The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead A Post-Apocalyptic Epic

by Peter Meredith

  The water alone had the ghouls backing away and her sword crumbled creature after creature into piles of bones.

  But there were countless of them and even Cyn’s sudden appearance and her use of the Holy Water, which was taken up by the Seals, wasn’t enough and they were forced back away from the door a second time.

  Jack saw the fight out of the corner of his eye as he dipped and drew in blood. It was a fight cast in sinister red shadows, marked by the slash of shining silver and flying, pale bones. Time and again, a man would be raked or bitten and their cries were torture to the ears. Thankfully, they still had their Holy Water which they doused on their wounds, easing their pain, allowing them to continue to fight.

  Somehow, just as Jack finished Cyn’s spell, defining what could come through the gate, the Seals forced the ghouls back to the door and even managed to shut it once again, piling against it—there were only five of the Seals left standing and in the courtyard were the bones of a hundred of the ghouls.

  They stood, braced and ready to fight again, breathing heavily and for some unknown reason the ghouls backed away. Jack was busy going onto the second circle—his spell, and didn’t have time to guess why.

  Cyn knew. “It’s here, Jack,” she said in a whisper that carried across the courtyard. He thought that she meant the fiend and he cast his face up into the darkness expecting at any second to see the seven-eyed beast from the lower plane.

  Then Jack felt the presence of something nearly as awful. It was the demon. The little girl with the copper pennies on her eyes. Its cold evil was a force that smote him and Jack had to take a breath before going on. He had to hope that the others could hold the thing back for thirty more seconds.

  They lasted ten.

  Lifting its tiny foot, the creature kicked in the door, sending the Seals flying. Cyn had been to the side and managed to splash it with the last of her Holy Water. It recoiled, momentarily and then opened its mouth impossibly wide as if it was unhinged. It was going to breathe its deadly ice breath on her and she did the only prudent thing: she shrieked and ran.

  The demon turned its grinning skull head on the Seals who were charging it, swords raised. Somehow they were able to overcome the fear and the nauseating stench of the beast. It opened its mouth again and blasted out a blizzard in a great cloud of white that enveloped the men, obscuring them, momentarily.

  When the cloud cleared, Jack saw the men crawling on the ground. Two were dying, their lungs frozen, having breathed in the icy air; two others were blind, their eyes frozen shut. Only Lieutenant Neilson could still fight.

  He climbed to his feet and faced the demon; he was completely over matched and using a weapon that took years of practice to become proficient with. The demon wasted no time and attacked. Neilson did his best. He swung the sword with all his strength; however he did so in such an obvious manner that the demon dodged the blow easily.

  It leapt inside the return swing, jumped on the lieutenant’s chest, and jabbed its hand into Neilson’s open mouth.

  When it yanked its hand back out, it pulled with it a length of Neilson’s spinal column. The lieutenant collapsed in a pile.

  Then the demon turned to Jack who had been frozen in place just as surely as if it had covered him in a foot of ice. The only actual weapon close at hand was the three-inch knife he’d been using to carve up the poor sailor. It was worse than useless.

  Slowly, he reached out for the only thing near him that had any chance against the demon: the flare. It burned at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. The demon laughed when Jack pointed the red fire at it and then it opened its mouth to test its ice breath against the flame.

  Jack didn’t think the fire would stand the test and too late he remembered his bottle of Holy Water. He turned to run, knowing he’d be too slow, but then he saw a flash of silver streak out of the dark—it was Cyn, swinging his blessed sword in a heavy two-handed chop that should have split the beast in two.

  The demon was too quick; it dodged to the side and Cyn ended up striking the cement with all of her strength. There was a great clang and then the sword was bouncing, jarred out of her weak grip by the force of the impact.

  She watched it tumble away, while the demon watched her neck—hungrily. Jack was already moving, slashing at the demon with the red fire in his hand. He knew that it couldn’t really hurt the demon, but that didn’t matter because he also knew the demon.

