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

by Peter Meredith

  “Stop it, please,” Cyn begged. “He didn’t mean it. You’re not wrong, Mother. Of course you’re not. You could never be wrong. H-he is the one that is wrong, just stop that, please.”

  Set me free once more, or he will die and I will take his essence, the Mother said, her lips not moving. Say the words. Give yourself to me.

  “Don’t do it,” Jack hissed, forcing himself to his feet in spite of the pain that carved his face in anguish. “She can hurt me, but she can’t kill me; not when I’m like this. She’s like the necromancer. It’s all about the souls with her. Don’t make her stronger by giving her yours.”

  “The son is wrong,” the mother said and this time she directed her frown at Jack. He cried out suddenly and went to the ground on his knees. “The mother kills whom she wishes to. She gives life and she takes life. At this moment I do not wish to take life. The Mother teaches only. I teach respect. I teach understanding. I teach you where you belong, Cynthia Childs and what your role is. I show that your power is so much greater than his. Your power is pure.”

  Another scream split the air and then Jack was on his side curled into the fetal position save for one arm that stuck out. It hung, looking oddly long as if it was being stretched by some unseen force. His hand shook and his fingers fought to remain closed but in vain.

  In seconds, his hand came open and a silver vial fell, its precious water dribbling uselessly into the dirt. Only then did the Mother snap her fingers, releasing Jack. He immediately went limp, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  The entire short episode was confusing to Cyn, whose mind had felt riddled with holes to begin with. That was Holy Water Jack had been carrying. Why hadn’t he used it to close the gate? Why had he held onto it?

  “Because man is always wrong whether he knows it or not,” the Mother said after “hearing” Cyn’s unspoken questions. “Man is arrogant and condescending. He thinks he knows everything there is to know. And this one,” she gestured with a curled lip at Jack, “thinks that you will chose him over a god. He thinks you will close the gate and shut away your mother forever, simply because he has abused your feelings and has taken advantage of your loving nature. But you know better, to close the gate would be wrong.”

  At the word “wrong” a harsh wind struck Cyn causing her to put a hand in front of her face. Through her fingers she could see the Mother though not as a whole. Cyn could see parts of her: the top of her arm, a hip bone, the right knee. Each aspect of the Mother was both perfect and imperfect. Each part was flawless and flawed. Each showed that there was much more to the Mother than Cyn knew. The mother was of fantastic size and was only giving Cyn a glimpse.

  “Of course there is more to the Mother because I am She. I am the eldest of all. I will be the living god if you free me. Come and say the words. Give your essence, freely.”

  Sudden understanding cut at least partially through the fog of puzzlement that Cyn had been drifting in since first seeing the Mother. “I have to die for you to come through and…and I have to die willingly. You can’t force me. Okay, now I get it.” Once again she was confronted with the fact that the gift of the soul was the strongest power behind any magic—even at a “godly” level. “I get it, at least I get what you want from me. Though I’m not exactly sure what you are offering in exchange. If I’m dead, if you take all of me, what do I get out of it?”

  The Mother gave Cyn her grandest smile yet—and it was enough of an answer. The smile was a reward people would kill for. Cyn wore a goofy grin and her knees were jelly, but some part of her still held onto her love for Jack. “What about him? Why…why did he want me to stop you?”

  “He wanted you to choose him over your mother.”

  Cyn glanced down at her lover, her one actual friend, and the only person she would call family. After everything they had been through together, she knew him on a level that was beyond intimate. She had, on more than one occasion, given him her soul.

  “And what has he given you in return?” the Mother asked. The question was so out of the blue that Cyn was tongue-tied, causing the Mother to laugh with the sound of crystal wind chimes. “Has he not given you only trouble? Sadness? Anguish? Pain? Where has the joy been in your joining? There has been precious little. He is a man and thus he is like the rest and has brought you only hardship.”

