by N. P. Martin
My father’s blackened soul.
He looked aghast when he saw his own soul held up before his eyes, and he started shaking his head, even tried to grab it back. But a tendril of light entwined around his wrist and stopped him.
“What goes around, comes around, father,” I said. “With all your power and knowledge, you would think you would know that.”
“August, please!” It was the first time I had ever seen him truly afraid. His normal psychopathic confidence had been shattered, and it rattled him to the core to see that I held his very life and soul in the palm of my hand. He had been on the cusp of gaining unimaginable power, and now it was all about to be taken away from him.
A terrifically bright white light began to beam from the palm of my hand so it could engulf the blackened thing I held. My father screamed as the light began to eat at his soul. "I do this out of love, father," I said. "Not for you, but for Mother, Fergal, Roisin and all the other innocent souls you murdered since.”
"NO!" Rays of bright white light began to shoot out of my father's body. The more of his soul that disappeared, the more light erupted from him, until all at once, his entire body exploded in a massive flash of blinding brightness, just as his soul did the same in my hand as it was finally reduced to nothingness.
I could hardly believe it, but my father and his rancid soul were now wiped out of existence.
Forever.
57
Resurrection
NEEDLESS TO SAY, the great Rloth roared out his dissent (to put it mildly) as soon as the monster realized its portal to Earth would be snuffed out of existence along with the power that was keeping it open in the first place. And as I stared up through the huge hole in the roof at the tumultuous sky and the swirling portal directly above me, I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that gigantic black tentacle begin to retract back inside the portal as the portal itself started to shrink in size.
Better luck next time, Rloth.
"Creed!" Leona ran up and threw her arms around me, and I hugged her tight as I shut my eyes, so glad to have her in my embrace again. Something that, for a while there, I thought I would never do again.
When she finally broke our embrace, Leona stared up into the sky through the gaping hole in the roof, a look of near wonder on her face as she tried to comprehend the otherworldliness of what she was seeing. “Is it going back to where it came from?”
“Yes,” I said. “Without He Who Shall Not Be Named around anymore, the portal can’t stay open. Thankfully, for us.”
She smiled and then suddenly pounded me on the chest with both fists. “That’s for going in here alone and not even telling me where you were going.”
“He would have killed you, Leona. You know that.”
She shook her head. “When we get out of here, I’m having a drink with you.”
“A real one?”
She nodded. “I think I’ve earned it after surviving this shitstorm.”
I went to smile, but a sudden thought kept the smile from my face. “Blaze!” I said, suddenly remembering the Garra Wolf.
Before I could run to find my loyal companion, however, Leona grabbed my arm. “Creed.” She shook her head. “I don’t think he’s—”
“No.” I emphatically shook my head. “Not Blaze. He’s stronger than that. No way.”
Pulling out of her grip, I hurriedly crossed the factory floor to the far end of the room where Blaze still lay motionless, the trident that had stabbed him now gone along with all other traces of Demon Black (except for the devastation the bastard left behind).
Tendrils of smoke still rose off Blaze's lifeless body. Blood that was a dark orange color pooled around the floor, seeping out of the three large holes on either side of his ribs. Staring down at the wolf, it felt like my guts had spilt onto the floor when I realized with sickening certainty that Blaze was dead.
"I'm sorry, Creed," Leona said, her hand on my shoulder. "I know how much he meant to you."
“How much he means to me,” I said, steadfastly refusing to accept the fact that there wasn’t something I could do to bring Blaze back. It was my fault he was dead, and he died protecting and serving me, the person who was supposed to keep him safe. “I’m not letting him go. Not like this. He deserved better.”
“He died defending you.”
“Exactly.” I stared down at Blaze’s unmoving body as a sense of stubborn determination began to fill me. “Leona, go check on the portal, see if it’s still closing.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to bring my friend back to life.”
Leona said nothing as she nodded and walked away, though I knew she thought I was being overoptimistic out of grief. Maybe so, but I couldn't just let Blaze die without at least trying to bring him back. I owed the wolf that much.
Kneeling on the floor, I reached out and gently stroked Blaze's still warm body, unable to keep from sighing when I felt how lifeless he was. "Don't worry, Blaze," I whispered. "I'm gonna bring you back, buddy. It's just you and me against the world, remember? I need you back here with me, buddy…okay?"
I wiped away the tears streaming down my cheeks as I forced myself to focus on the magic still flowing through me, the same light magic I had used to defeat Demon Black earlier. If I could channel some of that same magic into Blaze before it dissipated altogether (as it surely would, for such powerful magic does not hang around for long), I thought there might be a good chance of saving my once faithful companion. Bringing a body back to life again was not something I had ever done. It wasn’t the same thing as reanimating a corpse after the soul had departed the body, as with Necromancy. That was just like turning on a machine. Restoring life to a body in which the soul still resided was a different matter. Too much could go wrong (changes in the mind of the recipient usually, and not good ones), which is why I had always refrained from trying it.