  It turned away from Cyn to meet the new attack, which wasn’t an attack at all. It was a feint, only a distraction. “Get out of here, Cyn!” he yelled, dancing first to his right and then back to his left. She stumbled backed into the darkness with the demon foolishly eyeing her with its cold penny eyes. It gave Jack a chance to reach around and grab one of his bottles of Holy Water.

  “Want a sip?” he asked. The words were another feint. Another way to buy time he couldn’t afford. The ring was closing. The ghouls were coming by the millions and the fiend was in the air, soaring at them on wings feathered with human skins. Jack only had minutes to kill this thing and finish the spell. He took another step back and another, shaking the bottle for the beast to see.

  And then his foot struck what he’d been after all along: the sword.

  Dropping the flare, Jack snatched up the saber, and unlike the others, he was deadly with it. The demon was no fool. It seemed to guess that Jack had the advantage and very slowly it began to back away into the dark—it had all the time in the world, and it had the darkness as an ally.

  “Hey!” Jack shouted and then kicked the flare at the demon, something it hadn’t expected. It was lit, perfectly and Jack charged—another feint. The demon had many weapons, many tricks; however it had its favorites. It opened its mouth to blast Jack, who was already bounding away, having lobbed the bottle of Holy Water at the demon.

  In a millisecond, it froze solid and in the next millisecond, it exploded like a bomb. The demon was shredded by the shards of ice; its ugly, tight skin was in tatters and it was missing one of its copper penny eyes.

  Jack waded in with the sword as fast as he could, hoping to catch the demon in a state of confusion. It was not to be. His first strike was like lightning and hacked off the thing’s right arm. It howled in pain and then, as if it was throwing a tantrum, it stomped its foot, shaking the ground and nearly throwing Jack off his feet.

  By the time he’d regained his proper fencing stance, the creature was gone. It had fled into the dark. Jack edged back to the flare, turning his head this way and that, keeping the sword up and at the ready. Then he remembered Cyn.

  “Cyn! It’s out there. Be careful.”

  “I can feel it,” she yelled from the darkness. “It’s to your right”

  He spun and when he wasn’t immediately attacked, he grabbed the flare and charged. He found the demon coming forward, a grin on its misshapen face. You’ve lost, was all it said, speaking directly into Jack’s mind.

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said, and then attacked. No feints this time. He had the beast wounded and with the flare in hand, he hounded it back and forth until it tried to use his breath once more, and then Jack dashed forward in a picture perfect lunge and skewered the thing, sending the blessed saber deep down its throat.

  It tried to scream around the gleaming blade, but Jack only thrust deeper and deeper, a malicious grin turning up the corners of his mouth. “I will be your king,” he whispered, feeling the heat of the Holy sword burning into the creature.

  Jack gave the blade one last twist. There was a final scream that ran up the blade and then the demon died on the end of his sword, and Jack gloated until Cyn called his name.

  She did so in a strange manner. There was fear in her voice but also defeat.

  He ran to her and saw that she was standing over the sailor, the boy with the “Mom” tattoo—his throat had been torn out in the dark. The demon had been right: Jack had lost. He could feel the power of the spells in him. They were a storm of hate warping his soul.

  His mind was pur
e anger and his heart was very nearly as black as the hell he wished to be king of. He had lost. The spells demanded a life and there was no one but him and Cyn. He turned to her and his soul must have been on full display because she took a step back.

  “No, Jack, don’t do it,” she said.

  Don’t do it—by that she meant: don’t kill me—three words that sealed her fate. The spell had to be powered and the greatest power that Jack knew was from blood stolen and a life taken against its will. If she hadn’t said anything, she would have been perfectly safe from him.

  The demons and the ghouls and the fiend would’ve gladly killed her, but Jack wouldn’t have even considered it. He loved her, but that was with the “good” part of him, only that part felt like a distant thing, a voice far away screaming for him not to give in.

  Unfortunately, the voice couldn’t hold a candle to his overwhelming need.

