"He's there, Jon!" Carter cried. "I see him. Ernesto is there! With me, Lions Platoon! For Lizzy! For Earth! He's there!"
"Sir!" Jon cried, falling behind. "I saw nobody there. We should stay with the heavy armor. We…"
But Jon's voice faded. Everything faded. The world, the war itself—all blurred.
There ahead! A man in crimson robes. Hooded. Staring from an alleyway.
"Ernesto," Carter whispered.
All noise died. The rumbling tanks. The shrieking planes overhead. The rattling of bullets. All faded.
The red figure vanished around the corner.
Carter ran. Every sound seemed magnified in this silence. His breath, rasping. His heart, beating. He could hear the ghosts of his past, haunting. Lizzy moaning, close to death, smiling weakly in his arms. His own howl of rage. His vow of vengeance.
As Carter ran through the basalt city, those ghosts surrounded him. Peering from the windows. Replaying the old terrors over and over as shadows on the walls, passion plays of his torment.
But the red figure was gone. Vanished into the labyrinth.
"Ernesto!" he howled.
His voice echoed, bounced back to him a thousand times, each echo speaking with a different voice. Mocking him. Laughing. Ernesto! Ernesto! Ernesto! The name of his tormentor—tossed at him like a thousand arrows.
And there! The hints of red footprints in the dust. The wind scattered them in a crimson whirl. Carter ran in pursuit.
He spun around a serpentine minaret, raced down an alleyway, and ran up a coiling staircase carved into the mountain. Walls rose around him, filled with arrowslits like eyes. The stairs zigged and zagged, passed under archways, dove through tunnels, climbed slopes under a red sky.
Carter's bullet wound throbbed. His breath sawed at his lungs. His injuries were slowing him down. But he kept running.
There he was! A flutter of crimson cloth. Just ahead!
In his memory, blood sprayed.
A long shadow vanished around a corner.
In his dreams, countless shadows filled the jungle.
Carter kept moving through the labyrinth, panting. His wound reopened. Blood leaked through the bandage, leaving a trail behind him.
He was climbing higher up the mountain. The streets became narrower. The walls closed in around him. Stone doors led to hidden chambers. Windows were bricked up. Carter felt like he had two years ago, lost in the jungle, hunting Ernesto.
This time Lizzy is safe on Earth, he thought. This time it's just you and me, Ernesto.
The red footprints led onward, scattering in the wind, vanishing one by one as Carter pursued.
The rest of his platoon was far below now. The war seemed eras and light-years away. He could no longer hear nor see the Battle for Basilica. He had come here with a hundred thousand soldiers.
But it was now down to two. To Ahab and his whale.
Carter turned a corner, and there it was, rising ahead.
The cathedral.
He stopped dead in his tracks, panting.
The cathedral was larger than he had thought. From a distance, it had appeared like a church, the kind Carter would visit as a child on Earth. But this place was larger. Towering. Imposing. Covered in gargoyles and battlements. Its arrowslits peered like reptilian eyes, filled with firelight.
Carter took a step closer.
He hesitated. For a moment the weight of the cathedral seemed to crush him. He felt so small in its shadow.
"How did the Bahayans ever build this?" he whispered.
He knew the history. Centuries ago, the glowing Santelmos had visited Earth. They had chosen a handful of Filipino colonists, saving them from the ravages of the Philippine-American war. They had flown them here to Bahay, an alien world. A place to build a new homeland, safe from colonial powers. Basilica cathedral, the stories said, was the first structure built on this new world.
How did a handful of scared nineteenth-century rice farmers build such a marvel of architecture?
Carter forced himself to stand upright, to resist that invisible weight. He took another step toward the cathedral. His boots scattered black ash.
He frowned.
Flying buttresses rose around the cathedral, supporting the walls. Carter approached one of the arched buttresses and touched the polished basalt.
He pulled back his hand as if bitten.
This was not basalt. It was metal.
Carter took a few steps back.
My God.
Those weren't buttresses.
"They're a chassis," he whispered.
