Hunger grumbled in the pit of his stomach that intruded on his thoughts of Alex. Then the burning in his veins grew hotter still, washing away the famine with an inferno of pain, and he screamed in anger…
Wet mud fought against his lungs, muffling his roar, but his vigor and determination fought back harder, pushing his voice from his chest, exploding hundreds of pounds of soil from the cemetery grounds with a wail so powerful it left a crater in its wake…
Mud fell like rain all around him.
Afterward, unearthed and undead, Marty stood sternly in the middle of an empty grave – fists clenched, eyes black – huffing in a dominant display of will. He grimaced from the smoldering pain polluting his blood and stood braced against the torment as his mind was torn in two different directions…
A beautiful creature with a powerful voice beckoned him…and she reminded him so much of his mother… But the delicate face of his sister stood in the opposite light, slowly turning away, her face increasingly harder to see…
Hunger…
He leapt from the grave and landed on both feet with what sounded like the weight of the world on his shoulders.
In the distance: a citadel of flame – its structure illuminating against the rubescent clouds in the sky – and the beautiful demon voice calling to him reigned strong in his mind, pulling him toward the church… But in his heart…his sister pleaded…
“Marty……please……”
He ripped his eyes away from the burning chapel in hopes to quiet Imala’s tempting influence. He tried to think of his sister, picturing her in his thoughts, but her face kept turning further from his mind…
He growled and yelled in frustration, clenching his jaw with his head down and muddied strands of hair loose over his scowl.
The breath from his frustrated protest blew the soil from his feet, revealing a radiance hidden from him before. The glistening caught his attention, reflecting as a green shimmer in the blackness of his eyes, and just as he thought to reach for it, the temptress’s voice grew even more deafening in his mind…
His sister’s smiling face from when they were children rushed into his thoughts when he remembered it was his mother’s charm resting just below, and he was treated to a touch of warmth that only her love could fire.
Hunger pains pierced his stomach and he double over, clutching at his waist and hugging his gut…
“Marty……please…”
He reached out for the charm, hardly able to move against the rising pain. Every inch closer he came, the greater the anguish he had to struggle through to progress. It would be so easy, he thought…to just let go…
Just…let…it…GO!!
“I can be your mother now, Marty. I need you here. With me. …I am your true family.”
Her voice was powerful and beautiful, her eyes infinitely black and skin the color of blood…
“MARTY!!!”
Alex screamed his name in his mind and he raged against the pain to reach the amulet just inches from his hands. He clinched it, grabbing it with a handful of dirt as it ignited into green flame in his grasp… And he fell to his knees after expelling all the fight he had left in him just to reach it.
The green fire burrowed into his bones and scorched through his body, glowing under his skin, washing over his entire being before bursting from his eyes and mouth. It stifled the hunger inside him with certainty and strength, and when it was over, he finally felt like he was able to breathe.
He took in a deep breath, letting his chest inflate in full, then exhaled a soothing, controlled calm. The hunger in him rescinded. The need for chaos and vengeance took a back seat to control and reason. For now, his head was finally clear.
He gazed down at the charm in his closed palm and gently opened his hand to release the low-level glow that radiated from the emerald stone. The chain had snapped from around his neck during his tussle with Le’Duprie, but when he examined it, it began to mend itself before his eyes. Its reconstitution brought the slightest hint of a smile to the corner of his dry lips, and he proudly lifted it over his head to drape it in front of his heart. He tucked it behind his torn shirt and it continued to shine through the tattered material with the remnants of its strength still glowing green in his eyes—
“Well…whadda we have here?” Two dead-men approached where Marty stood, dressed in muddied-up versions of early 20th century, U.S. military attire, and attached to two short leashes in their palms were an equal number of salivating war dogs that’d been buried and consequently resurrected alongside their handlers. “Looks like we got ourselves a gen-u-ine, renegade enjun, Ensign!” The bearded lieutenant addressed the smaller officer while both dogs snarled anxiously at the ends of their ropes. “I reckon this big feller don’t quite understand the rules of the game.”
