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

by Peter Meredith

  “Come on!” he yelled, taking Cyn by the hand and pulling her. She resisted but was too weak and when her boots splashed into the cool water she fainted dead away, practically falling face first into the water; he caught her just in time and laid her on her back.

  Although he was afraid that the Mother herself would suddenly climb from the hole like a horrid black spider or that the statue would explode like a volcano or the cavern would cave in, Jack paused to wash Cyn completely. Her eyes fluttered open and immediately filled with tears.

  He washed those away as well.

  “I’m sorry,” she begged. She was sorry; however, Jack knew this was just the beginning. Her remorse would only grow until it would threaten to eat her alive.

  “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.Can you walk?”He dragged her across to the other side of the lake and now the cavern was half filled with the reeking smoke. She shrugged. Her soul was as drained as his and she had her regret added on top of that; she didn’t care what would happen to her. He understood. He had been there.

  With a grunt, he lifted her in his arms. Garbed in her armor and soaking wet, she was surprisingly heavy, and he was weak through to his core. Gasping and lurching side to side, he fled from the cavern and fought his way upward until he was out in the blaring light of the desert.

  Apathetic to everything, Cyn didn’t move a muscle when Jack put her in the blazing hot Volvo. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and then ran back down into the pit beneath the earth where the air was clouded black and had the stink of death.

  The first thing he did was to grab the green box with the skull in it—he couldn’t leave that just lying around; there was no telling what would happen if all the pieces of that particular skeleton were laid out—he rushed down the stairs that led to the necromancer’s lab and without looking in, he tossed the box inside the room and then shut the first of the secret doors.

  Next, because he was in his heart an adventurer and he couldn’t help himself, he grabbed a handful of gold coins and another handful of the tarnished silver ones. He then sped back into the second chamber with the broken sarcophagus, again shutting the secret door behind him.

  The door was so well constructed that immediately the smoke ceased to billow up. There wasn’t even a hint of it creeping around the edges.

  Then he pushed outside, blinking at the glare of the sun as it reflected off the sand. The sky above was a perfect cobalt blue. “I think I’m done,” Cyn said. She hadn’t moved a muscle from where he had left her and laid there staring up at the ceiling of the car. “I think I need to quit this.”

  “Yeah.” What else was there to say? He couldn’t find the energy to think and yet he had a big hole in the desert he had to refill.

  “I mean, I’m putting my bloody soul on the line and for what?”

  Jack went to the pile of debris that was mounded next to the hole. He started chucking rocks down into the slanting pit. “I agree,” he said to her.

  “I’m going to go to...I don’t know, to Bora Bora, maybe. Or the South Pole. Or the straights of Magellan. I’ll go where no one can find me.” Jack said nothing to this. He knew this sad train of thought—those tracks were well worn in his mind. He just continued to heave rocks, his head swimming from the heat and his exhaustion.

  Cyn was quiet for a long time as he worked. When the hole was half filled she suddenly said: “He’ll find me, won’t he?”

  She meant their cousin, Robert. “Yeah,” Jack answered.

  “Or She will,” Cyn said, her voice quieter than the desert wind. This kept her silent for so long that Jack had the hole mostly filled by the time she added: “I can’t run and I can’t hide.”

  “That’s why we fight,” he said. “We don’t have a choice.” She began to cry and so he changed the subject: “Tell me about your geese. Will you put little bonnets on them like in the cartoon movies?”

  She blubbered and laughed. “Of course. Why have geese if you’re not going to dress them properly?” She was quiet again for a time and despite the heat, she hugged herself. “Can I at least go on holiday?”

  Jack paused with a rock at his shoulder. “A holiday? What holiday? We just had Independence Day.”

  She finally sat up and rubbed the tears from her eyes. She looked like she was trying to be her old self. To Jack it looked like she was putting on a mask. “First off, don’t say Independence Day to a Brit unless you want a poke in the eye. And second, I was referring to a vacation.”