  The truth in that statement was evident by the fact that Cyn’s eyes slid from Jack to rest on the upturned dirt just next to him. Her mind flashed with images: him stabbing her with a knife, him threatening to kill her with a sword, him stealing her blood and taking her soul. “But…but that was a gift. At least it was supposed to be. I don’t think you get it, ours is a different sort of relationship,” she said. “We have a duty and an obligation and a destiny. We support each other in our fight.”

  With a cluck of her tongue and a shake of her head, the Mother said: “He has saved the world. He is the sorcerer. He is the one who fights and claims the glory. You are there only to clean up his vomit and keep him from getting in trouble. As so many, you do not see. Your heart is too great. You are blind to the fact that he is not the only one with a destiny. You have one as well. You can become one with a living god.”

  There was that word again. Whenever the Mother of Demons had called herself a god it had made Cyn wince. Everything she had experienced in the last year had pointed to the fact that there was only one source of ultimate goodness, while there seemed to be an endless number of tributaries leading to the foul bog that was evil.

  The Mother of Demons was just a very large tributary.

  “Good and evil are subjective,” the Mother said, her frown coming back, churning the skies, causing thunder to ripple above. “What a god does is by definition, good. Do you understand? Evil and good are subjective. What is good for one may be evil for another. That is simple. That is elemental. You would do well to learn the differences between…”

  Her words faltered and Cyn was abruptly jarred from the trance she always found herself in when the Mother spoke. They were being watched. Cyn turned and saw a faint shimmer in the air and felt that strange sensation of being under an invisible spotlight that she and Jack had experienced earlier.

  Of course the Mother could sense it with ease. Her frown turned into a glare as she suddenly spun to stare up into the darkening sky. Then with a growl, she snapped her fingers and a bolt of some sort of energy that was a cross between lightning and fire, flashed through the air, passing so close to Cyn that the little blonde hairs on her arms stood straight up.

  The bolt scorched the sky, sending up a trail of smoke and for just a brief second, Cyn caught sight of something that was nearly beyond description. Suspended ten feet off the ground was what looked like a pale white worm, a foot in diameter, with strange blood-red “hairs” sprouting all along its curving, squiggly, undulating length.

  It stretched away off into the distance.

  The worm was “lit” by the Mother’s magic. There was a flash of light and a scream and the weird feeling of being watched was gone. The entire episode couldn’t have lasted more than three seconds and yet in that short time Cyn found that she was suddenly and completely in control of herself. She saw with perfect clarity the Mother for the demon she was and she saw Jack as he was in reality: just an average man thrust into the unwanted position of being a hero.

  And she saw herself: a pawn to the Mother and a lifeline to Jack. She was his anchor. She was what kept him sane. But what was she beyond that?

  “I’m just a girl,” she said and as always that lie was good enough for her. Frantically, she dug for one of her remaining vials of Holy Water and once again, the silver vial burned her hand as she held it.

  “Stop,” the Mother said, this time in a gentle voice, one that was so full of charm that Cyn’s hand stopped poised above her head. “Consider what you are doing. Consider the power you are giving up. Consider that you are angering your god.”

  There was that word again: god. “You keep using that word,” Cyn
said, matter of factly. “I don’t think it means what you think it means.” At this, the Mother’s pearl eyes flashed to black while at the same time, the silver vial burned hotter than ever. Cyn had to throw the vial or drop it. Holding it was no longer an option.

  She chose to throw it and it left her hand, tumbling end over end.

  Too late she remembered that she hadn’t unstoppered it! It flew at the circle of glyphs and she thought that it would either bounce away or be swallowed up by the gate; however, it hit what appeared to be a wall of air, broke open and sprayed what looked like diamonds, each glittering and sharp and each exploding a millisecond later.

  There was a white light as pure as the glitter from the stars and then both the Mother and the gate vanished. Cyn took one unsteady step and then fell over, the sky of France spinning high above her. All she saw was blue sky and gentle puffy clouds. Everything was suddenly diffuse and soft, everything except the feel of Jack’s hand which found hers.

