by Roy Bright
He smiles and closes his eyes. As the last breath leaves his body, it withers and turns to dust. He crumbles to nothingness in Charlotte’s arms and she cries; devastated.
Gabriel walks to her and gently lifts her to her feet.
She throws her arms around him and buries her face into his mid-section. After a while, she stops crying, wipes the tears from her eyes, and looks at him. “Is this how it was always supposed to be, Gabriel? All of these people, all of these sacrifices?”
He smiles at her. “There are a million eventualities to all things, my child; this was simply one of them. This isn’t how we wanted things to be, but the eventual outcome was the desired one.”
“But a lot of the world died, Gabriel. What are we to do now?”
“Now, Charlotte, you must repair it.”
“How? I cannot do this alone. I’m just a little girl.”
“My child, you are anything but a little girl. You are the daughter of God, the one who has defeated the Devil, for now at least, and saved this world, you will figure out what to do, in time.”
She shakes her head. “Judas was the one who saved the world, and look what happened. I can’t do this without him. I don’t know what to do.”
He smiles, places a hand on the side of her face, and then looks to the sky. “Oh well, my dear, maybe there is something that can be done about that.”
She looks upwards as a sonic boom echoes out and a great ball of fire hurtles to the earth, trailblazing through the New Mexico sky. The sound of its approach grows stronger as it closes in on their position. She looks at Gabriel and he smiles at her.
It reaches them, slamming into the earth a short distance away, exploding dust and dirt into the air.
She turns her head to one side to shield her eyes. As the dust clears, she notices movement from within the cloud. Something steps forward. The smile on her face is as wide as it could ever be as Judas emerges out of the dust. From out of his back, span two impressive white wings.
He smiles and holds out his arms.
She runs to him and throws her arms around him.
He pushes her head back and smiles at her. “I told you, I will always be with you, my little girl.”
She laughs. She begins to say something but changes her mind and just hugs him more.
He looks towards a smiling Gabriel and he nods and smiles back.
They remain that way for a while, the child happy to be through the ordeal and to have her Protector back with her. After a time, he breaks their embrace and shakes his head at the Archangel. “Okay, Gabe, I’m confused, how the hell did Lucifer get this one wrong? I mean, his timing was off by a few minutes, what happened?”
“Well, Judas, as in any war, misinformation is the key. When Charlotte was born, we ensured the paperwork documented her time of birth a few minutes after she was actually born. Call it, our little security plan.” He winks.
Judas looks at him in astonishment. “Are you kidding me, Gabe? That’s it? Lucifer lost because he was fooled by a birth certificate? A creature with power comparable to that of the big man upstairs himself and he blew it due to a technicality from doctored paperwork and a lack of thorough research?”
Gabriel shrugs and laughs, and Judas laughs with him.
“You gotta be fucking shitting me,” Judas snorts.
Gabriel glares at him, finding his choice of words somewhat disconcerting. “You will have to put an end to such talk, Judas. You are now one of the holy guardians.
“Yeah, we’ll see.” he replies, smiling. He studies his arms and sighs, “any chance of getting my tattoos back?”
“We’ll see,” Gabriel replies and both men laugh.
Charlotte tugs at Judas and asks, “What about Abi?”
He looks at Gabriel, a deep sadness spread across his face, and then drops to one knee. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but Abi is gone. She wasn’t strong enough in the end to keep him out. She didn’t go in vain though. What she did for you was as important as anything I did and we could not have done it without her. I am sure she is at peace in the White Kingdom.” He smiles and then looks towards Gabriel.
The Archangel nods at him and smiles; a little white lie to protect her.
She shakes her head at Gabriel, “I know she’s not in Heaven, what I mean is, can we get her back?”
Gabriel purses his lips and lowers his gaze.
She takes in a deep breath, “Well, I won’t accept that and we must do something about it in due course.”
Judas looks down at her and smiles, admiring her resolute bravery, her sincerity and he knows for certain, that she will lead them to fix Abi’s fate one way or the other at some time. He looks at Gabriel. “So now what?”
“Now the hard work begins. There is much to do for you both, but first, let us go pick up an old friend.”
Forty-Six
Detective Gary Cross stands at the edge of the roof of the Tonada building. He is tired, dead tired. Around him lie hundreds of lifeless Taken, piled on top of each other, each face locked in a last grimace before death.
