The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic

by Peter Meredith

  “Maybe I can fry the glyphs,” he whispered.

  There was only one problem: if the spell failed, he would have almost nothing left in the tank; his soul would be paper thin.

  But no other idea came to him and so he felt inside for the power. There were plenty of holes in him and more than enough blood; instead of bellowing the spell, he whispered: “Shishin Ighn.” The electricity shot from his hand, hit the ring of glyphs and rebounded. His body jerked and his jaw snapped shut with a hard click, locking a scream behind his teeth.

  It was over in a flash and all that was left was the echo of pain and the steam coming from his hand. It mixed with the smoke that filled the store; the fire was raging now and there would be no stopping it. Cyn would die here, he realized. She would die and her soul would be trapped in agony forever. The glyphs were magic. They would linger forever. Even when the building was gone and the land reverted to forest, the glyphs would have her.

  As far as he knew, the only thing that could break the spell was Holy Water...that or a priest. Jack suddenly remembered Father Timmons had spoken of the power within the Bishop of Cleveland. Yes, a priest could break the spell.

  Jack looked back at the door, not eight feet away. It was more of a chimney now than a door. Smoke was pouring out of it in great gouts and for a second, Jack blinked stupidly at it, as it dawned on him that he was going to die here as well.

  Unless a priest suddenly showed up, that is.

  “Hello!” he yelled in desperation. “Father Timmons! Father Jordan! Anyone?” There was nothing but the roar of the growing fire, while the world outside was so black that the doorway could have been an entry into hell. He was alone.

  He turned back to Cyn, his face twisted in sadness and grief. Slowly, he reached out, feeling for the spell—it was there, just inches from his fingertips—it was nasty. He could feel the evil of it, the blood spilled and the life taken. He needed its opposite. He needed a priest. He needed someone or something pure, and he wondered briefly if he could run and grab the girl he had freed and take her essence…not her life or her power, just her innocence.

  Jack felt, as weak as he was, that he had the strength to break Bob’s spell; he just knew that he lacked the goodness. He had tried to be good; it just never seemed to work out. Even when he was murdering people and offering souls to Eveina rha—the Mother of Demons, he had been doing it in an effort to fight evil and save lives.

  But he couldn’t take the girl’s essence, not even for Cyn. That went over the line…besides, she was probably long gone.

  Which left Jack the choice between running away and saving his miserable soul or simply throwing his life away in a vain attempt to save hers. There really wasn’t much choice in the matter. Without Cyn, there wasn’t a reason to live. He knew himself too well. He would gather power for the sake of gathering power and, yes, he would eventually fight his cousin, but it wouldn’t be for the right reason. It would because of what Truong had said: He’s grown strong in death magic.

  Jack would want that power and his cousin’s spells; he would kill for them. Likely, he would kill for any spell. Perhaps not at first. At first he would make feeble attempts at retaining his humanity, but when it came down to it, if he didn’t have Cyn anchoring him, he would give in to temptation and people would die.

  It was unpleasant to realize that he was indifferent to the idea even then, even kneeling next to the body of his love as her soul was tortured. It meant his soul was now as worthless as the dregs at the bottom of the teacup. It was an unpleasant thought, but also somewhat liberating. His soul was worthless and the idea of giving it up to save Cyn wasn’t so bad.

  Jack looked up; the ceiling was hidden by a layer of smoke three feet deep. “Please God,” he said—it was the closest thing to a prayer he had uttered in a year. He didn’t just believe in God; he knew God. He knew His power and he knew His goodness, Jack’s problem with God was that he didn’t feel he deserved His love.

  Jack was a sinner and an unrepentant one. It was hard to say sorry when he was so full of excuses and rationalizations. He knew that if he ever went to confession every other sentence would be but it wasn’t my fault. He was also sure that he would end up repeating the same sins over and over again.

  But he was down to it just then.

  “Please God,” he whispered again and then bent his mind on the spell and exerted the last of his strength as he reached out with just his fingers. Immediately, titanic pain shot through his hand and up his arm and into his chest where his pitiful soul resided. The pain was beyond the scope of conscious understanding. It was horrific, searing and yet the pain wasn’t the worst aspect of the experience. Cyn’s inner screams ran along his nerves. They were loud and desperate and oh, so sad; and they hurt in a place Jack had never felt. The screams were worse than any pain that Bob’s spell could ever exert.

  Jack screamed as well, or his soul screamed, he didn’t know which, but there was definitely a shrill sound blotting out everything including the voice in Jack’s head that was demanding…no, begging for him to run away. He could’ve broken away if he wished. The holding spell that Bob had weaved wasn’t strong enough to pin two people in place, it had been written and spoken only for one.

  He could run away. He could pull himself out of the well of misery, but he wasn’t there to run. He was there to free Cyn or die trying.

  With her face in his mind, Jack exerted his power to break the ring of glyphs. He felt himself stretch, thinner and thinner and thinner until his soul wasn’t just see through, it could be breathed through. There were pores that quickly became holes and soon, there was more hole than soul and then there were only strands. His soul, which started as something as thin as a sheet, now had the same construction as a wind-riven spider’s web.

