Loret’s lips were grey worms on a slack mouth and when he sneered they bent into a bowed shape. “Maybe if you let me out, I’ll tell you.”
“Don’t trust him, Jack,” Cyn said quickly, lifting her shotgun. “Get your answer first.”
“First?” Jack asked in surprise. “I have no intention of letting this snake out. He was a snake in life and I bet he’s ten times as bad in death.”
Loret sneered again. “Then we’re at an impasse, because you don’t have the third spell. You can’t compel me to say or do anything. But…but that doesn’t mean we can’t strike a deal. Let me out and I’ll tell you anything you want.”
“Tell me first,” Jack countered. “You’re the one without honor. You’re the one we can’t trust.”
“I’m without honor? What do you call that?” he pointed at Connor’s corpse. “That looks like an infernal sacrifice to the Mother of Demons. That looks like you’re selling off your soul bit by bit. Whatever you want to say about me, I never did that.”
Jack dropped his eyes and felt the black spot on his soul like it was acid. Into the silence that followed, the Navy began lobbing two-thousand pound missiles across the city again.
“Ok, I admit it,” Jack said, his words slow and measured. “I’m not a good person. I thought I was, but now…I guess not. Still, I won’t screw you over, Doctor. I promise I will let you out if you tell me what we need to know.”
Pastor John hissed: “Jack! Can I talk to you, please?” He tried to pull Jack away; however, Jack dug his heels in.
“I don’t think so. I know what you’re going to say: we can’t release him. Right? You’re going to tell me that he’s a demon or whatever the smaller ones are. Guess what? I know that already, but he’s a drop in the bucket. In the great scheme of things, he’s the very least of our worries.”
“Exactly,” Loret said with growing excitement. “We have the same enemy. Let me out and I’ll find Robert and drag him to hell. You can trust me. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him a thousand times over. I owe that bastard.”
Cyn shook her head in warning. “Get the information first, Jack,” she said.
Jack closed his eyes, hoping to find a moment of peace, only Loret was so close, he could feel him like a torch. He had to turn away; in the west, the horizon was aflame and was as bright as the sun in the east. The Navy was laying down a curtain of shrapnel and fire in a desperate attempt to slow the second wave of undead.
“Information first,” Jack said, without turning around.
“No,” Loret said with equal finality. “You can’t send me away, Jack. You lack the power and you don’t know the spell, but I could teach it to you. Yes! I know the true reason why you brought me back. You don’t care about Robert, I know it. You want his power. You want to be able to control the things you bring up from the pit.” Loret’s dead eyes were alight with a greed that Jack could feel echo in his own soul.
It was an effort for Jack to say: “I want the information first!”
“That includes the final spell, doesn’t it?” Loret asked.
Jack was still staring at the flames, rising like a curtain in the west. He nodded his head.
Cyn marched around in front of him and glared up into his face. “Why Jack? Why on earth do you want to know that sort of thing? It can’t lead to anything but more evil.”
“I’m sure it will,” Jack said, slumping, feeling tired and defeated. “That’s the sad part about all of this. There’s going to be more evil, no matter what we do, but if I can limit it then I will. In order to do so, I need to know everything and that includes the third spell. We don’t know when it will come in handy. If we had it now, we wouldn’t be bargaining with this creature, we’d be forcing it to reveal what we need to know.”
“Exactly,” Loret agreed. “Now, let me out and I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”
Jack shook his head. He had an urge burning in his gut worse than any crackhead had ever felt. It was a hunger that went beyond hunger and beyond lust, he had a need to know this last spell, and he knew that he would have sold his own soul to know it and, had Cyn not been there, looking at him with her beautiful blue eyes, he would’ve have scraped away the glyphs with his tongue and released Loret that second.
There was only one way to stop himself from giving in; he unslung the M4 and handed it to Pastor John, saying: “Shoot me if I accept any terms other than information first.”