Both dogs snapped their jaws and tugged against their handlers’ hold, dragging the smaller ensign forward on the wet, cemetery grass.
“He looks like one of us…” The lieutenant sniffed the night air with a snicker. “…But he don’t damn well smell like one of us, do he, Ensign.”
The dead-men’s eyes were red with freshly eaten meat, their muddied uniforms splashed with gore. The dogs – one all white German Shepherd, one purebred, black Rottweiler – both drooled blood, human flesh still clinging to their claws. The Shepherd licked its lips and the Rottweiler barked with a ravenous bite.
Marty wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but fear wasn’t in any way a part of his confusion. He looked up at the four threatening creatures through thick strands of hair, grumbling predatorily.
He took a moment to piece together what he knew so far: that Le’Duprie was somehow alive, that J.C. had killed him by ripping out his insides and leaving him to die in a muddy, vacant grave, and that now he was also somehow alive… But if he looked anything like the two men in front of him, maybe “alive” wasn’t the right adjective…
He looked down at his stomach where his shirt had been ripped open, but his flesh appeared stitched together and whole. His torso was mortared over with scar tissue, but whole nonetheless. There were questions that needed answering and he seemingly had two candidates for interrogation situated right in front of him. He decided to try speaking, although he wasn’t exactly sure of what would come out. He felt controlled, but on the verge of explosive, like at any moment he could be as volatile as the two, growling canine’s viciously staring him down.
“…What……” The power in his voice gave him pause. “…am…I…?”
His voice was so strong the two dead-men’s expressions tempered when hearing it. A flicker of green ignited in his eyes and it was obvious there was more to this corpse than the rest of the undead soldiers rallying around the cemetery’s borders.
Both the lieutenant and ensign gave each other a quick glance, then leaned forward and simultaneously unclipped the leashes from the collars of their war dogs.
“Yer dog-meat, boy! Ghost! Blackout!” He declared the dogs’ names with an evil sneer. “…Feed.”
The two beasts snapped into action, one at Marty’s right, the other his left. Their barks were demonic. Their fangs unsheathed from behind their lips. Somewhere, in some rundown shithole in the pits of hell, an unsympathetic statistician’s odds weren’t weighing heavily in Marty’s favor…
The Rottweiler named Blackout made the first move. It dug its claws into the dirt and lunged forward, stretching out in midair with the strength of ten of its kind. It closed the distance between them within a fraction of a second – teeth gnashing – only giving Marty enough time to react instinctively. He cocked back and threw his fist the instant the mutt telegraphed its jump, and the two opposing forces collided at the pinnacle of their attacks.
Marty’s massive fist impacted with the dog’s snout, exploding its skull into chunks of darkened meat and broken teeth, crushing its entire neck and spine, its whole torso frac
tured by the power of a single blow. It fell out of the air and crumbled to the cemetery ground – a ragged carcass deteriorating at his feet.
Before he could be astounded by the quick work he made of the Rottweiler, Ghost had taken an alternate approach, viciously clamping onto his Achilles Heel. The rabid Shepherd ripped out the tendons connected to the back of his foot, disrupting his balance. He buckled to one knee and threw up his hands, knowing the back of his neck was now vulnerable – or it would be for at least a split second. Long enough, he thought, for the squirrelly little bastard to sink his fangs in deep.
He braced himself for the bite, clenching his fingers together behind his neck, but instead, was surprised to hear the demon-dog squealing in pain. It was strange, he thought, that the dead creature would feel anything since he didn’t seem to be plagued by nerve endings. So, when he turned to investigate, he was even more surprised to witness the tongue and teeth of the Shepherd melting from its whining maw…
Marty’s blood burned through its dead flesh, singeing green as it spread further into its lips and snout. The Shepherd tucked its head, rubbing its injured face into the cemetery grass to rid itself of the caustic flux. But its efforts were in vain, and its existence not far from spent as its skin continued to burn without relent, melting from its skull, boiling its poppy eyes in their sockets and sending the beast quivering to its second death.
