fight he had left in him. With a groan he gained a knee, rising.
“Still in the fight,” he whispered.
Janet hadn’t risen from the floor and was moaning as she rolled from side to side. She had probably never been exposed to such an enclosed concussion and Roy was both relieved and stunned that she was alive at all because more people were killed by the sonic force of a blast than from shrapnel or flame. As Roy reached her side, he gently raised her to a sitting position and her gaze centered on the gargantuan beast lying in the corridor.
It wasn’t moving.
Half its hulking body had been liquefied.
Janet gasped, “Get me inside the substation!”
***
This could not endure.
Isaiah was determined that he would not be the first to move. He would let it decide its blow when it stepped back or struck, and his counter would have to be instantaneous and would probably end this.
Suddenly the creature was transformed into a blood-drenched demonic form with glaring eyes of black that shrieked in Isaiah’s face.
Isaiah revealed nothing—no fear, no concern; he did not waver in his resistance or shift more than what was needed as they slowly continued to circle, still maintaining their position chest to chest, blade to blade.
It shrieked again and lifted the blade a fraction.
Isaiah shouted as he brought down the Honjo Masamune slashing its forearm to sever the appendage and the demon’s sword and hand fell toward the ground. But before the arm even hit the white surface Isaiah reversed the katana and brought the blade up to sever its other arm. And, with that move, Isaiah stepped directly before it, the katana uplifted.
Isaiah roared as he struck.
The Honjo Masamune hit the crest of its head and continued though its neck and chest and the rest of its body until the tip of the katana struck the unearthly ground behind it. But that was not enough as Isaiah screamed, whirling in place to swing around with the katana clutched in his right hand, and his right hand alone, to cut the abomination in half at the hips, the hardest part of its body, in a one-armed, backhanded blow—a swordsman’s most difficult cut—to sever it into six fragments; the white steel katana continued into the gleaming white air leaving a wake of blood so that when it was done Isaiah stood face to face with it, so close and glaring, as the beast slowly slid apart, and fell.
Breathing heavily, teeth bared, Isaiah stood for a moment with the katana raised. But another blow was not needed. Then he viciously flung blood from the steel and stepped back as a shadow gathered over the corpse, condensing around the creature and, vaguely, Isaiah could discern faint movement within the congealing, occult depth.
It gave the impression of reconstitution empowered by a cosmic force that was once vibrant but now oozed over this shadow substance like black oil, and, in that moment, Isaiah knew that, no, it could not be destroyed by any weapon forged by man.
The form it inhabited could be destroyed, but the dark energy that gave life to the heart of it was destined to die a different death.
Cloaked in black even within the arena of light, the demonic shape slowly rose from the floor. It was imperfectly reconstituted and Isaiah knew it would need time to repair the damage it was suffering. But it was healing.
It laughed.
“I only wanted to see how deeply your arrogance runs,” it said.
“No,” said Isaiah, “you didn’t. You wanted to kill me. And you failed. Like you’ve always failed. I wish I could have seen you thrown down.” His eyes were fierce. “Someone said you looked like lightning falling from Heaven.”
“The battle isn’t over,” it sneered.
With a frown Isaiah lowered the katana.
“It is today.”
Without removing his eyes from the grotesque obsidian form that shuffled forward matching Isaiah stride for stride, Isaiah backed slowly toward Amanda’s trembling form to gently grasp her right hand.
A narrow glance confirmed to Isaiah that the tiny red light on the nuclear weapon was still functioning. He raised his gaze to the beast.
“Are you going to tell me your name?” asked Isaiah.
It laughed, “My name is Baal. No … Forgive me … My name is Moloch. It is Belial. No, I forget. Yes, now I remember. It is Pazuzu. No, it is Charun. Gremory. Krampus. Naamah. Sitri. Tannin. Valac. Zagan. Rahab. Do you wish to know more?”
Isaiah reached out to flick up the lid covering the trigger to the mega-bomb. Once he flipped the switch there would be no stopping the explosion, so he looked over to see Amanda standing inches from the almost dead portal. Even though the gateway retained a thin veneer of light, Isaiah knew that they had lost power on the other end.
“There’s one name you failed to mention,” said Isaiah, looking back at the ravaged figure.
It stopped in place.
“Oh,” it said, “that one.”
“Why not claim what’s rightfully yours?”
“What belongs to me was stolen by a tyrant.”
Isaiah tilted his head. “For a king, you sure lose a lot.”
“The truth deceived me.”
“I guess you didn’t understand the truth.”
“The truth,” it said bitterly, “is that there are many gods.” Abruptly, it laughed. “Did you know that by my power I created what your world calls all things supernatural? What they call miracles and sorcery and magic? But there was one God who forbid me from receiving what was rightfully mine … for he is a jealous God.”
“What was rightfully yours?”
