The Jewel of Babylon (The Unusual Operations Division Book 1)

by Jacob Hammes

  “You want me to shoot you?” John whispered, sliding through the circle and shoving the barrel of the pistol up underneath Marcus’ chin. “You just want me to end it now?”

  Marcus realized for just a moment that John was overemphasizing the letter S.

  “If it means you’ll let the rest of my team and your sister go, then yes. Shoot me, torture me, do whatever you want. Just let them go.”

  “That’s not how it works,” John replied in a deep, demonic voice. In a flash, Marcus was on his knees and the side of his head was aching from where he had been blindsided with the pistol. Marcus was on the verge of losing consciousness again as he swayed, but John was not done with him. He used his bare foot to kick Marcus in the stomach sending the already wounded man doubling over as far as he could.

  The onslaught didn’t end there. John kicked and hit Marcus again and again, switching between arms and legs, trying every which way to hurt him. It was working. Marcus had never felt so much pain in his life. His mind was swirling through the darkness behind his eyelids and for a moment between each kick, he lost consciousness.

  When John had had his fill of torture he simply walked away from the drooping Marcus. Slowly, he meandered back to his bag and pulled a knife from the black innards. It was the dagger that they had been searching for. The dragon’s head hilt sparkled in the fire light and the curved, wicked looking blade was surely razor sharp.

  Without warning, John flicked the blade across Marcus’ back. He hardly felt the pain of the gash, nor the blood that immediately leaked from the wound. As Marcus was on the brink of unconsciousness, John took the opportunity to undress his sacrifice. Marcus barely noticed the fact that he was being stripped of everything he wore. Within moments, he was clothed in nothing more than what nature had given him.

  John threw his clothing unceremoniously into the fire just outside the circle. The tattoos that covered his lower half were exposed now to the light, making the man look as if he were two different people. The blood soaked, pale upper body hardly matched the cleaner, deep shaded legs and buttock of the tattooed bottom half.

  “You’re very artistic, Marcus,” John said, placing the palm of his hand against Marcus’ bruised forehead. Warmth and energy flooded through him suddenly, causing his bruised and broken body to spasm painfully. He was awake, wide awake. Possibly more awake than he had ever been. Energy coursed through his body yet the pain did not subside. If anything, it intensified.

  “Yes,” John sneered, only an inch from Marcus’ face. “Wakey, wakey, Marcus. It’s time to get this show on the road! What do you think, sis, are you ready to die?”

  She could hardly breathe now let alone answer her deranged brother. Her diaphragm was stretched so tight that every breath pulled painfully against her shoulders and nearly crushed ankles. Her taut stomach sunk in between hip bones and ribs. Even her breasts seemed as if they were stretching into smaller forms than they should have been.

  John went back to the duffle bag and started digging around again. Beside it lay the pistol that he had used to shoot Stephen and a fifty pound bag of salt that had nearly been depleted. When John stood back up, he was holding the Jewel of Babylon.

  It was the first time any of them had seen it in person and under other circumstances it would have taken their breath away. As it stood, fear gripped their hearts and gave much the same reaction—breathlessness. Even Stephen, doubled over in pain and leaking blood, managed to look up at the ancient orb.

  Along with the orb, John held a small sledgehammer and the other ancient Relic, the ceremonial dagger.

  “Inside this hunk of gold here,” John explained as he moved everything to the center of the circle, “is a heaping pile of something I like to call, pay dirt. Some call it the God Element, or the singularity from which the Big Bang was born. Whatever you’d like to call it, it’s in there. Minutes from now, I’m going to use that dagger, along with the blood of my last surviving blood relative, to change reality as we know it.

  “Some might consider the effects, harmful. Seeing as how all existence as we know it will be destroyed, I’d be inclined to agree. However, what will be created will be mine. You should bow your heads. You’re in the presence of a future god.”

