Judas: The Relic (The Iscariot Warrior Series Book 2)

by Roy Bright

  Although the skin does not break, the face caves in making it look like a cheap rubber mask and as Conrad lifts his foot once again in preparation to bring a finishing blow down on him, the man raises his hand and moans in a last desperate plea to his survival. One last chance at mercy.

  He gets none, and Conrad smashes his foot into his face. This time, it splits open and blood sprays out combined with pink-gray chunks of brain matter. In a fury, he stomps down again, over and over, until only a bloody pulped mess remains, nothing that once resembled a human head.

  Breathing hard, Conrad turns to Gary and is about to race over to him to repeat the process with the remaining foul creature within the room, when a fiery portal bursts open and out of it steps a powerful-looking demon. It swings its huge, lizard-like tail at Conrad, a fierce blow that sends him across the room, crashing into a wall.

  The broken-jawed man, creeping his way toward Gary, stops and turns to look at the horrific creature that has materialized within the room. He retreats to the rear wall, his head bowed as animals do when submitting to an alpha in their midst.

  The demon ignores him, unconcerned with the pitiful and pathetic man.

  “Awww, you gotta be fucking shittin’ me!” a helpless Gary shouts as the demon makes its way to him. He closes his eyes, waiting for the inevitable, but it does not come. Instead, the demon grabs his body armor and pulls him toward its scaled and dragon-like face.

  It sniffs him. “You. You have been near it. You smell of it and the one who carries it. A girl. A child. Where is she, human?”

  Gary opens his eyes and, although they are full of fear, he remains defiant. “Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit.”

  The demon cackles. “A brave one, eh? I like it when you monkeys get brave. It makes my work so much more… gratifying.”

  It opens its mouth. A coarse tongue unfurls and licks its way up Gary’s face, scraping against it, and leaving a raw, red mark on his cheek.

  With little effort at all, the demon tugs him downward and the chain that binds him snaps at the roof, dropping to the floor with a rattle.

  Gary grunts.

  The demon straightens up and brings him up to its eyeline, holding him in one hand.

  “I shall ask you a second time, there won’t be a third. Where is she?”

  Its foul breath is warm against his face as it grins at him and he retches from the smell. He draws on his bravery again. “And I already told you to go fuck yourself.”

  The demonic lizard’s grin turns to a snarl and it stomps toward the shutters with Gary held out in front of him. It grabs at the metal mesh and rips it away and then hurls it to the back of the room, right into the man who had skulked his way into the shadows, hitting him with such force that it kills him outright.

  It walks Gary out of the room, standing on the unconscious cannibal that had eaten flesh from the man’s leg, crushing his chest, causing blood to spray out of from the side of him. And as they approach a balcony, Gary looks around to see that they are five or six floors up within the mall.

  The demon dangles him over the edge. “I know you, former Detective Cross. I know all about you. You have been fighting us for so long that I am sure the sight of my kind does not frighten you anymore.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” Gary replies.

  “Hmm, perhaps. But I have always found that humans have a distinct aversion to being dropped from heights. It’s not the hitting the ground that generates the greatest amount of fear, it’s the time spent thinking about the landing while falling and it is delicious. I could drink that in all day long from you worthless maggots – it’s such a shame that the falling part is over so quickly.”

  “Hey now,” Gary says while looking around, his head movements rapid, trying to find a solution, any means of escape, “can’t we just talk about this like reasonable people?” He offers an unconvincing smile.

  The demon cackles, one that then progresses into a full roar of laughter. “If you won’t tell me, then I have no use for you. Lord Astaroth demands results and we will not disappoint. I will find her. I will – with or without your help.”

  The demon is about to let him go when it hears the sound of running footsteps, and it turns around.

  Conrad, holding the machete above his head, the shackles around his wrists rattling as he runs, screams at Gary, “Grab him around neck.”

  Fast thinking, Gary complies and slips his shackles over the head and around the neck of the demon just as Conrad brings the machete down on its arm, slicing it in two, the detached portion exploding into a cloud of dust.

