The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE

by David Moody

  How his stump wasn’t incapacitating him with full-body pain he couldn’t explain. The medicines and spells Timtar brought to bear on him must’ve been real potent, and real powerful. Other than the consistent background sensation that his leg was still there, he was perfectly comfortable. He didn’t even remember the moment Oldros’ shot had sheared it off.

  He’d remember what was about to come though, the boy from Earth’s moon knew that.

  He suddenly realized Kalandar was staring at him.

  “You’re a halfbreed like your sister, Sam, aren’t you?” the towering monster wearing gleaming armor asked.

  “I don’t know what halfbreed really means,” Derrick said.

  “The child of a god and something else. Your powers aren’t awakened. While it may be dangerous to awaken them on short notice before a battle, a wildcard only I can play is better than no wildcard at all.” The demon leaned forward and, after shifting his sword to the other hand, extended a single finger which terminated in a long and razor sharp black nail.

  Derrick couldn’t move as the talon’s tip pierced his forehead.

  Whatever meds and magic Timtar had given Derrick for his leg did fuck all to stop the shattering, spine-shaking pain that one large claw did to the skin above his brow.

  Derrick had been electrocuted once, back on the moon. He was young; six, maybe seven, and he was playing around with a fork near an electrical outlet. Seemed like a sensible experiment at the time. He came to a few seconds later, his sister Sam hovering over him, panicked and screaming.

  Sam wasn’t here this time, but when Derrick came to, there was definitely yelling, and a whole lot of chaos.

  Arridon watched as something alien stormed around the corner of a building just a hundred yards distant. It wasn’t Sebastian—at least, not the same Sebastian he remembered from House Frost in the Endless City—but it was still the same entity. A sick, wretched familiarity was there, and when the creature spouted off another tremulous scream of his sister’s name, there was no way the multi-legged monstrosity wasn’t the same person who’d transformed at the sea’s edge then tracked them down to the top of the clocktower.

  Something inside Arridon broke at that moment. Thistle always said he had a short fuse, and she wasn’t wrong; Arridon was quick to throw hands when he felt slighted, or if he or his family was threatened, but this was something entirely different. This was rage. This was fury. This monster—this bastard—had lusted after his sister in life, and now, in whatever monstrous form he was in after his death, he still came for her.

  And it was his job to protect his family.

  And his friends.

  He summoned the power inside him.

  His jaw shook, his hands curled and clenched and he felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end as the heat within his body soared. His vision narrowed, always with the charging, tentacle-covered man-spider at its center. The buildings on the dark world disappeared, then the sky and ground, leaving only the reddened, maddened, apocalyptic hatred of Sebastian’s twisted eyes.

  As Kalandar growled out a battle challenge and raised his sword, and as Timtar scattered to flank the approaching abomination with pistol made of flowers, Arridon tried desperately to hold on to the reality-splitting power he knew he was about to lose control over.

  “A thousand curses from the depths of the Stygian Realms upon you! Your foul ichor consumes no one and nothing on this darkened day! Face me, your better, the Champion of Ardinia. I am Kalandar, breaker of dimensions, destroyer of worlds, soul-eater of ghouls, the right-hand demon to the possessor, first of my kind to go forth into the wilds and return. I am the bringer of chaos into order, the slaughterer of Bazzaros, and second kin to Denderia, (she of the famed raid on the heavens). Fabled defender of the Red Witch; my exploits so legendary as to span multiple tomes. I have borne witness to the descent and will be there for the ascent. My might so feared, my—“

  Sebastian had crossed the impossibly far distance during Kalandar’s arrogant monologue, and the demon—for all his accolades—was hit with a tremendous smashing blow by the champion of the Bleed.

  The crash of a thousand pounds of muscle, shell, tentacle and fang into the demon-enchanted steel Kalandar wore reverberated through the streets, ringing the ears of the mortals present. Spikes of bone and chitin dented the ancient armor as if it were pot-metal as Kalandar was thrown onto his back, Sebastian atop him. The messiah of all-world’s end reared up on his forest of bent legs and began slashing and smashing down with his crab-claws and arms.

