Ashes - The Special Edition: The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

  The wind raged in an instant. The storm was centered directly over the cemetery, and the dark black sky was illuminated by flashes of bright lightning and crashes of deep thunder. Fallen tree branches and leaves blew throughout the graveyard – everything from small twigs to large brushwood – but none of the demons left their posts.

  The Protector set Darius’ heart down on the ground reverently next to the casket, and spoke. “It is time!” he commanded the army of demons, voice raspy, wheezing and full of mucus – yet loud and powerful enough to be heard by the entire army above the wind and commotion.

  The Protector raised his arms to the sky and instantly the winds stopped. His command froze the storm – froze it so instantly that branches and leaves hung in the sky in suspended animation – waiting for his command to continue. It was as if the entire scene had been put on pause.

  He turned to the graveyard to his minions. Each demon, guarding a grave, looked towards The Protector. All faces turned towards Darius’ grave.

  “We have an immortal with us,” his deep voice booming in a dialect that Antoine had never heard before. “He is in the grave below! He is lying in his maker’s grave!”

  The Protector gave another wave of his arms and all of the suspended branches and leaves fell to the ground. He stood directly over the grave, peering down into the blackness of the hole, so dark and dank that a human would see nothing. But The Protector saw.

  “Rise up, Antoine. Rise now.”

  As Antoine slowly opened his eyes, the dirt that had caked on his face fell into his eyes and blurred his vision. He raised his arms from the water, as water dripped from his jacket, and brushed the dirt and mud away, he got his first glimpse of The Protector.

  And Antoine stopped still – his hands were holding his cheeks, in the midst of cleaning dirt; hands still on either side of his face next to his eyes, drinking in the horrific vision.

  The Protector stood peering from above the grave down at Antoine.

  There was no hiding. The giant, towering man-beast was indeed how Antoine pictured him - stacked like a beast with muscles, with the face of a dog or even a wolf but most certainly a beast. From his snout emitted some noxious gas that looked like grey smoke which rose into the air, and the saliva that poured from his mouth fell down into the grave and dripped in the water below. With each drop, it emitted a hiss – like pressure being released from steam, and a small puff of smoke arose from where the drop fell.

  The skin was scaly, green and brown and was covered with black lesions that looked like sores that wept profusely. The scales pulled taught over the powerful muscles, and The Protector looked to be a legendary fighter. A dirty and dented steel shield was strapped over the powerful chest, and a sword was tucked at his side in its sheath.

  Antoine lay frozen, staring up at the beast.

  The Protector.

  Antoine had heard about The Protector in the past, rumors of what the demon looked like wafted through the immortal community from those who claimed to have fought him, saw him, or witnessed him resurrecting an immortal.

  The Protector of everything evil.

  Satan’s right hand.

  A former angel cast down from heaven, as was his mentor and chief Lucifer, The Protector, also known as Asmodai, was the embodiment of evil. He reigned in Hell with Satan, and went out beyond the inner realms of the Underworld to bring followers to Lucifer.

  Asmodai – the Demon of Lust and the sins of the flesh.

  And he was staring directly at Antoine.

  Some salivate dripped from the snout of the demon, and he emitted a deep grunt. The drool fell downwards into the grave, and onto Antoine’s leg.

  Antoine sat up and grimaced at the searing pain that raced through his body, and stared in disbelief at the small trail of smoke rising from his leg.

  “Rise Antoine!” Asmodai commanded. “Rise out of your maker’s grave!”

  Antoine looked up from his leg and saw the demon’s eyes, staring him down intently. The eyes were deep red and the scowl was of pure evil.

  *~*~*

  Asmodai stood over the grave, and cast his glare down at Antoine, who had not moved from the murky water below. Asmodai turned his head for a moment and issued a command to his army in their own dialect.

  The legion of demons began to dig with their arms at each of the graves they were guarding; a massive exhumation had begun.

  Upon Asmodai’s command, the storm resumed and raged with a greater intensity that it had before – all of the fallen branches and leaves were instantaneously scooped up by the ferocious winds instantly creating an almost blinding wall of debris.

