by Ryan Attard
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Free Download
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Ready For More?
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About the Author
RESURRECTION
Book 6 of
The Legacy Series
RYAN ATTARD
Resurrection
Ryan Attard
Copyright © 2018 by Ryan Attard. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Click or visit:
Ryanattard.com
To my friends and parents, who know firsthand that authors can be touchy at best and outright crazy at worst when deadlines are approaching.
To my wonderful editor for not telling me to go do something anatomically impossible with all the late night questions.
To Jeff Kohlbeck, Julie Prime, Roger Fauble, Fox Red, Aspen Carr, Traci Hauck, J Steffey, Tina Hayes, Lisa Marriott-Smith, Daniel Dunwoodie, Amea Sharp, and countless others, all Beta Readers and all heroes in their own right.
Without their support books are twice as hard to make, and half as fun to write.
And finally, to me. Well done, Ryan. You wrote 6 books, and got halfway through a series you conjured up back in 2011. I won’t tell you the definition of insanity — instead, I’ll just tell you to go outside.
Before you forget what sunlight looks like.
Get your free copy of the Legacy Short Story Collection
Click here to get started:
www.ryanattard.com
Chapter 1
“Erik Ashendale.” The Angel of Death raised his scythe. “I shall erase your existence.”
I yelped—literally yelped—and threw myself aside, slamming into a wall.
Hi. My name is Erik Ashendale, and I’m dead.
Like, actually dead.
And the thing chasing me was none other than Samael, the aforementioned Angel of Death.
His massive form rose to seven feet tall, raven-black wings flaring behind it, black robes dissolving into shadow. The only color was a red glint coming from his eyes hidden under a swaying hood, and the silver blade of the curved scythe as it reflected the little light around.
The weapon sliced through the wall, cleaving through it like butter. I rolled down a flight of stairs, slamming my head on each granite step, but there was no time for pain or discombobulation. I scrambled to my feet, holding onto the wall for support, and ran along the corridor.
“Over here.”
The ghost of an elderly man in his seventies held open a door. I bounded through it, just as Samael appeared behind me. The door closed, deflecting the scythe from taking off my head. The ghost of the old man disappeared with a chuckle.
I tumbled into a basement of sorts and fought the nagging voice of reason trying to get its bearings. The concept of space worked differently here.
From what I could gather—which was very little, considering I had spent every waking moment since getting here running from a psycho angel—this was a unique dimension that existed within a pocket of the space-time continuum.
Let me translate that: there was no fucking way I was getting out of here because there was a solid chance that this place didn’t even exist in the conventional ways.
So much for sending smoke signals.
One of the benefits of spending most of my time running away from Samael was getting really familiar with most of the corridors and rooms in this nuthouse. Every inhabitant saw their surroundings differently—in my case, it was a cross between a mansion (similar to the one I had grown up in) and a sanatorium.
I’ll let you chew on that one for a second.
The place was sparsely populated with a variety of other souls roaming around. Most of them seemed eager to get reaped by the Angel of Death, and the ones who could run away did not get very far.
I was the only exception, something which I chalked up to my magic. Using magical forces my entire life must have been like spiritual cardio, because I could survive Samael’s hunt, and sometimes even outrun him. The other ghosts turned this into a game of sorts—I guess when you’re dead you have to make your own entertainment.
Like a bizarre version of Maze Runner or Hunger Games, they cheered me on as I ran from the Grim Reaper, occasionally helping me escape much like the old man did.
I ran along the basement, ducking beneath a few overhanging pipes, and finally stopped to catch my breath. I could feel my heart pounding against my chest. Turns out I was a more solid ghost than your regular variety. I felt pain and sensations much like when I had still been alive. The same went for emotions. Fear was something I experienced a lot these days.
Even as a ghost there was no avoiding the fear of death.
That reassured me somewhat. All living things feared death, and so long as I had that, then I knew I was still me—still Erik Ashendale, wizard, monster hunter.
Dead, but not quite.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I muttered. I pressed my palms together and focused every iota of my being in the centre of my palms.
When I had been alive, using magic had come at a very painful cost thanks to a curse, but I could still do it. Magic was as much a part of me as my arms and legs, which meant I should have access to it even here. Hell, it was thanks to that same magic that I could outrun Samael.
I gritted my teeth, pushing all of my fear and pain and more fear until I felt a slight tingling in my hands. I opened my hands to see, only to find nothing.
Shit.
The pipes above exploded as Samael approached, casually waving at them with his scythe.
