by Tim Hawken
“Okay,” I said, not willing to stall any longer. “I want to leave as soon as we can.”
Mary frowned, looking back to the coffin, which held her brother.
“I would like to say goodbye to Judas alone first,” she said.
“Alright,” I sighed, nodding reluctantly. I had to understand that she still needed some space. “Please don’t take too long. We’ll meet you at Casa Diablo.”
I turned to leave, but a strange intuition stopped me. I reached my hand in my pockets to feel the Jewels of Blood. Taking them out, I walked back and handed the pouch to Mary.
“Here,” I said, pressing them towards her. “I need you to hold these.”
She shook her head furiously, like I’d lost my mind.
“No!” she said. “Last time I almost lost the keys. We can’t afford that mistake again.”
I silenced her with a quick kiss on her cheek.
“If you can’t trust your friends, who can you trust? Keep them safe.”
Before she could resist further, I turned and walked away. I shouted back to her, so the words echoed around The Crypt.
“Say goodbye to your brother. Use him as your inspiration.”
FIVE
Germaine’s reaction was more violent than I had anticipated. He took the body he had made for himself and cut off one of its arms, while the rest of us watched in surprise. Slicing away the other arm, he threw them at me. I blocked the bloody missiles with a sweep of my hand and the stumps fell to the ground. Without the protection of the cool air Germaine had cocooned around it, the skin began to blacken and blister in the heat of Hell.
“You see this!” he yelled, slicing off the legs as well and tossing them aside like rank meat. “This is what you’re doing to all of us. You’re crippling us before we’ve even begun.”
He moved towards the next body when Marlowe stepped forward, drawing his sword and holding it above Germaine’s head.
“That’s quite enough,” the African said in an icy voice. “Michael is right to hold off on giving us the blood.”
Germaine flung his arms in the air in frustration and slumped to the ground. He looked up to each of us, almost on the verge of tears. We were all gathered in the grounds at the back of Casa Diablo, across from the Fount of Mercy. Its deadly green waters of sleep shimmered with a mix of the Hellish sky’s red and black reflection. I had made the waterfall at the request of the false Bishop John Joseph. It would allow people to effectively commit a temporary suicide, passing through the curtain of water into a cave beyond. They would then sleep the same sleep as Judas, unable to awake for a millennium. Its construction had just been a diversion, though. Asmodeus had wanted me to build it to drain my strength before he attacked me. It now stood there, reminding me that I had to be on constant watch for deception. I should destroy it. It was dangerous. Right now, I didn’t have time to undertake the task. Smithy’s helicopter was perched close by, ready to take us to the point of resurrection.
“You don’t understand,” Germaine said. “We’ll be helpless.”
“We’ll be ticking time bombs,” Charlotte snapped, making Germaine jolt. She was normally so calm that the venom in her words took him off guard. “At least if we meltdown in Heaven, we might cause some damage where we want to. We can’t risk losing total control on Earth. That won’t help anything!”
Clytemnestra backed her up.
“Michael will protect us. It’s only a short journey to Jacob’s Ladder. We have to trust him.”
“But he doesn’t trust us,” Germaine said, locking eyes with me. “If you do, then give us each our own jewel to hold.”
He stood, holding out his hand. I hadn’t told them that I’d given them to Mary for safekeeping.
“No,” I said. “You’ll get them when the time comes.”
He let his arm drop. He was about to say something more when I cut him off.
“You can stay back if you like. You can help The Pure Seven and Marax gather the armies for readiness. They’re already down in the city, dividing Hell into separate grounds for the legions. Those are your options.”
His face fell into despair. I knew which choice he’d make. If he stayed here, there would be no blood for him at all. It felt unfair to dictate the terms like this, but I couldn’t risk Germaine being tempted to take his jewel early. Now that he had a taste of what the jewels could do, he might not have the will power to exercise his better judgment. It could spell disaster. His reaction now told me this was the right thing to do. I had to show some leadership. Smithy walked to him and put a hand gently on his arm.