  And yet, Bob’s spell hadn’t cracked or diminished in any way. Jack suddenly realized he was killing himself for nothing. He couldn’t free her, at least not from the outside. And with his last action, Jack threw himself into the circle of glyphs.

  Chapter 7

  Akron, Ohio

  Cynthia Childs

  Jack tried to save her, and failed. The pain took him.

  No words could describe the pain. It had made Cyn absolutely insane, but now it was suddenly half of what it had been and she did what any drowning person would do, she clawed her way across the floor as if she was clawing her way up the side of a stone cliff.

  Shockingly, amazingly, she was free of the pain, but before she could cry with happiness, she found herself in a new hell.

  The last thing she remembered before the eternal pain, was rushing forward into the shop, eager to fight Bob—then there was the pain. It was everything. It went on and on. It was unending and unbearable and the world outside of it ceased to exist to her. She knew nothing about Jack’s fight, or the fire or the girl.

  Now she stared. Her nerves burned and twitched, the pain still an echo that was slow to dissipate. She shook from head to toe as she stared, her mind trying to recover and right itself. What assaulted her eyes didn’t help. The herb shop was an inferno; the heat made her cringe; the smoke shriveled her lungs. She saw dead Bob Chapman going up in flames and there was a teenager who had been bled dry.

  And when she turned, and there was Jack in a circle of glyphs, his eyes peeled back so that the whites were gigantic. He had his mouth open as though he was screaming, but he made only a keening sound, like the rushing of wind.

  “Oh, God,” Cyn whispered, remembering suddenly a ghostly image of Jack trying to control his hands long enough to pull her out of there.

  He had tried to save her and he had failed. His power…or rather his goodness was too weak. Light drove out darkness and Jack’s soul wasn’t a good soul. She had known it before on an intellectual level, now she knew it on a deeper one.

  She felt sorry for him.

  That was her first feeling, when her mind righted itself and she could feel anything at all. She was sad for Jack. She hadn’t just seen his
soul and its dreadful thinness, she had felt it. He was a desperate man, or he had been a minute before. Now, his desperation was a thousand times worse. She knew the pain he was feeling on an intimate level; that had been her a minute before.

  And that would be her once more.

  Now it was her turn to save him and she knew she could. The glyphs had been drawn to hold one person, not two. She would grab him and roll out of there. But it would hurt. Oh, God it would hurt. It would be similar to licking an electric socket a second time. It was one thing to wonder how much it would hurt to do it once, it was another to know how horrible, how utterly dreadful the pain was and then lick it again.

  The idea of facing such pain made her hesitate. She stood on the edge with her face screwed up and twice she had said: “One, two three!” But hadn’t budged. Only the fire coming closer and closer finally drove her into action. With a cringing whimper she stepped into the circle.

  Just like that, her world was pain; every single nerve ending cried out. It shocked her, but what almost shocked her more was Jack; she could feel his essence and it wasn’t thin or stretched or even gossamer, there was nothing to it but a whisper and a faint one at that. It was scary how far he had pushed himself to save her.

  And she would do the same. She had power though she never used it—she used it then in an attempt to hold back the pain. It went fast, eaten up by the evil of the spell. Grab Jack! her mind screamed.

  The holding spell wasn’t meant for two and she wasn’t meant to endure that sort of pain. She scrambled and kicked with desperate strength until they were both out of the circle and lying on the floor of the shop with the super heated air and the choking smoke and the blistering temperatures—all of which was a relief.

  She wanted to lie there soaking up this new hell, because it was a vacation compared to what she had just gone through, but there was a crash from somewhere near and some part of the building deep in the smoke let out a loud urgent groan. She stood on shaking legs, but Jack would not move. He stared at the ceiling with blank eyes and a mouth hung open. There was so little soul left to him that he didn’t have the will to command his own body.

  Cyn bent and dragged him across the warping boards. He was dead weight and she was panting by the time she managed to lug him out into the night, where he just laid there unblinking and unmoving. “Jack! Hey! Look at me,” she yelled. It was July but compared to the inferno it felt like deepest January and she began to shake and cough.

  Jack only stared.

  Eventually, a firetruck arrived, its sirens wailing and its lights flicking. Indifferent firemen stepped out to gaze at the fire. The miserable concept of a Sanctuary City had infected them as well. Few wanted to put their lives on the line for a city that no one cared about. There were whispered jokes: Let it burn—It could take out the entire block for all I care—Anyone got any marshmallows?

  They were even blasé about Jack. Perhaps out of curiosity, two of them came by and glance down at him. “He’s breathing,” one stated and then turned away as if breathing was all that mattered.

  “Get back here!” Cyn demanded. “He needs help. He’s bleeding and he needs oxygen.”

  “We aren’t paramedics, lady. They’ll get here soon enough, so calm down.”

  Cyn reached down and produced an ankle holstered, snub-nosed .38 and advanced on the firemen, pointing it expertly at the first man’s crotch. “You will help him right this second or I will pull the trigger. Now move!”

  That got their attention and right quick. In a minute, Jack had an IV running into him and an oxygen mask over his face. His vest was removed and his wounds were being inspected when “her” priests arrived. That’s how she thought of whichever priests were assigned to Jack’s team at any time. Some lasted a single mission and she forgot their names within days of them leaving.