Closing my eyes, I entered the Chaosphere and quickly went about channeling and shaping the magic into the form I needed it to be in. At the same time, I began chanting the words to the spell. The spell itself was Japanese in origin, so that's the language I spoke it in while I continued to focus everything I had on shaping the remaining light magic that still resided in me. Then, when I was ready, and the magic was formed, I allowed it to course out through my hands and directly into Blaze's dead body.
The magic itself was invigorating, so full of life and brimming with the possibilities of creation. A blissful smile appeared on my face, despite the grief I was trying to keep down. When such powerful light magic flowed freely through you, it felt like you were channeling the source of all creation and that there was nothing you couldn’t do with it. Even bring life back to the dead.
When I had said the last few words of the spell, I opened my eyes and concentrated further on the bluish-white energy coursing out of my hands, and which now surrounded Blaze’s body, contrasting sharply with the deep orange blood still on the floor.
Then after a moment, I felt something.
Blaze's body bucked slightly as if I had just given him a jolt of electricity. Then it bucked again, more violently this time, so hard that I had to hold him down. "Come on, Blaze! You can do this! Come back to me, buddy!"
I watched in joyful wonder as the wounds in his side started to close over until they disappeared like they were never there in the first place, and I thought to myself, Yes, he’s alive again, he’s come back to me!
But then Blaze’s body went suddenly still again. “NO!”
“Did it work?” Leona asked, now standing behind me.
I shook my head in confusion as I took my hands off Blaze's body, the last of the light magic now gone from me. It didn't make sense. The spell should have worked. The magic should have worked! It was working, so what happened? I clamped both hands over my mouth and nose, unable to understand why I had failed.
Then, just as tears stung at my eyes again, Blaze moved, his ribs rising almost imperceptibly at fi
rst, then more noticeably as air began to fill his lungs. "Blaze!" I put my head down next to his just as the wolf opened its eyes. "Yes, Blaze, you're alive, buddy, you came back to me, Oh God, you came back…"
A huge smile appeared on my face as joy flooded into me. The big bastard rolled over and then stood up as if it hadn't just been dead a moment ago and was now looking at us wondering what all the fuss was about. As Blaze came forward, he put his head on my shoulder, rubbing his fur against my face in a gesture of gratitude. Throwing my arms around the wolf, I hugged it tight for a moment. "Welcome back, old friend," I said. "I thought I'd lost you there for a while."
“You might like to know that the portal is almost closed,” Leona said, smiling down at the two of us.
I looked up at her. "Is that a tear there in your eye, Lawson?"
She laughed and the tear rolled down her cheek, which she quickly wiped away. “Come on,” she said, vaguely embarrassed. “Let’s get out of this fucking place. It gives me the creeps.”
I stood up with Blaze by my side once more and nodded. “That’s the best goddamn idea I’ve heard all day.”
58
Aftermath
AS SOON AS I walked out of the factory with Leona (and Blaze, who turned himself invisible and tagged along behind us), we were met by men in tactical gear holding automatic weapons who immediately fell in at either side of us as if they were about to escort us somewhere. The waste ground was swarming with people in dark suits, others in full tactical dress, still others running around in hazmat suits as if such a suit would have guarded against the dark magic and the once imminent apocalypse. I glanced up at the still dark sky where the gigantic swirling portal had once been, glad to see the tear in the sky fully closed again and with no sign of any monstrous black tentacles pushing through it.
"What's going on?" I asked Leona as the armed agents continued to escort us toward a black van that was parked up on the road. From a distance, I could see Brentwood standing there, giving orders to various personnel while also talking into his phone.
“Brentwood told me if I made it out with you that he wants to see you,” Leona said.
“What for, to give me a gold star?”
“Probably just a debriefing.”
I let out a long sigh, exhaustion suddenly taking its toll on me as my body went heavy. “I could do without this. I was all for taking us to a bar that still had the apocalypse happy hour on. Getting drunk with you for the first time ever is not something I want to pass up.”
“Don’t worry, Creed,” Leona smiled. “I’m still getting drunk with you.”
I slipped my arm around her waist. “And then what?”
An elbow poked me hard in the ribs. “Just because you saved the world doesn’t mean you can manhandle me at work.”
“You’re still working right now?”
“What do you think? I still have to debrief.”
“Then we can go?” I said like a kid badgering a recalcitrant parent to take him to his favorite place, which in my case, was the pub.
“You know what you sound like?”
“Like someone who nearly died saving the world and now just wants to sit and get quietly shit-faced drunk with his awesome girlfriend?”
She smiled. “Get a grip.”
"Creed," Brentwood said in greeting as we stopped by the back of the black van, the two agents escorting us dropping back. Brentwood was in his usual dark suit, and his wide shoulders were pushed right back as he stood in front of me and held out his hand. "The world owes you a debt."
Well, this was new. Brentwood being civil for a change. I took his proffered hand and shook it. “Just doing my job,” I said.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you damn well did it,” Brentwood said. “I know we’ve had our differences over the years, Creed, but I’d like to think we’re still on the same side and that we can work together from now on.”
