“H-o-l-y shit,” muttered Tango, back in human form and apparently as awestruck by the liderc battle royale as I was.
“Damn, bro,” Caveman added through canine vocal chords. “Which one is Rooster?”
“He’s the one kicking the other one’s ass,” I muttered, trying to coax as much speed into the process of unassembling Abernethy’s flaming bonds as I possibly could.
“Should we help him?” Tango asked still gawking.
“Nah,” Caveman muttered as Carrick hurtled by us in a bloody red heap and split the trunk of a ginormous tree wide open with his face. “I think Rooster’s got this.”
Moby D apparently agreed as he let loose with a booming grunt of approval.
“Hey!” Stoner yelled from behind us as he popped his head through the somewhat stabilized portal. “Let’s go, girls! I can’t hold it open for much longer!”
“Go,” I said to the crew as the holy flame binding Abernethy was nearly diminished and the ground started to literally tremble with the force of the incoming legions crossing the plain at unnatural speed. “We’ll be right behind you.”
With absolutely no intent on leaving without us, the trio just stood there staring at me defiantly.
Even Duncan. What the hell?
“Do it!” I barked. “That’s a goddamn order! We can’t fight what’s coming. Its over. Go. Now!”
Begrudgingly, Tango sheathed his kukri knives and sternly said, “Don’t be late, Dean.”
“If anyone but us comes through the portal after you — blow the tether. No hesitation.”
“Like I said,” Tango said. “Don’t be late.” Turning to Caveman, he grumbled, “Let’s go.”
As I watched them double-time to the inter-dimensional gateway and fade from sight as they crossed the threshold, I was pleasantly surprised to hear an unexpected voice.
“You look like shite, lad,” muttered the archdeacon gazing at me through battered, swollen eyes.
“Hate to tell you this, boss,” I said with a grin “But you’ve looked better yourself.”
Grunting as he winced in pain, he asked, “Where are we?”
“Not in Kansas,” I said quickly helping him to his feet. “Can you walk?”
“Aye,” he halfheartedly mumbled as he staggered to his feet and immediately began to collapse under the power of his own weight.
“Easy, boss,” said Rooster with his creepy liderc voice suddenly appearing in a blur of movement and gracefully catching Big A.
“Jackie —,” Abernethy mumbled upon recognizing Rooster’s ‘Mr. Hyde’ form just as he passed out from what I suspected was a combination of his injuries and the lingering after effect of the holy flame.
“Time to go,” Rooster growled, looking down at me with flaming eyes while cradling Abernethy like a child in his massive red arms.
“Where’s Carrick?” I asked.
“Where he’s supposed to be,” Rooster said definitively with an ever so slight hint of remorse as he plodded toward the portal entrance now steadily flickering in and out of existence.
“Right.”
As the inconceivable force of anakim and assorted beastly creatures of twisted divine genetics were less than a kilometer out and closing fast, I followed the big red palooka to the gateway. And despite the absolute dire nature of the situation, I couldn’t help but feel a momentary sense of relief. The mission was nearing completion, and the team would live to fight another day.
Me on the other hand — I still had one thing left to do to make all that possible.
“You first,” Rooster growled stopping at the portal entrance now flashing erratically and seemingly within seconds of fading into the ether.
“Afraid not, my friend. The job’s not finished,” I replied with a cold demeanor glancing at the incoming barrage of unnatural beasties. “Not yet.”
“There’s nothing left to do here,” he snarled understanding my intentions. “It’s over. We’re leaving.”
But he didn’t know what I knew. My destined path ended here. By my hand this place would burn.
All of it.
Rooster’s Dragonfly device was never supposed to bring an end to this cursed realm and its inhabitants.
I was.
It was my purpose. A purpose I now understood.
Pausing for a long moment to take in his hulking red frame and generally nightmarish appearance, I smiled despite the situation.
“You know what, John?” I said with a shit-eating grin. “I think I like you better as a liderc.”
“What?” He grunted in confusion. “Why?”
“Because if you didn’t look like an oversized carny, I’d probably feel bad about this.”
As his burning eyes flashed brighter, I channeled all my supernatural strength and punched him as hard as I could square in the bony kneecap. Buckling under the force of the devastating and unexpected blow while still doing his best to hold an unconscious Abernethy, Rooster momentarily lost his balance. Seizing the opportunity, I gave his big red ass a healthy shove and watched contently as he and Big A fell across the threshold.
The last thing I saw before the otherworldly gate snapped shut was his eyes. They instantly flashed from fiery orbs to their normal brilliant blue as he locked gazes with me. Then he was simply gone.
And I was alone.
“Sorry about that, buddy,” I muttered out loud to no one in particular.
Slowly turning to face the horde of abominations racing across the landscape at me like a surreal swarm of locusts, I heard a faint whimpering sound to my immediate right. Quickly glancing toward the source, a familiar slovenly fat bastard in a jacked-up pinstripe suit was strung up like a side of beef on the trunk of a mighty redwood.
“Philbert!” I blurted out with the darkest of grins. “Always hanging around in the wrong places.”
Yeah, I went there. Couldn’t resist.