  He was so hungry for her soul that for a second he understood the demons perfectly. He understood the rich, blackness of their evil with a degree of empathy no human could. The demons had cast away their light, denying God and now all they did was crave the light. That same craving, that same need was in Jack, and it was practically impossible to fight against it. He was to become one of them and all it would take was one flick of his sword.

  Understanding struck his cousin; Jack saw it in her eyes. She saw her coming death and saw that it was unavoidable. On one hand she had the demons and the ghouls and the fiend from the lower hells, and on the other she had Jack who was coming apart at the seams and felt as though all he had of himself was the tiniest kernel of his soul, a hard little diamond that clung to his old self.

  She smiled her last smile and even in those circumstances managed to put a bit of her old devil-may-care attitude into it. “Please,” she said. “Just don’t be like him. Kill me if you have to, but don’t be like Robert. Remember, people love you.”

  Maybe she was going to tell him who these people were, but Jack’s urgency was too great. He had to act; the ghouls were at the gate and the fiend was soaring south as fast as it could. For good or for bad, he had to do something. He had only two choices: kill Cyn and become a demon himself, but possibly save some part of the world—a world he would rule. Or let her live…for a few seconds more and then watch as she was ripped apart and her soul pulled down into hell.

  The choices: love or life seemed obvious.

  With a soul-tearing cry, he lashed out with the sword, drawing her blood and stopping her words.

  Chapter 44

  Manhattan, New York

  Cyn began to make a strange noise in her throat as if the air was caught there and couldn’t get out. Her mouth worked soundlessly and her eyes bulged wide. She looked like she was dying, and she was.

  Jack, on the other hand felt great. The power of the spells over him had suddenly and completely vanished. He almost laughed aloud…but then Cyn fell to her knees, still making that strange noise.

  He bent down next to her and at first he didn’t know what was wrong, the cut hadn’t been all that large, just big enough to do the job. Then he remembered the poison. “We’ll get some Holy Oil on that in a sec, but first draw your spell and hurry.” He pushed the brush into her hand.

  “M-my spell?”

  “Yes, your spell. We got to keep ourselves safe until we can figure a way out of this.”

  “You mean you’re not going to kill me?” She looked amazed and happy, but also cautious.

  Jack didn’t have time for this, not right then. The ghouls were only just realizing that the demon was dead and were starting to surge toward the door. “No, I could never kill you. I always knew that, but I think I forgot it for just a second there.”

  When he had looked into her eyes at that last moment, he had wanted to kill her with nearly every fiber of his being—and she should have been terrified, and she was terrified, but she wasn’t wholly consumed by her fear. Somehow she managed to retain some greater feeling deep in those beautiful eyes. She loved him even though he was a monster.

  It was a shock.

  He was on the verge of killing her simply to save his own skin and yet, she still loved him. Even after the horrible things he had done, she loved him. It seemed impossible. He had not felt love in years, truly it hadn’t been since his father had died. His mother had gone into mourning and into hiding. His father’s murder and the subsequent warning note had consumed her and gradually fear had supplanted love.

  And then she had been killed as well and Jack was alone.

  He had not asked for Cyn’s love or begged for it. It had been a gift freely given and it was strong enough to stay his hand and save her life.

  “I could never kill you,” he said again. “But we’re going to die if you don’t do your spell. Can you?”

  She nodded and with gritted teeth, went to work drawing her spell, while Jack ran, not to the door, but to the dead Seals. The demon had killed the last two, probably to make sure that Jack couldn’t use them as sacrifices, something he likely would have done if they had lived.

  Now, there was no danger of that. The power of the spells over him was gone. Now, all he had to worry about was surviving the next minute, destroying an army of ghouls, fighting off a fiend from the deepest pits of hell, and finding a way to stop his cousin.

  Step one: survival.