  The demon screams and falls against the guardrail, which buckles under the weight of Gary hooked around his neck.

  Conrad drops the machete and it clanks to the floor and slides over the edge of the balcony, spinning down to the ground below. He dives onto the lower half of the demon’s body and holds on with every ounce of strength that he can muster trying to prevent the huge creature from toppling over the balcony and taking Gary with it.

  It gurgles and wretches, trying to claw at its throat to unhook the man, suspended from it, dangling in mid-air above the mall’s ground floor.

  Conrad places both feet on the guardrail and leans back, almost horizontal as he applies even more pressure into keeping the creature in place as it continues to shriek and claw at its neck. Its breathing becomes shallow, its movement less frantic as life drains from it, and he pulls at the creature, drawing it closer to him by digging his powerful fingers into its flesh to gain leverage. As he draws closer to its chest, the creature dies and its form breaks down and withers into dust.

  Gary looks up in horror as the demon disintegrates, knowing he is about to plummet to the ground.

  “No!” Conrad screams and dives forward, grabbing the chain between Gary’s shackles at the last second.

  A much-relieved Gary looks up at him. “Fuck me!” he says, his feet swinging in the air.

  Conrad hauls him up and over the railing, dumping him onto his backside with a thump. He joins him on the floor, staring straight ahead as though in a trance. “Let’s not do that again,” he says, breathing out hard.

  Gary looks at him and, half-smiling with his eyebrows raised, nods a couple of times.

  “No time to sit on asses,” Conrad says, getting to his feet and pulling Gary up with him. “We need find the child and others and get out of here fast as possible.”

  “Agreed,” Gary says, while looking around. He holds up his bound hands. “But we need to get rid of these ASAP. Really don’t wanna try to fight anyone or anything else in this state.”

  Conrad grunts and nods, grabbing his hands and examining the shackles. “Let us check dead cannibal bastards inside room. See if one has key.”

  As they begin to hurry back into the hellish room, the sound of screaming and gunfire echoes up from somewhere below and they look at one another with concern.

  “We best—”

  “—Hurry, yes.” Conrad says, finishing Gary’s sentence.

  They race into the room and Conrad conducts a hurried search through the pockets of their dead captors while Gary runs over to the man with the leg wound and checks him, lowering his head in despair.

  “Got it!” Conrad declares, as he pulls out a rusty key from the inner jacket pocket of the cannibal who cut into the man’s leg. He makes his way over to Gary, sighing as he reaches him, staring at the dead man. “We must save others. No time to be sad here. We have job to do.”

  Gary nods and holds out his hands for Conrad to unlock the shackles. His hands free, he returns the favor, releasing Conrad from his restraints. “Okay, we go,” he says, leaving the room, looking around for a moment, then turning right and running off in search of Abigail.

  Forty-Six

  Racing out of the room, Abigail turns left and away from the screaming and the terrifying scenes. She doesn’t want to leave Gary nor does she want to be alone, but she knows that he was right to tell her to run, and she believes in her heart th
at he will get out of that horrible place, somehow, and find her. She has to believe; she has to trust him as without that hope, she feels that she may never find the strength to put one foot in front of the other again. She also needs him to help find Isaac and Sarah. She knows that they are alive and here somewhere. She does not know how she knows, but she does and she must put her entire faith in her own instincts, trusting them to guide her to them.

  She hurries along, trying to spot a stairwell or elevator in which to make her way out of the building, then turns left again, darting down a corridor, moving further away from the screaming behind her. Her heart races, her breathing heavy, knowing that whatever occupies this building cannot be evaded in the same way as the Dark Ones, and it is this knowledge that has her scared the most. In the time that she and her siblings had to survive on their own, without their parents, they had only ever met nice and reasonable people, committed to their safety, even though most had not been able to protect themselves, unable to hide in plain sight from the creatures. But here, in this chamber of horrors, she couldn’t trust a single soul.