  Ignoring the admonishing remarks from the team and the pleading of his sister, John continued what he had been doing. He placed the orb on a piece of wood, just near his sister’s right side between her and Marcus. He collected the remainder of the salt and stepped back into the circle. Then with the salt, John closed the circle entirely.

  The team may not have felt it, being on the outside of the circle, but Marcus did. The temperature in the cave immediately dropped at least twenty degrees. The light from the fire looked dim and dull, almost as if it were losing its colors. The shadows on the walls looked alive. To Marcus, they made faces that watched with wavering eyes.

  Even John looked different. The whites of his eyes were darker. Perhaps they were bloodshot or covered in shadows, but Marcus could not see them anymore. His walk was slow, like someone who was moving in slow motion. Each time he stepped his bare feet missed the interweaving lines below them but came down like someone crossing a tightrope.

  “Wondering what your part in this is?” John asked in a booming, commanding voice. Tiffany managed to let a whimper escape her strained body. Her breasts bounced as she cried uncontrollably and tears leaked down her face.

  “What’s that?” Marcus was surprised. His voice sounded astoundingly normal in this other world.

  “Every god needs his devil,” John answered. “What more suitable Lucifer could I think of than the man who has tried so desperately to defeat me, to defeat his god?”

  “You’re no god,” Marcus managed a laugh. “You’re a crazy person.”

  The words must have touched a nerve. For a long moment, the Special Forces soldier just stared at Marcus with a withering glare. The tension between them could not have been any stronger. Suddenly, John looked away and knelt beside the orb without another word.

  The clank of steel on gold sent shivers through Marcus and with the first strike of sledgehammer on orb he knew that if there were any way to get out of this situation, he would have to find it quick. He stood tall against the supernatural weight that was pressing down on his body, beckoning him to remain in his kneeling position. With all of his might, against the strain of his body and his aching pains, Marcus tried to break the ties. He knew that they had no chance of breaking, yet the sinew in his arms stood out against the strain. In this spell, in this place that he was in, he believed now that Mr. Lambert was telling the truth—either Marcus stopped this right now or the world would end tonight.

  With his back against the pole, Marcus jumped forward. He felt his flesh rip and bone strain but the ties held strong. Again, he tried, and again John pounded away on the golden ball.

  It was no use. He strained, fighting to run against the restraints that held him back. Pulsing light filled the cave with each strike of the hammer and the noise of thunder threatened to burst his eardrums. The earth began to quake.

  A crack appeared within the orb. John was going to succeed. The light from behind him was constant now and the earth had begun trembling even more violently. Another moment and John would have successfully opened the orb. He lifted his hammer again, ready for a mighty swing.

  Marcus could hardly hear the woman behind him, screaming to get ready. She was a faint whisper in the blaring madness that had become the world. Marcus paid her no mind. He was too busy straining against his bindings, begging God to release him so that he might stop the end of days.

  Marcus had always been dubious of organized religion. He didn’t believe that the church was the proper way to communicate with God, nor did he believe that praying was of any use. It was used, in his mind, by desperate people in desperate situations such as this one. It was the reason he was praying. He knew that he had reached the end of his rope. Whether or not Marcus believed, his prayers were answered. With a
feeling like being released from the very depth of hell, his wrists swung loose.

  Cynthia somehow managed to free herself. With all the sweat pouring down her body she wondered why she hadn’t managed to wriggle her wrists free earlier. That did not matter though, the only thing that did was freeing Marcus. She could see that something had changed in the darkness. A red tint stood between her and the now shadow men that were on the other side of a mysterious shimmering wall.

  Though there was no palpable heat, it looked to Cynthia and the rest of the team like an ethereal, unimaginably hot fire was burning up through the salt.

  She only took a second to scan the floor of the cave before finding what Henry was frantically pointing at with his foot. A large wicked looking military blade had been carelessly tossed aside. It was her only hope to free Marcus and end the entire ordeal.

