Legacy of Judas - Book One

by Aragon, Christian

  “It is foolhardy to start a fire just to watch the flames.”

  It was an interesting tidbit considering what we were potentially walking into as the cab came to a stop. As we got out Vic gave Kassa an extremely gracious tip, for which Kassa was insistent upon getting a fist bump out of Vic before leaving her with a handmade business card. Away he went with a great big smile plastered across his face.

  “Pleasant man.” I said to Vic as she stared intently at the dreary warehouse and all those broken windows.

  “He was a somewhat adorable distraction.”

  “Any ideas on how to handle this?”

  “It's my mother, father, and Vincent. I only have one real course of action.”

  I know she's considering negotiation. She's considering signing over her soul to Malus to free the people she loves. But I know there's no way he'll relinquish a Trinity Demon. Malus had to expend a massive amount of energy to create that in the first place. It's not like the Thorn who can perpetuate their own numbers as needed. A trinity costs the creator a huge portion of its own soul’s energy. It's like all the months of energy a mother expends growing a baby within her, plus all the energy the unborn expends growing into a viable vessel for an incoming soul, but all that energy is expended in just a few moments. Only a couple of demons ever attempted what Malus did, and they extinguished themselves completely trying to make it happen; they simply don't exist anymore.

  I really hope Vic has a better plan.

  There's a broken chain on the ground by the double doors in the front of the warehouse. We enter into the still somewhat familiar and small office space, and it was obvious other teens and homeless people had been here since the last time Vic was. We exited the back door of the office and stepped into the dim and shadowy warehouse. What we could see of the interior only got darker as we looked further back, but the shadows were pierced with rays of sunlight cutting through the darkness from the broken windows above. But then the silence was broken as well.

  “Victoria, honey? Is that you?” It was Martha calling out, and then she stepped forward just enough for a ray of light to illuminate her face.

  “Victoria! Something horrible has happened …”

  Vic ran ahead just a bit, but caution set in quickly and she decided to not proceed farther. She could see her mother’s face better now, but there was still too much darkness, and there was something else not settling right with Vic about her mother.

  “I know, mom. I'm sorry. Things have gotten out of control. I'm so sorry. Is dad here too?” She's keeping it together, but emotionally Vic is definitely walking an edge that's getting narrower.

  “I'm here, Victoria, but you shouldn't come any closer.” Tom’s voice called from the dark, and then he stepped forward allowing the light to shine on his face as well. But we could see something was with him; a Thorn or the Vincent Trinity. Looking closer at Martha it seemed something was with her as well. They're both captives.

  “You should do as your father says, Victoria,” Malus’s voice echoed eerily within the empty metal warehouse, “You don't want anything to happen to them as did this poor gentleman …” and suddenly the Vincent Trinity stepped from out of the darkness into several beams of light. With an underhand toss something was airborne and headed towards Vic. The mass hit the floor with a loud wet slap and splashed blood on Vic. By the look of the clothing and long hair it was a homeless woman who was probably staying here to get out of the elements. Every bone in her body wasn't just broken but shattered; pulverized, as she lay there heaped in what would better be described as a puddle of flesh. Even her face barely held its structure under its own weight. She was another innocent death in all this.

  “MALUS!” Vic screamed out as she wiped the blood splatter from her face with the sleeve of her coat. Her demeanor seemed different now; angry, bordering on downright hostile, but Malus was ready to challenge her and me as well.

  “LET MY PARENTS GO! You don't have to do this anymo…”

  “VITORIA NYLES! Don't move! Put your hands on the back of your head and get down on your knees!”

  What the fuck was Abathar doing there?! What's worse is he had a lot of other officers with him who were heavily armed and trying to close in on whoever was in the shadows. Their rifle-mounted flashlights were turned on and that's when we saw what we really did not expect to see. Tom and Martha were now part of two new Trinity Demons. All their threads of flesh cinched up just as the lights hit them. They're complete and these police have no clue what they're up against.