He took another step back. He stared up at the cathedral. Yes, there were gargoyles. There were bell towers. There were basalt bricks. But those were all additions, cobbled on years later.
The central structure was a starship. An alien starship.
"It's the ship that brought the colonists here," Carter whispered.
He had never seen a Santelmo starship. The glowing balls of light were mysterious beings, shying away from humans, helping or harming them from afar. They aided the Bahayans—gave them knowledge to build and arm a modern military. But until now, Carter had never seen Santelmo tech. Before him rose a starship to rival anything Earth could build.
Wind moaned.
Whispers sounded within the cathedral, echoing, flowing out like mist.
Carter looked up. A circular rose window glimmered, watching the city like an eye. Perhaps once it had been an airlock. The intricate round window reminded Carter of the beautiful rose window of the Notre Dame cathedral, which he had seen in picture books. Except Notre Dame's rose window was full of colorful stained glass, forming a mandala of greens, blues, and yellows. Here at Basilica Cathedral, the rose window was frosty white glass, etched with circles. Circles within circles. White within white. Perhaps this stained glass was meant to represent the Santelmos, glowing bulbs of alien light. But to Carter this rose window seemed like an eye coated with a cataract. Like Ernesto's eye.
A voice fluttered through the gateway, barely more than whisper.
Come to me. I am here.
A red shadow flitted behind the white stained glass. A figure moving, robes fluttering.
Come to me, Carter. I'm here.
"Ernesto," Carter whispered.
He slammed a fresh magazine into his assault rifle, yanked back the charging handle, and approached the cathedral gates.
The gateway loomed like a mouth. This gateway alone was taller than most buildings in Mindao. Statues stood along its arch like pilgrims on a bridge, solemn figures in stone robes, their faces hooded. They had no eyes. But Carter could feel them staring.
The wooden doors were decaying. With his bayonet, Carter tore off chunks of wood, carving an entrance. He stepped into the nave.
He found himself in a vast chamber of shadows. Larger than he imagined it would be. A nave the size of a world.
Carter pulled out his flashlight and swept the beam from side to side. Columns lined the nave, carved from black stone into the likeness of hooded monks. Shadows filled the vaulted ceiling. As Carter walked, his boots scattered ash, revealing names engraved into stone tiles. The names of the dead.
I'm walking over the bones of the original colonists, he realized. This is a mausoleum.
As he walked, he read some of the names and dates engraved below his feet. Filipino names. Born on Earth in the nineteenth century. Interred here on this alien world three hundred years ago. Colonists. Saints.
And one tile—
Carter froze.
He stared down, belly churning.
He pointed his flashlight at the tile beneath his feet. He read again what was engraved there.
Michael Carter
Captain
May 14, 2199 - October 14, 2224
His name.
His date of birth.
His date of death—today.
He looked up, sneering.
"What is this?" he shouted. "Ernesto!"
Around him, a thousand
statues echoed his voice.
Ernesto! Ernesto! Ernesto!
A thousand stone monks, glowering from their hoods. All chanting the tormentor's name. Firelight blazed in the distance, filling the nave, painting the statues blood-red. All around him, the statues spun, pointed, accused, laughed. Carter knelt, covered his head, and shouted wordlessly as the statues chanted around him.
I am Ernesto!
No, I am Ernesto!
I am him!
"Stop it!" Carter howled.
His voice shattered into a thousand echoes. Each fragment of sound fluttered off like a bat. And the nave fell silent.
It's his temple, Carter thought. A temple to Ernesto. He's the Antichrist. He's the devil himself.
"Cart. Cart, are you there?"
A voice from the depths of the cathedral. A female voice. A beautiful voice.
Carter inhaled sharply.
"Cart, help me! Cart, I'm here. He has me again. Cart!"
"Lizzy," he whispered.
His head spun. No. No! It was impossible! Lizzy was back on Earth, recovering. Ernesto had shot her back at the club. She had gone home the next week. She wasn't here!
"Carter, please! He's hurting me. He's burning me. Please."
He could not help it. The cry spilled from his mouth. "Lizzy!"