“It is futile, Erik Ashendale,” he said. “Surrender to your fate.”
Tired as I was, I prepared to bolt. “Sorry, pal. Fate and I don’t see eye to eye.”
Samael dashed, faster than I could react. The blade arced closer, almost in slow motion…
And sliced through the old man’s ghost.
He chuckled. “Hehe. Thanks,” he said as he disappeared.
Samael regarded the empty space. “He shall join his family in the afterlife,” he said. “Do you not wish to do the same?”
“What, and go say hi to my despotic dad?” I shot back.
“Your mother,” Samael said.
That made me turn and face him.
“Leave my mother out of this,” I snarled.
Angel of Death or not, no one—I mean, no-fucking-one—ever gets to mention my mother, especially to manipulate me.
But I also had to think. Samael was not an enemy I could fight. He was stronger, faster, immortal, and a single nick of that scythe would result in game over.
On the other hand, I was a somewhat spry ghost with no magic, no weapon
s, and an ever-decreasing range of space in which to hide.
So I bluffed.
I took one step towards Samael, as if to lunge at him. He swept his scythe and the attack met nothing. It made him stumble for a split second—and that was all I needed.
I lunged towards a small window on his left and suddenly sprawled on a foyer.
Large and lavish, it was ahead of a massive staircase that led somewhere upstairs. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, the candles burning with fire that was dulled to a deathly grey.
The flutter of wings heralded the presence of Samael. I turned to look at him and saw him standing calmly at the very top of the staircase, scythe resting at his side.
“You can run to your heart’s desire, human,” he said, descending the steps. Gently, he extended his free hand towards me, sending ripples along the jet-black cloak that covered his entire body. “In the end it is all futile.”
I stood up, despite myself. I was tired and exhausted. I’d been running for days, months, even years. Like I said, space and time were weird here.
“No,” I told him. “It’s never futile.”
Samael stepped towards me, then froze. He cocked his head as if realizing something I did not.
“We shall see.”
And then I saw the Angel of Death do something he’d never done before:
He ducked.
Chapter 2
A massive tendril of magic smashed through the window behind Samael. It shattered the marble floor where the Angel of Death had been standing less than an eye-blink ago.
Several more tendrils burst in from all directions. The ceiling exploded as whatever spell this was rained down on me. My instincts kicked in and I ran for cover. I needn’t have worried—Samael was on me in a flash, the scythe cleaving through the spell. Magic erupted in a scream.
He pushed me away.
“Flee, human!”
His scythe snapped at several more tendrils but the more he slashed and chopped, the more voluminous their number. It was like the mythical hydra (which does exist, by the way, just on a much smaller scale, and vastly more venomous)—cut off one head and two more grew.
Samael disappeared from sight and I could barely track him.
He’s faster than you.
That realization brought along with it more questions. Clearly, a creature this fast and deadly did not have to chase me. So why did he? If he had been serious about killing—reaping me, or whatever the damn word for it was—then he could have done so at any time.
Why allow the chase?
My train of thought was interrupted by the wall next to me exploding into a million pieces as a tendril of magic—thick and viscous, like coagulating blood—reached out towards me. I stepped through a door, and tripped. The tendril overshot, smashing into several ghosts in WWII uniforms playing cards on an ancient table.
“Watch out!” I screamed.
The tendril slammed into the table, upsetting cards and smashing into the ghosts. It ensnared them, wrapping around their ectoplasmic bodies, and they cried and struggled to get free. The tendril dragged them out, through a wall, and likely out of Samael’s dimension.
This was bad news.
The Angel of Death was in charge of transporting souls to the afterlife, forever shunting them towards their deserved direction. Whatever magic this was had a similar shunting effect, but I doubted whoever had cast it had Samael’s divine ability to send souls to the afterlife.
Screaming pulled me out of my stupor. I saw a tendril reach out and grab a ghost as he bolted across the room. It snatched him and wrapped tight. I leapt towards him and grabbed the magic tendril, prying it open with my bare hands. I had no idea why I was doing that or why I thought the spell would not affect me. After god-knows-how-long of avoiding the Grim Reaper’s blade, you’d have thought I had better self-preservation instincts.
Just goes to show, I guess, that death does not cure stupid.
To my surprise, I actually touched the tendril spell. I felt a current run through my body upon contact with the magic, both hot and cold. Voices—what felt like screams—erupted at the back of my head. It took me a while to figure it out: it was ambient noise.
Here in this death dimension there was no noise, unlike back on Earth. The living were messy, noisy, vibrant, and very active. This spell embodied that energy. It confirmed that a human had cast it and that ‘living fingerprint’ ran through the very essence of the spell.