  The trinity of Trinities charged from the darkness. Their great quills piercing deep into the cement floor of the warehouse didn't slow them down at all. They're lightning-fast predators making incredibly short work of these officers. A couple of them don't even get the time to fire their guns. The quills, some measuring significantly greater than the height of these men, pierce the body armor, the bodies, and protrude from the backs of these men so quickly and effortlessly these demons may as well be stabbing into thin air. The face shields and helmets prove just as ineffective. Their strength is awesome even in this heavier, more stable gravity as one of them has four officers all punched through and through on the quills of one arm. The beast performs what the Japanese call chiburi, which is to say it swung its arm in a motion not unlike the swinging of a sword to clear the blood groove and blade, and the four men were flung from the quills and smash into one another against an upright girder that's part of the frame of this building. They hit so hard they stick for a moment, and then fell from their impact like gobs of paste.

  Seconds. Just seconds. That's all it took the Trinities to decimate these men. The whole time Tom, Martha, and Vincent were screaming without making a sound due to the intertwining of their bodies with the demons and Thorn. Now, covered in the blood and gore of their kills, the three of them close in on the detective and Vic, and Abathar is at a complete loss over how to react to what he just saw.

  Abathar’s training and years of experience are completely failing him as he's fighting back tears for the slain officers. He’s also making the mistake of trying to find reason or logic, of any kind, to help him get a grip on what's happening. He’s still has a hold on Vic’s right wrist, which is as far as he got into arresting her when the attack ensued. The worst of it though is that he'd pissed himself in reaction to the purest fear he'd ever felt. His gun slowly fell from his hand as his entire arm went limp. He can't hear Vic screaming at him as he wobbles and looks about the carnage almost drunkenly as the Trinities close in.

  Vic’s fist makes contact with the detective’s nose which breaks with the impact. No, she doesn't punch like a girl at all. His faculties seem to return a bit from their vacationing state as he grabs his bleeding nose and focuses in on Vic.

  “RUN YOU STUPID FUCK!!!” Which seemed to register just enough for Abathar to act on it. They'd just seen how fast these things can move leaving running away as their only move.

  “Let them go.” Again Malus’s voice reverberated in heinous tones within the warehouse walls. In the back end of the warehouse four scars opened up and we could see Hell’s glow illuminate Malus slightly. He was looking back to our end of the warehouse. I knew he couldn't see me, but he knew I was there.

  Then suddenly I wasn't as my tether went taut and I was suddenly snapped to the back of a police cruiser with Vic white-knuckling the wheel, speeding, with the lights and siren going. She has no clue where she's going other than away.

  “Vic, tell the detective to call in and tell the officers en route to stand down.” But she wasn't quite paying attention.

  “Vic? VIC?!” She finally acknowledged me.

  “Slow down and tell the detective to call the officers on their way and have them stand down!” Her senses started to return as she slowed the cruiser and turned off the lights and siren before pulling over to park. She told Abathar to call the reinforcements and tell them not to enter the warehouse. Later it'll be safe for them to enter and retrieve the bodies. Vic left
the car running and got out. The detective also got out and stopped her as she came around to the sidewalk.

  “What the FUCK just happened in there?!”

  “That's up to you, detective. You need to go back there and wait for backup and the paramedics. Give an hour or so before going in and you should be fine. Whether they're dead or alive you need to be there for those officers. I need to be somewhere else for my parents and the man I'm in love with. So you and I aren't going to stand here debating what happens next. Which reminds me; how did you know to go to that warehouse?!”

  “Picked up the jewelry box to inspect it well before you arrived. Back when I was a uniform we used to bust kids and flush homeless people from there on a regular basis. I'm pretty sure I was one of the cops who busted your little group! But just to be sure we stopped the cab that came to pick you up, threatened the driver with obstruction of justice and a couple other crimes if he told you we put a GPS tracker in the car. What I can't figure out is how YOU knew to go there! You only opened the jewelry box, but you never picked it up! I even got you back in that room a second time and you never even tried to inspect that box. How the FUCK did you know?!”