  “Oh,” he answered and then tossed the rock. He bent for another and paused again, staring around. The heat and his exhaustion were becoming a force. “I think this is our vacation.” Her face clouded again but after making an angry determined sound, she pushed the smirk he loved where it belonged.

  “Oh yeah? And was that night in Wadi Halfa indeed your idea of a honeymoon? Don’t answer that! I could tell that you were going to say yes.” She struggled to stand and then came over to the pit and looked inside. Without being asked, she bent and started tossing rocks in as well.

  They worked in silence until the hole was filled completely and the only sign that anyone had ever been there was the hunk of intestine. Cyn wrinkled her nose at it. “Robert didn’t leave that.”

  “And nor would he leave the crypt wide open like that. It doesn’t make sense that any necromancer or sorcerer would. Truong mentioned Chinese sorcerers. They could probably find the crypt of the necromancer, but would they leave it open?”

  “They might if Robert’s demons had been chasing them,” Cyn suggested. “It might also explain the intestine. Maybe they were attacked and only just got away.”

  Jack unbuckled his armor and then washed himself with a different jug of the water they had picked up in Wadi Halfa; it smelled of old goat milk. He tossed the jug down; it glugged as the water drained out of it. He sniffed his hand as he asked: “And they left just an intestine and no blood? If I had to guess, it’s probably another necromancer who had a ghoul with him to do his digging for him.”

  “Another necromancer? That’s just great. That’s just what we need.” She was close to crying again and he went to her. She hugged him but for only a second before she pushed him away. “What is that smell?” She tried to smile but there was pain behind her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, again.

  He knew she’d say it another ten times that day and probably twenty the next, and that was okay. He had already forgiven her; the apologies were for her, for her soul. She would beat herself up until she realized that there had been nothing she could’ve done differently.

  And then they would never talk about it. When she wasn’t looking, Jack rubbed his chest, still feeling the ugly sting of the hooks that had been in his soul as it was being torn from his body.

  “It’s nothing,” he told her.

  Chapter 16

  Nekhen, Egypt

  Jack Dreyden

  It was early afternoon by the time they left Nekhen. Jack figured that they would make it to Luxor, a city of some historical note by evening. From there it was only another long day’s drive to Cairo.

  They were thinking of going to Cairo simply because they were tired of the desert and the scorching sun and the hot as hell water. Of course Cairo had all these things in abundance, but it also had actual five star hotels where all of that could be ignored. Their plan was to lay up in one of these hotels and recuperate.

  The death of the Volvo changed things. It blew a rod some ways out of Luxor and so Cyn and Jack found themselves with their tongues wagging from the heat, tramping, first through the desert and then through some no-name town.

  They were pretty sure that the town actually had a name; however neither of them knew Arabic and no one in the town knew English or ancient Egyptian. Since Cyn’s phone had been ruined by her total immersion, they were somewhat lost. Still, after much pointing and gesturing with the locals they were able to find the town’s version of a Motel 6, complete with air-conditioning and running water.

  Of
course, the water smelled of rust and the air conditioning dripped some sort of oily fluid so that the room was half taken up by a puddle when they woke nineteen hours after checking in. They ate and slept again—they didn’t hold hands as they had a few days before after the battle with the necromancer. In fact, Cyn kept very much to herself.

  “She’ll come around,” Jack said as he dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing for days. They were rancid, smelling of curdled goat milk and old sweat.

  It was almost evening when Jack left the hotel alone. They were very much in need of supplies since they had lost all of their weapons in the tomb, and had to abandon whatever was left of their food and water with the Volvo. He felt naked without a weapon and so he went in search of one first, finding out pretty quickly that getting hold of a gun was out of the question and a sword was only slightly easier.

  It took some bribing and quite a bit more gesturing before he found someone who was willing to sell him a sword. The man, an old toothless chap, wanted five hundred dollars for what was practically a useless piece of steel. It was a heavy, ceremonial scimitar with a dull blade and gold braiding hanging from the pommel.