He had all but lost hope minutes earlier. Having fled from his position of reinforcing the door to the edge of the roof, he had realized it was a futile endeavor as Taken were flooding upwards from the outside of the building. He had managed to find a small nook away from the edge in which to squeeze into, providing him with a temporary refuge, a momentary safe haven as their numbers blocked the path into the gap as they tried to claw their way in, screaming with savagery. However, he knew that would not last and so had placed the gun to his head with the one remaining bullet in the chamber and prayed for one last time, prayed that he would get to see his son Jacob again. He had almost applied enough pressure to bring the trigger back all the way, send the hammer forward and fire the weapon when the Taken just fell to the ground, dead. At first, he wasn’t sure what was going on, whether this was another of Lucifer’s tricks, but, as he tracked some of the higher level demons flying away, he had smiled, realizing that they had done it, that Judas and Charlotte had beaten the Devil. For a few minutes, he had sat there, amongst the dead creatures, sobbing, with joy at having lived through this nightmare. After a time, he had wiped the tears from his eyes and managed to push enough of the dead out of the way to squeeze back out of his little sanctuary.
Now, as he watches the sun rising to wash New York in a new cleansing light, he looks out over the city and wonders how the world is going to heal itself, how it is going to bring itself back from the very edge of the apocalypse and he wonders just how many people made it through this night. There are so many questions running through his mind that he has no answers to, so he decides to let it go for now and just enjoy being alive.
He sits down on the edge of the roof, his feet dangling over and smiles as he looks at his gun, laughing. “Almost Gary…almost.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, lifting his face upwards towards the sky, enjoying the warmth of the sun as it begins to radiate over the city. It feels unusually warm for November and he tells himself it is going to be a nice day.
He turns and looks behind him as the ground crackles with electricity and a portal opens up, a feeling of peace and serenity pulsing from within it. He smiles and stands up.
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About the Author
Roy Thomas Bright was born 22nd October 1971, in Manchester and grew up in Burnley, East Lancashire.
He received his secondary education at St Wilfrid’s C of E High School in Blackburn and upon leaving decided to join the Royal Navy as a
gunner. The need to patrol some of the worlds ‘hotspots’ allowed him to travel the globe extensively, and he was very fortunate to see a vast number of exotic countries and different cultures.
In 1998, Roy decided to leave the Royal Navy to pursue a career as a professional musician. Having been a musician since the age of six and able to play a plethora of instruments, Roy went on to experience many highs in his first band ‘deponeye’ until that ended in 2004. In 2005 Roy started his second band Exit State, which enjoyed great success touring all over the UK and parts of Europe, a No.1 video on Kerrang TV’s Most Requested show and sharing the stage with the likes of Michael Schenker, Blaze Bayley (Iron Maiden), Esoterica, Dave Evans (AC/DC), The Black Mollys, Forever Never, Black Spiders and Neil Buchanan’s Marseille.
Following a successful tour with guitar legend Michael Schenker in 2012, Exit State were delighted to be invited to become Patrons of the Children’s Hospice Arts charity chARTUK, an organization Roy is still a proud patron of, whose amazing work aims to enrich the lives of children and young people with severe disabilities and life-limiting conditions in hospices through the creative, performing and literary arts, enabling individual expression, creativity and communication.
It was in late 2012 while enjoying touring downtime that Roy decided to pursue one of his other creative passions – writing. The idea for Judas had been sitting deeply within his psyche for some time and the amalgamation of the original idea fueled by the lyrics in the rock song What Have You Done by Within Temptation finally saw him put pen to paper. A massive and steep learning curve followed, but he was fortunate due to connections made from his time within the music sector to receive exceptional advice from a number of sources. An introduction by Exit State’s manager Mark Appleton to Stephen Clegg, the author of Maria’s Papers, proved to be an invaluable one as Stephen’s help and guidance was key in ensuring Judas was worthy of being published.
In 2012, Roy published Judas via Whiteley Publishing. He then re-published a second edition of the novel via self-publishing in 2016 and hasn’t looked back since.
Roy is thoroughly enjoying writing more and more, including screenplays with his screenwriting partner Mike Harris and has penned a number of original scripts, including the Judas stories. He has now begun work on the third novel in the Judas saga and a ‘Book Zero’, which details events happening in and around the same timeframe as the first Judas story.
Roy has three children, Reece, Tyler and Lily.