In spite of his words, Jack was a little shocked when the pastor…the US Army chaplain, snapped back on the charging handle of the M4 and leveled it at Jack’s face. He said: “Finally, a request that makes sense.”
Chapter 36
Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York
For the first time in days, Jack smiled a genuine smile. It almost seemed that if the pastor killed him it would be some sort of redemption; as if his soul could be saved by this minor form of martyrdom. At the very least he wouldn’t be alive to commit any more murders.
This change of attitude bolstered Cyn and the pastor and, at the same time, Loret shrunk. He turned his squished-grape eyes first to Jack and then to the resolute pastor, and did so with an air of petulant disappointment. “I will tell what I know, but you have to promise on your soul to let me out when I’m done.”
“I promise,” Jack said and when he did, a wicked gleam swept Loret’s face.
“Stupid boy,” Loret cackled. “Never promise your soul, not for something so insignificant. Now we are bound together. If you go back on your word, I will own you.”
Cyn glared, not at Loret, but at Jack. “That’s why you don’t make deals with the devil, Jack.” She made an angry sound and then turned her gaze on the animated corpse. “You have your promise, now start talking. Where’s Robert?”
Loret turned to Jack. “My deal is with you, Jack; is that what you want to know first?” It was a sly question and Jack felt his hunger build. “No, you don’t want to know about your cousin, you want to know about the spell, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah,” Jack breathed.
“That’s what I thought. You’re just like your cousin, so hungry for power that you’ll do anything.”
Cyn hauled Jack back and stepped right up to the edge of the circle, her toes throwing their shadows across it she was so close. “You don’t know what you’re talking about; Jack is nothing like Robert. He’s only looking to end this and so am I. So, enough with the bloody mind games. If you want to start with the spell, fine, just get talking.”
“Of course,” Loret said and then glanced over her shoulder at Jack. “Are you sure you want her to hear the spell? Do you want to share the power?”
Jack hesitated in answering. The honest truth was he wanted the spell all to himself. He was ashamed of the fact and yet he couldn’t fight it. He shook his head and Cyn’s eyes widened in shock.
“You don’t have anything to worry about, Jack, I don’t want to know the spell,” she said. “Not after seeing what all this is doing to you. You should see yourself. It’s not pretty. When I first saw you, you were this shy, bumbling boy and now…you’ve changed in a bad way.”
“I know,” he answered without meeting her eyes. “The spells are evil; I know that, but…but…” He gestured at the empty cemetery. “I don’t have any choice. You do, though.”
She stepped back and said: “I won’t listen.”
Pastor John did not make the same promise. He stood nearby with his arms folded across his chest, his eyes going wider and wider as Loret explained the spell and showed Jack the glyphs that were used, drawing them on the ground using his own thick blood.
Jack had him smear each one before he went on to the next—there was no need for Cyn’s phone this time and not once did he ask Dr. Loret to repeat the glyphs or the words of the spell; they were imprinted on his mind, seared there in fact. He couldn’t forget them even if he wanted to.
At certain points, Pastor John clucked his tongue and at the end he pronounced the entire thing as:
“Disgusting.”
There was no point in disagreeing, “Yeah,” Jack said and had trouble swallowing. For the first time since all of this started, he felt a form of empathy for his cousin. The spells at his command weren’t just inherently evil; they almost felt alive, as if there was an insidious force behind them or within them that could manipulate the caster.
Even then, Jack felt an unearthly desire to strike down the pastor and use his life’s energy to open a portal to the netherworld. The desire was nearly a compulsion. Jack stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Ok…Ok, we know the spell,” he said through gritted teeth. “What about Robert? What’s his game plan? And where the hell is he?”
“So angry, just like your cousin.” Loret let his split tongue fall out as he smiled. “And I don’t know where Robert is or where he’s going. Though if I had to guess, I’d say Washington DC. You see, he didn’t have a game plan, as you put it. He brought back Hor just to see if he could, just to see if the spells really worked.”
Pastor John’s face somehow registered even more disgust. “This is the year 2016, no sane person murders a man in the hope that a magic spell will work, even if it is written in hieroglyphics and on some ancient scroll.”