  “Three hundred,” Jack insisted. They settled on three-fifty and Jack was then pointed to another gentleman, a plumber by trade, who took the unwieldy weapon in the back of his shop and put an edge on the hefty blade for only ten dollars more.

  Jack gave him twenty and asked about where he could find a church. The question was met by an ugly look. The same thing occurred throughout half the town. It was only when he was being fitted for a loose pair of cotton trousers that someone gave him a whispered answer: “Two block is west. No say of me.”

  The woman who said this had frightened eyes above her veil. Jack assured her that he wouldn’t say a thing. He had two sets of clothes made for him and Cyn. He was dressed in baggy linens of tan and white which made him feel like a bedouin. The clothes he picked out for Cyn were local as well: wide, silk pants that tapered at the ankle and a shapeless shirt covered by layers of even more shapeless wrappings.

  She wasn’t going to be happy.

  Now that he was dressed to blend in, he had the rest of the items sent on to the hotel and, after a final purchase of a few feet of black cotton that he wrapped the scimitar in, he set off for the building that the woman had described. It was a sad little structure of stone and wood with shuttered windows in place of glass. There was nothing to indicate that it was a church: no steeple or crosses, just some obvious fire damage on the door and what looked like human excrement against one wall.

  The doors were locked and yet there was light inside and voices. Jack knocked lightly until a man came to an upper floor window and stared down. He asked questions in Arabic to which Jack could only shrug and shake his head. Finally, Jack crossed himself and pointed inside.

  He was let in by the same man, a priest as it turned out, though he was as unadorned as the building. He looked like all the other locals to Jack: careworn, fearful eyes, cracked fingernails, brown skin prematurely aged by the desert heat. There were seven men in the church all looking at Jack with suspicion and looking at what he carried with even greater suspicion.

  “It’s just a sword,” Jack said, showing the hilt. He presented it to the priest and then crossed himself before pointing at the sword. This had an astounding effect.

  The priest’s dark eyes went huge; he was afraid at first, but then he smiled suddenly. Jack nodded expressively, like a stage actor. “Yes. I need you to bless this.” Again he made the sign of the cross. This set off a burst of excitement from the priest, directed, not at Jack or the sword but at his very small congregation, none of whom shared in his enthusiasm.

  Their scowls doubled in intensity, becoming glowers.

  In proper Catholic fashion, the priest set them to saying prayers. When they had their faces nose down in red bound books, what Jack took to be bibles, the priest ushered him into a side room that likely acted as a confessional. It was as sad as the rest of the building. The boards of the floor were rough-hewn and the paint on the walls was peeling in long strips.

  Jack was sat in a chair that sagged beneath his bottom and then the priest scurried from the room, coming back with a basin of water and a small vial. Jack figured the basin was Holy Water, but if it was, the priest used it in the most unusual fashion—he pulled Jack’s boots off his feet and proceeded to wash his feet.

  “I’m good, Father. I just bathed a couple of hours ago.” It had taken him a good long soak to get the smell of sour goat’s milk out of his skin. He held up the sword. “This is what I need blessed, not me.” The priest didn’t seem to understand or care what Jack was saying and went right on.

  After his feet were washed, the priest brought forth the oil. Finally, Jack thought, only again the sword was ignored. The priest prayed over Jack and drew a cross on his forehead. The sword was an afterthought; it was finally blessed only after the priest had finished fussing over Jack.

  “Thank you,” Jack said, holding the sword up, letting the glow from the weak bulb hanging from the ceiling, glint from its edge. It was suddenly light in his hands and he gave it an easy flick.

  This encouraged the priest who grinned and nodded—there was something uneasy about the grin that made Jack nervous. “What is it?” he asked. The priest only nodded some more and began pulling Jack along. They headed for the rear of the church. “Where are we going?” Jack asked, wondering what he had gotten in to.

  More nervous grins were his only answer. It was full-on dark when they stepped into the alley behind the church. Jack began to protest, but the priest shushed him and pointed. With the dark hiding the finer details of the world, all Jack could make out were the last few buildings of the little town and then what looked like the desert, craggy and open.

