Faith of a Monster Killer: Killing Forever Book 3

by David J. Phifer

  I pulled out the Walther P38. He turned to me. “Heinrich, what are you do—”

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  Three bullets directly in the chest at point-blank range.

  He went down. Before I could put two more in his head, he got back up. The blood retracted into his body.

  I stepped back. “You’re Forever…”

  “Of course, I am,” he said. “We all are. You know this.”

  Goddammit. Even the scientist was Forever.

  I was approached from behind. A pinch ran across my throat. I touched it. Blood rushed down my hand.

  Someone slit my throat.

  I crashed to my knees. Before I hit the ground, I was back in the abyss.

  I should have seen that coming. If anyone was human, I would have guessed it would be the scientist. Wishful thinking, Ivy.

  At least in the dark abyss, I had time to weave in and out of people’s minds long enough to develop a decent plan of attack that actually worked.

  Sooner or later.

  I needed another soldier to enter into. Remembering the old film, I recalled the man in the chair; the one who shouted in German…

  At the mere thought, I was whisked to that moment in time.

  I opened my eyes as if awaking from a year-long deep sleep. I tried to move my arms but they were tied to the chair.

  “Why am I tied up?” I asked. My gaze scanned the room. A dozen people hovered around me. Mostly soldiers. I heard the sound of the film reels rolling on the camera. “Release me. Now.”

  It took a few seconds to fully understand the words coming out of my mouth. They weren’t English.

  They were German.

  A man in a white lab coat approached me. “Where do you think you are right now?”

  “What the hell do you mean? I’ll kill you all. Let me the hell out of this.” I jerked my arms but the bindings were too tight. The ropes dug into my skin. “I have to find a way back.”

  The scientist spoke to another man dressed in a white coat, whispering in low tones I couldn’t hear. His partner was whispering in German.

  The scientist pulled his clipboard to this chest and came up to me. “Ulrich, do you recognize us?”

  “My name is not Ulrich,” I said.

  “We know who you are.” He wrote something on his clipboard. “You are The Presence.”

  I laughed. “You people are imbeciles. But then again, you’re not people, are you?” I asked. “You shouldn’t have summoned the creature here. The Presence is everywhere,” I said. “In and out of consciousness, swimming through the fluidity of soul and darkness.” I thrust my whole body upward, crashing sideways to the floor.

  I tried to break free, but I was too weak. Exhausted, like I ran three marathons back to back.

  “Ulrich, your mind is breaking down,” the scientist said. “We need your help to end this war.” A soldier set me upright in the chair.

  I snarled. “You don’t give a shit about the war. You just want to raise evil—”

  “In order to end evil,” he said. “Hitler has supernatural forces at his command. We need a force powerful enough to stand against him. To defeat him.”

  I glared at the scientist. “You have your hydrogen bombs, what else do to need?”

  The German spoke sideways to the scientist, “What bombs does he refer to? Surely the entity has superior awareness of such things? Awareness of physics that could help us build new technologies and weapons. It could give us the knowledge to create them…”

  I peered at the corner of the room. It was empty. There was no bomb.

  I was too early in the timeline. They weren’t even thinking about using bombs up until this point.

  Goddammit, Ivy. You gave them the idea.

  These dickheads were trying to stop Hitler by raising a dark entity and now you suggested they should make nuclear bombs as well. Well done, asshat.

  A dark entity that wanted to infest the human race. A hundred hydrogen bombs deadlier than any other weapon in existence. How many bad ideas does it take to destroy the world? Let me count the ways.

  “You’re all fools,” I said. “You summoned The Presence to defeat Hitler? And now the bombs?” I glared at the scientist and threw daggers from my eyes. A ringing cut into my brain. It was deafening. I was about to pass out. “You devil-worshiping buffoons,” I said. “He’s the devil. You're giving us a death sentence. The devil will kill us all.”

  I ground my teeth and growled. The pain was intense.

  The German grabbed my head and moved my eyes up to his. “Give us the power to defeat our enemies.”

