Occult Assassin: The Complete Series (Books 1-6)

by William Massa

  She shook off the memories and instructed her brain to focus on the problem at hand. Her peripheral vision revealed a figure striding past her. Dressed in brilliant white but clearly just a man. The Lightwalker. He was inexorably closing in on Talon and Casca, who were huddled close to each other in the protective circle, rifles ready. Ghosts were rippling toward them, but an invisible wall of some kind was deflecting their attacks. Adira was still trying to make sense of it all when the Lightwalker bent down and scooped up the machine pistol Talon had dropped earlier.

  It all came together in her mind. The entities were unable to reach the men, but bullets would.

  She had to stop the Lightwalker.

  And that meant she needed a weapon.

  As soon as the thought slashed through her mind, her eyes fell on the knife of one of the dead cultists.

  Tapping into her last reserve of strength, she crawled toward the downed hoodie. The Lightwalker was talking, but she mentally blocked out his words. Fueled by sheer willpower, she reached the corpse and her fingers tightened around the sickle.

  I can do this. Have to do this!

  She gritted her teeth and willed herself to her feet, muscles screaming in protest in an excruciating effort. One weak step at a time, she closed in on the psychic whose back remained turned toward her.

  He must’ve sensed her approach at the last moment. He turned, but by then it was too late. Before he could shoot Talon and Casca, before he could even cry out, Adira brought the sickle down on the Lightwalker. The white fabric of his hoodie turned crimson. A beat later, the cold metal of the machine pistol dug into her face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A shocked Talon stared at Casca through the view-screen of his necro-helmet. The system’s red tint gave the billionaire a demonic quality, an impression further enhanced by the guttural words of the incantation. Talon couldn’t believe it. The man he’d come to trust was using the same occult forces they were supposed to protect the world from.

  The insight made him lose his focus for a second, and one of the ghosts broke through their defense. The entity went straight for Adira. The wail of the damned drowned out her screams as the corpse-like spirit hurled her out of the protective circle.

  Talon’s gut clenched and his lips tightened into a hard line as the ghost buried itself inside Adira’s body.

  He blasted the entity, knowing full well it was a futile effort. The darkness had found another victim. There’d been so many, but he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on it. Not now. Not here.

  The other spirits hovered above them, ever-shifting, endlessly breaking down and reforming as they slithered through the air. More specters attacked but bounced back before they could make contact. The ring Casca had drawn on the ground had conjured some invisible force that was stopping their advance. What sort of magic was the billionaire tapping into?

  The answer would have to wait. The Lightwalker was approaching the circle, sporting the machine pistol Talon had dropped earlier. His eyes glittered with deadly intent as he spoke. He was about to squeeze the trigger when Adira came into view behind him, sickle in hand.

  A feeling of relief washed over Talon

  She is alive.

  The curved knife in her hand slashed out at the psychic. Talon saw his opportunity to make a move. Ecto-rifle blazing, he stepped out of the circle and surged for the Lightwalker. The psychic was about a second away from pumping a round into Adira when Talon attacked. His first punch aimed for the psychic’s wound.

  The Lightwalker let out a piercing wail as Talon’s fist found the bleeding knife wound. The psychic stumbled backward while he stitched his surroundings with lead. Bullets chopped mortar and punched through the dead cultists. Both Talon and Adira hit the ground, bullets sizzling overhead.

  As soon as the barrage ceased, Talon followed Adira’s earlier example and snatched a sickle from one of the dead cultists. Armed, he launched back to his feet and faced the Lightwalker. The psychic tossed away the empty machine pistol, lips twisting into a snarl as his sickle shot out at Talon, cutting the air inches away from his face. The next blow Talon parried with his own sickle, steel kissing steel. He lunged forward, knife out, pushing the psychic back. Suddenly a dark silhouette shot out of the cement floor, blocking the psychic from harm.

  The Reaper had joined the fight.

  The thrust meant for the Lightwalker cut through the entity’s translucent, unstable form. The Reaper lunged at him, and the resulting electrical discharge between ghost and necro-armor catapulted Talon a few feet back. Shaken, he barely maintained his balance and went into a combat stance. He tried to sight down the Reaper with his ecto-rifle, but the Lightwalker’s sickle whistled toward him from another angle. Servant and Master, the living and the dead attacking at the same time from separate directions, both joining forces in a combined effort to destroy their new enemy.

  The knife in Talon’s right hand blocked the Lightwalker’s sickle while his other hand blasted the Reaper backward with repeated shots from his ecto-rifle. Howls of agony filled his helmet as the magnetic waves drove the Reaper back and vaporized the living shadow.

  No time to celebrate as the Lightwalker lashed out at him once again. Already dark contours grew visible nearby as the Reaper reconstituted itself. This entity was unstoppable!

  Tendrils of energy engulfed his armor. But this time the suit failed to protect Talon. The Reaper held on with all its might, the ever-shifting form refusing to let go. The dead mass murderer’s horrific visage loomed mere inches before Talon, a withered, flayed bonemask that recalled the skeletal visions he’d had back in Mexico City.

