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

by Peter Meredith

  Then Cyn and Jack were alone in the cemetery and the silence was unnerving.

  The two went to the tree Jack had fallen out of and sat on its trunk, not speaking to each other; not seeing much beyond the tips of their boots. Jack was thinking about the land. What had once been beautiful as well as hallowed had been abused and likely would never be built on again. It would gain an evil reputation and would be called haunted.

  The land was ruined, which was becoming something of a hallmark of his. He left destruction in his wake. “In Robert’s wake,” he uttered. When Cyn cast a look at him, he tried on a grin. “So that was the Mother of Demons in real life. Pretty scary.”

  Cyn’s eyes darted away. “That was part of her. She’s bigger than that, probably bigger than we can imagine.”

  “You want to tell me about her?” Jack asked. “You guys were talking for some time.”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “It was a lot to take in…more than I could handle. Well, almost more than I could handle, and that reminds me. I know you trust me to fight my own fights, but next time, if you have the chance to shut the gate then bloody well shut it. The Mother almost had me.”

  Jack patted her armored leg. “But she didn’t. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? You faced the Mother of Demons one on one and came out alive and unscathed.”

  She shook her head. “Not completely unscathed. She showed me many things and she fed her power into me. It wasn’t right and it’s making me sick. I can feel it churning my insides, making them dark. I have to get it out of me but I don’t know how.”

  “You can try magic. We both know you have the ability. I can teach you the lightning spell easily enough and there are plenty of targets around here.” He waved an arm at the trashed-out cemetery.

  “No, I don’t think so. Magic is not for me. I won’t do that to my soul. I won’t destroy it for target practice or for fun.”

  He brought out a knife and said: “Then there really isn’t any other option. I’m drained and I need a boost just in case we find Robert at the center of this mess…speaking of which, how do we get the helicopters back? The pilot really wasn’t any help.”

  Cyn dug in a pocket and held up a cell phone. “This little gadget is called a phone. It’s right handy and allows you to communicate with people far, far away. You should get one.” She was smirking as she said this, but then her eyes caught sight of the knife and the smirk became a tense grin and she clasped the phone in both hands. “I don’t know if I should give you this power. It’s not wholesome. It’s hard to explain, but it won’t feel like I would be giving you a gift this time. It’ll feel like I’d be giving you a disease.”

  He made a face. “A magical venereal disease? Sounds gross.” Her smirk came back and as it always did, it made him love her even more. “Seriously, if there is an issue with this power that the Mother gave you, it would be better if you transferred it to me. I can either dump it with a little target practice, or use it against whatever we find at the center of all of this.”

  Reluctantly, she agreed and so he cut the inside of their wrists with the knife and then they joined their souls touching new blood to new blood. It was a connection unlike the others they had experienced together—it stung like nettles under his skin. And worse, it made him feel as though he was going to puke all over her. There was indeed something horrible in what the Mother had given her and Jack knew immediately what it was.

  It was power, a fantastic amount of power that fully revived him…but it was stolen power. Cyn had been given what Jack, at one time in his life had craved: souls. Inside of her were the shredded remains of dozens of souls. It was horrible feeling them squirm inside of him and worse, he could feel the necromancer in him spring back into life, becoming greedy for more. That part of him did not care about right or wrong, it only cared about its all-consuming hunger.

  Jack tried to keep a neutral look on his face; however, Cyn was connected deeper than the surface and knew what he was feeling. She tried to pull away.

  “No,” he insisted, holding her flesh bound to his through an act of the mind and not of the body. “You can’t have this evil in you. It’ll ruin you. That’s why she gave it to you. She wanted to tempt you with its power. She wanted to warp your soul.”

  “What about your soul? You may not care about it, but I do.”

  Again she tried to pull back, using more of her own strength, which Jack found surprisingly powerful. Nonetheless, he was stronger than her and he was stronger than that evil part of himself that he had thought had been killed for good. “My soul has already been dirtied by this sort of thing and a little more won’t hurt.” That was a small lie that they both pretended was the truth. He took the power of the Mother from her and when he had siphoned it all off, he made to pull away, but, out of the blue, she let a little of herself into him as well.

  It was a golden feeling compared to the horror of the souls and it soothed his mind and calmed his conscience. It also kept him from puking, something he had been sure he would do.

  But it also fed into the demand for more and he had to get away from her before he gave in to the temptation to take all of her. He broke the connection between them and immediately walked away, saying over his shoulder: “Call the choppers…please. I need some time and some air.”

  What he needed was space. Her soul was pure and sweet and wonderful, while the others inside of him were horrors that screamed in desperate pain, filling his ears with their cries. They weren’t full souls. They were the shredded remains; strangely shaped bits of beings that spun and twisted, trying to entwine with the little kernel of what was left of his own soul.

  They were searching for something, their other parts, likely. Jack had the distinct impression that they were trying to complete themselves. It was an unpleasant feeling, full of great sadness and horror and, if there wasn’t the possibility of facing Robert, he would’ve set them free. Though in truth, they would never be free. The Mother owned the rest of their souls and thus they were bound to her. Freeing them simply meant freeing himself of them.