  Antoine cautiously stood, still keeping his head below the earth, but had to struggle to get out of the grave with the intense winds. Holding on to the thick roots, and climbing up the deep, damp grave wall, his arms finally reached the surface and he felt for the pickaxe. Grabbing it in his right hand and standing on the sides of the grave liner, he stood on his toes and dug the axe into the ground, giving him some leverage and dragged himself out of the grave.

  He collapsed on the ground for a moment, and gathered his senses and then looked up, shielding his eyes from the offensive and biting winds. He peered through his fingers to protect his face from the debris, he saw many demons exhuming casket after casket – tossing dirt and throwing bits of wood, satin liners and body parts everywhere. All the caskets were old and full of rotted and decaying wood. A few, perhaps of the more wealthy dead, were made of stone or marble.

  But the stone proved to be insignificant to the demons. One stone coffin was raised out of the ground at such a velocity it flew across the clearing and landed just feet away from where Antoine was huddling. It landed on the ground with a deep thud and the cement lid crashed against the body of the coffin and broke into pieces. It fell on its side, almost rolling on top of Antoine.

  A rotted corpse that looked as if it was lying in the cemetery for years spilled out of the coffin. The skin on the face was sucked in revealing the cheek-bones, as if the skin had melted off the face. The teeth looked as if on a wolf as the gums and soft oral tissue had long rotted away and served as a feast for maggots and other larvae.

  The hair was still there - but in patches and dark, blotchy mold spotted the skin throughout the skull. The corpse, Antoine saw, was a man. Fairly young, perhaps not that much different in age from himself or Darius.

  “Rise,” said Asmodai, extending his arm to the body.

  Antoine’s head had turned in the direction of the body when he heard the falling cement. His eyes remained fixed on the corpse.

  The remnants of the lid crashed to the ground. The eyes on the body glowed orange and the head turned slowly; it looked over at Antoine and sat up It started to rise out of the coffin.

  It took some time for the body to lift all of the giant, heavy slabs of stone off its legs and step up and out of the casket. Antoine snapped his head to where Asmodai was standing.

  Time appeared to stand still, if only for a moment, the sky, which had seemed brighter before, was now darkening. The wind quieted significantly. Asmodai seemed for the moment to be the only one else in the cemetery, save Antoine.

  “This will be the one,” he said to Antoine.

  Asmodai gestured to the legion of demons and barked at them to stop in their native tongue. He then turned back to where Darius’ heart lay on the ground, and picked it up with care.

  “Take this and make it part of you,” he instructed. “And then make it part of that rotted piece of human flesh. And raise your maker!”

  The wind resumed once again, although the debris of branches and leaves were gone. It was a harsh and biting cold wind, and did not howl like the winds before. It was much less intense. The sky remained dark as midnight and the clouds swirled, but the lightning and thunder subsided.

  Antoine looked over to where the multitude of demons stood guard, as the storm subsided somewhat, and saw that the graveyard now looked as though it were untouched. The dem
ons all stood in military fashion once again at the edge of the cemetery. There were no unearthed coffins; no piles of dirt; no evidence that anything had happened at all.

  It was eerily quiet; only a light wind whistled in the background.

  Antoine’s attention returned to Asmodai.

  The corpse was lying on the ground again. Placing the heart into Antoine’s open hands, Asmodai commanded: “Make it part of you!”

  Antoine held the heart in his hands, feeling the cold, meaty flesh, listening to a distant heartbeat, feeling a warmth inside, treasuring the pleasure that it brought to his fingertips. He clasped the heart in his hands, bringing it to his lips, and stared at the organ. It was pulsating, as if it were still beating.

  Antoine chose to make it part of him the only way he knew how. He opened his mouth, and tore into the rotting piece of flesh, sucking the warmth from the inner chambers.

  *~*~*

  The loud clap and roar of the thunder struck just as Antoine’s teeth sunk into the meaty red bloody mess of flesh of the heart. The storm returned, far stronger than before. The trees ripped apart and the branches and leaves again began to blow across the open air of the graveyard; the wind instantly roared like a hurricane.