  Skidding to a terrified halt, she freezes as not ten feet away from her a portal rips open and out of it step two powerful, dragon-looking demons, standing on their hind legs, their tails thrashing back and forth. They sniff the air, searching for something, and she edges back, afraid that she is their intended target. She glances to her side and steps through a broken window into a clothing store, as quiet as she can so as not to alert them to her presence.

  Mutilated mannequins adorn the room, some standing, some on the floor but all riddled with bullet holes or with knives and other sharp implements embedded in them. Their sheer volume and erratic placement provides a significant and dangerous assault course that must be navigated with care if she ever hopes to get away from the beasts unheard and unseen. As she edges back, keeping the demons in her sight, a terrible smell hits her and she throws her hands up to her mouth and nose to protect against the nauseating odor. Losing her concentration, she missteps, standing on one of the dummies arms causing her to stumble and fall backward and lands onto the floor with a noisy thump.

  Alerted, one of the demons bounds over, grunting with each footfall. It sniffs the air again.

  She crawls back under a table, all the while keeping her attention focused on the beast. As it approaches the smell returns, more powerful than ever. She glances back and is forced to once again throw her hands over her mouth, this time to prevent herself from screaming. Laid out on the floor is the butchered corpse of a woman, with parts of her body missing. She turns away from the sight and clamps her eyes shut, her terror reaching its limit. Small tears leak from the corner of her eyes. She wishes that she was anywhere but here and she never wants to open them again. But she knows that she must. She knows that she cannot afford to lose control, not now of all times. She must find the strength within her to open them, to figure a way out of this situation and make her way back to her brother and sister. The relic that hangs around her neck and the people relying on her are much too important for her to succumb to fear. She knows that the demons cannot see her and that gives her an advantage, an edge.

  Opening her eyes, her pupils dilate as the demon’s face is inches from hers. How did she not hear it approach? How did she not feel its presence? She is sure that this is the end, that somehow they can now see her.

  But it hasn’t.

  It whips its head back away from hers and prowls the room.

  “What is it? What do you see?” the second demon asks its searching partner.

  “Something is here. I cannot see it, nor smell it, but I feel it. I feel… something.”

  “Well, we need to find the one who carries the Seal. Astaroth’s spy said they and it are here somewhere, so we best stay alert and be the ones to retrieve it for him. He will reward us well. So stop with this and let us be off.”

  “I’m telling you, something or someone is here. Something is moving among the dead.”

  Abigail knows that she has no more time that she must make a break as she believes it won’t give up until it has torn the room apart. She turns around and steels herself, calling upon every ounce of bravery that she can muster but the only way out from under the table is to crawl over the corpse of the dead woman. She fights the rising terror within her and creeps away on her hands and knees. It takes all of her concentration and willpower not to gag or vomit as she crawls over the mutilated, decomposing body. As she climbs over its chest it gives way and her knee sinks into the cavity with a squelch.

  “There!” the lead demon says, turning his attention to the sound. “On that body, something is on that body.” It leaps onto the table and stares at the corpse.

  As it leaps, Abigail gets to her feet and tiptoes at speed to a wall in front of her, flattening herself up against it as much as she can, her eyes never leaving the demon.

  It leaps onto the body and takes a huge sniff of it, drawing its head back and up as it does.

  “What do you smell?” its partner asks.

  “Death.” it says, slowly turning its head toward Abigail.

  It sees me? she says to herself as dread fills her. She then glances down at her knee, still coated in the bloody gore. No, it smells me! Frantic, she looks around for an escape route. To her left, above a stack of boxes piled against a shelf, she sees an open vent and knows that it is her one chance. With one last prayer to God, she bolts for it.

  “It’s moving,” the demon says, its head following the smell of her flight.

  “I see nothing,” the second one says, frustrated.

  “It’s moving, I smell it. This is the one, the one we seek.” It leaps off the table and gives chase on all fours.

  Abigail wants to look back, to see how close it is but she cannot. Terror runs rampant within her. She feels it like icy fingers at the back of her neck reaching out for her, fueling her every step forward as she tries to remain ahead of the fear. She scrambles up the boxes and onto the shelf just as the demon crashes into the containers below, and she still doesn’t look back as she scurries into the vent.

