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

by Peter Meredith

  The soldiers shared a look and a few crossed themselves. No one wanted to go into battle against demons without a priest on hand for exorcisms and healing.

  “One more thing,” Jack announced. “There may be civilians with Robert…they need to be shot on sight.”

  This caused a murmur to spread throughout the chopper. Cyn pulled her hand from Jack’s, and Vance stared as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Civilians?” the captain demanded. “You mean humans. You mean you want us to murder innocent people, don’t you?”

  Jack met the captain’s steely gaze. “In case you forgot, Robert is a necromancer. He gets his power from stealing souls. If we have any chance at defeating him, we need to make sure he can’t keep replenishing his power and that means…”

  “Screw that!” Vance spat. “That is not a valid order and no one is going to follow it.” The soldiers all nodded and cast dark looks Jack’s way. Cyn didn’t look up. She kept her eyes steadily at the vibrating deck of the helicopter.

  “Keep an open mind,” Jack said, quieter now. “This may be our best shot at getting Robert. Think about what happens if he gets away. Think about what will happen if he finds the real Lance of Longinus. So please, do what you have to do.”

  No one answered his plea except with barely audible curses. Jack didn’t blame them. These were all proud men, fighting on the side of good. They were Holy warriors and he was asking them to commit murder.

  Cyn checked her shotgun. Vance made a point to stare past Jack to look down at the glowing city of Rome as it came into view. “One minute!” he cried. The soldiers all said near silent prayers and kissed the crosses that hung from their necks.

  St. Peter’s Basilica was a beacon of light, and they buzzed right for it. They were still two hundred yards out when Jack saw the bodies. Eight people were sprawled on the steps; their blood running into the square. “Hot LZ!” Vance yelled. The second he did, the helicopter dropped fifty feet, sending Jack’s stomach into his throat. They bucked left and right, dropping so fast that he feared that they were going to crash.

  At the last moment, the pilot flared and set down softly. All eleven of them leapt out in seconds. The soldiers spread out in a small circle, their weapons trained outward.

  “No,” cried Cyn. “Inside! I can feel them inside.”

  There were demons all right. Ten of them, and one was horribly familiar. “Hor,” Jack whispered. Hor had been the very first demon he had ever faced. Jack had been beaten and survived only by running for his life. The next time they had met, Jack had been beaten again. “Not this time,” he said and ran up the stairs with the others struggling to catch up.

  He charged into the basilica and saw the last moments of a sadly one-sided battle. Three old men were being attacked from all sides. They were being picked at, nipped and torn. They were being worn down and readied for Robert’s “last rites.” He would take their souls and grow stronger.

  “Stop!” Jack demanded, his voice rolling like thunder through the cavernous basilica, stopping the fight. The demons—rotting corpses with leering eyes and bloody teeth—paused in confusion. They could feel Jack’s power.

  Behind the demons stood the bone-creature that was Hor. He was tall compared to the others and his flesh was ancient leather, and the deep sockets of his eyes were dark with evil power. He wasn’t afraid of Jack in the least. Somehow he managed to form the bone of his jaw into a grin.

  Ten feet behind him, holding a girl child by the hair stood Jack’s cousin Robert, looking sickly thin.

  “I felt you coming,” Robert said. He too was smiling as he pulled the girl close to him in a hideous mock embrace. It was a one-handed embrace. In the other hand he held a tall pole of wood, the top of which was tipped with a shining iron spike.

  “Is that…” Jack asked.

  Robert lifted the pole and swept the iron spear in Jack’s direction. It was simple, sharp and deadly. It was a spear a soldier would carry, except this one was special. A cold wind from the spear splashed over Jack and the others, chilling their ardor and stopping them in their tracks.

  “Yes, this is the Lance of Longinus,” Robert said, his smile manic as if his teeth were about to burst out of his head. “I hear you’ve been shopping around for replicas. Too bad you didn’t get to St. Martin’s tomb before I did. Do you like it?”

  He pointed it at Jack and the cold wind sunk into his bones. “I’ll like it better when I take it from you and stick it in your guts,” Jack answered.