  The hand was warm and strong and fit hers perfectly.

  Chapter 24

  Tours, France

  Jack Dreyden

  With a groan and a little cough that had just enough strength to expel the stale air from his lungs, Jack clawed at the dirt, fighting simply to roll over. It was another labor to sit up. Once again, he was drained as deeply as he had ever been drained. The Mother had fought him tooth and nail in order to open a gate into hell…or so it had seemed at first. When he started the spell, he foolishly thought that he was in a battle with the Mother of Demons herself and like a fool, he thought he was winning.

  In reality, he hadn’t been in a battle at all and if he had been, he wouldn’t have had a chance at winning. Jack had been a hero only in his own mind, and once the fourth set of spells had been completed and he had been rendered impotent with all the strength of a mewling kitten, he had been shown the truth: the Mother of Demons had allowed him to “win.”

  Only in retrospect was he able to see that she had been toying with him and had allowed him to complete the spells only because she had wanted him to. One of the key components to opening a gate into hell was the literal begging for the Mother’s assistance and it was up to her to allow the gate to be opened or not. Why she had let him complete the spells, he didn’t know, but he didn’t think she would ever let him use the spells again.

  She was an angry and jealous bitch of a demigod and couldn’t stand being told “no.” The least bit of resistance was blasphemous to her, especially if it came from a man. It was an affront to her and Jack figured that she was busy planning some sort of terrible revenge and just at that moment, he couldn’t have cared less.

  The very fact that the Mother would deny him access to the gate into hell was so fantastic that he secretly cried in happiness.

  Finally, he was done with this.

  There was nothing so horrible as bringing unwanted souls back from the netherworld. Even the dreadful pain that the Mother had thrust upon Jack earlier, what felt like he was being force fed tumors, was nothing compared to the horror of opening a gate into hell. But the tumors were a close second. What she had done to him was beyond description and he could still feel the pain in his innards radiate out as he took little sips of air. It hurt to breathe and it hurt not to. His nerve endings were on fire and he felt bruised on the inside.

  But the pain wasn’t the reason why silent tears slid down his cheek to drop onto the floor of the graveyard. The pain would fade and in fact it was already fading. He cried in pure happiness. If he never painted those bloody glyphs again, he would die a happy man.

  Next to him, Cyn was stretched out in the turned up dirt with her arms flung above her head. Her face glowed white and stood out in stark contrast to the dark earth. Although she was very much alive, she looked as pale as death, and her beautiful blue eyes stared out of her skull seeing nothing, not the beauty of France and not the horrors he had brought into the world: all around them were tens of thousands of foul half-beings. They were creatures that stank of decay and fetid grave dirt and they were shuffling through the graveyard, coming right at the two of them.

  She didn’t seem to care. “Are you okay?” she asked, finally turning to look at him, her eyes half-lidded.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said as he passed a hand across his face, swiping at the tears quickly so that she wouldn’t see them. He also tried on a smile but could only force the corners of his mouth up by a few millimeters. “Just a little tired is all. Can you give me a minute?”

  She nodded and, thankfully, closed her eyes, seeming to drop into sleep. That was a blessing; he didn’t want her to see this part of his life. “One last time,” he whispered as he slowly groaned his way to his feet.

  The power he had over the ghouls and the demons made him different. It made him ugly. It took something evil inside of him to control the evil without and it was an utterly disgusting feeling to command the dead, to rule them as king. It made him feel as though he was a demon himself.

  He struggled to take a deep breath and then when he was calm, he sent his will out among the multitude of undead, feeling their warped souls, feeling their evil, taking a part of each of them inside of him. And there were so many of them. He knew their exact number: 42,869 ghouls and 141 demons. He could feel their minds and their temper and, as always, there was some resistance to overcome. Sometimes it was just a little, while at other times the creatures were as unruly as a class of children with a substitute teacher.