The two officers looked on with a confused squint shaping their foreheads when Marty began to stand. As he rose, a green mist serenaded the edges of his wound and healed it just as fast as it had torn through the pelt of the simmering German Shepherd.
The two soldiers firmly stood their ground, not at all plagued by fear themselves, but instead genuinely curious, and the lieutenant couldn’t help but ask:
“What’n the hell are you?”
He didn’t really expect an answer; he just felt the need to verbally vocalize his disarray. Until now, every creature that crawled from these graves was under one rule… But that didn’t appear to be the case with this man.
Marty took several powerful strides toward the lieutenant and grabbed him by the breast of his uniform with one fist and cocked back with the other. He didn’t know how to answer the querying carcass, but settled on the only response he felt positive of enough to give. He tightened his fist and addressed the soon-to-be headless corpse with undisputed certainty.
“The highest scoring centerman in the MWG Hockey League.”
With his response set in stone, he punched through the dead lieutenant’s face like his bones were made of Styrofoam, its consistency generously splattering the ensign’s coat.
Marty dropped the undead sack-of-crap to the ground and it disintegrated back into the bloodied, cemetery soil it previously spawned from. The ensign didn’t even flinch, standing tall with a mischievous smile on his face when Marty decided on throwing him a line as well.
“I also lead the team in penalty minutes.”
His banter had always been a measure of control for him. It would help him stay calm and battle his demons in times of intense emotion if he’d crack a joke or two. But he was a little thrown by the smile on the ensign’s face, since his joke wasn’t meant for him.
“What the fuck’re you smiling about, asshole?”
Marty grabbed the rotted, walking corpse by his uniform as he did his Commanding Officer, towering nearly a foot over him with his eyes glowing jade, loosely braided hair curtaining his stare.
The raspy little sailor finally decided to speak, and his chosen words left Marty’s insides unsettled.
“Now I know why she wants you.” He chuckled softly in the face of his demise, but his executioner wasn’t ready to off him just yet.
“Who?” he boomed with a growl. “What the fuck are you talking about? Who wants me?”
The ensign’s continued chuckled elevated the level of Nuts his blood-caked lips and yellow teeth already exemplified. He lifted his hand deliberately, pointing toward the Spirit Fortress in the distance – the origin of the mysterious voice in Marty’s head that nearly cost him his sanity when waking into this…un-life…
“What is that?” He shook the ensign in his grips as if rattling him around might coax a more truthful brand of answer from him. “What’s waiting for me there?”
The ensign’s smile tarnished his tone. “Hellllll…” he answered, drawing out the word in a whisper as if it strangled him to say it. “She calls to us… Can’t you hear her?”
For an instant, Marty humored the notion, but finally decided against paying this villain any mind. “No,” he responded. “I can’t hear shit over the sound of yur fucking skull exploding.”
He plowed his knuckles through the center of the ensign’s twisted grin without bothering to moderate the blow. It proved stronger than either of the two he delivered before, exploding the cretin’s head into nothing but cherry mist, and the power behind it almost worried the towering Priest. He felt as if he’d lost himself a little with its delivery…
And it felt…
…invigorating…
The body turned to mud in his hands, as the one before it did, and Marty watched the black blood-laced soil fall through his fingers. He would have spit on the leftover mound of shit at his feet if he could, but his mouth was dry and stale. A coveting began to build in his pallet and his gut still seemed troubled by a faint hunger…
He glanced over his shoulder at the only other object with any color around: the yellow, orange, and red, ghost-fortress that surrounded the church an eighth of a mile away, and the charm around his neck burned in his chest. It didn’t cause him any pain. It was just enough of a nudge for a moment of clarity. He had the urge to investigate the structure in the distance, but thought better of his curiosity.