  “Always the rowdy American,” Robert replied with a sneer. “But you blew it, Jack. You should have accepted what the Mother offered, because now it’s too late for you.”

  Chapter 34

  Rome, Italy

  Jack Dreyden

  “You’ve talked to the Mother?” Jack asked. This unnerved him more than facing the demons or the spear or Robert himself. What plot had been hatched between them? What malign spell had been given? Was Robert set to inherit the power that Jack had turned down?

  He never found out.

  Just as Robert opened his mouth to answer, Captain Vance pulled a Beretta and squeezed off five shots. There was sixty yards between them, virtually point blank range for someone of Vance’s abilities, and yet not a single bullet struck Robert.

  The air flashed silver, inches in front of his chest, as some spell of Robert’s stopped the bullets.

  “That wasn’t very sporting,” Robert chided and then pulled the girl behind him, shielding her.

  Sporting or not, it hadn’t been a smart move. Vance should have gone for the girl. “If you want sporting, why don’t you and I settle this one-on-one,” Jack challenged.

  Robert pretended to think this over for a few seconds and then replied: “How about instead I have Hor kill you and drag your soul down into the pit?” In answer, Jack charged, the sword, Almacia raised. Time slowed at his command and he moved in a blur, flashing past the cringing priests and the demons, heading straight for his cousin.

  Jack could end the fight with one swing of his sword; however, Hor was suddenly in front of him, matching his time. The demon blew out a gout of ice and Jack only saved himself by diving to the side. He wasn’t fast enough. The cold bit his right leg, numbing it, turning it wooden.

  “You are not the master,” Hor said, and then clapped his bone hands together and Jack’s spell failed. Time snapped back into place and the air was suddenly filled with flying lead and the sound of shotguns going off.

  The soldiers charged after Jack, looking to save the priests, but too late. One of the demon-possessed corpses leapt among the old men and raked them with its long claws, tearing open throats and bellies. The soldiers blasted it with their shotguns, sending it flying while the other demons retched up sheets of ice.

  Jack barely had a second to watch. Hor was all over him, slashing with claws that crackled and glowed with magical energy. He had to dodge and parry, steel against ancient bone. Somehow the bone resisted the magical blade. It should not have been possible. Hor should have been nothing but a pile of bones.

  On the reverse side of the coin, Hor’s magic was countered either by Jack’s quickness or by the magic sword which ate up electrical energy. They fought under the great dome, their battle a stalemate. When Hor drenched the room in his magical darkness, Jack countered with a million particles of glowing light. When Jack stabbed with his shining sword straight through Hor’s eye socket, the demon built up a magical barrier around the blade so that it felt like he was wielding a useless weighted golf club.

  Around them the fight between the demons and soldiers was a draw as well. The men worked in teams: a gun fighter matching up with a swordsman. This kept the demons on their heels. The beasts retaliated, alternating between blasting out sheets of ice and poison fog. Men went down screaming. Some were revived with a splash of Holy Water, while others died, their bodies contorted in their final agonies.

  They fought among a growing litter of bone as the demons were being rendered into
scraps by the valiant soldiers, and yet these scraps were slowly come back together. Jack saw that the “draw” would only be temporary if he didn’t do something to alter the course of the battle. Only Hor would not let him. The creature kept up the pressure, knowing that once the soldiers were all dead, the demons would be able to overwhelm Jack by sheer numbers.

  Thankfully a splash of gold in his periphery caught his attention. “Shishin Ighn-Rahe!” Jack hissed, sending electricity coursing up his blade. Hor appraised the spell with a gleam in his eye. The demon made to dispel the magic, clapping his hands together, but Jack slowed time and lunged in.

  Hor countered, slowing time as well. They were moving in a blur, while everyone around them looked to be in slow motion. When Cyn brought her shotgun up, it moved at an achingly torpid pace—a snail’s pace right up until Hor clapped his hands, ruining both of Jack’s spells.