  Until they left or were killed, they were hers.

  “Okay, that’s enough. Get away,” she said to the firemen. When they backed off with their hands in the air, she practically threw herself down in front of Father Timmons and begged: “What can you do for him?”

  They were hers but they weren’t her servants or her underlings, they were the people she turned to when she couldn’t turn to Jack, which was more than he knew. She thought of them as her personal priests and she was constantly going to them for spiritual advice, again, more than Jack knew. She was secretly a devout Catholic.

  “He’s got almost nothing left,” she said in a rush. “I mean, nothing.”

  Father Timmons knelt down and touched Jack’s hand; a shiver ran up him so that his shoulders shook in a spasm. He then bent his ear to Jack’s chest, listening for a long time before sitting up. He looked both confused and afraid. “Yes, he’s alive…but his soul…I don’t feel it.”

  Jordan was slower to touch Jack and when he did, he left his palm flat on his sternum for so long that Cyn was practically out of her mind. “Please say something!”

  “His soul is within him, still,” Jordan said, eventually.

  “Thank you, God. Thank you, God,” Cyn whispered, her head bowed, tears running onto the pavement.

  “His soul is there, but barely,” Father Jordan said in a warning tone. It suggested that she should not get her hopes up…only sometimes that’s all she had, and besides she would never count Jack out. She would hurt and she would cry, but if someone came to him with his body torn in half, she knew that there would be a part of her that firmly believed he would sew himself back together and give her that devil-may-care look of his.

  “But is there something you can do?” she asked again. “You know, to help him?”

  “I was thinking of asking you the same question,” Timmons said. “You know him better than we do.”

  She liked to think so, but she knew she was only fooling herself. He was a puzzle with a thousand pieces and no picture; he was a broken man; a warped man; he was ice in a fire pit; he was evil and deadly and an uncaring bastard, and he was good through and through and there wasn’t anyone she could trust more than him.

  “We will pray for him,” Timmons said when she only shook her head. “I don’t know if we can do anything else. You should hold him and speak to him. He always listens to you, Cyn.”

  For the next hour, she whispered into his ear: “Hey, Jack? Listen to me. Listen to my voice…” The words ran out of her with all the emptiness of air, but also with all the love of an angel. She spoke until her mouth went dry and, after guzzling a gallon of water, she went on.

  The paramedics arrived and she waved them off; really, she hissed them away. What could they do? Her priests could take care of the holes in him better than any doctor. They had progressed from strictly spiritual healing to the physical side of things, though it usually took a lot out of them. Timmons and Jordan were both tired, and yet they drained themselves until they were both staggering with exhaustion. They prayed over him until his eyes closed and his heart ran steady and the blood stopped leaking.

  She begged for more, but they had nothing else to give.

  Eventually, Captain Metzger arrived with his FBI backup and then another priest arrived. He was old with large, knobby knuckles and blue veins showing through his flesh. He had heard of Jack by reputation and it was clear that it wasn’t a good reputation.

  He didn’t know how much Jack sacrificed. It was the same with most of the priests; they only saw what appeared to be black magic and felt the aftermath when Jack was an ass and dead inside. They had to face the acid of his tongue, not realizing that this was his way of venting his anger. He had never asked for the position he was in, no more than Cyn asked for hers, and in a way her position was less enviable.

  She appeared as little more than a strut or a girder, when in fact she was the keystone in the arch holding things together. She suffered in order for Jack to suffer. She felt every pain of his and hers as well. He could afford to be an ass, but she could not. She was the keystone, pressured from every side: the priest’s goodness, Jack’s mercuri
al nature, and then there was the government in the form of Metzger.

  “We’re going to the Sudan just as soon as Jack snaps out of this,” he informed Cyn after a glance down at Jack’s blood and soot-covered body. Jack was breathing and like the firemen that was all that mattered to the government.

  Going to the Sudan meant there would be more death and pain. These weren’t things Jack could hear just then and so she spoke of the geese and the soft earth of Wales, where the rain was sometimes as delicate as the sunlight.

  The geese, a secret that only Jack knew about, and the ridiculous farm that she envisioned were her only way of venting, and like any normal person, she needed to vent; she needed a release. She wasn’t hopeless and doomed and her soul wasn’t torn apart upon on a weekly basis as Jack’s was, but that didn’t mean she had it easy.

  She was twenty-three, and an orphan. Her future was demons and swords, guns and fire…and in all likelihood hell was her final destination. She could only put her soul on the line so many times before it was taken in this game of chance.

  The geese were her way of dreaming of a real life, a normal human life; they were something that could connect her to the world. For the last year and a half, she had been the dutiful girlfriend, the frantic lover, the maid who cleaned up the blood and vomit, and she had been the bait as the men did the fighting and the killing.

  The geese were her way of going to one extreme—the polar opposite of what her life had become. She spoke of them as much for her as for him, and she spoke long into the night after the fire had reduced the herb shop to a smoldering pit.

  Eventually, he cracked an eye and whispered, “You can’t name a goose: Ducky. That’s confusing.”