“I’m not coming to work with you,” I told him. “We’ve been over this.”
“I don’t mean work for me, Creed. I mean work with me. There’s plenty of Mr. Black types out there who need neutralizing.”
Neutralizing? One way to put it.
“I hope not,” I said. “One Mr. Black was enough.”
One insane father was enough.
“Unfortunately Creed, there’s always some power or other out there looking to cause murder and mayhem. In fact—” He paused for a second while he looked from me to Leona and back to me again, and I thought, Shit, here we go. “—right now there’s a group of them out there, a cult actually, who—”
I held up a hand. "I'll stop you right there, Brentwood. No offense, but I've had my fill for one night. I'm knackered, and I just want to go sit in a bar with Leona here and do something normal for a while. Then I might sleep for a day or so. After that, we can talk."
Brentwood wasn't the kind of man who liked being interrupted. Normally when I would do that to him, he would take a step toward me and give me his battlefield death stare to let me know he didn't appreciate my insubordination, as he saw it. This time, though, he didn't do that, and after a moment, he nodded and even cracked a smile. “All right. Get out of here then.” He looked at Leona. “Both of you.”
As we walked away, Blaze tagging along by my side, Brentwood called to me. “Creed?”
Rolling my eyes, I stopped and turned around. “Yes?”
“That thing I just mentioned. It’s serious.”
Shaking my head, I said, “When is it ever anything else?”
“I expect to hear from you, Creed.”
“You will,” I said, already walking away.
59
Happy Hour
FOR SOMEONE WHO didn't drink anymore, Leona could hold her whiskey. We were sitting in a little Irish pub called The Wonky Shamrock, which was only a block away from the Sanctum. Initially, it had been packed with people who thought the best place to go when the world was ending was the pub. Then, when they all realized that the world wasn't going to end after all, most of them shuffled home as if it was just another strange day in Blackham. A few stragglers remained, along with Leona and I, who sat in one of the secluded booths in the back of the pub, the two of us firing back shots of whiskey like they were going out of style. Even though we had matched each other drink for drink, I was feeling the effects a lot more than she was.
"I'm disappointed in you, Creed," she said, a relaxed grin on her face after she had downed another shot. "I thought that you could at least hold your drink against a woman, especially since you're Irish."
"My dalliance with Mr. Black has taken it out of me," I replied, slurring my words slightly, slumped back in the cushioned seat like I had no intention of moving anywhere ever again. "Besides, you're a soldier. Holding your drink is as much a requirement as being able to shoot."
She chuckled and shook her head. “Light-weight. That’s all you are, Creed.”
I laughed back, too drunk and too exhausted to argue with her.
The big screen TV on the wall across from us was showing the local news. The top story was obviously the mysterious "storm" that threatened to engulf the whole city at one point, but which then inexplicably went away as if it were never there in the first place. The storm itself, however, was secondary to what came out of it. The giant black tentacle that scores of people had filmed on their phones and posted to social media—so the images of that writhing, monstrous thing were on screens all over the world right now—was naturally attracting much attention. Many people were saying it proved the existence of aliens and that we just averted an alien invasion. Some talked about a new military weapon being tested, a weapon built using advanced biotechnology. A lot of other people believed that Satan had tried to break into this world from Hell.
“You think people will forget about this eventually?” Leona asked, slumped in beside me, her head on my shoulder.
“It was a giant black tentacle poking out of the sky,” I said. “What do you think?”
; "I think Sleepwalkers are Sleepwalkers. For the sake of their own sanity, they'll forget, or put it down to something else."
I nodded sagely, my eyes half closed. “I think you’re right. What do you think, Blaze?”
Blaze lay on the floor, visible only to Leona and I. He opened one eye to look at me for a second before going back to sleep again. Clearly, getting speared by a trident and dying had taken it out of him.
“He’s exhausted,” Leona said.
“He’s not the only one,” I said. “We can’t all have your endless energy.”
“Hey,” Leona said, pressing her head into my neck. “I’m tired, believe me. I just don’t show it the way you do.”
“Military grit?”
“Something like that.”
The curly haired waitress who’d been serving us since we arrived (Jenna was her name), came to our table and lifted our empties. “One more round for the road,” I said to her.
"By the looks of you, Creed," Jenna said. "One more round is all it's going to take before you end up on the road."
Leona chuckled beside me, and I made some stupid face at Jenna before she smiled and walked off. Then I lapsed into drunken silence as I found myself thinking about my mother, and about Fergal and Roisin. It was good to know that their souls were not in some hellish part of the Underworld, although I was annoyed they didn't tell me where they resided now. If they had, I could have taken steps to contact them again. As it was, they could have been anywhere in the damn universe, which made trying to pinpoint them like trying to find a particular needle in a huge stack of needles.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Leona said.
“Just thinking about my family.”
"You should be grateful you got to see them again. I'd give anything to see my brother again."
I put my arm around her and squeezed her gently. “I know. I am grateful. Course I am. I just wish they could have stuck around a bit longer.”