“Ah — Hey, bossman,” said Uncle Skip as his chubby face drained a pure white.
“What was that you were saying about a good con?” I asked, stalking toward that smug son of bitch as I called for the fire and felt the presence of a flaming sphere form in my gauntlet.
As Skip’s eyes widened with primal fear and his jaw dropped open, I blew a hole the size of a manhole cover through his goddamn chest in a sizzling flash.
Contently watching as he vaporized in an eruption of searing white fire leaving nothing behind but Coop’s arrows, I grumbled, “Never mind.”
The pounding of giant feet accompanied by a deafening clamor of grunts, howls, and throaty screams drew my attention back toward the meadow. Slowly turning to see a wall of dust practically blocking out the daylight, I found myself in the dead center of a horseshoe formation of infuriated aberrations. An eclectic collection of countless anakim, varangian, lycaon, and all kinds of other weird looking fuckers I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet stood before me. Eyes fuming. Fangs dripping. Chests heaving.
Willing the spatha into my hand, I wrapped my fingers tightly around its stout hilt as my face hardened into a predatory squint, and I met the multitude of loathing, soulless eyes glaring back at me.
“Listen up, assholes,” I boldly declared pulling the hood of the cloak over my head. “My name is Dean Robinson. Seventh Deacon of the Seventh line.”
The cloak flared and billowed about my shoulders like a caged animal as the Wrath welled like a seething maelstrom of infinite power within me. Silence swiftly spread through the monstrous formation like a surreal domino effect until you could literally hear a pin drop.
“I am my Father’s Wrath. And I’m the last thing you sorry sons of bitches will ever lay eyes on.”
As the words flowed from my mouth, they immediately boomed with a commanding echo throughout every corner of the wretched land. Holding the spatha high above my head, the legions descended upon me with ravenous fury.
And I simply let them come.
“Control the Wrath. Command the Power,” I murmured as I closed my eyes. D
rifting deep within myself as the calmative awareness washed over me, I felt no fear as I approached the blazing light of my divine mantle. There was only serenity and clarity and purpose. For this time when I untethered the Wrath from my being — it was without malice, without anger. It was with sacrifice.
A willing sacrifice to end this cursed realm in fire, in blood, and in rage. To set the divine judgment free upon the bane of mankind — the enemies of Heaven.
Focusing every ounce of my will on this sole purpose, I opened my eyes and called for the fire. In a spectral flash, a torrent of otherworldly flame erupted from my metal gauntlets and encased the sword in a pulsating glow. The air rippled with waves of searing heat and the brilliant glimmer of pure white light.
As the sword literally hummed with unfathomable power, I boldly raised it to the sky. Looking to the Heavens, I spoke the Words of Enoch.
“And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee — thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them — thou shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.”
In a blur of movement, I then reversed the sword and thrust it with all my power into the ground before me. As it penetrated the surface, a boundless wall of infernal white fire erupted from the charred earth like a raging volcano. It stretched from left to right as far as the eye could see and subsequently raced forward with unbridled speed toward the charging legions. Reaching the front of the formation, the unbound Wrath mercilessly ripped through the unyielding multitudes until the unnatural creatures were nothing more than blazing silhouettes amidst the dust. Their inhuman screams were that of absolute horror and utterly deafening.
But that was not the end. Rippling across the expanse like a voracious shockwave, the raging wall of judgment fire reached the mountain range on the far horizon within mere seconds. Upon colliding with the majestic peaks, the fire catapulted into the sky and instantly formed an unthinkable funnel of swirling, fiery apocalypse that made the Dragonfly look like a flash in the pan.
Dropping the spatha and falling to my knees in absolute exhaustion, I watched with fading eyes as the firestorm ripped through the landscape — sucking time, space, and reality into its voracious vortex. My perception of time came to a screeching halt as my senses began to steadily dull. Mustering enough strength to pull the hood off my head, I collapsed to the ground in relief.
I’d done it.
The chain of events leading to the reckoning of mankind was broken. The new generation of anakim would not plague the Earth as in days of old. The divine mantles of the enslaved Deacons would return to the source upon their regrettable yet merciful death. The Balance was restored.
It was over.
And unfortunately, by consequence — so was I.
As my vision faded to black and I felt myself checking out for good, something quite unexpected happened. A strangely familiar prickling sensation tingled on the back of my neck. And just like the other times I’d experienced it, I instantly had the unequivocal feeling that I wasn’t alone.
As I contemplated that for a quick second, a face appeared in my blurred vision. A face silhouetted in a wraithlike luminous sheen. Despite the fact my senses weren’t exactly running on all eight cylinders at that particular moment, I could still discern that it wasn’t the face of a giant nor a horrid beast — it was the face of a man. And he was leaning over me — smiling.
What the hell?
“Well done, Master Robinson. You’ve more than lived up to your reputation,” he said in a garbled yet somewhat charming voice. “However, your part is not yet played out I’m afraid. This was but the first act.”
As the shadow realm imploded in a literal blaze of infernal glory around me, I felt a hand forcefully grasp my chest accompanied by a powerful whoosh of air and the flutter of massive wings.