  She crawled as quickly as she could, trying hard to keep herself out of sight. Once she had the blade she made a beeline toward Marcus’ back. All she had to do was place one good stab and Marcus would be set free. Something, however, was in her way.

  The closer she got to the strange, shimmering barrier, the stranger she felt. It was then that she realized she was dealing with something none of them had ever dealt with before. Her skin prickled and her hair stood on end. Something in that fire called to her, told her to scream and run away while begging her to come closer. Regardless of her own personal beliefs, she was face to face with something she could never rationalize. It must have been a hallucination, yet she could feel its heat. What it would do to her if she were to touch it, she could only guess.

  She took a few last breaths. If this was going to be her end, she wanted to savor it.

  “Get ready, Marcus,” she screamed. He did not respond.

  “I said get ready, you stupid asshole!” and then plunged her arm through the wall.

  Pain like nothing she had ever experienced engulfed her entire soul. It was as if fire had touched her every nerve, lit them like a match all at once. In an instant her hand was out of the wall of energy, yet the pain continued. Blackness almost instantly started replacing the light in the cave but she pushed hard, clenched her teeth, and screamed in agony. She saw the man she had just released take off like a sprinter from the blocks, but her job was not done. She couldn’t afford to pass out now.

  She still had others to free.

  With Marcus’ hands suddenly free, he was off toward John and the descending hammer. One mighty step and he had built enough momentum to knock the man from his knees and send the hammer flying from the circle toward the mouth of the cave. He couldn’t be sure, but Marcus swore that a wisp of smoke followed the thing.

  The weight of both men on Tiffany’s stretched body knocked the remaining wind out of her. She gasped in a futile attempt to fill her burning lungs with precious oxygen as the two rolled off of her, locked in a deadly grapple. Both fought as hard as they could, vying for the upper hand while kicking salt and dirt from beneath them.

  It took only a moment for John, who was superior in hand to hand combat even without his new found powers, to overtake Marcus. He flung the smaller man up and over his head and Marcus came down hard on his naked back. John was on him in a second. His black shadowed eyes saw something Marcus could only imagine. Muscles ripped through his torso and the grin that split his gnarled lips was menacing.

  “You expect that after two and half thousand years, you will win so easily?” he screamed. His voice was unfamiliar, raspy and old. “You expect me to let you destroy all that I have worked for? I can choose another Lucifer, Marcus, another devil. You are unfit!”

  Marcus saw the wound in John’s stomach. The glistening hole was something he could use against the bigger man. In one quick motion, he punched John before plunging two fingers in as deep as they would go. The response was not one of pain but rather pure anger.

  “Mind over matter, Marcus,” John yelled. With a grip like iron, John crushed Marcus’ arm and shoved his hand wrist deep into the wound. “Mind over matter! I have lived this long with a bullet hole through me because I can control my bleeding. I control every aspect of this pathetic body. Not that it matters now. Shove your hand all the way through, I’m still going to kill you and destroy this pitiful existence.”

  Besides the thunder, the screams coming from Tiffany as she lay stretched on the floor and Johns’ seething, angry screaming, Marcus heard something familiar. As a strong hand gripped his throat, choking off his airway, Marcus chanced a glance over his shoulder. There, only an inch away, was a glistening pistol.

  Marcus figured that John thought he was just too wounded to fight back any more. It was the only way to explain why he let Marcus reach up and grab the gun in the first place. He never saw the shadow leave John’s eyes for just a fraction of a second, nor did he feel his grip loosen against his neck. He was too deep in his own sense of survival to worry about those things.

  He didn’t know that there was some unimaginable war going on inside the man. John had somehow found a foothold, a toehold, inside of his own body. He had used it for just a precious moment in order to halt the bloodlust that was overwhelming Marcus. He couldn’t see it, because it was an internal struggle.

  Instead, Marcus reached the pistol and without a second thought pressed it up against John’s temple.