“Robert wasn’t acting on a whim,” Loret explained. “There’s way more to these spells than a whim. There’s a craving and a calling, right Jack?” When Jack refused to answer or even look his way, Loret went on: “And Robert wasn’t just guessing that they would work, he was almost certain. He had some proof.”
Cyn had been angling closer and now she asked: “What sort of proof? Was it something from our great-great grandfather?”
“No,” Loret answered. “Lord Blackburn was too smart to leave the clues to something so dangerous in writing. I’ve read his notes. They were usually quite floral in their presentation, but the notes on his final dig were all very short and to the point and the point couldn’t be stated clear enough: they found nothing!”
“So, what’s that mean?” Cyn asked. “How does finding nothing point to proof of something?”
Loret, annoyingly superior even in death, grinned and the effect was awful. Cyn blanched, which only made Loret’s grin go wider. “They were on that dig for seven months! No one digs for seven months without any findings, but he didn’t claim a single piece of pottery or a chip of stone that might have been part of a tool or a toilet brush. Clearly, he was hiding something, but it was only clear in hindsight. At the time, people thought he was a fool.”
“This is your proof? Perhaps he...”
“I wasn’t done,” Loret hissed and then tried to attack the barrier again. He only stopped when his belly spilled on the ground. Sulking, he hauled the mass up in armfuls and went on: “My proof stems from the one Egyptian who lived through the expedition: Baqir Sharma. He was remanded into an insane asylum in 1925 and wasn’t released until 1978 and died the next year.”
“Did he say anything during that year?” Jack asked, afraid of the answer, afraid that whatever had driven Baqir mad was already at work in his own mind.
Loret forgot about his intestines for a moment. “He said a lot and he wrote down even more and somehow Robert found it all. Sixteen handwritten books. Robert had them all translated—and the translator he hired? Ended up dead, ran over by a truck...that should have been a warning to me, huh?”
“Go on,” Jack said with a roll of his eyes. “You made your bed.”
This earned Jack a sneer and there wasn’t anything like a sneer from cold dead lips. “And you are making yours, Jack. But let me help by tucking in another corner of the sheet. Baqir described the entire expedition in perfect lucid detail. Your great-great grandfather uncovered a sorcerer of such power that even death could not stop him.” Loret’s blown eyes were now suddenly alight.
“How did they kill it?” Jack asked, quickly.
“I don’t know if they did,” Loret answered, his zeal gone. “Baqir did not stay to find out. The second he could, he ran away. He was in the desert alone for three weeks before he was picked up and shipped off.”
Pastor John made a face as if he’d just sipped curdled milk. “That’s still not enough to kill a man over. I’ve seen evil in this world and if Robert killed a man over what you’ve said then...”
“It’s more than that,” Jack said, interrupting. “I know it now. Once Robert had all three spells translated, I don’t know if he could have helped it. There’s something in them...a pull or a desire, or a need. There is a need to use them. Whoever wrote the spells wove something within them, like a psychic demand to use them. Now that I know the third spell, I feel it.”
Cyn touched his arm as if expecting to be shocked. “Can you control it?”
That was a question he didn’t know the answer to. “Yes, so far.” It was just a guess, he could feel the urgent demand in the back of his head and he wondered how he’d be able to sleep, and if he was able to there was the question of whether he would kill in his sleep? He shook his head to clear it. “Ok, so we know why he raised Hor, but why the others? Why did he destroy the city?”
Loret grinned again, his grey lips pulled all the way back. “That’s all on you, Jack. You hounded him. You forced his hand. That’s what he said, at least, but that wasn’t the truth. But I think you know why you’re being targeted, don’t you?”
“The birthright,” Jack said. “It’s mine isn’t it?”