  Vic pauses for a moment, and we recalled when we were watching the detective’s memories. We stopped watching just as he closed the lid. We assumed he was respecting the dignity and privacy of it all, and we stopped there. A little further and we would've had the answer without even going upstairs. But we made another mistake. The cops called the cab, and Vic was so caught up in the moment she never said anything about wanting to leave. Too many mortals involved and details are missed. Then there was the cabbie; he was trying to warn us with that last comment he made. He's a good man and did right by us as best he could.

  “You're an excellent detective, detective,” Vic’s tears rolled up in her eyes over having now lost her parents and Vincent to Malus, but she held her composure there, “But of all the people on planet Earth, I'm the very last one you want to investigate. Good day, detective.”

  It was the detective’s turn to acquiesce.

  Journal entry LXIV

  We walked for a while. To be honest we ended up a bit lost in this industrial area, but somehow we found our way out and back on the road towards Tom and Martha’s house. It was after dark when we arrived and only one officer was sitting in a cruiser across from the house. All the houses in this area are anywhere from a hundred to three hundred feet apart with expansive yards and lush vegetation. Vic remembered a shortcut through the yards to the back door of her house. The last thing we needed was even just one officer seeing Vic in her blood-drenched trench coat.

  Once inside we found all lights had been turned on so the officer could see movement inside from his cruiser. Fortunately Vic knew her way around without being seen, at least until the stairway in the foyer. She stayed low and quickly rounded the base of the stairs where she found the one piece of luggage she’d taken to the U.K., and then here, but never opened. Why Abathar didn't keep it for evidence was a bit of a mystery with several possibilities, but it wasn’t a mystery Vic cared to be concerned with. Carefully and quickly she made her way to the back of the hall dipping into the contours of the staircase to stay out of sight. She pushed her bag over to the door leading to Tom’s workshop, and then she stepped into the small bathroom below the stairs.

  After hanging the trench on the hook behind the door she closed it, and then turned on the light. She stripped off her clothes and cleaned herself from head to toe with a washcloth. Once finished she shut off the light and quietly opened the door. In one swift motion, with her soiled clothes wrapped in her inside out trench coat, she dashed across the little hall bare naked, opened the door to her dad’s workshop, stepped in, tossed her soiled clothing down the stairs, and pulled her bag in from the hall.

  After quietly closing the workshop door Vic turned on the light and headed downstairs into Tom’s work area. She sat on her dad’s shop stool for a few minutes, looked around at the tools and the projects her father finished and those which were still in progress.

  “Every once in a while dad would slip when carving a piece of wood and cut himself, or he would be hammering small nails and forget to use his needle nose pliers and he'd smash a fingernail. He'd get hurt working on nearly every single project, but he'd bandage himself up or put ice on whatever part he hit with a hammer, and then he'd finish the project, even if he hurt himself again.”

  Vic got up from the work stool, separated her money and wallet from her dirty clothes and trench, and then loosely wadded the clothing up and threw it into a small, antique cast iron stove. Tom loved that little stove and would use when working down there during the cooler winter evenings. The stovepipe runs out the back of the house, so even if the officer smells the smoke he won't know where it's coming from. Vic squirted some lighter fluid in the stove, and then tossed in a lit match. For a moment she was just standing there, naked, slouching a little from the defeats dealt this week, and staring at the residues of the evils from the last few days go up in flames. But as the flames consumed her clothes she seemed to straighten up a bit.

  Finally Vic opened her bag and retrieved fresh pairs of undies and socks, a pair of blue jeans, a black T-shirt, black tennis shoes, and a dark brown leather jacket. After dressing she produced a brush and a black hair tie from her bag and quickly tamed her mane into a ponytail.