Carter ran, scattering dust from the engraved tiles. Some tiles were loose. His boots pushed some up like trapdoors, cracked through others. Skeletal hands reached from beneath. Bony fingers grabbed his boots, lacerated his legs. He ignored the pain and kept running, kicking through the sea of skeleton hands.
He ran past two mighty statues—towering sentinels, shaped like dragons with blazing fire in their jaws. And before him he beheld a dizzying array. A grand ceiling soared above, adorned with magnificent frescoes, painted larger than life upon the canopy.
It was his story.
In one painting, Carter was a child in the slums of New York.
In another, he walked the manicured lawns of the palatial Julius Military Academy, a young cadet with squared shoulders and fire in his eyes.
But the artwork became darker. As did his life.
In one enormous painting, Carter was battling ghosts in the jungles. In another, he was killing innocents. In the largest fresco, directly above, Carter was holding Lizzy in his arms.
Lizzy. Painted above him, her beauty displayed across the ceiling. Limp. Her eyes closed. Her left hand was gone in the painting, the stump dripping.
A drop splattered onto Ernesto's boot. Another drop wet his hand, then his hair. Carter wiped the liquid with his fingers, examined it. Blood. It smelled like real blood. The ceiling was bleeding. Lizzy was bleeding.
And there in the fresco…
Carter gasped and aimed his rifle at the ceiling.
It was hard to see in the shadows. But unmistakable. The painting depicted a jungle behind the wounded Lizzy. A figure lurked in the trees like Satan in the Garden of Eden. A figure of shadows. Grinning maliciously. A man with one dark eye, the other blazing white like the rose window. A beam of light shone through that white eye, and Carter realized it was an oculus. A small round hole in the ceiling, peering down at him.
The beam of light fell upon an altar.
Carter froze.
The stone altar dominated the room. Carter climbed the stone stairs toward it. Atop the altar he found a shattered stone sword. The altar was cracked. Perhaps the sword had cleaved it, and both had broken, now lying here together in death.
More blood dripped from the ceiling. Pattering around the sword. The blood seeped between the altar's cracks and trickled down the stone stairs. An organ loomed above the altar, several stories tall, its black pipes rising toward the ceiling like gargantuan serpents of myth.
Carter turned around, sweeping his gaze across the room.
"Lizzy!" he shouted, and his voice echoed. "Lizzy, where are you?"
"I'm here, Carter."
A voice behind him.
Carter spun around.
A figure came walking up the staircase, clad in crimson cardinal robes. The head was lowered, hidden inside a hood. The cardinal held a swinging thurible, spreading aromatic smoke.
"Lizzy?" Carter whispered.
"It's me, Carter. It's me."
But her voice came from everywhere now. It bubbled up from the floor, dripped from the ceiling, flowed around the columns.
The robed figure stepped onto the altar and pulled back its hood.
Carter found himself staring at a sharp face, its angles like shattered stones. Mocking thin lips. A scar along the cheek. One blazing black eye, the other searing white.
Ernesto.
Carter raised his rifle.
Ernesto grabbed the barrel and yanked it aside.
A shot rang out. A bullet slammed into a column.
Ernesto gripped the rifle tightly. His fingers were long, tipped with red claws. Carter refused to release his own hold. He fought, trying to wrestle the gun free, while Ernesto grinned, teeth bared. Sharped teeth. The fangs elongated. Vampire teeth.
"You are the devil," Carter hissed.
Ernesto laughed, yanked the rifle back, then swung it.
The butt slammed into Carter's chin.
He fell.
He crashed down the altar's stairs and landed on his back.
Ernesto swooped. Carter rolled and came up swinging. His fist slammed into Ernesto, but—
He was gone.
Ernesto was gone.
Where—
Claws clutched Carter from behind, digging into him, drawing blood.
Carter screamed, spun around, and saw his enemy. He grabbed Ernesto by the throat.
"You captured her!" Carter shouted, eyes burning.
He squeezed. Squeezed tighter. Crushing the windpipe, and—
The red robes fluttered to the floor, empty.
A shriek sounded above.