  The demon parried, blocked, and punched up with fervent power, somehow retaining his wherewithal during the furious, terrifying assault. His gauntlets turned away the majority of the bludgeoning, but he had but two arms; Sebastian had arms upon arms, and legs that worked of their own accord, slashing, stabbing, pinching, cutting, and murdering without any sense of restraint or sanity.

  Ten yards distant, Timtar aimed his dainty pistol and let free its power. A burst of fine, glittering dust erupted from the flower at the weapon’s tip, a yard long. Like a laser beam made of some kind of pollen or metallic sand hit Sebastian just below one of his several armpits, splashing onto his shell and hide like spilled paint. The unassuming half demon fired several more blasts with remarkable calm, hitting the monster atop his father center mass, covering one whole side of it with a polychromatic skin of alien substance. Within moments, the colors ran together, shimmering and bright, illuminating the world in the dead city with a light it hadn’t seen in millennia. The juxtaposition of color and wonder in a situation of such violence and darkness jarred.

  Sebastian slowed his assault as his claws and tentacles, one by one, peeled off to itch and scratch at the luminous substance that irritated him. His irritation became pain then turned into panicked fury. He leapt off of Kalandar like a fleeing tick, crossing the entire street, landing on the side of the building opposite, ten feet above the ground. He had landed above Timtar. The half demon scrambled, running away from the enormous creature of the Bleed that could drop down on him. He slipped, sputtered and sprinted, trying to get back to where his father was getting up, and where Arridon stood statue-still, shaking with fits of obvious growing power within.

  Enormous cerulean beams of crashing light thundered down into the street a hundred yards away, exploding the synthetic road surface in a circular shape, and tossing rock, plastic and refuse into the sky. The shockwave of the blast hurled the idle dust and dirt into the air, weaponizing it. Timtar caught the gust straight into his eyes, and the grit blinded him. He cried out and put his empty hand to his face to try and clear the debris out. The sky shook.

  “Rainbows and flowers?” Sebastian cursed as his tentacles wiped away the offending substance and flung it off. As he said, the colorful coating had begun to grow flowers. Where the paint landed, the flowers kept growing. Life takes root.

  “Your tenacity is applaudable, as are your many sharp limbs,” Kalandar praised. “But you are neither strong enough nor skilled enough. Here is where you die, champion of entropy.” The demon lowered his enormous blade in a two-handed hold, aiming the point at Sebastian. “Incendicare!” he grunted, and a terrible gout of flame materialized at the terminus of his sword.

  The stream of liquid fire arced over the entire avenue and crashed into Sebastian, flattening him against the side of the building he clung to. The force of the strike, coupled with the resulting flames on his body knocked the Bleed’s monster from the side of the alien structure. He fell to the ground, writhing, screaming, limbs askew and wild. The sounds of pain tilted then, shifting to the unmistakable sound of laughter.

  “Fire and flame now?” Sebastian said through his manic, hideous chuckles. “Your choice of weapons to stop the Bleed are a joke. Don’t you understand, orphans? Don’t you think with minds that work? I will get what I want, and the Bleed will suck your husks dry. Now, GIVE ME THISTLE!”

  Still on fire, Sebastian leapt back across the street with insectoid strength. A
soaring ball of flame, wiry, ropey limbs, and claws, he landed in the arc of Kalandar’s blade without a care, and went to backhand the still standing body of Arridon. He would strike before Kalandar could cut him in half.

  “No,” Derrick said from his place on the ground just a few yards away.

  Gravity ignored Sebastian for a moment with catastrophic consequences for the burning monster. He floated into the air—yanked upward, it seemed—at the simple will of Derrick and his newfound power. As he drifted skyward, Kalandar, too, was caught in the zone of cancelled gravity, and the monster from the depths of the Hells drifted upward, albeit slower, and not as high.

  Kalandar blurted out an alarm, then adjusted his swing attempt. He used his considerable might to spin his blade in a hip-high, side to side, devastating swipe. The foot-wide blade slashed through the levitating fire and flesh, hacking a hole in Sebastian and severing a rain of limbs that fell to the street below. They clattered and writhed, crawling away under their own power, going in all directions near Arridon’s feet.