“Come on, mate. You’re better than this,” he said. “I know what you did for us back there on the Great Lawn. We need you up there with us. Please.”
The pilot held out his hand. Hesitating, Germaine looked to each of us.
“We do need you,” I said. “We just need to make sure you strike at the right time. You know deep down this is the only way. You felt the madness coming in towards the end of that battle, didn’t you?”
Germaine hung his head in the face of reason. He knew this was the right way. It was the demons inside him that were struggling against it. I watched as with visible effort he calmed himself. Moving back over to the body he had maimed, he laid his hand on its torso. The basic elements sprung to his call and the body started to grow limbs once again. I added my assistance to the effort, so the shell was whole again in a matter of moments. Marlowe still had his sword out and ready. I placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Keep an eye on him up there,” I whispered into his ear. “We’ll need to be focused if we hope to get to the Aedicule of Ascension without incident.”
My words seemed to settle him and Marlowe slid his blade back into its scabbard.
We were ready to leave, but Mary still hadn’t arrived. While we waited, Germaine and I worked together to make a body of my own. He guided me in growing the flesh and organs, helping me construct the human face I had once owned, without savage teeth and red ears. Once finished we started to load the bodies into Smithy’s helicopter. It felt strange, placing them in the cargo hold. I looked into the mirror of my other, lifeless face. This was the vessel that would carry me to Heaven. Germaine and I had already gone over the procedure with Clytemnestra. We were to fuse ourselves with the shells. Not just our souls, but our entire ethereal bodies as well. Because the elements of our current bodies were less rigid, we could push ourselves right into the earthly flesh. It would be almost like piloting a robot exoskeleton, while encased within. If we split our souls from our ethereal bodies completely, it would leave that side of us exposed and without guard in Hell. Once fused, we would ascend into the Hellmouth, and onto the material realm of Earth.
As the last of the bodies were loaded aboard, I turned to see Mary exiting the castle and crossing towards us. The way she looked reminded me of the first time I had seen her. She was dressed in scarlet, a shade darker than her hair. The aura about her was of immense dignity and otherworldly power. She wore a mask of deadly calm, which concealed all of her emotions. Since we exorcised the souls of The Pure Seven from her body she had been freer with her feelings, but now she had returned to the demeanor of a businesswoman. She was once again the cool madam of the biggest brothel in Hell. It suited her. I smiled a hello and she simply nodded to acknowledge me. Without even so much as a glance at Charlotte, she walked up to Smithy and greeted him with a hug and a lingering kiss on both cheeks.
“Thank you for taking us all, Captain,” she said. “We’d be nowhere without you. Would you like me to ride in the jump seat with you and show you where we’re headed?”
Smithy blushed at the compliment.
“By all means, m’lady,” he said, opening the door for her and holding out his hand to help her aboard.
I looked at Charlotte, who rolled her eyes at the display. She moved to get into the back. Germaine, Marlowe, Clytemnestra and I all piled in together behind her. Doing his preflight check, Smithy flicked his controls an
d the blades overhead whirred to life. In moments we were lifting off, hovering above Casa Diablo and flying away from the city. At first we took a similar path to when we had traveled to the Chinvar Bridge. Over dark and teeming jungle, we zipped, past scorched and uninhabitable desert sands. Instead of heading to Zoroaster’s old monastery, however, we moved further to what I supposed was East. I could see Mary pointing directions to Smithy, but the noise of the helicopter drowned out what they were saying. I grabbed one of the headsets in front of us and put it on.
“We’re not far,” Mary was saying. “It looks like we’re going to arrive with good timing.”