“Worship.”
Isaiah once more raised the tip of the katana. It glanced at the point of the sword poised at the trigger and paused. Then it raised a gaze.
“It will profit you nothing,” it said.
“Well,” Isaiah allowed, “it ain’t gonna do you any good, either.”
Isaiah flicked the switch.
“Holy God!” screamed Amanda.
Isaiah spun to see her with hands uplifted at where the portal once existed but now there was only a ring of fire filled with dark matter swirling like an angry shark beneath black water; there was no place to go, no escape. There were trapped in this dimension with a nuclear bomb ticking off the last thirty seconds.
Amanda whirled to Isaiah.
“What do we do!” she shouted.
Isaiah looked at the creature.
“You’ve made your choice,” it said.
***
Janet had raced around the substation throwing multitudinous switches and looked up and down, abruptly motionless, as if searching for a ghost. Her rage couldn’t be contained to physical action.
“What the hell is wrong with this thing? Why isn’t it kicking in?” Janet pointed viciously. “There! Roy! Get up there and throw that big red switch on my signal! But wait for my signal!”
Roy leaped over the debris of a fence and was instantly on top of the huge steel conduction box where he saw a red switch pointing straight up. He knew enough about breakers to know it had to connect. As he laid a hand on it, he twisted to see Janet poised beside a series of white switches, holding one in each hand.
“On my signal!” she screamed and rapidly began throwing a series of switches up and then down until she almost immediately covered the distance of the substation. As she slammed the last switch, she spun.
“HIT IT!”
Roy threw the switch.
***
As a sun blazing at noonday the portal suddenly reopened before them disintegrating the blazing crimson ring so that it showered across them red rain and Isaiah didn’t hesitate as he grabbed Amanda’s hand and leaped into the gateway; he wasn’t going to give it another chance to disappear without them.
“Isaiah! I’m coming for you!”
As they were engulfed by the portal Isaiah glanced back to see the last seconds erased on the timer of the mega-bomb and then everything was overcome by a soundless white that followed them into but not through the portal as whatever was visible in this alternate world vanished in the white heat of the purest power.
***
“Is it working?” Roy shouted.
Janet staggered back, hands at the sides of her head. “I don’t know!”
“Dammit! Is it working, Janet?”
“I don’t know, Roy!”
“How can you know?”
Flinging arms out, Janet shook her head.
“We have to get back fast!”
Roy grabbed her hand, dragging her over debris. Then, together, they leaped into the ATV and in seconds were flying toward the nearby Observation Room.
***
Margaret’s hands jumped from the computer like she’d been shocked as Roy, his arm slung over Janet’s shoulders, staggered into the control chamber.
“Whoa!” Margaret shouted. “What was that!”
Janet groaned, “Did you get the power on?”
“No!” Margaret gasped. “I didn’t! What happened?”
“Is it working?” shouted Roy.
Margaret scanned every screen. “The machine might be working but the computers have to reboot! It takes a minute!”
The floor trembled and the walls visibly quaked as every light surrounding the collider suddenly came alive and they turned together to see the ATLAS door open even though Margaret didn’t command it. Face twisting in regret, General Jackman pointed the detonator at the machine as he groaned, “I’m sorry, guys.”
“Wait!” shouted Janet, dragging Roy forward.
Blazing blue light had erupted from the open door of the ATLAS sheathing the Observation Room window in a cobalt-azure haze as two figures emerged from the cylinder, each leaning on the other, one holding a shining white katana.
“It’s them!” Janet laughed hoarsely. “They’re back!”
Raising his gaze, Roy dropped his head again. His word was the very last word of a man spent with exhaustion, “Yeah …”
Jackman dropped his hand to his side. Then he bowed his head and slowly shook it for a long moment. “By God,” he muttered, “I’m going to make this deathtrap a controversy until the day Jesus tears the sky apart and comes down, and I hope he lands graveyard dead on top of this place and judgment starts right here.”
Upon the solid platform, Amanda and Isaiah embraced.
Roy laughed, “Make the most of it.” He tightened his arm around Janet. “You ready to go home?”
Janet rested her forehead into his chest.
“Yeah,” she whispered, “take me home, cowboy …”
***
It was three months before Isaiah found himself moving inside his bookshop without being in agony. That butcher-knife sized shard had done more damage to his leg than he’d realized at the time and, even now, he was amazed he’d managed the duel against whatever that thing was. But he no longer pondered, in his more honest reflections, what it was.
It was a demon or worse. And with that thought Isaiah glanced at the aluminum case holding the Honjo Masamune; it was leaning against the wall behind the counter of the bookshop, always close.
