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

by Peter Meredith

  “Yes, you have killed before,” the Mother said. “You have done so for selfish reasons. Now, you can do so for a noble one. You will kill to free your mother, and that is wonderful and good.”

  He had a sudden vision of stabbing some vague person; there was a scream and some blood and then small hands scratched at his armor and a voice begged for him to stop. The vision gave him a momentary notion of sadness, but then a new vision came to eclipse the old one. The gate to the netherworld opened and this time there wasn’t an ugly black, oily patch on the ground. The gate was lit with a thousand suns. And there wasn’t the rude sound of a tinny bell, there were trumpets of gold blaring, proclaiming the good news. And then She came out. It wasn’t the Mother of Demons, but some wonderful cross between his own mother and this beautiful being before him.

  “Who do I have to kill?” he asked, eagerly, not knowing what he was saying.

  Chapter 33

  Naples, Italy

  Jack Dreyden

  The Mother beamed at Jack and he grinned like an imbecile in return. She purred: “I need you to help Cynthia Childs to enter the Duat. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? It is the way. Love for love; life for life. Free her from the cares of this world and free me from then chains of mine.”

  “Cynthia? Do you mean Cyn?” A second before, the idea of murder hadn’t seemed all that bad. It was just killing and as the Mother had pointed out, hadn’t he killed before? But now there was an actual face to go along with the blood and the screams, and what was worse, it was a face he knew and loved.

  “But you also love me,” the Mother insisted in a purring voice that had Jack’s head swimming. “That you love me is wonderful and good.”

  And it was wonderful and good, but also confusing and intoxicating in a bad way. He found himself nodding and he didn’t know exactly what he was nodding about. It felt as though he was being drugged. His mind was in a stupor of forced emotions and fear, and yet he understood on some level that this was her will going against his once more.

  “I don’t think I can,” he managed to spit out in a groggy voice.

  The glowing particles of Jack’s spell disappeared altogether as the Mother grew angry. “You can. You are a killer. You can kill Cyn for me or you can die right here, right now.” Without warning, the knives were back, sliding under his skin, going for his joints and his eyes and his testicles. He screamed, a haunting sound that echoed throughout the entire warren of tunnels.

  The pain was unbearable. He screamed, twisting in knots on the rock floor until the Mother finally relented. When she did, he lay in a heap, crying, snot and tears mingling on his face. “Do not make me kill you, Jonathan. You are my child and I would not want to kill my own child.”

  “I’m not going to kill Cyn, so you do what you have to do.” In response, she hurt him. The pain was beyond anything he had experienced so far and how long it lasted, he didn’t know. When she released him, she spoke words that didn’t register. All he could think of was to crawl away. He made it two and half feet before he was tortured a third time.

  The bones in their stacks rattled with his screams and dust sifted down and yet when she released him, he growled: “Is that all you got?” He had mouthed the cliche in an attempt to bolster his own flagging strength and had expected only pain in response. What he received; however, was a pause from the Mother. “Is that all you got?” he asked again, this time looking for an honest answer and receiving one when the Mother smiled, nastily.

  Surprisingly, it was all she had. She could hurt him and could probably kill him, but she couldn’t force him to do as she wished. “You need me to kill Cyn, voluntarily, don’t you? Okay, I get it now. The power of sacrificing love is greater than the power of stealing souls.”

  “Yes. It’s a delicious power. Though now I see that I won’t be getting it from you. That’s too bad. I could have made you one of the great ones…but maybe I still can. Would you like a taste of power?”

  Before he could say no, the Mother looked him straight in the eyes. The air crackled between them and when the power entered Jack, his back bowed and his arms flung out. It was almost too much. The power raced electric over his flesh and in a way burned him.

  While he squirmed in a mixture of ecstasy and pain, she only grinned. “I could have made you my chief lieutenant on this world. I could have given you such power.” She put images in Jack’s mind. He could see himself casting true bolts of lightning from his hands and lifting cars without effort. He saw fire rain down on his enemies at a word and the last image was of him standing with his boot on Robert’s neck.

  “So much power,” she said. “You would be second only to me, your power unstoppable. Would you like that? Would you like to rule this world?” This was a much more difficult test for Jack. The first had been easy to pass; he would never murder Cyn under any circumstances. And the second test was, in a way, even easier; he had faced so much pain in the last year and a half that the threat of more was nothing.

  But power? That was something he craved, it was something he needed. He found himself saying: “Yes,” his voice only a whisper.

  “Then you know what to do,” she said, and now her voice matched his in tone, quiet, secretive. In his mind, he saw himself slitting Cyn’s throat.

  “No.”

  “She will feel nothing. She will be asleep. It will be easy for both of you. Say the words: Arth-mallie-tyth-on and her eyes will close and she will sleep, and with one touch of your knife they will never open again. And she will be eternally young, and her cares will be gone forever.”

  “But…”

  “And the world will be safe,” the Mother added quickly. “You will cast Robert into the flames, personally. And then you will take command of this world. Think about it! You can have peace in your time. No more war, no more strife, no more hunger. Isn’t that worth one life?”