  Antoine drank as the sky turned from black to deep red. In time Darius would shortly be rising, rising from the putrid rotted corpse that now lay next to the broken stone coffin; it was time that Darius would transform into the body and change it to that of his own, and walk the earth again.

  The corpse still lay dead on the ground, limbs sprawled across the grass.

  Darius was near.

  The extraordinaire. Lover of all fine things. And what a demon himself!

  “Darius!”

  This is the blood! The blood of my maker!

  Antoine cringed as he drank in the hot, thick potion. His teeth remained locked in the muscle as the liquid poured into his mouth; the liquid was so hot that it felt like it burned…he felt it ooze down his throat and into his body, racing at lightning speed through his veins as if seeking to overtake every inch of his body.

  Antoine’s eyes shot open and stared at Asmodai.

  Darius was back.

  He slowly withdrew the heart from his teeth, drawing it further from his mouth like a child slowly taking candy from his mouth when discovered by his mother.

  He threw it in the open casket.

  Asmodai stepped forward towards Antoine, and started to speak.

  Before he could say a word, Antoine opened his mouth and vomited the blood, spewing a sticky red mess all over the coffin, drenching Asmodai in Darius’ mess of innards.

  “Rise, Darius! Come to me now!” Antoine screamed at the top of his lungs, blood streaming down his mouth and dripping to the ground below.

  “Make him part of you or you will not raise him up!” Asmodai said, drawing his sword. “Make him part of you or I will put you in this ground!”

  Antoine stopped dead in his tracks.

  Asmodai was covered in what was left of Darius’ blood; only the heart remained. He could not succumb to Asmodai’s commands. He needed to get past Asmodai and reanimate Darius himself soon, despite that it seemed that Asmodai made the night last eternally.

  Poised with a flaming sword in a fighting stance and ready for battle, Asmodai spoke again: “You have chosen to drink the blood of your maker. But you did not make it part of you and resurrect this corpse. You know, as well as I know, that you summoned me. You summoned me…the moment that your shovel hit the dirt in this earth. If you do not go forth with the ritual you will be exterminated.”

  With his words, every demon that was standing guard drew their swords instantaneously.

  Antoine did not have time to think. He knew that if he were to ritualize Darius’ reanimation, he would be forever in debt with Asmodai. Asmodai would own his soul.

  He had to get that heart and get out of the cemetery. He could still reanimate Darius with the heart. It would be hard and close to impossible without the blood, but it could happen. Antoine needed Darius, but he did not need Asmodai’s rituals and the high price that came with it.

  “Make your decision!” Asmodai boomed. “There is no turning back! Resurrect him or I will put you here in this ground forever!”

  The thunder crashed the loudest that it ever had, as if the storm were directly above them. With the bright flash of the lightning and the roar of the wind the sky opened up again. A curtain of blinding rain began to fall and the dirt of the earth quickly turned to sloppy mud, and Asmodai took Antoine’s silence as the answer.

  He lunged forward with his sword and Antoine ducked swiftly to the left, towards the coffin, like a cat. Gracefully he bowed down to the coffin and swiped the heart, and placed it in his coat pocket. He had Darius with him, closer to him than ever before.

  As he darted to rush towards the edge of the forest, Asmodai swung his sword again and clanked on the metal hard, sending a shower of sparks into the rain.

  As if on cue, every demon soldier sprung into action with swords ready in a battle stance. They equally and steadfastly pursued Antoine, as he tried desperately to make it to the woods and the safety of a thick canopy.

  He used his immortal gift and jumped to a thick branch on a tall tree at the edge of the cemetery. Looking down on the action, he saw a swarm of demons approaching the base of the tree like ants overtaking a piece of food.

