Anathema

by Bruce Talmas

  I threw her wasted flesh into the eyes of the next demon I met, who blinked aside the minor obstacle and attacked with claws bared. I stepped aside of the attack and stuck my thumb as far into his eye socket as I could. He howled in pain and thrashed into my abdomen. The assault took the wind out of my lungs and threatened my balance, but I caught myself on my right heel and used the Masamune to slice his throat as I stepped around him, listening to the satisfying plop of his head on the manicured lawn as I centered myself to face the rest of the horde.

  The house behind me was an inferno now. Two houses burned down and a church that looked like a John Woo set piece within a couple of hours. There was an assload of symbolism there. I was going to have to find a shrink to work out my anger issues if I lived long enough to enter therapy. I’d probably get my own chapter in the DSM.

  A pockmarked demon in a black hoodie lunged for me, and I cut off his left arm at the elbow with a quick downward thrust. I let his momentum carry him past me and focused on the next attacker. I could take care of a one-armed demon at my leisure.

  The next attacker was actually a duo: a thirty-something woman who looked like a middle school librarian and a forty-something man who looked like a gym teacher. A diagonal downward arc cut the gym teacher from clavicle to hip. The sword ripped through him like paper, and instead of stopping the inertia, I used all of the potential energy to pivot and spin towards the librarian. I landed a straight thrust through her neck. I slid the blade to the left and her head tilted creepily to the side, then fell backwards, the last of the flesh relinquishing its hold as gravity won the battle.

  I turned back to the one-armed demon, but didn’t get a chance to finish him. As I moved to intercept him, Vassago casually came out the backdoor and fired the shotgun into the back of the demon’s head. I ducked instinctively; he was, after all, still a blind guy with a shotgun. But the blast did the trick: the demon fell to the ground as what was left of his brains leaked out the exit wound that now covered most of what had been his face.

  Vassago was dragging a still dazed Barney with him: the blind leading the dumb. I nodded to him, still not sure if he could really see or not.

  “Nice shot for a blind guy,” I told him.

  “Shotgun,” he replied, tossing the weapon to me. “I don’t need to be accurate.”

  He deposited Barney on the ground at my feet as the house went up in flames behind him. I sat down next to them, too exhausted to stand. Rose and Vickroy came around the side of the house, keeping their distance in a perfectly normal reaction to fire that the three of us with our demon blood didn’t need to consider, although if a gas line went we’d all be penciling in our eyebrows for a while.

  Vickroy looked at me in concern. I knew what he was thinking. He’d already done the headcount.

  “They got Katie,” I said to him and everyone else.

  “Bastards,” said Rose.

  “Shit,” said Barney. “I’m sorry Jacob.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “This one’s on me.”

  I knew what I had to do. Thankfully I still had my bag o’ guns in Barney’s car to help me do it.

  “Jacob…” Vickroy said as he saw the look in my eyes.

  “Not now.”

  “No. Now. We need to talk.”

  Sirens crescendoed over the roar of the flames. “Fine, but not here.”

  Slowly, we gathered ourselves up and limped to the car. Rose, Vickroy, and Lori filled into the backseat of the Audi. There was not going to be any easy way to cram everyone in to a single car. There was also no way to hide the damage from its unexpected meeting with my retaining wall. It was only then that I’d remembered the house had been set up with all necessary amenities, including transportation.

  I told Rose to drive Barney’s Audi around the city. I would have just met them back at St. Margaret Mary's’s, but I couldn’t be sure the old church still offered sanctuary. I led Vassago and Barney back through the front of the house. It was still largely unaffected by the flames, but I could see the smoke beginning to billow in from the rear of the house. After a quick search, I found a set of keys, and went to the garage.

  As the garage door opened, Barney whistled appreciatively. Vassago just stood there, waiting to be told what was going on.

  “Is that a Bentley?” Barney asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t a car guy. “I think so. I honestly forgot I had it until a minute ago.”

  Vassago just shook his head. “Rich white devil problems,” he muttered.

  I didn’t bother responding to his jibe. Sure, I had money, but so what. I also had a band of demons, the Devil, a possible Angel, and a pack of Marilyn Manson groupies trying to send me to Hell. I could be forgiven a few luxuries given the circumstances.

  We pulled out of the driveway ten seconds before the first responders came around the bend with sirens wailing. I didn’t wait to see if they’d negotiated the bend any better than I had. I drove away as calmly as I could, thinking about Katie and Anna and all the other people I’d not been able to protect; thinking about the house on fire behind me and all the treasures that were going up in flames. All the precious items, lost before the unrepentant fire. I thought of how the world would burn in much the same way, when the end finally came. I didn’t know if it would be tomorrow or billions of years from now, but the over/under on it was decreasing by the minute.

  We did a couple drive-bys of the church before pulling back into the parking lot. Apparently the neighborhood hadn’t changed that much: the sound of automatic gunfire still wasn’t enough to draw the cops. Or if calls were made, no one was able to locate the source of the gunfire.

  Rose and the rest of our ragtag crew were nowhere in sight, so I went about the unhappy business of cleaning up the bodies from my father’s church.