  It was worth it, if it would actually happen. Yet this was Eve, the first in sin, the first in lies, the first temptress. “I can’t,” Jack said and as soon as the words left his mouth, he sagged and he felt the sweat cool on the back of his neck. Somehow he knew he had passed his test. He had been tempted and now he felt as though there was nothing more she could do to him.

  He stood straight, waiting on her. Wondering what she had planned next. Would she offer him riches? He could handle it if she did. He had been absolutely dirt poor for most of his life and he had been happy. Perhaps she would attempt to seduce him. That would end in failure as well; he had Cyn and didn’t want any other woman.

  The Mother appraised him, cooly, her opal eyes at squints. “Okay, you are a tough nut.” Her voice was no longer dripping with magical charm. She spoke plainly as if they were equals, maybe even friends. “I like toughness in a man. Too bad Robert isn’t like you. Your cousin is weak. We both know that he’ll do what I demand of him and then he will rule instead of you. Will he be as generous a leader as you? I doubt it. Will the world thrive under his greatness or will he be petty and vindictive? Tell me Jack, will blood run in the streets? Will you wake up to screams every morning?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The tremendous figure of the Mother laughed at this and the ground shook and skulls cascaded down from their stacks in an avalanche of bleached bone. “Are you lying to yourself or to me? We both know Robert’s style. He kills without batting an eye. I know you think Cyn is the most precious thing this world has to offer, but you know that she is dead no matter what. One way or another her soul will be in hell. Robert will kill both of you as soon as he takes over and what a waste this nobility of yours will have been. Her screams of torment will ring in your ears. Hers and millions more; all on your head. One way or another, either you or Robert will free me. Because I respect you, Jack I’m offering you the chance to do some good in the world. Take this chance.”

  A grunting laugh escaped Jack as he stared up at the beautiful creature. “If you respect me, why are you treating me like an idiot? Robert can’t free you. My cousin do
esn’t love anyone but himself. Who could he sacrifice to open the gate for you? No one. Now, since you are out of anything left to tempt me with, I need to ask you to leave. I have work to do.”

  Jack expected her to flare into anger, but she only laughed heartily, causing his dancing motes to reignite so that the bare walls of the catacombs and the ugly bleached bones were visible again.

  “I really do like you, Jack,” she said, grinning. “You are courageous to the point of insanity. It’s refreshing. I’m almost tempted to tell you what Robert is really after.”

  He had been about to offer a witty retort when he was brought up short. There was one word that stuck out. “Really? What he’s really after? You know what he’s…wait, of course you know.” This was no fake out. His and Robert’s mortal machinations were likely child’s play to someone nearly as old as the earth.

  And yet, her words suggested some sort of trickery on Robert’s part. What did he know of Robert’s plan? Next to nothing. Everyone figured that he was going after someone or something in Naples; likely something that had to do with the Lance of Longinus—what was so tricky about that? “Unless he isn’t going after something in Naples,” Jack said, thinking out loud.

  “You are getting warmer” the Mother said.

  Since everything that came out of her mouth was suspect, Jack did his best to ignore her as he tried to analyze the situation. Question: did Robert’s actions suggest he was after something in Naples? Yes, he had raised a demon army, but what was it doing? “It’s trying to kill the Pope and all of his clergy,” he said, answering himself. “Robert knew the Pope would come if there was a threat close enough to his front door. Is this a trap?”

  The Mother gave Jack an exaggerated shrug which had him growling: “You’re no help. Wait…what’s west of here? Robert fled west. Maybe there’s something to the west that he is after.”

  “The Mediterranean is two miles west of here,” she suggested. “And after that is Spain and the Atlantic.”

  At first he was going to snap at her for being particularly unhelpful, but then he saw that she was spelling it out for him. Robert had laid a trap for the Pope and his cardinals not just to kill them but also to draw as many of them away as he could. The Vatican was wide open, easy pickings and hadn’t the Pope himself said that there were many interesting and powerful objects there? The Mother had also pointed out Robert’s path; he had gone west, meaning that he was going to Rome by sea, perhaps the quickest route with a zombie apocalypse tying up all the roads in this part of Italy.

  “That has to be it,” Jack said, but then immediately second guessed himself. “What if there really is someone or something he’s after right in the Pope’s backyard and he hadn’t expected so vigorous of a response?”

  “Very unlikely,” the Mother said.

  He wanted to agree, but he was so suspicious of her that he began to second guess his second guessing. What he needed was time to figure this out without her right there leering over him. And what he needed more than that was his army of corpses.

  “Okay, thanks for all your help,” Jack said to the Mother, after which there followed an awkward silence.

  “I take it you are dismissing me?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, if you don’t mind. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have an army of demons to fight, and then I have to get up to Rome. I mean, this was nice and all, but I have work to do. I’m sure you understand.”

  “I do, more than you realize. Good bye, Jack Dreyden. I fear you will be on your knees begging me when we next meet. Don’t expect me to be so cordial.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?” She did not answer, she only slid silently down into the inky black depths of the gate. When she had disappeared and the motes of lights appeared once more in the darkness, Jack whispered: “Then there better not be a next time.”

