by Brian Fuller
His eyes cleared, and he blinked to clear the rain from his lashes. He was on his back again. Above him, the Dreads and the Sheid had just started their ascent on the platform. He had to hurry. Helo rolled over. Cassandra’s face was twisted in a sneer, lips drawn up like a growling dog. King grinned as he presided over Cassandra’s horror. She had stopped yelling, eyes now open. Was it too late? With a lunge, Helo grasped her hand, and the Virtus flowed from him to her. In an instant he gave her what she’d needed her entire life.
He taught her how to forgive.
The blackened tentacles snapped away, and Cassandra’s sneer faded, replaced by an expression of rapturous wonderment. Her eyes softened and brightened, the very muscles that for years had pulled her face into a mask of dissatisfaction losing their tension. Happiness dawned on a countenance long used to the night, the bitterness and regret burned away by a rising joy.
King’s eyes widened. He turned his gaze back to Helo.
“What have you done!” he yelled, backing away.
Helo stood and pulled a smiling Cassandra to her feet. She was radiant.
Light gathered around her. Cassandra’s aura exploded outward with the white-hot fury of a soul set free, cascading over King with blinding power. Horror bloomed on his face, and sinking to his knees, he howled in agony. He bent forward, grabbing his head as if to clamp it back together. In the glare of divine light, the form of King wavered and vibrated. Devon and King traded places, each screaming, the different tenors of their voices as jarring as the flip-flopping of their images.
Helo jumped forward, ripping the leather thong from King’s neck. The talisman’s light extinguished. It was a bone, though what kind he couldn’t tell. With a quick shove, he pocketed it and jogged to the items Devon had discarded next to the pool. Fishing around in the wet clothing, he found what he was looking for: the explosive gun. It was heavy. Five massive bullets remained in the chambers of the revolver. It wasn’t exactly what he needed to fight Shedim and whatever King was, but it would hurt.
The light from Cassandra’s Glorious Presence was extinguished. King lay in a heap on the floor, trembling.
A clanging above him drew Helo’s gaze upward. The Sheid jumped from the basket, hit the deck floor on the far side of the pool, and stood up. With a leap, the evil creature cleared the pool, a black sword forming in its hand as it soared toward Cassandra. The unholy blade was thin at the bottom and thick at the top, with a single edge on the long side. Forged from the Vexus of the Sheid itself, a dark smoke clung to the dull-gray weapon, absorbing the light.
He slashed downward at Cassandra as he landed, but she dropped and rolled sideways, the blade whistling wide. But the Sheid was too fast. Before she could recover, he ran her through the abdomen just to the left of her spine, pinning her to the deck like an insect. Without expression, he raised his foot over her head, water sloshing off his shoe and onto her face.
Helo fired.
The bullet tore out of the barrel, the kickback jerking his arm up. He’d remember to boost his Strength next time. The projectile slammed into the Sheid just below the shoulder blade. The Sheid lost its balance, rocking forward, and the sword slid out of Cassandra’s belly. She rolled.
A second later, the bullet exploded.
The top half of the Sheid burst into a cloud not unlike the ones outside the ship. It expanded outward with the force of the blast but then reversed as if drawn back by a magnet. The storm seemed to settle for a moment. But the Sheid was re-forming.
Cassandra darted into the darkness outside the glare of the utility lights. They had to make it to the stairs on the far side of the hold.
“Get to the stairs!” Helo yelled to Cassandra, wherever she was. He could buy her time.
The Sheid, now whole, turned on him, a red wave of desecration painting the floor of the hold.
Helo’s skin goose-bumped, and he shivered.
The Sheid strode forward, and Helo backed away, raising the gun. His Strength wouldn’t work now. The gun had four bullets left. He shot another round, the gun nearly slipping from his rain-slicked fingers. The bullet ripped into the Sheid’s chest, the force wobbling it for a moment. But only for a moment. Before Helo could squeeze off another round, the Sheid shot forward with unnatural speed and wrapped its arms around him in an iron embrace, the bullet embedded within the Sheid exploding.