  And that was when things got weird.

  Chapter 31

  I had Barney clean up the choir loft. It was a chore: I’d caught one of the gunmen in the jugular and he’d bled out all over the loft. Hopefully there was no choir practice tonight. Barney still seemed off his game, but at least he had a task that he couldn’t fuck up. I mean, they were already dead, what could he possibly do to make the situation worse?

  I came back down to the church floor to dispose of Pender’s body only to find Vassago standing over it. He had his head bowed as if saying a prayer or examining the body, but since he wasn’t religious and was blind, I had no idea what he was doing. He looked up at the sound of my approach and pursed his lips. “Killing a priest is bad karma,” he told me.

  “Good thing we’re not fucking Buddhists then, huh?”

  “Don’t mean karma’s not a thing,” he said. “I’ve been around enough lifetimes to know things come back to haunt you.”

  I grabbed Pender by the foot and started dragging him towards the front of the church. “Well if I didn’t kill the priest, I’d be the one haunting your ass, because he was trying to kill me. Everyone seems to gloss over every time someone tries to kill me.”

  Vassago shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

  “Please stop saying anything,” I said. “I have enough voices whispering in my ear. If I didn’t know better I’d say I was getting the Emanations now.”

  Vassago considered that for a second. “Maybe you are. Angel. Demon. Two sides of the same coin.”

  “Are you going to help me or just stand there?” I asked.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. Stand outside and sign to people that we’re in the middle of cleaning up a murder scene. Tell them we’ll get back to regular church services in an hour or so.”

  “Sarcasm is the refuge of the weak,” said Vassago. “And I’m blind, not deaf. I don’t know how to sign. It would be kind of a useless skill for me.”

  “If I beat the shit out of you sarcastically, what does that make you?” I asked.

  “Me? I’m an old blind man. It makes you an asshole though,” he said.

 
I dragged Pender’s body out of sight into a back room and shut the door.

  “Did you call Rose to let him know they could come back here?”

  “Yeah, they’re on their way. They wanted to make a few detours to make sure no one was on their tail.”

  As he said it, Vickroy came barging through the front of the church. Well, not really barging, but in the relative emptiness, it sounded like an elephant stomping through the vestibule.

  Thomas Rose was following with his wife, who seemed to be way more coherent than any time I’d seen her since returning from Trinity.

  “Follow me,” said Vickroy, and Rose followed with him, his wife stumbling behind as if on an invisible tether.

  They stormed through the church without so much as an acknowledgement from me or Vassago. I looked at the blind angel and shrugged. “Must be important,” I said.

  I let them get a few yards ahead of me before I followed. No one paid any attention to me. They went into the back room and I stayed in the doorway. I remained just outside the room, waiting for the conversation to begin.

  “I’ve translated literally thousands of texts regarding the Antichrist,” said Vickroy, although it was impossible to tell whether he was talking to me, Rose, or no one in particular. “And every one of them leads me to the same conclusion. Especially this one.” He held up the piece of parchment I’d given him to translate.

  I stayed where I was. I’d been down the same road, and I assumed was led to the same conclusion he’d been. I just never dared to say it out loud.

  “And what’s that?” asked Rose.

  “There’s many readings of the word ‘Antichrist.’” Vickroy began in his sermon voice. “Nowadays, most religious scholars believe he will be a charismatic individual, likely a politician, who will come to power through the aid of Lucifer, and from there will begin to mastermind the events that will lead us to the Apocalypse.”

  Vickroy paused as if waiting for a response. None came. There wasn’t really a proper response to what he was saying. After a moment, he continued: “But in the early centuries after the New Testament was written, the Antichrist was originally thought to be the Devil incarnate. He was the earthly embodiment of the Devil. His blood, his flesh, his mastery of the Hell domain.”

  “So what’s that mean?” asked Rose.

  “Think about it,” said Vickroy. “Who fits all of the criteria to be the Antichrist? Once he was able to control Hellfire, I knew it had to be true, although I’ve always suspected.”

  Rose stared at the old priest like he’d just professed he was a Muslim. “Jacob?”

  “Jacob,” echoed Vickroy.

  I leaned against the doorframe, causing it to creak just a bit. If the noise hadn’t interrupted absolute stillness, it may have gone unnoticed. Both Vickroy and Rose seemed to have forgotten I was there. I stood in the doorway, frozen. What else was there to say?

  “Speak of the devil,” I said. “And the devil appears.” That had been the first line I’d uttered to Rose, and now it took on a much more prescient and menacing meaning.

  “So aside from that, what else is new?” I asked.

  “You knew?” asked Rose.

  “I suspected.”

  “Jacob,” Vickroy said, “It’s too dangerous. You have to leave here.”

  “They have Katie,” I said in reply.

  “It’s not worth starting the Apocalypse over. She’s just a girl. We’re talking about possibly the fate of all of humanity here.”

  I looked at him, stunned to silence. “So you’re saying I should just let her go? Let her be subjected to all of Hell’s torments because she had the misfortune of crossing paths with me?”

  Vickroy cleared his throat. “Yes, it’s tragic, but that’s what I’m saying.”