  He stepped back as the motes grew both in numbers and size. They came racing up to smear themselves like a bubble of wax, swelling the gate to tremendous size. Jack barely saw this. He was suddenly anxious that he was being played by the Mother. “What did she mean by begging? And should I stay here in Naples? Maybe Robert isn’t after something in the Vatican…and even if he is after the lance, it’s a fake.”

  Next to him the gate grew and the floor of the cavern swelled and cracked with the number of souls trying to get out. He was still trying to figure out if he had been double crossed by the Mother or triple crossed or quadruple crossed when the gate opened with a cosmic sigh and the souls poured out in the hundreds of thousands.

  “Find the nearest corpse and then attack Robert’s army. Drag it back to hell. Do not dawdle and do not harm any humans. Now go!” He said this with half his mind still on the puzzle before him. Perhaps because of his inattention, a demon of middling power challenged him.

  It was a crude skeleton, missing half its bones. “What do you want?” Jack demanded.

  “I want to hear your screams once more. And taste your tears and…”

  Jack didn’t have time for this. “Get your ass out of here,” he growled, whipping out his Holy sword. At the sight of it, the bone-demon turned on his heel and left without another word. The rest went clacking along with him; rank upon rank, their numbers beyond count. For a good thirty minutes, the bones assembled themselves and filed out.

  Jack pushed through them, needing to find Cyn and tell her about his conversation with the Mother. He found her sitting on the side of the hill with her knees drawn up and her feet tucked up under her. She was watching the parade of dead and nibbling on a croissant that had seen better days. It was smushed nearly flat.

  “I heard you screaming,” she said.

  This stopped him. “She tested me,” he admitted, keeping his eyes down at the tops of his boots. “I think I passed, but who knows? The Mother is so conniving that I don’t where I stand on anything.” He explained the tests she had put him through and then told her about Robert. “I don’t know which way to go.”

  “That’s easy, we go to the Vatican,” Cyn answered without hesitation. “Naples is huge. We could spend a day or two looking for whatever he might be digging up. If he’s at the Vatican, we’ll know in minutes. Hell, if we get lucky, we could beat him there and trap him ourselves.”

  It was exactly the unhesitating advice he needed. As she called Captain Vance, the only person in a hundred miles whose number she knew, Jack focused on his army. It was an immense force, ten times the size of Robert’s, which made Jack wonder why he hadn’t chosen it.

  “Maybe an army that big would have discouraged the Pope. Or maybe he has a control issue.” Jack rarely had to issue more than one set of commands. It made controlling his army much easier.

  Cyn came up and offered him a flattened croissant. “Captain Vance is worried that everyone will be mad that you raised this army. I told him not to be such a git.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Jack admitted. “Is he going to send a helicopter?” That was all that mattered to him just then, or so he thought.

  “He said he would do what he could. So…so you’re supposed to kill me? You were going to inherit the world if you killed me? Sounds like the Mother doesn’t know squat about haggling. She should have started with the moon or maybe Greenland in exchange for my soul.”

  Jack laughed. “She wasn’t that bad at haggling. I demanded that she throw in a set of steak knives, but she held firm.”

  “You think I’m worth steak knives?”

  “I think you are worth more than this planet and everything on it.” She grinned up at him; they were close, armored chest to armored chest. He had a thousand things on his mind—she had one. She pulled him down until their lips met and they kissed in a surreal moment, standing above marching regiments of undead soldiers.

  They were still at it when a beam of light transfixed them twenty minutes later. Vance and a team of Raiders had arrived. “Where too?” he asked when the two of them had climbed aboard the crowded chopper. “They have motels around here
if you think there’s time for a quickie.”

  That earned him a punch from Cyn that had him rubbing his arm. “Takes us to the Vatican,” Jack ordered. “Robert has about an hour head start, but if he is traveling by boat, we might be able to overtake him. If not, is there anyone left there?”

  “A few people, I think,” Vance said. “His Holiness went ‘all in.’ The last I saw, there were a few very, very old priests and some janitors. I’ll give them a heads up that trouble might be heading their way.”

  As he tried both his cell phone and the radio, they blazed north, while below them the night was alive. The remainder of the Pope’s out of positioned forces were trucking it south to Naples, while the civilians in that city were a fear driven mob that was spreading out in all directions. The two groups clashed on the Autustrada del Sole, the main highway linking Rome and Naples. The ensuing traffic jam was immense. Seen from the air, it was like two rivers of light colliding.

  “I’m not getting any answer from the frequency we had been using at the Vatican,” Vance told them, a few minutes later. “And the Pope is surrounded by two armies of undead. He won’t get any radio signals until he’s free of the black cloud.”

  “What about the soldiers down there?” Cyn asked. “Can we get any of them to turn around?”

  Vance gave her a pained look. “Probably not. The Pope made it very clear that he was in charge. None of the priests will countermand his orders. Not even the American priests.” He jerked his thumb at the full chopper. “These are all soldiers. None of the priests would think about coming.”

  “Then we make do,” Jack said, raising his voice so everyone could hear. “We can expect Robert to have brought a few demons with him. Hit them hard and fast. Use the shotguns to slow them down and the swords to finish them off. I know they won’t stay down, but it’ll take them longer to reform.”