  What he felt was different.

  There was a ghoul ahead and what he had thought were rocky crags was actually a graveyard with headstones of various sizes and shapes. The sensation that he was picking up from the ghoul suggested that it was relatively weak, which made Jack nervous. Was this another trap? Or was this simply a stray, and if so from where, and who had conjured it? Jack paused, slinking down, letting his mind and soul explore what his eyes could not see.

  As far as he could tell, it was just the ghoul—but it wouldn’t be for long, Jack would see to that. With the priest fifty feet back, peeking around a corner in the alley, Jack strode forward. There was no need to be quiet or subtle; the ghoul would attack as soon as it caught wind of him.

  “Hey there, ghoul,” Jack said, swishing the scimitar back and forth. “Sorry about this but it’s time to go back to where you belong.”

  The ghoul turned slowly, almost tiredly, something Jack had never seen before. “Jonathan Dreyden? What are you doing out here?” it asked, surprising Jack into stopping cold. Not only had it spoken English, it had spoken in a slushy, winded manner that Jack recognized.

  “Dr. Loret? Holy cow, is that you?” The ghoul nodded, again slow and unhappily. Jack came closer, less warily, now. Loret was a weakling as far as ghouls went. “I should be asking you the same question, Doctor. What are you doing here?”

  Loret shot Jack a look; however with the dark, and the fact that his features were utterly lifeless, the meaning behind the look was lost on Jack. “I’m working on my tan. What do you think I’m doing out in an Egyptian desert?”

  “Right, sorry. You’re after Robert, of course. Hey, that was you who left that hunk of intestine back at the necromancer’s grave, wasn’t it?”

  The ghoul looked down at his stomach which, at the moment, was hidden beneath an old sports coat he had picked up somewhere. “I left what?” He began feeling beneath the coat. “Ah, for crying out loud! You didn’t happen to pick it up did you? Tell me you have it there in a baggy or something.”

  When Jack shook his head, Loret straightened his coat and managed to look huffy even with his split eyeballs and wormy grey lips. “What sort of archeologist leaves va
luable artifacts lying on the ground to rot in the sun? For all you knew that could’ve been from Ahmenhotep! You wouldn’t leave Ahmenhotep’s intestines just lying around, would you?”

  “You’re not Ahmenhotep, so it’s a moot point. Besides, who are you to lecture me about how to conduct myself at a site? You left that tomb wide open! Anyone could have happened upon it and then what would have happened? I doubt that even you would want the Mother loose on this planet.”

  A cold light suddenly lit in Loret’s split eyes. “The Mother? Are you talking about...?”

  “Yes. There was an effigy to the Mother of Demons and some sort of avatar of hers possessing it. Wait, you didn’t get down into the lower dungeons?”

  “No, I didn’t get down into the lower dungeons,” Loret mimicked in a high-pitched falsetto. “How could I? I’m not a sorcerer or a necromancer. I could tell there was a spell nearby but not where. And even if I knew where, how could I get past the door?” His scowl had been heavy on his face, but then it suddenly brightened. “I could dig around it...maybe come up from beneath!”

  Now it was Jack’s turn to glare. “You’d be wasting your time. Robert took the necromancer’s spell book and I cut the link to the Mother, so don’t go messing where you shouldn’t mess.” Jack fingered the edge of the scimitar, menacingly.

  “Of course, oh great master. I wouldn’t think of disobeying you.”

  If Loret guessed that the dig “master” would hurt, he was right. Jack had brought Loret’s soul out of the abyss in order to get answers from him and now he was essentially immortal in the disgusting form he was in.

  “If you’re unhappy with your present state, I can send you back,” Jack said, lifting the sword. “From what I understand of where you were, you should be thanking me and not making snide comments.”

  “I’m a ghoul,” Loret said. “What sort of comments do you expect me to make?”

  Jack didn’t bother pointing out that Loret had been an ass when he was alive as well. “How about we dispense with the unpleasantries and you just tell me what you know of Robert’s whereabouts.”