  Talon felt the suit succumbing to the entity’s sustained efforts. Cracks appeared, and then pieces of armor began breaking off. A keening shriek filled his helmet, the rage of the Reaper given full expression. Talon’s armor ripped and the chest plate hit the ground in an explosive spray of metal and circuitry. Other spirits, emboldened by the Reaper’s success, pulled on Talon’s arms and legs. They clung to the armor despite the waves of agony it must have triggered in their vibrating spectral forms. More armored plating snapped off and clattered to the ground, the skintight bodysuit shredding.

  Spent, Talon joined his shattered necro-suit on the stone floor. Fully exposed now. Vulnerable. The remaining armor hung from his battered frame in tatters. The next attack would penetrate flesh.

  The band of spirits tightened around him. Talon braced himself for the inevitable.

  But then the specters froze. Almost as if some invisible force had snapped them back in mid-attack. The hands of the nearest ghost were still reaching for his exposed chest. The Reaper and his spectral forces hung in the air as if in suspended animation.

  There was only one possible explanation.

  Casca.

  Talon whirled toward the billionaire. His benefactor’s left arm was drenched in blood, a red sickle in his other hand. His features remained invisible under the helmet, but Talon knew he still had to be mouthing the guttural words of some ancient incantation.

  The protective circle had only been the first step. An effort designed to buy Casca enough time to complete the real ritual—one that required an offering of blood.

  And it wasn’t over yet.

  The specters began to rush toward the stunned Lightwalker. One by one, the entities slammed into him like sizzling bolts of lightning. A scream erupted from the psychic’s mouth and echoed across the plaza.

  Talon fought back revulsion as he saw the stark outlines of the cultists’ faces beneath the Lightwalker’s flesh, struggling to break free of their new prison. Somehow Casca had forced the spirits back on the psychic. Their efforts distended the blood-smeared white hoodie, their inhuman features stretching the Lightwalker’s skin and distending bone. Dominating the screaming faces of the dead was the Reaper. His mouth scowled with unbridled fury.

  Talon recalled Adira’s earlier words: If the Reaper’s spirit took possession of a living person, and if that person were killed, both
souls would phase over into the afterlife.

  He knew what had to be done and strode up to the writhing psychic with quick steps. The Lightwalker’s features looked wizened, his spent life force having aged him prematurely.

  Without hesitation, Talon grabbed the psychic’s neck and wrenched it with all his strength. Bone cracked, and the Lightwalker’s lifeless body slumped forward. The parade of ever-shifting faces stopped before he reached the ground.

  Talon breathed deeply. It was over. His eyes found Adira and Casca, now the only signs of life in a place of death. In their futuristic necro-helmets they looked like triumphant robotic warriors towering over some post-apocalyptic battlefield.

  Talon turned back to the broken psychic at his feet.

  Did the dead truly walk into the light? No one alive knew the answer. All he could hope was that the Reaper and his disciples dwelled in darkness, wherever they might be.

  Chapter Twenty

  Adira had made a promise and she intended to keep it. She was back at the crash site in the Santa Ana mountains.

  This time around she wasn’t afraid.

  The air stirred and rippled and the apparition flitted across her helmet’s visor.

  “I know you’re scared,” she said. “Alone. Confused. But I can help you.”

  The figure peeled from the shadows of the surrounding trees. A hint of alabaster features, haunted eyes.

  She had gone over the crashed plane’s passenger list and looked at over a hundred faces. The heart-wrenching experience had driven home the full extent of the tragedy. Based on the photographs, she’d quickly established the identity of the spirit in the clearing. Maybe her psychic abilities had grown since the spectral attack back at the mall, or maybe they’d always been there, laying dormant, merely waiting to be awoken. But when she stared at the photograph of Harry Wells, a thirty-five year old investment banker, she’d felt a spark. This was the man she’d seen in the barren foothills. There was a seriousness of purpose to the face in the picture. He was the type of pragmatic man who believed only in that which he could see, hear and touch. The type of man who might not accept survival after death.

  Even though the features of the apparition remained blurred, she recognized the man from the photograph.

  “Harry, do you want to talk?”

  “Where am I? Who are you?”

  “My name is Adira. I’m hoping to help you. And to answer your question, you’re in the Santa Ana Mountains.” The words hung there.

  “I’m on my way to Las Vegas”

  “Not anymore.” She extended a hand toward the entity. “You never arrived at your destination.”

  The entity closed in. Adira remained strong and held her ground. She was determined to see this through, to help Harry move on to the next world.

  “I was on a plane,” he said slowly. “I was looking at the mountains. And then I heard shrieks, someone was yelling…”

  There was a sob, elongated and eerie, a pitiful sound not produced by human vocal chords. ”The woman next to me…she held my hand…”

  “They’re waiting for you, Harry. Waiting for you to join them,” Adira said kindly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Death is only the beginning.”

  The Lightwalker’s ominous message now held seeds of hope, a promise of a greater destiny that lay ahead beyond the boundaries of human existence.

  Detail and color returned to the ghost’s features, and the figure straightened. For a second he looked alive again. And then the presence was gone. Harry had finally joined the others.