Angel wings.
Then there was only darkness.
Chapter 38
“You’re an asshole,” Rooster said waiting for me like he knew I was going to walk into the bar at that exact moment. Wincing in pain, he dismissively turned and began to hobble through the Quartermaster on a set of crutches with his right leg in a bulky cast.
Barely awake yet somehow fully dressed in a pair of jeans and yet another RoosterBragh tee-shirt, I muttered, “Nice to see you too.”
“Thought we were friends,” he grumbled glancing down at the cast.
“We are friends.”
“You punched me,” he said drolly. “Really fucking hard.”
“I, ah, punched you because we’re friends. It’s a complex emotion. Heat of the moment kind of thing.”
“Aha.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I felt bad about it — For a couple seconds.”
Remaining silent, he simply shot me a rather snide glare as his eyes blazed red for a quick second.
“Come on, man, it was for your own good. Get over it already. I said I was sorry.”
“No — No, you didn’t.”
“Oh, right. Sorry?”
“You’re an asshole,” he repeated as his face curled into a mild grin.
“Look at it on the bright side. I could’ve shot you.”
“Do I need to call you an asshole again?”
“Nope. I get it.”
Still completely baffled as to how the hell I got back here, I was nonetheless tickled pink to be back in the QM with all its otherworldly charm. But as I meandered through the labyrinth of smooth wooden tables and benches following a gimpy Rooster, I couldn’t help but wonder where everybody was. The place was a ghost town.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Three days,” he replied. “But the topic du jour is how the hell you got out?”
“You mean from Azazel’s funhouse?”
“Yeppers.”
“You say it like you’re not happy to see me.”
“Not at all,” he replied still inching along on his crutches. “I’m over frik’n joyed to see you. As was everyone else when we got back from Liverpool thinking you were toast only to find your sorry ass all laid up on the Reliquary floor. What none of us can wrap our heads around is — how the hell you did it?”
“Did what?”
Stopping in mid hobble, he spun around and shot me a pensive gaze prompting me to stop as well.
“Did what? For reals?” He asked rhetorically yet incredibly sarcastically. “Ok, so shortly after you shattered my kneecap and opted to go all lone gunman on the anakim militia — which was so incredibly not cool for the record, Skyphos registered a massive energy displacement where the shadow realm was located. Curiously, at precisely that same moment — you mysteriously ported into the Reliquary all jacked up and unconscious in your usual fashion.”
“So,” I grumbled.
“So? You single handedly obliterated an entire realm within a matter of seconds and somehow managed to port back here without a gateway. Then … three short days later, you’re back on your feet and cracking bad jokes like it was nothing. And not to mention that whole dealio about inhaling a ring of holy flame. What the hell was that about? Nobody does that, Dean. Nobody.”
Not sure it was prudent to tell Rooster that I based my entire Machiavellian scheme to save mankind on the prophetic ramblings of Freddy Binkowicz nor that I was evidently whisked from oblivion’s doorstep by an unidentified angel whose motives were still in question, I simply shrugged.
“What I can say? Had to improvise. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You had to improvise,” he said fully knowing I was holding something back. “That’s what you’re going with, eh?”
“Look, man, the last thing I remember before waking up in my bed ten minutes ago, surprisingly not dead — again, was going thermonuclear on the horde of friendly neighborhood creatures charging at me with bad intentions. And now I’m here. That’s all there is to it.”
“Fine,” he said realizing the conversation had reached a momentary dead end. As he resumed his determined hobble toward a large ston
e door at the back of the massive room, he added, “But we’re going to talk about this again — soon.”
“Fair enough,” I replied. “Right after you tell me all about fuzzy dogmen and smoke monsters — and lidercs.”
He momentarily paused.
“Deal.” Reaching the massive door within a couple more labored grunts, he said, “Alright, let’s go. We’re late.”
“Late for what?”
“The feast.”
“The what?”
“The feast — to end all feasts. The official ‘Ding Dong the Giants are Dead’ soirée. Not sure if you heard, but some lunatic managed to wipe every breathing anakim off the face of God’s green earth in one fell swoop. Big A figured that called for a celebration of epic proportion.”
“Medieval France epic?”
“Maybe not quite that epic.”
“Will there be chicken coops?”
“No chicken coops,” he replied smirking. “Everyone’s gathered at the Dreghorn. Just waiting on the guest of honor to show his ugly mug.”
“But, how’d you know —”
“When you’d wake up from your latest dirt nap?” He said finishing my sentence. “Stoner’s been monitoring your healing process.” Glancing at his pocket watch, he added, “He figured you’d be back on your feet exactly fifteen minutes ago.”
“That’s, ah, really disturbing.”
“Magus.”
“Right,” I muttered. “Will there be RoosterBragh at this most fabled fiesta?”
He scoffed.
“Enough to probably kill you. And for good this time.”
“Well then,” I happily muttered. “Count me in.”
Balancing on one crutch as he reached down and placed his hand on the Chi-Rho etched into the center of the massive door, he paused.
Rise of the Giants: The Guild of Deacons, Book 1 Page 36