The tendril stopped and released the ghost, who fell to the ground.
“Oh, my,” he said, shuddering.
Samael appeared like the Grim Reaper he was and slashed at the tendril, before scything down the soldier.
“Go in peace,” he muttered.
Then he turned towards me.
“Aw shit, come on!” I said, backing away. “Isn’t one threat enough?”
Samael said nothing. All I heard was the slightest flutter of wings as the scythe dropped to an inch from my hairline, where it cleaved through a second tendril.
“I will not be denied his soul,” the angel said.
He wasn’t looking at me when he spoke—which meant he knew who was casting this spell.
Something flashed in my head.
“Hold on,” I heard myself mutter. “Just hold on a damn second.”
I have no idea how it all made sense, but it made sense. It was like stepping back from a giant mural and seeing the massive picture as one continuous painting.
The tendrils released the ghost.
Samael said he would not be denied my soul.
The tendrils were looking for something, but it was not the other ghosts—and unless you counted the pissed-off, sickle-wielding death angel, there was nothing else here.
Nope. There’s one more creature. A human who is special.
That’s right. Me. I was special.
Magic.
I held my hands together, like I had done so many times—so many futile times—and focused my magic. All around me, the tendrils exploded like a mass of worms. Up close and personal I could see little barbs, extended like fish hooks.
Warm energy surrounded me, living energy.
Human energy.
“NO!”
Samael lunged at me, scythe shredding and cutting anything in his path, but I backed away and lunged at a tendril. Those barbs tore into my body. There was no pain, just a weird, invading sensation of something that shouldn’t be there pulling from within you.
I was jerked back, pulled with more force than I had ever experienced before. My feet were now off the ground as the tendril pulled me beyond the confines of Samael’s domain.
On the outside I saw something that often drove minds to their breaking point.
Chaos.
Our universe is composed of multiple dimensions, like neighboring houses—close to each other, but not quite touching. Some dimensions are closer to one another so crossing through, while difficult, is not impossible. Angels, Demons, Fae, and lesser gods do it all the time.
What is really scary is the space between dimensions. Pure Chaos, a form of uncontrolled entropy that is made of anything the universe has rejected. Think about that. This celestial, dimensional goop was everything our universe—with all of its life, physics, laws and limitations—could not handle.
I had glimpsed Chaos once before and it had left me broken. That had only been for half a second, just a single blink of the eye—one forbidden glance.
Now, I was swimming in the stuff, ensnared by whatever this tendril was. Panicked, I forced my eyes forwards, towards what had been my jail for an unknown amount of time.
Samael’s domain looked like a torn-off skyscraper building, rectangular and with windows in neat rows. Cracks snaked along the edges. The bottom was torn and shredded, as if someone had plucked a building from the ground and chucked it up in space. The same went for the top. It was jagged and broken. The whole building was tilted at an angle and spinning lazily on its axis.
Several fresh
holes were present along the side, but looking at the whole building, only a small section had been affected.
Standing at the edge of the hole I had been plucked out of was Samael. The scythe was pointed at me, and his wings were folded back. For a split second I thought he was going to give chase, but he stayed put.
Not even the Angel of Death dared cross through Chaos.
Dimensional travel happened through extremely precise magic. (Or as precise as humans can get when dealing with celestial forces they barely understand.)
Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to get me back. A spell like this must have taken countless wizards working together. I’m not talking your basic Avengers team here—this would have taken thousands of people, not to mention the hours of study and knowledge that would have gone into just shaping this spell.
Then there was tailoring the spell to react to my magic. Which meant these guys had access to my body (I would have shuddered if I could), or some of my DNA at the very least.
And to pull me through Chaos…
Whoever this was, he or she was desperate to see me.
I closed my eyes but Chaos is not something you can simply unsee or tune out. Chaos is your every stray thought, made manifest and horrifying.
But I still closed my eyes. Closed my eyes and held fast.
I had no idea when I had crossed over to our dimension. I had no idea how long it had taken, how many realities I had gone through, how many lifetimes.
But I had made it back.
Everything was tight. My body felt restricted, immobile. Everything itched and hurt. Colors, sensations, sounds—I wanted to vomit from the assault to my senses, and wanted nothing more than to end it.
But I couldn’t. I could not move, nor breathe, nor speak.
But I was aware.
Mostly of the pair of strong arms pressing me face-first into a pair of smallish breasts and a mane of platinum blond hair.