  It was from the demons that he always had the most trouble.

  On a psychic level, one that was unknown and unknowable to science, he battled the greatest demon he had called forth. That was the way these things went about a third of the time. In their world, the demons were petty and petulant princes and few creatures ever had the temerity to make any demands on them and so when Jack began issuing orders, the strongest of them pushed through the crowd to challenge him.

  The creature had chosen what was probably the finest corpse in the cemetery to wear: a woman who looked as though she hadn’t been in the ground for more than a day. The dead body was tall and slender. Its skin was pale but unmarred, so that the cause of its death couldn’t be ascertained. It was covered in a light pink dress that looked splendid, in spite of the fact that it was stained with dirt. The body had gobs of brown hair that had been meticulously styled for what had been thought was a final internment.

  The body really was one of the better ones Jack had ever seen and he had seen far too many to ever count. Yes, the body was great, all except the eyes. It did not have eyes. The lids had been glued shut to simulate sleep, but the demon had popped open the holes in the woman’s skull and Jack could peer in at the complete emptiness of the corpse.

  “You have your orders,” Jack said, trying to avoid looking the demon in its borrowed face. Locking “eyes” and staring into those empty pits was disturbing. The demon came right up to Jack, who was suddenly very aware that he had lost his blessed sword somewhere in the cemetery and that he was too drained even to perform the simplest bit of magic. Right then he couldn’t have pulled a rabbit out a hat.

  “Go!” he snapped, pointing past the demon in the direction of Robert’s army. The demon shook its head and smiled with oddly red lips. The corpse’s makeup was also disturbing. Whoever had made the woman up in preparation for her funeral had tried too hard to simulate life, and the effect made Jack feel queasy.

  The demon could sense the effect its body had on Jack and pressed its advantage, getting close so that Jack was also assaulted by the perfume that had been liberally applied before she went into the ground. Beneath the sachet was the sickly-sweet aroma of decaying meat.

  “You are weak,” the demon said, speaking in a terrible growl that was again made more horrible by the fact that it spoke with the high voice of the woman. “You cannot command Ghulat. Ghulat was strong when the world was young. Ghulat made kings and feasted on queens. Ghulat…”

  “Ghulat needs to shut his trap and get moving,” Ja
ck barked. He had heard all sorts of demon bragging in his time and it was wearing. “Find the greatest of Robert’s demons and drag it to hell. That’s the only thing you need to be concentrating on right now. You came through the gate. You accepted the contract now fulfill it.”

  The demon Ghulat snapped the woman’s teeth closed hard enough to break the front ones off, so that when it smiled, all Jack could see were jagged points. The demon then went through a ritualistic display of fury by tearing open the woman’s face and chewing off her overly-red lips.

  This actually helped Jack, who found it easier to deal with the demon now that it looked much more like one.

  Now came the actual battle. From an outside point of view, it was extremely underwhelming. The two fought with their minds. The demon was ancient and had battled wills for thousands of years. His mind was a tough knot, an old root that would never wither, while Jack was young, barely tested, and exhausted.

  Still Jack was a sorcerer, which helped and yet he did not win the battle simply because of that. He won mainly because of the contract that had yet to be fulfilled. The demon wanted to break it and the only way he could was to first break Jack’s mind. The attack came quickly and it came without mercy. It felt like Jack’s brain was being compressed, crushed inwards by a vice.

  He started to sweat, and his head began to pound, but he stuck to his guns. “Go Ghulat. Do as you’re told.” Ghulat redoubled its efforts and there was what felt like a spike of iron in Jack’s mind, but it didn’t last as Jack laughed in the face of it. “You are a joke, Ghulat. Go and be a joke somewhere else.” It had been a forced laugh and yet it had its desired effect. Ghulat threw another tantrum as it realized it had no choice but to obey. Once it did, the others followed suit and left to hunt down Robert’s army.