  He snapped out of his trance, opening his eyes and glaring at the monster floating nearby, just out of reach. Consumed by fire as Kalandar hacked at him, Sebastian continued to laugh.

  One of Arridon’s hands raised up, making a vertical line in the air. His other hand did the same, forming two parallel walls in space. Kalandar’s sword clanged off an invisible wall of force beside Sebastian’s floating body. In the air, the flames visibly bounced off the walls he’d made with his power. He drew another line in the air with his hands, creating a lid, trapping the flames down, keeping the heat and destructive force contained right on top of Sebastian’s body.

  “No escape this time,” Arridon said, his voice barely audible over the roar of Kalandar’s magic flames. “No following us. My sister will be safe from you for all time, Sebastian.”

  “Hearing your pointless words only makes my stomach rumble in hunger, you mewling, pathetic wretch,” the monster called out from within the fires. Another limb fell with a sickening crunch.

  “You must let me strike it!” Kalandar yelled to Arridon. “My blade can sunder its soul!”

  “You were trash at Mercy Point. You’re trash here. It is time you were thrown away properly,” he whispered. Arridon made a fist and closed the walls of force to crush Sebastian into nothing.

  But the avatar of the Bleed saw that coming, and Sebastian reacted before Arridon could destroy him. Floating in the air, aflame, with Kalandar cutting him into bits one swing at a time, Sebastian had been doomed. But Arridon’s walls gave the monster purchase, and it lashed out, launching itself downward, using the walls as a springboard.

  The creature crashed into Arridon like a comet, crushing him into the street, breaking bones, and setting his clothes on fire. The monster reared up as it had with Kalandar, smashing down—still laughing—with all its might, and all its remaining limbs, most of which were burning. Arridon’s body went limp, went lifeless, succumbing to the fury of the Bleed’s hound.

  “Nooo!” Timtar yelled in anguish. Still blinded, he fired his weapon of nature over and over into the burning mass, but the fires obscured any sign of it having effect.

  “Arridon!” Derrick cried with panicked, trembling lips. Unconsciously, he reached out and grabbed the form of Sebastian, canceling the gravity once more, lifting the monster off his mauled and savaged friend. Flailing, laughing, cackling wildly, the monster rose up.

  “For that, you will pay,” a muted, furious Kalandar threatened. He followed his threat with a swing of the sword that would’ve sliced a castle in half.

  The whistling blade passed through Sebastian, gutting him, cleaving him in two. He swung again, and again, his strength fueled by the literal fires of Hell and the burning rage of a warrior who sought to battle equals for eternity.

  Black tendrils of acidic flesh shot out from the burning ball, lashing at the demon, who didn’t laugh the attacks off. He took them, seeming to revel in the scars the burning, hissing acid left on his hide, and armor. Emotionless now, the red giant worked like a logger felling a tree. One swing of his blade at a time.

  Eventually, the laughing from within the flames ended. The storms in the sky above seemed to pause as well. Derrick forgot to hold the dismembered corpse of Sebastian in the air, and the parts fell to the ground. The sound was wretched and nightmarish.

  But no more horrible than the still body of Arridon of House Frost.

  “We must go with haste,” Kalandar said, walking to Derrick, who was struggling to hold back uncontrollable sobs.

  “We can’t…we can’t…we can’t just leave him.”

  “We must,” Tim said, wiping the last of the sand from his eyes. “If this creature is here, it means the Bleed has access to return. We can pay proper respect to Arridon at a different time, in a different place.”

  Kalandar lifted his blade and grumbled a string of syllables in a harsh language Derrick couldn’t decipher. The blade flared white-hot, burning away all signs of blood and gore. Ash drifted down, and Kalandar sheathed the weapon. He knelt, and lifted the hurt Derrick into his arms, as gently as if he were a babe.

  “Stop,” Derrick begged. “Get his pistol. The gun he got from his mom. It should go to his sister, Thistle. We can at least do that, right?”