  I looked at Rose, a man who’d lost almost as much as any man possibly could. He just stood there, nodding his head.

  “Well I’m not going to do it,” I said. “I’m tired of losing the battle to win the war. It ends now.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” asked Vickroy

  “They’re demons. They don’t have free will. They don’t have creativity. They follow orders. That’s all.”

  “So?”

  “So Lucifer’s the one giving the orders, and he’s not exactly on the front lines. That works well enough on offense, but what happens if I put them on the defensive?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There’s no one there to give them orders except Belial, and I know how he thinks.”

  Rose jumped into the conversation. “What about the Angel?” he asked. “And the magician?”

  “What Angel?” asked Vickroy.

  “Never mind. It’s just a theory. We won’t know if it’s true or not until we test it. Tonight.”

  “And I’m going with you,” said a new voice from behind. It was weirdly familiar, but also like no voice I’d ever heard. It had the quality of sand rubbing against a snare drum.

  I turned around and looked into the face of the man I once knew as Junk. But the Junk I had known was gone. That much was immediately clear, if not from the dead Angel eyes that stared from his face, then from the bloody mask that had once housed his visage. The features were ruined, destroyed by bloody patches and strips of skin that hung inelegantly from his head. I wondered briefly how he’d gotten across the country. I would not have wanted to share a flight with him.

  “Hey Junk,” I said. “There’s something different about you.”

  “Junk is no longer here. This is simply a vessel for me to conduct my work.”

  There was a sickly sibilance to his enunciation. It likely stemmed from the fact that his mouth was a bloody mess, the lips sandblasted away, the teeth rotted through by some sort of supernatural erosion that had done decades of damage in a few short days.

  “And you are?”

  “I am Abaddon, Angel of the Apocalypse.”

  I nodded. “Of course you are.”

  “I’ve come to bear witness to the end of days.”

  “Of course you have.” I didn’t have time for this. “Listen, Angel: you don’t show up in the last act wearing my friend’s bloodied skull as a Halloween mask and start making demands. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Nevertheless, I am here.”

  I turned away from him. Arguing with an Angel was an exercise in patience that I didn’t have time for. I looked at Rose instead. “You can come with me if you want,” I told him. He looked over at Lori, and I realized it wasn’t just his decision to make. “Talk it over,” I said to them. “If you’re coming, meet me in the parking lot in ten minutes.”

  I turned to Not-Junk. “You. Bloody Angel. You can do whatever you want, but you’re gonna have to get your own ride, because I’m not taking you anywhere.”

  He nodded and said. “Most unwise.” It was ambiguous, and I didn’t care enough to question it. I just turned away and addressed my adoptive father instead.

  “You take care, Old Man.”

  “I’m coming with you.” He said it with conviction, but I could tell he knew there wasn’t a chance I would let him come with me.

  “You’ve put yourself on the line for me more times than I can imagine,” I told him. “I know I’m not what you hoped for when you took me in, but I am grateful for everything you did for me. It’s time to let me go now. Get on with your life.”

  “I’ve been getting on with my life for twenty years. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on you. And I’m certainly not letting you go now after all the shit you’ve put me through over the years.”

  It was the first time I’d ever heard him swear. I almost laughed. Instead I reached out and gave him a hug. It was with just one arm and awkward as hell, but he returned it with a strong embrace of his own. I pulled myself back and gave Rose a nod, letting him know the clock was ticking.

  I then turned toward Not-Junk and punched him in the face. It didn’t seem to phase him at all, but it made me feel better.

>   As I walked out, I heard Vickroy repeat his concerns to Rose. “It’s not a good idea,” he told the cop.

  “True, but neither is pissing off the Antichrist,” he replied. At that point I knew he would be coming with me.

  Chapter 32

  Twenty minutes later, Rose and I were headed back to the place we’d begun our bizarre relationship. We’d left everyone else behind. For me, it wasn’t that hard. It was kind of my M.O. over the last twenty years. For Rose, the toll was much greater. He’d had to say goodbye to his wife for what may be the last time, a woman he had loved and who had lost so much, forcing her to confront the lonely truth that she may yet lose even more. It resulted in a rather somber drive north.

  The city gave way to the suburbs as we progressed, which in turn gave way to the trees and rural areas of northwestern Pennsylvania. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nice scenic drive. Only after we’d passed beyond the trappings of modern civilization did Rose begin any earnest attempt at conversation.

  “Vickroy was right, you know,” he said simply.

  “About what?”

  “It’s too dangerous. You should be running in the other direction.”

  “That’s not exactly in my genetic code. People fuck with me, I kill them. Trust me: I’ve been doing this for years.”

  “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t do this. You said yourself Belial’s known you for centuries. I’m sure in that time he’s learned how to push your buttons.”

  I nodded, conceding the point. “He has, but that’s just my demonic side. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know…this,” I said, not having any better way to describe the difference between myself now and the demon I’d been. “And even if he did, that doesn’t change anything. Katie’s out there, at the mercy of Belial and his psychos. I’m not standing by anymore and watching people die just because it’s not my problem. There’s gotta be a line drawn somewhere. If not here, where?”