The international debacle following the final conflict within the collider was almost as spectacular as the battle itself. Only the overtly theatrical saber-rattling of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force insured their safe passage from Switzerland after the U.S. threatened to withdraw all funding for the UN if they did not intervene. And, in the end, all charges were dismissed, early retirements were arranged and no one was sentenced to prison on the continent or anywhere else. And CERN continued searching mask after mask for a power they would never understand. A power that was a living thing and would come to them only at its appointed time.
No. It wasn’t the perfect ending.
But what is?
Amanda walked into the aisle with an armload of books. She studiously began placing them on a shelf before she glanced toward Isaiah standing without working or seeming to work. Her brow hardened.
“Hey,” she asked quietly. “You all right?”
Isaiah blinked, “Yeah.”
“Is it your leg?”
“No,” Isaiah shook his head, and glanced at his rapidly expanding theological section, which was newly bracketed by multitudinous books on evolution, creationism, time, physics, space, and light as well as every theoretical beginning and every theoretical ending of the universe, scientific or not. In fact, his store had become something of a specialty shop and a place for intensely intellectual, but civil, discussions over coffee and beer and sandwiches—an unexpected benefit over Isaiah’s past, unimpressive prosperity that he and Amanda had translated into the luxury of a real home not far away. No, it wasn’t a big thing. But Isaiah had learned to appreciate the day of small things.
“You’re in pain,” Amanda said as she laid the books aside and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “Do you need one of your meds?”
Isaiah smiled and glanced high at what he didn’t truly understand and never would. He didn’t know how they had won the day. All he knew was that the day had been won and a force beyond them all had opened that portal three seconds before the purest power engulfed that entire dimension. And although he had never considered himself a spiritual man, Isaiah found himself inclined more and more to such thoughts these days.
Where would it end?
Who knows?
“Isaiah?” whispered Amanda. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Isaiah nodded. “Did you get the new seeds for our garden?”
“What? I didn’t think you cared about the garden.”
With a smile Isaiah slid a book onto the shelf and turned. He gently laid arms over her shoulders and leaned close. He gazed down into her eyes until Amanda laughed.
His own words were the truest Isaiah had ever known.
“I’m beginning to care about a lot of things.”
THE END
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ONE
Sitting upon a bough, the raven watched.
In the dying of the light the little boy swung slowly from the tree, his body broken, a noose around his neck. And at the edge of the forest a car burned and the raven watched as flame rose from the heat like hate rising from the heart of the sun.
The raven and the boy were together as the fire burned and burned and began to fade in the last of the day but still the raven did not move. It stayed upon the bough and did not leave the boy alone until the sun had descended and was gone.
The raven watched as the boy was claimed by the darkness of the night. It watched as the fire smoldered and the smoke vanished in the evening gray that overcame the day. It watched and it watched and it watched and it watched until something else had begun to burn in the dying of the light …
Fire rose in the raven’s eyes.
* * *
Joe Mac felt the gray November cold more completely than he’d ever felt it before because he could no longer see the leaves fade from rust to gold or gaze upon the skeletal silhouettes of trees etched against the gray November sky.
Now he lived in the world of the blind, so feeling the cold was all that remained. The re
st was darkness and he would inhabit this darkness until the day he died and they buried him in the dirt and this darkness.
The raven came as it always came; it descended with the sound of enormous wings to land with a thunderclap on the home Joe Mac had built for it.
Three years ago they met as Joe Mac was first learning to live in the world of the blind. The raven had come to him every day as he sat alone in the back of the barn, and Joe Mac named him “Poe” after the old poem. And every evening they would sit together in the back of the barn in Joe Mac’s eternal night.
Poe did not rise or even seem to notice the familiar Mrs. Clemens as she approached, but then Poe rarely flew away when someone came close. Rather, he seemed to know the exact distance for danger and ignored anything else.
Mrs. Clemens brought Joe Mac his supper – an act Joe Mac reckoned to her uncommon human kindness – and spent a moment to inquire about his health. But Joe Mac sensed something different in Mrs. Clemens tonight. Her steps were halting and seemed to wander before she laid a hand on his shoulder.
Lifting his face, Joe Mac asked, “What is it, Mrs. Clemens?”
Mrs. Clemens shuffled, and Joe Mac felt the strength lessen in the hand; it was not much of a change, it was true, but a hand with little strength is even more revealing when what little strength it possesses is diminished ever more.
Joe Mac repeated more sternly, “What is it, Mrs. Clemens?”
“Oh,” moaned Mrs. Clemens, “it’s horrible, Mr. Joe Mac. Just horrible. Oh, god, I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Just say it.”
She faltered, “It’s about your grandson, Mr. Joe Mac. It’s about Aaron. The poor thing disappeared from daycare today.”
Joe Mac’s left hand tightened on the arm of the chair. “How could they lose a four-year-old boy? Have they called the police?”
“Your poor daughter has called everyone! We’re all scared to death something terrible has happened!”
Crux Page 31