His sister was his first priority. Once he found Alex and made sure she wasn’t caught up in any of this madness, then he could do some digging and maybe kick some ass and break some shit to get some answers. Whoever created this mess was going to have hell to pay if she wasn’t okay. Marty was prepared to face down the devil himself if it meant protecting his kin.
Unbeknownst to him, there was a devil eagerly awaiting his arrival, regardless of in what condition he’d eventually discover his sibling.
Prey
The scent of her prey wasn’t as much a sensory perception as it was an empathic imprint. The taste of her soul was teasing on the demon’s tongue, and the aroma of her fear could be experienced from as far as a whole state away. Alex couldn’t flee quick enough to shake the beast from her path even if she knew she was being followed. The fact that she had no clue of her immediate danger made the chances of her reaching her destination and making it back home again a very slim probability. But the demon didn’t deal in probabilities, likelihoods, or eventualities. She was relentless, cunning, and unwavering in her pursuit. She didn’t sleep or have need for rest or nourishment. She wasn’t discouraged by weather or lengthy distances. She could slip in and out of the shadows of one void to the next like the darkness itself, and rematerialize wherever she could visually perceive herself to be. She was a breath of death on the frigid wind and a pair of amber eyes in the dark. She was the taste of blood in your mouth as you lay dying, and the smell of burnt flesh in your nose as your skin starts to cook in Hell. She was what you fear most, trailing right behind you, just out of sight but never out of reach. If you knew of her existence, you would never know peace. Her name was Tessura…and she was coming for you.
Dead Beat Friends
The Coach of the Los Angeles Priests would never sit during a game. He’d stand throughout the warmups, stand during play, and pace back and forth all through the intermissions regardless of his team’s performance. He’d post behind his men on the bench with his arms crossed over his chest and the clock ticking down, never irresolute or dithering from his stance. He’d saunter to and fro in the locker room between the b
ig blue hamper with the pile of sweaty towels and the entrance in the front corner of the room. After games, he’d smack all his players on the back with a firm and heavy hand whether they’d win or lose, and he’d always leave them with a coach to look up to at the outcome of every competition.
Today…the Coach was sitting down.
He had his head planted in his palms and his elbows on his knees, counting the little dimples in the cement between his shoes. His team had lost the day’s contest to the Anaheim Hell Hounds 8-0. A brutal and humbling defeat. Foreboding and droll. He would have guessed it’d be a cold day in Hell before his team would ever have suffered such a loss…
The Priests sluggishly removed their equipment, the decibels in the locker room at an all-time low. Mac (an abbreviation stemming from his sir name, Harold Mackenzie) stood nearest his coach where he’d slumped at the end of the bench by the towels. He removed his helmet to uncover his orange hair and wiped sweat from his brow. After deliberating the future of his career, he decided to tackle the deafening silence that hung in the air like a pungent musk, although his voice failed to confidently support such a gallant advance…
“Uhh…Coach? …D’you think—?”
“Shut!” The Coach cut him off with only half a response, his head heavy in his hands.
Mac looked to his good friend Donny who occupied the locker next to his. He offered an expression that asked, “What do I say?”, and Donny shot him an answer in a glance that warned, “Don’t say anything if you know what’s good for you”. But Mac refused to leave well enough unmolested, so he primed his bravado for another crack at finishing what he’d started.
“Coach…should we take—?”
“SHUT!!” This time, his half an answer said a whole mouthful in its tone, and he slightly lifted his face from his palms to emphasize the severity of his mood. “…The fuck!” While he was being communicative, he figured he’d add a few more syllables to his retort, clarifying any misunderstanding there may’ve been the first time. But in between words, he picked up a puzzling sound under the silence of his players that resonated from behind the wall separating their team from the Hounds. He raised his head a few inches more, cocked to the side. “Did any of you just hear that?”
Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell Page 16