  The scientist pulled him away. “His brain is degrading,” he said. “He’s speaking nonsense. I think The Presence is eating him from the inside out.”

  Without warning, a shrill sound exploded in my head. As if they were on a television screen that was shrinking, I was whisked away as the bunkers and soldiers became distant. The whole scene was gone.

  I was back into the black abyss.

  I needed to end this. And I had all the time in the world to do it.

  I tried to possess another man’s mind. And then another, weaving in and out of people in 1943 so fast I got dizzy. Each time, I failed to take them down. If they were human, it would have been easy.

  But being Forevers, they were tough sons of bitches to kill when I didn’t have charmed bullets laced with Black Death.

  The assholes kept healing their wounds and regenerating their bodies from the severed heads. With no acid to melt them, they kept coming back.

  When I tried to kill someone, eventually the soldiers caught me and prevented me from stopping their bullshit.

  With no end in sight, I started to get mopey about it. That is, until I found the flame thrower in the closet. They could stop me from killing the others, but there was nothing they could do to prevent me from committing suicide.

  With every jump into a new body, I killed myself by lighting myself on fire. When you understand how hard it is to set yourself on fire and sever your own head in the process, you learn to appreciate the challenge.

  When I made it into the body of the British officer. I took the time to charm his ammo, etching sigils into the bullets that would dissolve Forever flesh. It wasn’t a perfect spell, but it would hurt them. After a hardcore blessing, I finished off the last few with dickheads with headshots. Then burned them to ash.

  But this wasn’t the only bunker in town. I had to kill everyone. In every bunker. The Presence couldn’t be allowed to come through them. Each one was a window into our world. I had to close every door. Plug every leak.

  Most of them I shot and burned. I dumped one guy down the pit as he was on fire. But with twelve charmed bullets in him, he wouldn’t be healing any time soon.

  In time, I cleaned out every bunker. After the place was empty and quiet, I took my sweet ass time to set up and do what needed to be done. As I was the last of them, I bathed in gasoline and lit myself on fire. As I burned I stuck the barrel of a pistol to my temple. And pulled the trigger.

  And just like that, I was back in the abyss of The Presence.

  After dealing with all that bullshit, it was time to reach out to Sam again. This time, I found him. He was dream-walking. The abyss must have blocked sight of his astral form, but I could hear him.

  “Sam,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  Sam grumbled and coughed. “Who is this?”

  It was refreshing to hear his voice. A blanket of comfort. “How many hunters do you dream-walk with, you old coot?”

  “I know that voice,” he said. “This sounds like Solomon Ivy—”

  “Of course it’s Ivy, you fat bastard.”

  “That’s impossible…”

  “What’s wrong with you, Samuel? Are you drunk?”

  “You can’t be here. Solomon Ivy died.”

  “What are you jabbering on about? I’m not dead. I’m lost in a dark dimension. In the body of a cosmic beast called The Presence. Has the bomb gone off yet
? Where are Maya and Augie?”

  “Maya and Augie?” he asked, sounding uncertain. “Solomon, they’re all dead.”

  “This is no time for one of your stupid jokes, Sam.”

  “It’s no joke, Sol. The nuclear bomb—”

  “Am I too late? Has it detonated?”

  “Solomon, the bomb destroyed Chicago—

  —twenty years ago.”

  Chapter 32

  One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

  After traveling back in time and possessing an army of soldiers in 1943, killing them all and committing suicide more times than I can count, I thought my problems were over.

  It should have reversed everything. It should have made it so the veil between worlds no longer existed. It should have undone Karen Bell’s death because, without The Presence, there was never a supernatural cult she needed to investigate. It should have reversed my situation because I never would have traveled to the godforsaken loony bin Island in the first place.

  My plan should have worked like a charm. But as I floated in dark ectoplasm, it was quite obvious that it did not.

  Damn it to Hell.