Previously, Clytemnestra had explained the best time to make a surfacing to Earth was just before the guilt storm. During that time the air became thinner above. It was sucked toward the horizon for the coming blast. Any normal resistance above was weakened momentarily and a wormhole opened up, which would enable us to weave our way through to the material realm. I glanced at the watch on my wrist. Mary was right. We would be there with enough time to enter our prepared bodies and lift our party into the entry. We could only go from what the Necromancers had told Clytemnestra. In a sense we were running blind, but that was nothing new.
Easing the chopper to the ground, Smithy quickly shut down the controls. We disembarked, each moving to the back of the aircraft to heft down our cargo. Almost without ceremony we laid them in the sand.
“Okay,” I said to everyone. “I want each of you to lie down on top of your chosen body. Germaine and I will soften their construction, so you can sink down into them. We’ll then have to fuse your thoughts and emotions into them. I want you to empty your minds of any thoughts. Try to become empty yourselves so that you may fill your new vessel.”
“That sounds like some kind of hippy yoga nonsense to me,” Smithy said, looking up. “How am I not supposed to think about anything? That what it is to be alive.”
I paused for a moment and thought. “Just pretend you’re trying to go to sleep,” I ventured.
“Oh,” the old pilot nodded. “I can do that.”
Letting them each settle on their respective bodies, I waited for them to get as comfortable as possible. In a silent nod to Germaine, we began our work. The process was fairly simple at first. All we needed to do was create a small amount of space between the atoms which made up the earthly bodies’ construction. Then, with a nudge of pressure, like clicking two Lego blocks into place, we pushed the ethereal bodies down to meld with their twin. Once they had been matched properly, the body jolted with a heavy twitch, as if awaking from a deep sleep. After that, I needed Germaine’s ingenuity to complete the process. He talked me through how to take strands of ethereal thought and emotion and connect them to the physical. As the process came to an end, one by one, each of our party sat up rubbing their faces and looking at their hands. They looked woozy, as if they weren’t fully in control of their bodies. Marlowe pressed up onto his knees and attempted to stand, but toppled again to the ground, swearing. Clytemnestra did the same, while Smithy giggled. He then smiled at the sound of his own voice and looked at his hands as if they were brand new.
“They’ll take some getting used to,” Germaine said. “But it shouldn’t take long.”
“It will be like driving a new car,” I offered, seeing that they were finally beginning to get the hang of their limbs. “Once you know how it all works, it will become second nature.”
At my words Smithy pressed off the ground and remained steady. He was obviously a natural at controlling foreign machinery. He walked over to me slowly and reached out, pressing his hand onto my skin.
“That feels very odd,” he said, before looking around. “It feels like I’m wearing thick gloves. And I’m very hot!”
“You’d feel hotter if you didn’t still have a layer of cold air around you,” Germaine said, settling over the top of his body.
Before I could even offer to help, he had sunk down into his shell with ease. I connected his spirit to it, before lying over my own shell and closing my eyes. Feeling my way into my body, I swelled up, as if filling my lungs with air. As I breathed in, the flesh underneath me rushed in to fill my pores. As I breathed out, I became fixed inside it. The sensation was indeed unusual. It wasn’t like before, when I had returned to Earth. That had been my true earthly shell. This one was alien. I felt heavy, weighed down with too much substance. It took great effort to lift my mass. It reminded me of the few times in my life I had fallen asleep with my arm underneath me. When I woke up, it felt as if the limb was dead, but if I waited long enough, I could eventually make it respond. Ever so slowly, it would come back and feel normal again. This body was the same: a piece of thick rubber that moved at my will, just not exactly how I wanted.
A flash of light on the horizon reminded me that we didn’t have long to get used to this new state. I would have to gather us all together very shortly.
“Smithy,” I said, the words echoing strangely in my head. “Can you help me up?”
My friend came over and heaved me to my feet, keeping me steady until I had the ability to control the flesh that encased me. Even my mind felt misty, as if I had enjoyed one too many Heinekens at Sloth’s Lounge. I made a concerted effort to focus.
“Don’t fight it,” Smithy said next to me. “Relax into it. It will do what you ask, you don’t have to wrestle it.”