  “It’ll be okay,” he whispered to himself. “I just have to give them some time to settle a bit.” Keeping his head down, he walked the length of the cemetery, and while he walked he breathed deep and steadily, doing his best to calm the souls. They responded best when they were able to enmesh themselves in the tiny bit of Cyn’s soul. They still cried out and thrashed about but it was easier for Jack to take.

  When he reached the far end of the cemetery, he didn’t hesitate. He climbed right up the chest-high wall and leapt down into the real world where the air was clean and the sanity close to normal. Close, but not quite.

  The town was empty, having been abandoned hours before. It was eerily silent and completely still. Nothing moved. It had not been just the humans who had fled this part of France, even the birds and cats and the mice had run off.

  “Hello?” he called out, only to hear his own voice bounce back at himself. “Wait…what’s French for hello? Uh, bonjour?” His words rang on empty streets. The moment was surreal and became more so when he walked to the nearest corner cafe and, after stealing a croissant and Coke, sat down at a table facing the street. His first impression was that he had been stranded between ticks of a watch; however, a second, much worse thought came to him: What if the rapture had occurred and everyone but him had been lifted up to heaven?

  Even though he knew the truth, it was such a depressing thought that he tried not to think about it and forced himself to nibble on his croissant and sip at his Coke, but they only made his stomach roll over and, with a grimace, he was forced to push them away. The bits of souls were not settling down as much as he had hoped, in fact they weren’t settling down at all.

  “I’m going to puke, aren’t I?” He could feel the Coke brewing like a storm in his guts and before he knew it he vomited right across the table. He hurled again and again as though he was trying to puke up the souls and splatter them on the street.r />
  “Stop it!” he shouted and thumped his own heaving chest. “Just settle down in there!”

  The shouting didn’t work. It only made the souls angrier and Jack groaned, holding his belly. As he did, the whup-whup-whup of helicopters came to him. Captain Vance and the rest of the Americans were on their way.

  “No,” Jack whispered. “They’re too early.” His army of demons and ghouls had barely begun their fight. He could sense both groups squaring off…and he could feel some of Robert’s beasts scattering to the winds. To hunt them down took a level of concentration that he wasn’t up to with his mind pulled in so many directions.

  “First things first,” he said, before forcing everything going on around him out of his mind and concentrating only on the souls. At first, he tried to separate them, each into an individual little penned up section of his mind,, but then he found two of the souls that were perfectly joined together.

  They were nearly opposites in shape and texture, but there was a seam on each that matched up with the other; yin and yang. They had been warped through some unthinkable power of the Mother’s to fit together like some bizarre jigsaw puzzle.

  And if two fit, it figured that the rest would.

  Not wanting to be seen huddled over a pool of vomit, he staggered away from the mess he had made and went to a little park where the swings creaked under a light breeze. This little sound in the deathly quiet world was a strange blessing and, with it as background music, Jack worked the puzzle of the souls, going through each and categorizing them: squiggly, straight, firm, soft, hard.

  He was still sitting on one of the swings when Captain Vance and Cyn found him. “Having a little play time with your inner child?” Vance asked.

  Jack held up a hand. He had just made a discovery about the puzzle: the squiggles of souls were turning into shapes that he knew all too well. The Mother of Demons had not just given Cyn power, she had also given her a very well-designed trap. The souls fit together to spell out the three verses that opened the gate to hell.

  “Son of a bitch,” he hissed. The spells were more than half drawn in his mind and now the remaining souls were going crazy, desperate to find their counterparts. He wanted to stop; not just because his mind was starting to feel as though it was being torn apart by the violence of the remaining souls, he was also honestly afraid of what would happen when he finished it. Would the gate open inside of him and would he be obliterated by the eruption of souls from hell? Would his own soul be burned out opening it? Would the Mother herself come and possess him?

  These were terrible questions with equally terrible answers, but he had no choice but to finish creating the spell in his mind; it was either that or be driven insane by the rampaging souls.

  “You ok, Jack?” Cyn asked him and he was dimly aware of her soft hand on his arm. She spoke more than these words, but he couldn’t hear, and she touched him on the face, pushing the hair from his forehead and looking into his eyes, but he didn’t feel any of that. All he cared about was pinning down those souls and finishing.

  “We’ll get a priest,” Vance said and then began shouting orders into his radio. A moment later, he suggested: “Let’s lay him down.” Jack was suddenly nose to the sky and saw neither the sun nor felt its warmth. The spell was so close to being done and his head was pounding and the souls were screaming and someone was yelling Latin in one ear and someone else was whispering “I love you,” in the other.

  Then, just like that, the spell was whole in his mind and the souls quieted and the world was peaceful and calm and everything was silence and serenity except, of course, for the spell and the ugly demand that he use it. It banged inside his head, a steady drum and the demand was so powerful that he almost opened the gate to hell right there in the park, not caring what would come out.

  Chapter 25

  Tours, France

  Jack Dreyden

  “I’m ok,” Jack said, trying to get to his feet. “I don’t need an exorcism. I’m good. I just had a bout of something.” For some reason he couldn’t point to, he was hugely embarrassed about the spells inside his head.