  “It’s in the vent!” the demon screams.

  It is much too big to follow whatever has darted in there and so it leaps off the boxes and to its right, bolting out of the room and back onto the balcony. It turns left, its partner in pursuit, and then rips through the shutters and into the store next door. It stops and looks up, focusing its hearing on the roof panels. It hears metal bowing and flexing, and leaps up at the sound, ripping the roof tiles down to expose the metal vent shaft. Something moves within the vent and it follows the noise, chasing it down. Two paths exist for the shaft, one that continues through the room to the next store down and one that branches off to the left and through the wall in front – it is this direction in which the sound moves.

  The demon leaps into the wall and demolishes it, ripping it apart in seconds. It no longer hears the sound of its prey and so sniffs the air once again and the smell of death floods its olfactory system, rich and tangy. It stands erect and claws at the roof, yet again opening it up to reveal the shaft. “It’s stopped,” it says. It grabs the metal trunking, tears an entire box section down, and shakes it. The splintered shaft is empty save for a jacket that falls out and it throws the metal against a wall, picks up the jacket, and sniffs it. Once again the smell of death engulfs it. It smiles and looks up to see that three paths now exist; left, right, and straight ahead. It roars and turns to its partner. “You go left; I go right.” It thrusts the jacket under its nose. “This is what we seek.” Its partner takes a deep sniff of the clothing and then powers of into its designated direction. The demon throws the jacket to one side and then does the same.

  ***

  Scurrying through the vent shaft, Abigail spots a path branching to the left ahead of her. She heads down it, away from the sound of tearing metal behind her. They’re in this room now, she tells herself, picking up the pace. A notion hits her and as she passes over a sturdier piece of the
vent, meaning she is passing into another room, she stops and whips her jacket off then wipes as much of the offending rotten human matter from her knee as possible. She discards the jacket and hurries off once again, continuing straight on at the crossroad section of vent in front of her. Behind her she hears the sound of a wall being torn to pieces. She passes over another firmer section and into another room.

  Isaac. Sarah. Where are you?

  Forty-Seven

  Judas steps out of his portal, followed by Charlotte, Uriel, and Jophiel. “I haven’t been here in a very long time,” he says, shielding his eyes from a strong gust and glancing at Charlotte.

  Ahead, the Vatican obelisk stands proud, marking the center of St Peter’s Square and past it, the once proud Basilica that is now a shadow of its former self. Battered and in disrepair, the rubble provides an ominous backdrop to the already disturbing scene as thousands of decomposed corpses litter the ground both within the square and upon the stairs leading up to it. Trash dances all around, driven by a fierce wind sweeping through the area; a danse macabre in an otherwise silent setting.

  “Come,” Judas says, making his way through the unfortunate souls who had been caught up in Lucifer’s initial push, slaughtered by the very people stood around them, strangers and loved ones alike.

  As she walks among them, Charlotte’s heart fills with sadness, fixating upon the corpses of a mother shielding her child, clinging to it. Her eyes well up with tears and she shakes her head. “Why? For what?” She looks up at Judas.

  He takes her by the elbow, leading her away. “It’s best you don’t dwell on this. It has happened and there is nothing we can do for these poor people now except hope that they made it to Heaven. We need to focus our attention on helping the survivors, living in fear upon the rest of the planet. That is our job now. We must hurry. Come on.”

  She wipes the tears from her eyes and follows him, trying to avert her gaze but unable to; she returns to the scene no matter how hard she tries. Her emotions rollercoaster within, and in the end they settle on anger. It pokes at her, taunting, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, knowing that to succumb to rage would dull her senses, make her more of a burden than a help. Opening them once more, she strides on and does not look down again, instead keeping her attention focused ahead, resolute and determined. She considers stopping Judas, to tell him about the dream she had a few days ago where she had been flying over the Vatican City, but decides against it. There was nothing more that she could glean from the vision other than that it had foretold their coming here and so, she pushes it out of her mind and forges on behind him, with the Archangels bringing up the rear, their weapons at the ready.