  It’s why he ran to the Seals. He was a master swordsman but there were too many of the creatures barging through the door for him to fight. What he needed was the power of the military. In the confined space of the doorway, a grenade would wreak a lot of havoc and ten grenades would wreak ten times as much.

  The dead soldiers were still covered in weaponry and Jack started pulling the pins from grenades and throwing them as fast as he could. The explosions: Bang! Bang! Bang! went off one after another in a deafening string.

  Jack went from corpse to corpse, thankful that they were so close. He had thrown twelve grenades, each one lighting up the doorway in a strange shutter, like the worlds slowest strobe. He had the thirteenth in his right hand, the pin pulled and the fourteenth in his left, ready to go when his mind caught up to what the last grenade had shown him when it exploded—nothing.

  There had been piles of bones scattered everywhere, but there hadn’t been a single intact bone-monster in sight. They had backed off again and certainly not because of the grenades. Jack spun and saw in the glow of the flares something tremendous standing on the other side of the wall, towering above it.

  It was the fiend.

  Without hesitation, Jack threw the two grenades in his hands. He lollypopped the throws, timing them so that the grenades exploded on the creature itself. Bones blew out in a rain of fragments; however compared to the size of the creature, the explosions were disappointing and the effect, tame.

  Jack hadn’t expected more. He had hoped that after the drubbing the Navy jet had given the creature earlier that the explosions would give it pause. It did, long enough for him to glance around and find one of the blessed swords.

  He swept it up and brandishing it, he screamed: “If you step one foot in this castle, I will send you back to hell! I am more powerful than ever!” And he was, too. In spite of everything that had happened, Jack felt pretty good, in fact, he felt great.

  Physically, he felt as strong and quick as he ever had and mentally, he was a great deal tougher. The fear rolled right off of him now and the cold and the stench were hardly issues. He had faith in his sword that it could at least hurt the monster and he had faith in himself. He had passed the test with the three spells, something few people on earth could have done.

  On the flip side, he knew he had no chance against the fiend. It was impossibly big and impossibly strong. Thus, his words, perhaps his last, were one more feint, a last gambit to buy Cyn time in order to finish her spell.

  You are nothing, the fiend said in its three voices. You are weak and your soul is forfeit. It is mine.

  “Not yet it isn’t. I...”

 
“Jack!” Cyn said in a whisper. The circle was finished. All the spell needed for completion was for Jack to get within it and speak the words. Facing any other monster, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Against something that could shoot ice a hundred yards, however, there was definitely a problem.

  He needed ten seconds—a long span of time in this situation. But he had a weapon and no other options. Cocking his arm back, Jack threw the sword at the fiend. It glittered silver and bright as it flew through the air right at the thing’s breast; he wasn’t expecting a lucky stab through the heart, if the monster even had a heart. No, he was buying seconds and didn’t bother to watch the flight of the sword, which the monster batted away, easily.

  In that short time, Jack had raced to join Cyn within the circle, and began speaking the words to the spell as fast as his lips could move. The beast, seeing what Jack was doing, gulped in a huge breath from its three mouths and then blew ice and snow in a great gout that kept going and going. It created a vortex, sucking air in through two of its mouths while blasting out the super-cooled air with the third. The creature was so powerful that even the darkness began to roil and spin around it.

  The fiend stood in the eye of a storm of its own making and high overhead, Jack could see the light of day—it was wonderful. Jack and Cyn watched from within the magic circle, completely unharmed. They weren’t even cold. The snow and ice rushed right past them and built up in drifts on the far side of the castle.

  When the fiend saw that its magic was being wasted, it stopped its icy breath and in a fit of rage tore down the wall of the castle and hurled thousand pound chunks of mortared brick at the two of them, also in vain. The rock blasted against nothing. The air shimmered and the hurled rocks cracked and splintered, rebounding away. They could not be harmed by the undead as long as they stayed within the bounds of the circle.

  “Now what?” Cyn asked, when all around them was frozen rubble and the beast finally quit. “We’re at an impasse. They can’t get in and we can’t get out.”