  Drifting aimlessly in The Presence, I lost all track of time. My brainwaves slowed down to Theta or Delta frequencies, the levels of sleep. It allowed me to project my mind out to a man who walked through dreams for a living. As a last-ditch effort out of sheer desperation, I found myself contacting my old shaman friend, Sam, to help with my sticky situation. But after only a few seconds of conversation, I almost wished I hadn’t.

  “Sam, you better be joking,” I said, “or I’m gonna cram your Johnny Cash statue up your wrinkly old ass.”

  “You’ve been dead for nearly twenty years, Sol,” he said. “I don’t know how you are talking to me now. Where are you? Are you a spirit?”

  “I’m not a damn ghost. I’m alive. I’ve been stuck floating in a dark abyss of ectoplasm,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Maybe twenty-four hours. Tops. I killed a lot of soldiers in 1943. It’s hard to tell if time there equated to the same time here or not.”

  “I think time must be distorted where you’re at,” he said. “The bomb went off two decades ago. Chicago was obliterated.”

  “Along with my team? What about Jack? And Serena?” My eardrums popped. Not sure why. I don’t think I was even breathing anymore. The ectoplasm was in my body. Probably in my bloodstream at this point too.

  “A lot has changed with the world since then, Solomon. Nobody knew why the nuke went off or where it came from. Let’s just say the world you knew is long gone.”

  “But I told you about The Presence when we dream-walked—”

  “I searched everywhere, Sol, but I couldn’t find you. Whatever place you were in was too well-hidden. It cloaked your soul. Made you untraceable. The eclipse only made things worse.”

  “How did you survive? You would have been too close to Chicago to make it out in time.”

  “When the time came, Serena spun a spell that shifted us to a pocket universe. One of Serena’s secret spells she never told anyone about. When we came out, we were in San Diego. Miles away from Chicago. Or what was left of it.”

  “Leave it to Serena to pull a spell out of her ass. What about The Presence?” I asked. “Is humanity a hive mind of terrible creatures?”

  “Lots of shit went down, Solomon. Lots. Serena is dead. Everyone is dead. Killed by the awful shit going down here. And I’m on my last leg. To be honest, I wish I bought the farm twenty years ago. The world ain’t in much shape to enjoy it.”

  Even though I was in the abyss, I could hear the faint sounds of the room Sam was in. The fireplace crackled. Rain tapped against the window. The familiar chime of a wall clock went off.

  “Sam, are you in my cabin?”

  “One of the only places left untouched,” he said. “I’m glad you never sold it.”

  “What about Blackwell? If you tell me he’s president, I’m going to cuss in your ear.”

  “There is no president,” he said. “Like I said, the world isn’t as you remember it.”

  “Are you saying there’s no president of the United States?” I asked.

  “I’m saying there is no United States,” he said. His voice trembled. “If you’re floating through time in this abyss, Solomon, you have to change it. You have to go back.”

  “I can’t travel back to my time to change shit. I can only pass my consciousness back and forth.”

  “Then I suggest you change some people’s minds,” he said.

  “Sam, listen to me. You need to astral travel back to your past self. Give yourself a warning.”

  “I already looked. I couldn’t find you, remember?”

  “Because you’re relying on magic, you old coot. It’s your default,” I said. “All my watches have GPS tracking. It won’t work on the Island, but I have an old watch in the glove compartment of my truck. It’s still ticking—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.”

  “Shut the hell up and listen to me. Get Serena, track that watch, and close the veil before the nuke destroys Chicago—” I heard the hammer click of a pistol. “Sam, what was that sound? Are you holding a .357 Magnum?”

  “You caught me in the nick of time,” he said. “I was just on my way out.”

  “Samuel, what are you doing?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like here, Solomon. I was pissed at you for years for going out before me. It looks like I finally beat you to it.”

  “Sam, don’t do this. We can figure this out.”

  “Find a way to prevent this, Solomon,” he said. “Change history.”

  “Sam—”

  BOOM!

  The gunshot was the last I heard of my friend.

