Rise Of The Soulless

by Erik Lynd

  She moved closer, no longer concerned about the danger. “You are not alive, but not dead either. What are you?”

  “These bodies are convenient shells for me, but that is all they are—shells of flesh that will someday rot and fade away. I, however, will never fade.”

  Grace moved even closer as though the thought of danger had completely left her mind.

  Apophis continued. “I was created by one like you, a queen with great gifts. I recognize the same gifts in you and have come to serve. I request only that you give me purpose.”

  “That is all pretty language, but how do I know you are telling the truth? You could be waiting for me to turn my back so you can kill me,” Grace said.

  Despite her words, Hamlin could see the man’s words were having an effect on her. She seemed to be a sucker for flattery.

  Apophis thought for a moment. “I don’t have proof, and I have no soul for you to read, but I offer evidence. The Hunter is your enemy, correct? He is no longer a threat.”

  “You lie,” hissed Hamlin.

  Apophis glanced at him as though seeing him for the first time. “And who are you?” he asked.

  “That’s one of the Hunter’s minions,” Grace said. “We caught him snooping around where he didn’t belong.”

  “Despite what the hanging man says mistress, we assure you he will not bother you again. He owed me vengeance and I collected.”

  Then Hamlin recognized them. The last time he had seen them, they had been wearing scarves across their faces, slaughtering innocents as bait in a trap for Chris.

  “You killed him?” She glanced and the glowing soul shard on the shelf. “I think not.”

  “No, that would be too easy. We did what his predecessor had done to us. We buried him in the sand, beneath tons of rock that not even he could escape.”

  “So, he is not dead,” she said. “It’s sounding kind of shady to me.”

  “Worse than death, mistress,” Apophis continued and moved a little closer, but not threatening. If anything, he seemed subservient. “He suffers immeasurably. He has been trapped for days starving and dying of thirst, but unable to die. By now he must be mad. I doubt he can do more than lie on the ground. No mistress, his fate is far worse than death.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Hamlin cried out. He struggled against the bindings on his hands and swayed back and forth in his bonds. “It’s bullshit! There’s no way you defeated him.”

  Apophis ignored him and continued to stare at the ground just in front of Grace, keeping his eyes averted.

  “How do I know you tell the truth?” Grace asked,

  “Has the Hunter come? You have his man, I know the power you have here in the building. Certainly he would have come himself? Wouldn’t he come to at least snatch his man from you? Or kill him to keep him from talking to you?”

  “You do have a point,” She looked back at Hamlin. “Why would he send this loser in his place? So, you were able to defeat the Hunter in a fight?”

  “Of course, mistress, we are the best, the first of the Bleeders. We will kill all those who stand against you, simply give us the word. And I offer proof.”

  Apophis held out his hand. In it rested a small pocket knife. It even had the swiss army knife emblem on it. Hamlin recognized it instantly and his heart sank. Was it all true?

  “This is weird, but if it’s true, it’s awesome. Always wanted my own henchmen so I didn’t have to rely on Golyat’s all the time. What are the names of your friends?”

  “I am Apophis.”

  “Yeah, I get that, but who are the two dudes behind you?”

  “They are me. I am Apophis. It is just best if you address me when I’m around.”

  Hamlin was only half listening to the conversation. Could the kid really be dead? Well, not dead if he believed this Apophis. Just suffering, starving for eternity? He had to get out of here, somehow; he had to find Chris. Apophis said sand? Was he buried in Egypt?

  “Come with me, I want to introduce you to Golyat. He is the one giving the orders around here and he is lame as hell, but we have to make nice with him. If he doesn’t like you, he’ll kill you on the spot, so I hope you aren’t playing a game.”

  “He will not kill us. I have told you, we are the First Bleeders. We are unstoppable.”

  “Didn’t you just say you were trapped for thousands of years by the first Hunter? You sound fucking stoppable to me,” said Hamlin with a toothy grin.

  Grace stepped up to Hamlin, made claw shape with her hand, and thrust her fingers into his gut. They sunk into his skin like ghost fingers, not touching him physically. But he could feel her cold touch all over his being. Like she had found his central nervous system and poked at it with an ice pick. Pain, like electricity shot through his body, only he knew it wasn’t his body. It was striking at his soul. It was the most painful experience of his life.

  His body convulsed, shaking the rafter above. His eyes bulged out and without warning vomit spewed from his mouth, splattering to the floor. Grace jumped back and, thankfully, removed her fingers from him.

  “Ew, that is so gross. Why did you have to do a thing like that?” She looked down at the foul-smelling liquid and held her nose. Then she put her head back and made a little moan while she stamped her foot. “And I lost my maid today. That’s just great. Come on Apophis let’s go meet Golyat. I’ll just make some guard clean this up.”

  Hamlin knew they left, but it was hard to focus after that last assault. His body had finally had enough and his brain was shutting down. Unconsciousness beckoned. He tried to fight it, he needed to find a way to escape and save Chris. That was his last thought as everything went black.