  Tears streamed down Adira’s face, but this time they were tears of joy.

  Two days had passed since the climatic battle with the Reaper. Talon had demanded a sit-down with Casca—they needed to talk. The billionaire’s use of the occult ritual had been eating away at him, and he needed to air his feelings if this partnership was to have a future.

  Casca picked a seafood restaurant near his Silicon Valley corporate headquarters. To Talon’s surprise, Casca was the one to cut right to the chase before they even ordered. “I know what’s on your mind, Sergeant.”

  “We fight the occult, Casca. How can I trust a man who is tapping into the very forces we’re trying to defeat?”

  “I understand how you feel, but please hear me out. If we’re to win this war, we’ll need to both understand our enemy—and adapt some of his tactics.”

  “And what happens when the line begins to blur? When there’s no difference between us and them?”

  “The pentacle around your neck, the demon slayer blade—these are magical relics, Talon, that tap into the light. Magical weapons. The ritual I used was an extension of that.”

  Talon shook his head. “I’ve studied enough of your books to know it was a blood sacrifice.”

  “That’s true,” Casca conceded.

  “I’m worried. I’ve seen the books and occult items at your house. If you were to become corrupted by one of these rituals or the items in your possession…”

  “I’m treading lightly, I promise. But if something were to happen, I know of one man out there who would be able to stop me.”

  Talon tightened his lips. “I hope it never comes to that.”

  Casca pulled out a small metal case and handed it to Talon.

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s call it an early Christmas present.

  Talon opened the case and immediately recognized the item inside. It was the demon slayer blade that he’d lost during the fight with Zagan at Omicron.

  “As promised, I made some calls. Detective Serrone was nice enough to get this out of evidence for me, no questions asked.”

  “How is she?”

  “Moving on with her life. Like we all should.”

  Talon mulled this over but said nothing. After a moment, Casca held out his hand. “Peace for now?”

  Talon looked deep into the billionaire’s eye and saw that the man’s intentions were pure. He took the hand in his own and shook on it. “Peace.”

  Even though their talk had reassured him somewhat of Casca’s intentions, a famous quote from Nietzsche popped into his head: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself don’t become a monster…” It would serve them well not to forget the philosopher’s insight into human nature. They were both at risk in their own way. War could erode one’s humanity.

  Casca broke him out of his thoughts. “Have you ever been to Italy?”

  “Why do I get the feeling I’m about to?”

  “It would be that chance to trace the Talone family tree.”

  “If you put it like that…”

  “But first, let’s eat. I hear both the lobster and Brodetto are amazing here.”

  Talon focused on the menu and pushed his concerns aside. As soon as the waiter took their order, he became thoughtful once more. His experiences in Ohio had taught him a vital life lesson: Death wasn’t the end. Somewhere out there, a part of Michelle went on. She might be waiting for the day when they’d be reunited again.

  For now, he’d continue to battle the darkness—but when his time finally did come, he wouldn’t be afraid of the light.

  THE END

  4.5: The Coffin Collector

  A Bonus Short Story

  The Mission

  AN OCCULT ASSASSIN SHORT STORY

  The Story So Far

  After a decade spent fighting the enemy abroad and keeping his country safe, Delta Force Operator Mark Talon is ready to settle down with the love of his life. But Talon’s world crumbles when his fiancée becomes the victim of a murderous cult.

  In the wake of his terrible loss, Talon dedicates himself to a new mission – hunting down twisted occultists around the globe and stopping them before they can unleash the forces of darkness upon an unsuspecting world...

  In Coffin Collector, his quest for vengeance will take him to Florence, Italy…

  Chapter 1

  DARKNESS GREETED TRAVIS Willyard upon waking. Instead of look
ing up from a soft bed at the wood ceiling beams of his studio apartment, he found himself confined in a black and soundless space. He tried to move left and right, only to realize he was boxed in. Frantically, he tried to sit up, but banged his head against a wooden surface. His pulse quickened, and he fought back the first signs of claustrophobia.

  Where am I?

  He shifted about and explored his extremely tight quarters by touch. He was…encased in something. He pressed against the rough wooden ceiling of his new prison, his labored breaths amplified in the tight space. Soon words tumbled from his lips, nearly unintelligible in his parched throat, building into terrified screams.

  “Hello! Let me out of here! Somebody help me!”

  There was no response.

  Oh my God, what’s happening? How did I get here?

  Travis searched his memory. Through the haze of last night’s binge drinking and the terrible hangover splitting his head, he vaguely remembered spending the evening at Rivalta, one of the poshest bars in town. He was four weeks into his summer semester at the Florence University of the Arts and was having the time of his life. As an art student, he cherished this beautiful European city and all its historical relics and artistic masterpieces. Engaging classes during the day gave way to a different kind of stimulation when the sun went down and the local beauties hit the discotheques and bars. Travis appreciated art in all its forms, particularly the female form, and he had been meeting his share of lovely and willing locals. He wanted this to be a summer to remember, a final hurrah before returning to New York, where graduation and the responsibilities of adulthood would be waiting for him.

  He was madly in love with the city. And the city had returned his passion in kind.