  I had to change this but had no idea how. I could move my consciousness back and forth, but what good was that if my body was stuck here? And with no portal to get back? I had no physical attachment to the real world. Without a tether, there was no going home. How could I get back to my time?

  From the dark abyss, a tidal wave of thought and feeling crashed into me. A voice passed through my cells.

  A woman’s voice.

  “Ivy, come back to me,” she said. “Please don’t leave me. Come back.”

  It was Maya, pleading for me to return.

  She was still connected to The Presence. I never thought I’d be grateful that an evil being laid its eggs inside Maya, but on occasion, it certainly had its perks.

  I swam through the gelatinous dark toward the sound. Through the darkness. Through swarming beastly tentacles and black ooze, I swam. For the first time, I was able to see something up ahead.

  A pin-prick of shimmering light.

  It grew larger as I pushed toward it. Maya’s voice became clearer. Louder. When I reached the brightness, it was blinding.

  Tendrils pulled me into the light. When I opened my eyes, I was being lowered into the containment room. Maya was in the corner, inside the circle. Crying.

  “Maya,” I said, trudging toward her.

  She opened her eyes and stared at me. She frantically pushed away, deeper into the corner.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said. “Maya, it’s me.” When I reached for her, she flinched. I looked at my hand and understood why.

  It was the deformed hand of a beast. Sickly-colored pale blue flesh coiled into a shape barely resembling a hand.

  I thought I was lucky that Meshach’s infection didn’t transform me. But over the course of twenty years, it mutated my cells, my entire body, without me even noticing it was happening. I was no longer Solomon Ivy, the monster killer.

  I was Solomon Ivy, the monster.

  Chapter 33

  The Angel Cometh

  Maya shuddered at my monstrous form. Having descended from the portal as a monster, I wasn’t surprised she didn’t recognize me. Even I didn’t recognize me.

  I was massive, at least nine feet tall. A mess of twisted flesh and body parts that
didn’t make sense. I had no idea how many eyeballs I had, but I could see Maya in several energy signatures, through multiple dimensions, and endless frequencies.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said, but my words were garbled. They weren’t words at all, but low garbled grunting sounds that came out as ear-shattering noise. My words sounded like they were backwards, dropped through a meat grinder, and translated into Klingon.

  I withdrew my hand and touched my heart. That is, if I even had one anymore.

  “Ivy,” I said. “Ivvvy…”

  Maya relaxed her body and stared into me. “Oh, God,” she said. “Ivy? I don’t understand.” She reached for my hand. I touched the tip of her fingers. She shook her head. “This is impossible…”

  I tried to smile, but had no idea how that came across. I would imagine a smile from this face was blood-curdling.

  Maya touched my cheek. And ran her hand down my face. I pushed my face into her palm. She was warm.

  So warm.

  She shouldn’t see me like this. I turned away. Further in the room, the Meshach beast struggled with someone. The beast had a victim’s mouth open, pouring black snakes down his throat. I lumbered toward him. But it wasn’t just any victim. It wasn’t just any man—

  It was me.

  The earlier me. The human me. The real me.

  I charged Meshach. Dwarfing him in size, I was two feet taller and twice as thick as I plowed into him, knocking him away. I grabbed Solomon Ivy and reached down his neck. Gripping the the black worms squirming down his throat, I wrenched them out. Ivy fell to his knees, coughing blood and bile to the floor.

  I ripped the worms in half, black and purple blood splattering everywhere. I glared something awful at the Meshach beast. He stepped back, not knowing who or what I was.

  Without a second thought, I grabbed his jaw and ripped it off. With my beastly hands, I gripped under his teeth and pulled, separating his head from his neck. I dropped both his dead body and severed head to the floor.

  Redmann stood on the other side of the glass, his hand pressed against it. “My angel.”

  It took twenty years of me killing those Forever bastards in order to stop The Presence and you mean to tell me that was all part of the process to transform me so I could be the final piece of Redmann’s puzzle?