  Cyn came right up to his face and peered into his eyes. “Are you sure? You don’t look so great. It was that power I gave you, wasn’t it? It was bad. I knew it.”

  Captain Vance agreed with Cyn’s assessment. “She’s right, you look like a crap sandwich.”

  “Thanks for the concern, but I’m fine. Now, can you back off for a moment? I need to check on the progress of my undead army.” Although that sounded pretentious to his own ear, it seemed official enough to Vance for him to step away and plausible enough for Cyn to give him some breathing room. The last thing he needed was for her to pester him with a thousand questions concerning the Mother or the exact nature of the power she had put in Cyn.

  The spell was there inside of him and wasn’t going anywhere, and as long as he kept focused and busy, he probably wouldn’t think about the gnawing hunger to use it. And he really did have to check on his army. Demons and ghouls were notoriously slow when there wasn’t a firm hand on the tiller. If Jack let his attention stray for too long, the creatures would fulfill their contract, but at their speed, not his, and they would prefer to take centuries instead of hours.

  With far more effort than it had ever taken him before, Jack centered his thinking so that he could feel the various creatures. His ability to sense their evil presence had a range of about twenty miles and both his demons and Robert’s stood out like black spots in the world—some being darker than others, depending on the strength of their evil.

  With only a thought, he could direct his minions here and there, just as Robert surely could, assuming he was somewhere in the vicinity, which Jack doubted. If Robert was still in Tours, then it was likely that his army would be surrounding him, protecting him while he finished digging up whatever he was after.

  However, Robert’s creatures weren’t holed up in a defensive position. They were intent on escaping, trying their best to get away before Jack was able to corral them all. But it was too late for them, they were being bottled up nicely.

  It took some time, but once he made sure the situation was well in hand, he opened his eyes and glanced around at the living. Cyn, looking fresh-faced and beautifully young once more, sat on the hood of a little box of a car, checking the bore of a new shotgun; Captain Vance, grim and bristled, sweating under his combat load, leaned against a wall of weathered bricks talking into a cell phone; a priest from one of the Raider Squads sat in a reclining chair that he had pulled from somewhere. He was a small trim man with a cross laying across his chest armor; he drank coffee from a tea cup.

  “Care for some?” the priest asked, holding his up; strangely, at least for an American, he held a pinky jutting out from the cup’s handle. “There are also cold-cuts if you wish.” He pointed across the street at another cafe. “I found a full lunch set out, ready to be eaten. It’s so strange. And on the next street over are three bikes right in a row sitting perfectly upright on their kick-stands. It was as if their owners had calmly parked them only to run away. Does that make sense? This whole town is like something out of the Twilight Zone. I know you might be used to this sort of thing, but I can only call it eerie.”

  Although it wasn’t quite true, Jack remarked: “To me, it’s just another Monday.”

  The priest blinked at this and replied: “You know, I think today is Thursday.”

  “That’s even better,” Jack said and then turned to Captain Vance. “I think I have the situation under control. The French can stand down and we should be able to move to the ‘site.’ You have figured out where the epicenter is, right?”

  “Sorry, but that’s a negative. We know the location of the cemetery that Robert used to raise his undead army. It’s south of the Loire but north of the smaller river; I think it’s pronounced Levee Du Cher or something like that. Either way the two rivers form a rectangle of about six square miles and it’s likely that whatever he wanted was in that area, b
ut so far we haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact location. The French have been kind enough to send out two different recon flights, but as of yet we have nothing.”

  “Then we’ll use the helicopters,” Cyn said, sliding down off the boxy little Euro-car. “And we must hurry if we’re going to have any chance at catching Robert.”

  She seemed completely over her run-in with the Mother, while Jack was still shaken inside and out and unable to think too much beyond the spells inside of him.

  They headed back to the cemetery where the choppers had settled in among the wreckage of coffins and the ramble of broken headstones. At Vance’s orders, they began spooling up their engines, and as the rotors turned, they kicked up an odd storm of white silk; what had once lined so many of the destroyed coffins.

  Around the thrumming birds the Raiders and Knights checked their gear in preparation for a fight and the priests went among them, blessing the men. Jack was handed a new sword and had his Holy Water replenished. He paused before getting on the helicopter to check the blade of the sword, and when he turned around he was face to face with the priest who had been sipping coffee with his pinky extended.

  “May the Lord cast his blessing on you,” he said and anointed Jack’s forehead with Holy oil.

  Jack couldn’t help himself and cringed, expecting to feel the fire of the Lord burning out the evil that the Mother of Demons had placed in him, but he felt nothing more than the slide of the man’s finger and a gentle warmth spread through his bones.

  He was so relieved that all he could say was: “Okay, good. Thanks.”

  Next to him, Cyn was pulling her hair back in a ponytail. “Okay, good? You sounded a touch nervous. Do you have everything under control?”

  This made him laugh and the laughter combined with the oil and the blessing pushed the thought of the spell deep in the corner of his mind—and that had the effect of making him laugh harder. “I haven’t had anything under control since the first day I met you.”