  Suddenly she seemed far less concerned about the officer out in his car as she exited the workshop, and walked upstairs like she hadn't a concern in the world. She went to her parents’ room and opened the jewelry box without so much as trying to avoid being seen. She took the little red ring box and pocketed it in her jacket, and then turned on her heel and almost walked out. A framed photo on her mother’s nightstand caught her attention. It was a photo of Tom, Martha, and Vic in the Redwoods up north. The sun is beaming down from behind them giving them all a glow. They're smiling. Good times. She pulls the photo from the frame and slips it into the inside pocket of her jacket. She then pulls her cash out, takes a quick count, and then pulls her wallet and checks her credit cards and I.D. A business card escapes and falls to the floor. Not just any business card though. It's a handmade business card.

  “Vic… C’mon…”

  “Fine. I'll call him.” She said in a what-the-fuck-ever tone as she picked up the phone on the nightstand. I could hear the phone ring no more than one and a half times when it was answered and a familiar voice called out …

  “Kassa the Cabbie! How may I help you?” I swear I could hear him smiling as Vic gave him an address a couple houses down the street.

  Vic strolled down the stairs as brazenly as she went up. We exited the same way we came in. I have no idea how the officer outside missed Vic twice, but nothing came of it and we weren't going to hang around and wait to find out. She's shelving her feelings as best she can, but down what path will that take us?

  It was good to see Kassa the Cabbie.

  Chapter Ten

  ~

  Hell’s Angels

  Journal entry LXV

  Another fuckin’ flight, though not as far as the previous flights this week. Even sitting out on the wings or straddling the tops of these planes like they're my own personal transport gets boring. Vic is sleeping curled in a ball and drooling on her pillow. We're headed home, though not the east coast home, not back to school. She’ll have to pick up her studies at a later date. Yeah, that sounded optimistic.

  We're headed back to the south; the Bible Belt, back to her first home where she was taken after the hospital. Tom and Martha have no idea Vic purchased this home, so we should be relatively safe. Her motivations in buying her childhood home didn't have anything to do with romantic notions of childhood memories and fun times. No. Vic’s instincts kicked in and she believed one day she would need a place unexpected but familiar to gain perspective and get away from prying eyes. She chose that place for the bad memories instead of the good ones; for losing Lusa and for taking those seven young so
uls, perhaps even for taking possession of the Book of the Damned.

  Before boarding the plane Vic asked me to search the souls within the book. She wanted me to find the soul closest to where the captured angels are kept. I had till we get to the old house to locate that particular individual.

  The flight lands and Vic exits as quickly as possible. She has no bags to collect so she heads straight out to catch a taxi and soon she's on her way and anxious, but calm outwardly. We actually caught ourselves wishing Kassa the Cabbie was the driver, especially since this one had the personality of a lump of shit and smelled nearly as bad.

  Vic wouldn't have brought us here if she wasn't going to be attempting something big and dramatic, but she only requested access to the book by patting her thigh and motioning like she was turning pages. She went back and forth a number of times looking for something specific. She's been doing this for some time without discussing what she's been looking for. Back and forth through the same pages … only as I write this have realized she's NOT looking for something; she's already found it and has been memorizing it. I am so stupid sometimes!

  Vic was deep in contemplation when we arrived at the old house. Even though she had a property manager keeping the house maintained, she had given him specific instructions to only maintenance the house itself and not do anything with the vegetation around the home unless the vegetation was threatening to damage the house somehow. The result of her instructions is a home well hidden from even the street in front of it due to the bushes, trees around the property and the vines hugging the house itself.

  Once inside the home the vinery outside broke up the light coming in the house into little dancing beams from the breeze on the leaves. The house was warm, almost invitingly so, but devoid of furniture aside from a mattress, a wooden chair, and a TV tray folded up and leaning against the wall, all in the living room. In Vic’s old bedroom is an actual bed with fresh sheets and blankets.