  John saw only blackness. He felt the cold steel of the pistol press against his skull a fraction of a moment before the firing pin shot forward and the slide drew back, leaving only the small inner barrel pushed against him. He also felt the round of hot lead split his skin and then his skull. What he felt then, before the blackness took him over, was a sense of peace. John, the real John, had finally died and had done so saving whatever was left of him there had been left to save.

  What had taken him over, however, did not feel the same sense of peace. Whatever had taken him over felt only anger and frustration. Its anger, the maddening anger, was because he had once again been thwarted. The life he had tried so hard to manipulate had been snuffed out and now, he was alone in the dark void.

  John’s lifeless body came down in a heap on top of Marcus. His broken skull landed with a thud on Marcus’ already wounded forehead and his arm was suddenly soaked with blood from the leaking stomach wound.

  “Too bad the mind doesn’t work without the brains, asshole,” Marcus whispered in John’s ear before he rolled the dead body to the side.

  He could hardly move. His own body was badly beaten and his energy had been completely drained from what he could only describe as the fight of his life. The constant sound of thunder had disappeared and the constant light at the end of the cave was gone. The earth had also stopped shaking and the warmth that had been missing washed over him as he lay unmoving in the salt, panting for breath.

  A figure loomed over him for a brief moment in the dim light of the fire. It was too dark to make out, yet Marcus felt a certain sense of calm at seeing it. He was, for a moment, completely convinced that he was looking upon his maker. It was just as good, however, to realize that a very concerned Cynthia was kneeling down beside him. She was cradling a very broken, very mutilated looking left arm. It looked to Marcus like it had been beaten with a baseball bat and then plunged into a boiling pot of oil.

  “You made it,” Cynthia said. Her body was convulsing in obvious pain and tears were streaking down her cheeks. “I was praying that you would.”

  “What happened?” Marcus asked, weakly. “Your arm…”

  “I had a knife in my bra,” she managed a weak smile at the obviously bad joke. “Always keep a knife hidden in my bra strap, don’t you know that?

  “Actually I got free and found his military knife on the ground. I got to it and decided you looked as if you could use a hand. There was such intense heat coming from inside the salt, I don’t know how you survived.”

  “So you cut me loose?” Marcus asked, laughing as loud as possible. It came out a raspy whispering croak. “I have never prayed so hard in my life.”
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  “None of us have,” Henry said from behind Marcus. He was hefting the sledgehammer, making precise strikes around the bonds holding Tiffany. The team had all been set free thanks to Cynthia and Marcus hadn’t even noticed. “Both of you did well. You saved our asses, for sure.”

  Stephen managed a thumbs up, holding a rag over his wound as he sat huddled against the wall. He was in bad shape and Marcus knew it; they had to get him to a hospital.

  “Don’t worry, boss,” Phillip said. “I know what you’re thinking. The radio is working again and Brenda has arranged for a medical helicopter to transport Stephen and Cynthia to the nearest hospital. Apparently it has stopped raining and they will be here in minutes. Strange thing, don’t you think? John dies, the radio works, and the rain stops all at once.”

  A final clank and Tiffany was loose from her bonds. Any physical agony that she felt was nothing compared to the mental torture that she had been forced to endure. She was, for the most part, silently crying into Henry’s comforting shoulder. He had covered her with a jacket that was long enough to keep all of her private parts hidden.

  The orb lay broken, just where it had fallen. The interior was visible from where Marcus lay. It was completely empty. Whatever had once been inside had died with John.

  Epilogue

  Stephen watched from a wheelchair with tears melting down his large black face while his friend Bishop was lowered slowly into the ground. The entire team was there, even Gregory Scott, the overseer of operations for the Unusual Operations Division. There were over two hundred people in attendance, including the policeman who had shot him in the first place. He had not been charged with any crimes but was put on a ninety day paid vacation and given a year’s worth of mandatory counseling sessions. He was also a future prospect for the UOD staff because of his ‘unique’ experience.