  26

  Christopher stepped into the main room of the Brooklyn Lair from the cube room and he knew he had come home. It was a dark bunker of a building, but he had never been so happy to see the place. The book the Librarian had given him had refreshed his memory, brought him to the here and now, but some things seemed distant. He still had the sense that he had been gone a long time.

  “Juan,” Christopher said.

  Juan was sitting slumped over the computer desk, head in hands. He looked defeated. His hair was messed like he hadn’t washed it in a while his clothes looked like he had slept in them. Something was wrong.

  “Juan,” Christopher said again.

  Juan raised his head but did not look at Christopher. As though he wasn’t sure if he had heard anything. Then he looked over and his eyes widened.

  “Chris!” he said as he jumped up from the chair. His face was red and his eyes swollen. Something was definitely wrong. “Jesus where have you been? Everything is screwed up.”

  Juan was speaking Spanish and the words were running together. But he suddenly stopped and ran over and hugged Chris. Christopher smiled as he hugged him back. Hellcat faded in from the shadows and rubbed up against them.

  “I was wondering where you disappeared to Hellcat,” then to Christopher he said, “Thank god you’re here. I thought you were gone for good.”

  “No, I was trapped and it’s a long story. Let’s call Hamlin so I can just tell the story once. We have a new enemy out there we must figure out how to… what? Did something happen to Hamlin? Is Eris still in the hospital?”

  “The Eris’ are okay at least as far as I know. Hamlin though, he’s been captured.”

  Christopher could feel the familiar anger building up inside of him.

  “Tell me everything. Start from the moment I left.”

  Juan told him everything. From the discovery of the building to stakeout followed by Hamlin being a stupid as hell and walking in the front door.

  “What were you thinking? I told you guys to not make a move. Just watch and observe.”

  “Technically we were watching and observing, just really close up. Besides we had no idea where you were or what was going on. For all we knew you were dead.”

  “We have to go get him,” said Christopher.

  “Of course, but
it’s obviously a trap. It was meant for you in the first place.”

  “You said you had a schematic of the building? You know the layout?”

  “Yeah, but you’ll never get past the front door. They will have extra security, I don’t know what, but they know it will be you that’s coming, they’ll have something that can give you a run for your money. Something that can stand against your Weapon.”

  He must have seen something in Christopher’s eyes. “You do still have the Weapon?”

  “I don’t have time for the whole story, but at one point I was unconscious and they took the Weapon. But I can work on getting that back later, right now we need to get Hamlin out of there. Besides, I don’t plan on going through the front door.”

  “But without the Weapon you don’t stand a chance. I mean your tough and all, but without a weapon how are you supposed to damn their souls?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t. Maybe all we do it get out of there with Hamlin and our lives. It doesn’t matter. Hunting down the Weapon will take too much time. Time that Hamlin doesn’t have. He is a tool for them and you throw away tools when they are no longer useful.”

  Juan leaned back thinking. “It might be a suicide mission, but I’m in. If you’re sure. There will be an army waiting for us, regular guards, those tattooed freaks and at least one powerful dark soul. Plus, whatever surprises Golyat had planned for this trap.”

  “Will you be able to hack into the security camera’s again?”

  “I doubt it. I bet the moment they found Hamlin they started hardening their security, and there was that secondary security network that I hadn’t even detected.”

  “Is that a no or a maybe but it will be hard?”

  Juan stared at Christopher intently for a moment before breaking into a smile. “Well it’s only been a few hours, so I think I have a chance they couldn’t have plugged every hole in the system. But I can’t be sure there isn’t some other layer of security that I can’t find. That’s what happened to Hamlin. That along with the reinforced guards, will make sneaking in impossible.”

  “I wasn’t planning on sneaking in,” said Christopher.

  “A man of action, I like it. Let’s go,”

  “I need to make a quick stop before we go,” said Christopher. “Also, do we have any small sealable containers of some sort?”

  Juan gave him a questioning look, “You mean like Tupperware?”

  “No something more durable, metal if possible.”

  “Well, I have some small metal jars I’ve been using to store some small repair items. They’re about four inches tall and a couple inches in diameter. Will that work?”

  “I hope so,” Christopher said. He had no idea what size canopic jars should be.

  An hour later Christopher entered the hospital room where the Eris’ rested. He was in plain clothes as he slipped through the corridors hood and baseball cap obscuring most of his face. It was a risk, but one he had to take.

  He had avoided signing in at the visitor’s desk and had only been given suspicious look by the security guard. Luckily the guard seemed more interested in some game on his phone than trying to figure out what he was up to.

  Months ago the hall and waiting room might have been filled with reporters wanting to talk to the girl that was saved by the mysterious new hero. But when she didn’t wake and the hero never turned up to answer questions the story faded away as all news stories do over time.

  Christopher was alone with the Eris’. She looked the same as when he had gazed at her from outside the window. But now, closer, able to reach out and touch her, it was different. He saw the touches of life still in her. The small bit of color that had been missing from outside the glass was still there on her cheeks.