  Asmodai still stood at the grave, glaring up at Antoine, staring directly at him, as he perched himself up in the tree like a bird. Asmodai did not say a word. His eyes beckoned. The skin on his forehead scowled in deep ridges; and the eyes pierced their gaze up towards the tree; they were a deep red – an intense crimson blood, and they were menacing. They were the deepest blood red eyes that Antoine had ever seen in his entire life.

  And the eyes were filled with fury.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Five Years Earlier.

  The Astral, Ponce De Leon and Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida.

  The dark green file for Antoine Nagevesh hit the desk with a flop, sending a puff of air across the plane of the table and rustling the days work. There was a small, wallet-sized photo of Antoine attached with a paper clip to the edge of the file. To a casual glance, the photo seemed to be of a young, strikingly handsome dark skinned man with long, dark hair. Once the file hit the desk, it would have seemed lost at first glance in the mountains of paperwork. Sheldon Wilkes was not the most organized of Directors, but he was passionate about his work.

  The office was cluttered and always in a state of disarray – just like Sheldon’s appearance. A short, paunchy and balding older man with a large gut, and forever wearing three-pieced suits and horn rimmed glasses, he seemed to mirror his office a bit. His demeanor projected the complexity of clutter – and it showed in his surroundings. Besides the blanket of papers across the voluminous desk in the center of the room, the walls were lined with bookshelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling; they were stuffed with volume after volume of books of the Undead, the paranormal, demonology and handbooks of the Immortals.

  On one corner of his desk, Les Livre Des Vampires was opened, bookmarked and underlined with blue ink as well as highlighted in yellow and had notes penciled in the margins.

  For the past several years, Sheldon had been obsessed with immortals, the paranormal, supernatural occurrences and the afterlife. His forehead wrinkled as he stared at the photo of Antoine. Sheldon mopped some sweat from his brow and loosened his tie. A drop of perspiration dropped on the photo, directly over Antoine’s photo. Sheldon wiped it away, taking notice to Antoine’s face – a dark complexion from years of working under the hot sun in the coffee fields surrounding Badulla. Antoine’s long, black hair was pulled back tightly.

  Sheldon began to formulate questions in his mind that he would ask Antoine later that evening. He fished a pencil from a pile of writing utensils on the desk and scribbled another question on a yellow legal pad, scooped up the file, and walked out of th
e office.

  *~*~*

  The hot air enveloped Sheldon as he entered the humidity outside his office. His jacket was draped over his forearm, and he struggled with the file in his other arm. As the glass door swung open with a squeak – on which “The Astral: Integrating Immortals into Everyday Society” read in frosted lettering – the Director stepped out and promptly dropped Antoine’s file all over the sidewalk on Ponce De Leon.

  He bent over to pick up the papers, and as he was gathering the file contents, he stopped for a moment.

  As he looked straight ahead, he saw a pair of black boots.

  His eyes followed upwards as he slowly arose from his crouched position – long legs, black pants, long, flowing black coat – could it be?

  Yes, it possibly could be.

  He looked up and saw a silhouette in the sunlight – the wind caught the mysterious man’s hair, and it blew lightly with the breeze. The sun shone brightly from behind the mysterious figure, and Sheldon had to shield his eyes.

  “Hello Mr. Wilkes,” the man said, looking down. The curves on the side of his cheeks indicated he was smiling. He crouched down to Sheldon’s height and poked through the contents of the file. He picked up several papers, shifting through them. “I see that this is my file you are keeping on me.” He picked up the page with his photo on the corner, and paused for a moment, and unconsciously smoothed his hair that had caught the wind. “Not bad looking, am I?” he said with a chuckle, and dropped the paper back down on the sidewalk.

  Sheldon sat on his haunches for a moment. He laughed softly and shook his head gently back and forth. His salt and pepper hair was thin and reached from his head like threads from a mop, matted and sweaty from the afternoon humidity. He was dumbfounded. He could not believe he was right here with Antoine. He remembered when he first encountered a photo of the intriguing spiritual healer – in a reference book in 1965. But so many years ago, Antoine was not who he was today, and now, things were quite different, and here he was, in the flesh. Kneeling right beside him on the sidewalk of Ponce De Leon.