I listened to what he was saying. Rather than physically trying to bully my arms and legs into submission, I used my mind and muscle impulse instead. It made a world of difference. While still strange, the construction around me made sense. It was similar to controlling the elements. I supposed in a way it was the same thing.
“Everyone!” I said loudly, starting to feel normal. “Do your best to gather around me. We’re soon to depart.”
As I finished the sentence, the bloody flames on the far edges of Hell spluttered into guilty whips of light. I narrowed my vision and let the elements take hold. Looking skyward, I could see a black vortex begin to open directly above us: The Hellmouth.
Pulling air in tight and grasping Charlotte close to my body, I formed a bubble around our party and took flight. As we pushed upward, the black hole of the Hellmouth beckoned us within. The flames of guilt licked at our heels and we blasted inside. At once, the rush of noise below ceased. We were enveloped into a new atmosphere that was familiar in the back recesses of my mind. Through the dripping darkness above, I could make out rock stalagmites hanging from a limestone cave. A shiver of night air breathed around my body. We had returned to Earth.
SIX
I SLOWLY LET MY PHYSICAL GRIP ON CHARLOTTE LOOSEN, allowing her feet to touch the stony ground beneath us. The elements I had constructed sifted away as I released my hold on the others. I stood, blinking, waiting for my eyes to fully adjust. After the constant storm-laden sky of Hell, it took quite a few moments to get used to our naturally shadowed surroundings. A cool breeze blew through the cave, from what I assumed was an opening somewhere further up. The sound of crashing waves shuddered in an irregular heartbeat through the tunnel from which we’d emerged. All of us were silent, each in our own personal world, remembering what it was like to be alive in the physical realm. It hadn’t been as long for me as it had for most of the others, yet still it felt unique. It wasn’t exactly the same, since we were in borrowed bodies, but the actual sensation of air on bare skin was sharper than anything else on the other side. This was living.
After waiting and listening for anything unusual, I made a move to light the cave. Letting a soft yellow light filter out above us, I illuminated every corner. Crags of rough rock on one side contrasted with smoothly worn wall on the other. It was as if a craftsman had only half finished his work inside a living work of art. I realized that the smooth area was closer to where we had entered, so perhaps it was the centuries of hot blasts of air coming up from Hell upon every guilt storm that had created the phenomenon. After searching around for any danger, it became clear that we were alone. We were saf
e, for now.
“We have to assume that Asmodeus is watching our every move from Heaven,” I said to everyone.
They all looked to me, slightly startled at the sound of my voice. I hadn’t realized they were all just as on edge as I was, if not more.
“Anything could happen,” I said firmly. “We’re at his mercy while we’re here. Remember, though, the worst that can occur is that your physical body will be destroyed and you’ll be ripped back down to Hell.”
“Or you could be put in a coma and imprisoned here indefinitely inside a useless body,” Mary said. She started to move ahead, up towards where the cool air wafted down to greet us. Her words sent a chill down my spine.
“So death is preferable,” Clytemnestra said, shrugging her shoulders. She started to follow Mary. “We should get moving, then. I’d rather be caught in the open air than another stifling cave.”
In front of us, a jagged stairway was cut into the rock. It appeared to be a natural formation rather than anything man-made. I wondered how many feet had actually trod those stones over the centuries. Surely not too many souls had left Hell to visit this surface and it seemed baffling that anyone would want to go down. I did vaguely recall an old Greek myth about Hercules descending to Hades, but surely this wasn’t the same place.
It was slow going, climbing upward in a new, unproven body, but the exercise helped me get used to my mortal form. I made sure I was last to go up, just in case something unexpected came from below. Smithy seemed to move with ease, while Marlowe was having the most trouble. It was unusual to see such a normally graceful killer uncomfortable in his skin. I kept the light surrounding us, not too bright to create notice from anything on the outside, but just so that we could see.