  He came close to her bed, gently taking her hand in his. Tubes and wires were attached to her body, but she was still beautiful. He knew that now. His memories of her were at once recent and old. To him, it was like he had known her all his life.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your side earlier,” Christopher said. “I told myself it was because I was afraid of being recognized. That if I came to you they would have me on camera and nobody would ever leave you in peace. So I stood outside the window. That glass, that distance separating us.

  “But that wasn’t what I was afraid of. I was afraid that whatever was between us was making me weak, that fear of losing you would become a weakness. I was afraid that being too close to you would make me weak.”

  Christopher reached up and brushed back her hair gently, not a normal gesture for the Lord of Damnation, but totally in character for Christopher Sawyer. And that was the point.

  “I’ve changed a lot in just the last few days. I’ve lived a lot of adventures and I’ve grown in a lot of ways. But you were always there it gave me strength in ways I couldn’t have had if I had never met you. I was afraid of what was between us, between all of us for that matter, but really you are a strength I can’t fathom.”

  He leaned over and gently kissed her brow. “I need you to live, I need you to help me live.”

  He kissed her one more time before stepping back. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you can, at least a little. I have to go now, saving the world and all that shit, but I will be back to be by your side. As you always were by mine.”

  With one last squeeze of her hand he left the room. It never occurred to him to question that there were two Eris’ in that body and he had been speaking to both.

  27

  The meeting room was large but cloaked in shadow. Nobody was hiding their face purposefully, but they all lived in a world of mistrust and the darkness helped them maintain their poker faces. The ceiling was high and the room wide. Golyat was the largest dark soul, but many were large, some close to his size. Having a large room made everyone comfortable.

  Four members of the alliance sat around the grand table, carefully seated as far from each other as possible. They each knew that one would turn on the other in a heartbeat if it meant they could seize an advantage. The Alliance had formed of necessity, not any real desire to work together. Each member had his or her own goals since escaping Hell; working with other dark souls was just a means to an end.

  The alliance was larger than the four that sat here around the table, but they never all met at the same time. Too many in one place risked chaos and violence. They only gathered in numbers large enough to make decisions with enough checks and balances in power present to assure no one of them overstepped.

  The room had recently been cleaned, but Grace could smell the sour stench of corruption. No matter how much these dark souls washed, some could never get the stink of Hell off.

  Grace stood off to the side, near the bar set into the wall. She was not allowed a place at the table, nor were her new henchmen. Golyat had made them stand to the side also. He eyed them suspiciously while Grace fed him calming thoughts with her stolen mind techniques.

  In just this brief time she had learned a lot of control but could not bring the power to bear in a direct assault on his mind. She didn’t have the finesse for that and he would certainly kill her if he realized what she was doing. Despite what he had said, she did not overestimate her value to him.

  “Why the girl, Golyat? Why is she here with her pets?” the one called Draug asked. “This is no place for her kind.”

  She did not mind the disgust in his voice. She expected no less, she merely looked over them one by one, wondering which one she would be able to consume first. Which ones had powers and experiences she would want to feel?

  There was Draug, Eastern European by his accent. He was a dark, powerfully built man whose eyes glowed with a vicious animal shine, as if a pack of man-eating dogs hid inside him struggling to get out.

  There was Andre Lavolier, the Alligator King. He was swathed in hooded robes that covered him from head to toe, but Grace could see the reptilian fingers as they snaked out of his robes to lift his drink. From inside his dark hood, she could see
the glassy flashing of his large eyes. It was unsettling.

  And then there was Michael. He was cute, Grace thought. She liked him. He was a young one and, in some ways, the male version of Anabelle. Model handsome and charming when he wanted to be. He was like the bad boy of the group, and he was the one who seemed the most at ease. He even smiled and winked at Grace.

  Oh yeah, she was crushing hard. She had no idea what his abilities and talents were, but she knew she would save his soul for last. It would be the sweetest of desserts.

  “She is here at my request,” Golyat paused for a moment as though confused as to why he would request her presence. “And her pets are…”

  “They are my guards,” Grace jumped in. “I don’t have the natural gifts as you have, I have to rely on special soldiers to guard me.” She patted Apophis on the arm.

  “Little miss, you seem much more confident than the last time we met,” Andre said, his voice more hiss than human.

  “I have learned and grown strong.”

  “Enough,” said Draug. “Why are we here Golyat? You said you had an update on the project? I hope so. Have you stopped the stability problem?”

  “Yes, the final piece of the puzzle has just been delivered from Egypt. With it we can finish the project. But that is not the only reason I have brought you together. I had wanted to share with you a trap I had laid for the Hunter. I planned to lure him here to this location where we could all dispatch him at once.”

  “You what?” Andre had slid his chair back and stood. He was not as tall as Golyat, but he dwarfed all the others in the room. “Are you crazy, Golyat?”

  The others did not jump, but it was obvious they had become nervous. They tensed up as though expecting an attack at any moment. Draug looked to the window as though gauging it for escape. Grace almost laughed at their fear.

  “Sit down, Andre. That was my plan. Between having my personal guards here, Grace bending his soul, and the four of us he would not stand a chance. However, it seems there is no need.”