  The lightning fizzled and time returned to its normal pace, just as Cyn pulled the trigger of her shotgun. There was a deafening roar and Hor’s head was vaporized. Two more shots turned him into a twitching pile of bone. Immediately, she pulled out a vial of Holy Water and began splashing it about.

  “Go!” she cried

  Jack was already turning, sword in hand. There were seven humans still standing, though three of them were only barely on their feet. They had their hands full fighting the six demons that were still mostly intact, while all around them bones were skittering across the gleaming marble. In seconds, the other four creatures would be whole again.

  It wasn’t something that Jack could allow. He slowed time once more and flashed in, dodging the ice and the poison gas and the savage claws. His sword was an explosion of light as he hacked here and there, rendering three of the creatures into nothing but rags of flesh and kindling.

  But then his strength failed him and time returned to normal. He had exhausted his supply of magical energy; it felt like only a soft wisp in his chest. Still, he had managed to give the men a fighting chance and they rushed at the last three demons with their swords drawn.

  Instead of fighting, one of the demons raised a putrid grey foot and then slammed it down. The marble beneath its foot cracked and the room shook. Another of the demons smiled, its blank eye sockets alive with evil glee. It too, stomped its foot.

  Now, cracks ran up the stone walls. The third demon laughed and let loose, stomping over and over. The ground shook and the walls began to crumble, sending blocks of stone falling from hundreds of feet in the air to land with the sound of thunder. The ceiling was coming apart.

  “Everyone get out of here!” Captain Vance yelled. The soldiers broke for the door. Jack went in the opposite direction. Cyn was directly under the dome keeping Hor from coming back together by blasting any bone that had the audacity to try to connect with another.

  “Run!” Jack screamed as the walls failed completely. She turned to run deeper into the basilica, but a bony hand reached out and caught her foot. It was Hor; even dismembered the demon could fight. Cyn fell, her shotgun flying out of her hands. She tried to scramble to her feet, but Jack saw that she was going to be too late. The entire ceiling was falling now. They had all of three and a half seconds to get clear.

  Jack had nothing left in the tank, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Gritting his teeth from the pain of tearing the final nub of his soul, he slowed time and raced forward with tons of stone seemingly directly hanging over his head. He grabbed Cyn, hauled her to her feet and made it exactly twenty steps before he couldn’t hold back time any more.

  There was an explosion of sound from behind as if a bomb had exploded; the floor heaved and rocks of every size flew all around them. At least one struck Jack in the back of the head and he fell into a black world where he felt nothing and saw nothing.

  He thought he had died, but the next thing he knew he was being shaken into consciousness. “Jack? Wake up, Jack.” A strange version of Cyn knelt above him. She was as grey as the dead. Even her golden locks were grey. Only her eyes were of another color. They were wonderfully blue, like neon stars.

  “What happened?” He could remember fighting Hor and the demons and then nothing. He tried to sit up and winced at the pain in his head. There was a lump half the size of his fist on the back of his skull. All around him was more grey; dust billowing in clouds that obscured everything.

  “We have to get to Robert,” Cyn told him, trying to pull him up to his feet. “He’s killed that little girl and opened the gate again.”

  The idea that Robert had raised the dead within the basilica boggled Jack’s mind even more than it had been. “Why? When? Why?” The why seemed very significant.

  “It happened just now and I don’t know why. But maybe…” She stopped speaking as two noises came to them. The first was a tremendous crash that shook the floor. It sounded as if it had practically come from beneath them.

  The second noise was a weak voice, begging: “Help me.” Although the crash beneath them portended something awful, they couldn’t ignore the plea. Together they pushed through the clouds of billowing dust until they found a huge mound of stone that rose to a new ceiling of jumbled rock that hadn’t been there a minute before.

  At the closest end, they found a soldier who was mostly buried under blocks the size of boulders. Only his head and part of his torso jutted from beneath the rubble. Jack tottered to him and tried to budge the stone but only the smallest of them would move.

  “It’s got me, Jack,” the soldier whispered.

  Jack dropped down and peered into the grey face. “Captain Vance! I’ll get you out of there. Hold on.” He tried again pushing and pulling on stone blocks with all of his strength. They were hundreds of pounds in weight and didn’t budge.