“It’s all yours,” Loret replied. “It was Jonathan Dreyden who first possessed the spells. He gave them to his father, Lord Blackburn, who divided them to keep them from being used. As the true hair to Blackburn, Robert is jealous of you and your birthright. He tried to kill you with Hor and then he tried with the other mummies and when that didn’t work...well, Robert got angry.”
Cyn asked: “You said you think he’s going to Washington, what’s that have to do with Jack?”
“Oh, my sweet, it’s not just Jack who he was trying to kill. He was going after you and your mother as well, but he lost track of you and then we had the police all over us. I have to say, it was quite a shock when they showed up at my house. It sort of put Robert in a tough spot. He had to do something, or he would’ve been arrested for murder.”
“So he raised a zombie army?” Cyn asked, appalled.
Loret lifted a single shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not like he could’ve gone home at that point. He also said that destiny had provided him with an opportunity.”
Cyn slumped. “To rule the world?” she asked, and when Loret nodded, she shrunk even more. “Since we’ve been little, he has always been going on about the inherent right of the British to rule the world and how his family peerage should have been an inheritable one. Now he’s looking to make himself king. But why the king of the dead?”
“He won’t be just king of the dead,” Jack said. “He’ll be untouchable. He’ll be feared by the entire world and he’ll wield great power with that fear. He’ll go for DC first, but he’ll go for the Vatican as soon as he realizes there is still power in the church. Speaking of which, Loret, can you be killed...I mean can you be killed again?”
The corpse looked down at himself, ropes of intestines dangling from both hands, blood starting to pool, both in his feet and on the ground beneath them. “I don’t think so. Since, I’ve been called without the third spell, I can’t be forced back by my master, since I don’t have one. I will live forever as you see me. Though I do fear the priest and can’t say why...but we are straying from the only topic I am obligated to discuss, and I have exhausted my knowledge on the subject, so release me!” Loret leaned into the barrier, excitement playing in his blown orbs.
Cyn brought up her shotgun and Pastor John did the same with the M4. “I’ll take that,” Jack said holding out his hand for the gun. “You have your crucifix and your God.”
The pastor gave over the weapon, saying: “He’s our God, Jack. He forgives all those who bow before him with the courage to beg forgiveness.”
Jack wondered
if that was true for him. He felt as though he was slung with a yoke. On one side he had the guilt and pain weighing him down and on the other he had the hunger of the spells—the need to kill, the need to grow in power. For the moment the two balanced themselves out and it almost felt as though he needed the guilt to keep from him gushing blood out onto the ground and sacrificing anyone close to himself.
“You two can discuss theology later,” Cyn said. “I don’t want Jack losing his soul over a technicality, which, I would not put past this piece of scum.”
“Step back, Loret,” Jack ordered. “And I’ll release you.” He didn’t care for how close the creature was. Loret seemed bigger in death and a thousand times hungrier.
“No,” Loret said. “That wasn’t part of the bargain. Let me out, now!”
Jack felt a fire of hate radiate from his chest that burned as bright as the flames that were turning New Jersey to ash. The yoke was tilting toward the dark anger. “You’d be wise not to anger me, Loret,” he said with such malice that the creature actually stepped back and appraised Jack. “That’s better,” Jack said. “I release you Dr. Loret. Go your way and I will go mine.”
The circles were still intact and yet, the barrier was no longer between them. Cyn kept the shotgun ready and Pastor John held his cross; only Jack didn’t raise his weapon. There was great power in fear, but there was even greater power in courage. “Go,” he said and Loret left with his intestines slung around his neck like a curled garden hose.
“So what do we do?” Jack asked when Loret was picking his way toward the cemetery wall.
“Here’s what you should do, Jack,” the pastor said. “You should get down on your knees and beg the Lord for forgiveness. It’s not too late, even for you.”
The words even for you, sunk in and Jack understood this on a level where the soul gripped the body. Even for you meant even for a murderer like you. He shook his head, feeling the yoke tip from one side to the other. He wanted it to fall all the way over to the side of his pain and misery, but the other side wouldn’t let it.
The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead A Post-Apocalyptic Epic Page 33