Carter looked up to see a figure swooping, wings spread wide, one white eye blazing. An enormous bat, hiding the fresco on the ceiling. A bat with Ernesto's face.
The creature landed on Carter. Claws sank into flesh. Fangs pierced Carter's shoulder.
He howled, ripped the creature off, and shoved it away. Then he lunged right back at it. He barreled into his enemy, slamming the demon against the altar.
"You raped her!" he shouted.
The altar cracked. Blood leaked from the stone. One of the sword's shards clattered to the floor.
Carter lifted the shard.
A piece of a stone sword. But that stone was glimmering obsidian, filled with fire.
"You mutilated her!" he cried, almost blind now.
With all his fury, Carter drove the obsidian into his enemy's chest.
Ernesto screamed.
A hideous scream. Growing louder and louder, higher and higher pitched. A scream like steam fleeing a kettle. Like demons fleeing hell. Smoke rose from his wound. With his claws, Ernesto pulled the shard from his chest, then fell to his knees.
Carter aimed his gun at the beast.
"It's over, Ernesto. You captured her. You raped her. You mutilated her. Now you will die."
Kneeling by the altar, Ernesto threw back his head back and laughed.
His robe unwove, each thread becoming a red serpent. The snakes hissed and fled. His skin melted, revealing a new face.
And suddenly it was not Ernesto kneeling there.
It was an old man. A stranger. An old man with white hair. With black sacks beneath blacker eyes. An old man with discolored fangs. A Saint Peter's cross hung around his neck, blazing with black fire. The snakes returned, weaving a new robe. A finer robe than before. A blood-red robe trimmed with gold, woven with inverted crosses.
"The Red Cardinal," Carter whispered. "Lord of Bahay."
The cardinal moved so fast Carter could barely see it. With fingers like claws, he gripped Carter's gun, yanked it free, and hurled it aside.
Before Carter could react, the old man clutched him. Those bony fi
ngers tightened around Carter's arms. The nails pierced the skin. The old man was so strong. The cardinal licked his lips, then sank his fangs into Carter's neck.
Carter struggled. He tried to shove off the vampire. But the fight had fled him.
It's not Lizzy. Not Ernesto. Just an illusion. A shapeshifter. A trap. My war—for nothing. This quest—in vain.
He fell to his knees before the altar. His strength was seeping away with his lifeblood. He fell onto his back, and the vampire knelt above him, clutching, sucking, drinking and drinking like a glutton.
Everything was fading now, but when Carter looked up at the ceiling, he could see her. Painted larger than life. Lizzy.
And she was no longer mutilated. No longer a bleeding, brutalized woman with one hand.
She was the beautiful woman he would walk with in the garden. Kiss under the elm tree. The woman he wanted to marry someday.
I love you, Lizzy. I tried to avenge you. I failed. I'm sorry.
Across the ceiling, he saw them painted. Dozens of men and women. No—just boys and girls. The fallen soldiers of the Lions Platoon. All those he had led to death. All those who had died for nothing. For his own quest of meaningless vengeance.
And he saw the multitudes. The hundred thousand Earthlings dead in this war. The millions of dead Bahayans. And in the distance, so faded—a greater, more brutal war, looming like storm clouds, inching ever closer.
"I'm sorry," Carter whispered. "For what we did. For why we fought. I'm sorry, my soldiers. I'm sorry, Earth."
The Red Cardinal kept drinking. Carter's head rolled back, and the world faded to black.
Chapter Twenty-One
A Rising Light
Jon ran through Basilica City, lost in the labyrinth, seeking his captain.
"Jon, slow down!" George called somewhere far behind, wheezing.
But Jon would not slow down. He had to find Carter. To save him. A madness had seized the captain, driving him blindly onward. Jon had heard of such things. Battle madness. Blood madness. Brought on by combat trauma. It often ended with soldiers running into enemy fire, dying in glory and insanity.
You saved my life, Captain Carter, Jon thought. Now I must save yours.
The labyrinth coiled, branching this way and that, but Carter was still bleeding from his bullet wound. Red drops splattered the basalt cobblestones. Jon followed the gruesome trail.
Earthlings (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 2) Page 16