  Vance cried out again: “It’s got me! Jack! My leg. My leg. It has me.”

  Cyn had been straining at the rocks in equal futility, but now she dropped down next to Vance’s head and asked: “What has you?”

  “One of them. It’s chewing. Oh damn it!”

  In desperation, Jack tore at the rock cursing at the top of his lungs. His nails split and bent back; his fingers bled but the rocks would not move. “Try a spell,” Cyn suggested.

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t have one for something like this and besides, I’m completely drained.”

  “Save me,” Vance said in a harsh whisper. His face was screwed up in pain and fear, and tears ran streaks down through the grey dust, showing Jack that there was real living flesh beneath. “Jack, s-save me. You know what’s going to happen. It’s chewing in-into my l-leg. It’ll get an artery, J-Jack. And you know what it’ll happen then.”

  He knew. Vance would have his blood and then his soul sucked out of him. He would become the demon’s plaything. Perhaps he would turn Vance into the living dead. Perhaps he would send Vance down to the pits.

  Jack also knew what Vance wanted from him. Vance wanted Jack to kill him.

  It’s always me, Jack thought to himself, tasting bile come up the back of his throat. He bent down and picked up the Holy sword he had tossed aside.

  “Not the sword,” Cyn said. She pointed at Vance. His shoulder holster was just visible. “The gun will be quicker.”

  “Yes,” Vance begged. “The gun…but first promise me you’ll tell my kids something for me.” He took a breath to go on only his face screwed up in a spasm of pain and a scream echoed throughout the room. Jack felt impotent fury rock him as next to him, Cyn sobbed.

  After a few agonizing seconds, Vance was able to go on, speaking quickly, perhaps knowing he didn’t have a lot of time left. “Tell them I died a good death. Lie for me, Jack. Okay?” Jack didn’t know what a good death was, but nodded anyway and then tugged out the Beretta. He thumbed off the safety and paused as Vance added: “And w-watch over them, please. Don’t let any of these things get them. P-promise me!”

  “I will do my best,” Jack said. He didn’t think he could say the words: I promise, since as far as he could tell he was not only powerless, he
was also trapped in the basilica with Robert and who knew how many demons. He’d be lucky to be alive in five minutes. For some reason that didn’t bother him. He was numb and tired and mentally exhausted.

  But not spiritually. He was about to kill another friend and the pain of it hurt worse than any torture. With his hand shaking, he brought the gun up. Vance turned to look at the floor, only before Jack could pull the trigger, Cyn put out a hand to stop him. She held one of her silver vials. She tipped it, wetting her finger with Holy Oil and then drew a glistening cross on Vance’s forehead, saying: “May the Lord bless and guard your soul. And may you find your way to heaven.”

  Vance nodded once, said: “Thanks.” He kept his eyes focused on what had been part of a ceiling fresco drawn by Michelangelo. It was a cherub, with a chubby belly and a satisfied smile. “That was nice,” he said. “Now look away, Cyn. Let Jack do what he has to.”

  Again the thought: It’s always me. And to it Jack added: Do I even have a choice anymore?

  It didn’t feel like it. Jack felt as if he was an actor in a play. His words written for him, his actions dictated, his footsteps chosen by another. He held the gun, waiting on his cue and when Cyn looked up to where the ceiling had once been, he knew that was it. He pulled the trigger, blasting out brain and blood to add color to the grey world. It was the wrong color. It didn’t brighten things; it only caused pain.

  Wordlessly, he handed the pistol to Cyn and then stuffed the heels of both hands into his eyes and pushed as hard as he could until he was sure that he was on the verge of shoving his eyeballs into his head. He might have growled or cursed or screamed, but he didn’t cry. He was too angry to cry.

  In a cold fury, he pulled his hands away and bent to pick up his sword. It was time for the final act. It was time for either him or Robert to die. There was no other way, because there was no way out. The ceiling had collapsed, trapping them, two scorpions in a bottle. He wanted to tell Cyn to hide only he knew that she wouldn’t. She was too tough to run.