  TImtar nodded, and walked over to the corpse. He muttered more words of enchantment, and his hands became encased in obsidian black gloves. He retrieved the pistol and the magazines for it with great care. He lifted them up to his father, and he spoke the same words of cleansing. The gun went white as the sun for a second, and then ashes fell.

  “Thank you,” Derrick said to him.

  “Now, let us leave this place,” the demon said, and he led them into the alien tower, with its clockwork room at the top.

  Epilogue

  With Kalandar’s guidance and Derrick’s godly gifts, the clockwork room on the world that once belonged to now-dead giants came to life. The demon gave simple and precise instructions to the boy, and guided the trio through time and space to the safest place they could be;

  Kalandar’s Fortress in the Hells.

  The demon—armor crusted in gore and filth, and back to carrying the damaged and now spent Derrick—strode through his towering foyer, flanked by monsters who answered to his every whim. He gave more instructions: seal the doors, alert the guardians on the pillars of flame. Cleanse this armor, purify and sanctify everything that they arrived wearing, or carrying.

  Ready the pit, was the most crucial of his commands.

  They were in a race, you see. Cleanse Derrick of his own spiritual aura, or risk Oldros and his army of minions tracking him down. Even here, in Hell, they were not out of the reach of the traitorous monster that wore the pelt of a god.

  Kalandar lay the sleeping Derrick down on a fur-covered sofa in a wide, tapestry-filled stone hall. He shed his ancient and now rather battle-scarred armor to clatter on the floor. Dozens of tiny creatures picked the pieces up. They scurried or flew as needed, taking the gear away to be attended to. To be rejuvenated for the upcoming battles.

  Kalandar gathered Derrick in his arms and led his son down many flights of stone stairs. The giant demon walked on the outer edge of the stairs, where the steps suited his size. Timtar walked beside him, on the narrower inside of the spiral. After a long time of descent, they left the towering stairwell and passed through a rough stone arch into a deep rectangular room with a central pool of reddish fluid.

  Blood.

  Without pause, the naked demon and his naked son approached the pool and walked into it, stepping down into the opaque, crimson fluid. The surface of the blood quickly reached Timtar’s shoulders, and Kalandar sat, allowing the liquid to reach his own shoulders. He held the resting Derrick flat, submerged almost completely in the cleansing bath.

  “How long until his aura has been altered enough to divert Oldros?”

  “We are here until dawn,” the demon replied. “And then, he will be invisible to their pr
ying and meddling.”

  “Then we what? Reunite him with his sister on the moon you spoke of?”

  “It is the wisest course of action. We must leave as soon as we can. Their safety on the moon is tenuous. Without me to defend them, they are sure to perish.”

  “It’s always all about you, isn’t it?” Timtar said, half as a joke.

  “No,” the demon said, looking down at Derrick with fondness in his dark eyes. “It is no longer just about me. Now, it is about fighting the Bleed. Stopping it, where before, we chose only to avoid it.”

  “You believe that this is a war you can win?”

  “We have no choice but to fight it. The Bleed is desperate. It senses something we cannot yet divine.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Have you ever seen a champion such as the one Arridon called Sebastian? Have you ever heard of so many worlds and realities being consumed simultaneously by them? They are slow and inexorable. But this…is different. This reeks of desperation. Now is the time for unity. The moment is nigh for the armies of Hell to rise against that which seeks to destroy everything.”

  “Heaven and Hell working together. Who would’ve thought?”

  “I think the Bleed saw this coming, that’s who. And I think these people, these frail little human beings, might be the key to stopping Armageddon.”

  About David Moody

  DAVID MOODY first self-published HATER in 2006, and without an agent, succeeded in selling the film rights for the novel to Mark Johnson (producer, Breaking Bad) and Guillermo Del Toro (director, The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth). His seminal zombie novel AUTUMN was made into an (admittedly terrible) movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine. Moody has an unhealthy fascination with the end of the world and writes books about ordinary folks going through absolute hell. Find out more at www.davidmoody.net.