Unimaginable pain lanced through Helo’s body. The blast blew them apart, and Helo fell, his chest a gory mess of exposed ribs and wet organs glistening in the dim light. The Sheid’s upper half again dissolved into a dark cloud only to resolve again into the dead face of Devon Qyn.
The gun was gone. Helo’s back was broken, his chest crushed and exposed. The Sheid reached down and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him like a weightless toy, every jolt sending nauseating pain through Helo’s gut until his feet cleared the desecration and a welcome numbness returned. With a purposeful stride, the Sheid took him toward the pool, lifting him high to toss him into the water and to his doom.
Helo struggled. All he could manage was a weak flailing of his arms. Like a vise, the Sheid squeezed him. Even with divine Strength, Helo couldn’t extricate himself from the powerful creature. The Sheid had just pulled its arm back to launch him into the water when something slammed into the two of them with such force they were thrown to the ground like rag dolls.
Helo tumbled and rolled, skin shredding as he scraped along the abrasive floor. He came to rest facedown near where he and Cassandra had lain all day. A familiar voice yelled at the Sheid, commanding it to leave. Dahlia. He turned his head up, his vision blurred by the filthy water. She was there, staring the Sheid down. Again she told it to leave. An agonized yell from Dahlia followed by an echoing crash told him the Sheid had given her its answer. Helo couldn’t see her anymore. King had regained his knees and stopped trembling, but he swayed, still enervated by Cassandra’s Glorious Presence.
Tears of pain blurred Helo’s vision. He tried to think of a way out, but nothing came. The pool waited, and the Sheid would come for him. He hoped Cassandra had made it out, that she was getting help.
But she wasn’t.
From his vantage point on the ground, he suddenly glimpsed her shoulders and head. She stood in the pool, grasping a scrap of rebar she had found among the discarded metal in the hold. She smiled at him fondly, her eyes full of purpose. In one powerful thrust of her arms, she drove the rebar down and through her heart.
“Hold on, Helo,” she shouted, eyes bright. “They’re coming. And thank you. It is beautiful.”
Helo wanted to shout back, to tell her to stop. His voice failed him, whether from the racking pain in his body or the clenching grief of what she was about to do, he couldn’t tell. She looked to the sky and fell back softly into the waiting water. In an instant she disappeared, her ash mingling with Goldbow’s. Somewhere inside the welded pool, a glowing, sanctified length of rebar waited for an angelic hand to wield it.
Chapter 39
First Avarice
Cassandra was gone.
Helo couldn’t come to grips with it. It seemed impossible. She had defined his time as an Ash Angel through victory and defeat, happiness and despair. As contrary as she was, Cassandra was one of the pillars on which he had built his afterlife. Now that pillar was gone. Sadness battered him, and the falling rain seemed like the tears of a weeping sky mourning the loss of a beautiful daughter who had fled the confines of earth. An angel going home.
“Goodbye, Cassie,” he said softly, finding his voice.
To his side, footsteps splashed. Bones grinding, he strained his neck to see who approached. He let his head sink down into water deep enough to tease the edge of his eye. It was over now. The Sheid had finished with Dahlia and had come to destroy him.
It walked toward him from beyond the lights, no worse for wear from its encounter with Cain’s sister. King had finally recovered enough to stand, eyes clearing and the malice on his face returning with a vengeance. Booms of gunfi
re echoed and flashed overhead, mingling with the fireworks in the sky as the battle raged on the upper deck of the ship.
Helo doubted he would last long enough to enjoy the rescue attempt. The Sheid again scraped him off the floor by the neck and dragged him toward the frowning King, the pale man’s eyes like nails.
“Cain told me you had been a nuisance,” King spat. “I see he did not exaggerate. Give him to me.” The Sheid stretched out his arm, King taking over the creature’s grip on Helo’s neck. He squeezed, the pressure in Helo’s throat building.
“Now go finish that battle above decks!” King commanded his creature.
The Sheid crouched and, with a spray of water, bounded into the air. It caught the edge of the opening of the hold and pulled itself over.
A red aura behind King caught Helo’s attention.
A battered Dahlia limped quietly out of the darkness at the rear of the pool. Her rain slicker was completely torn off, the remainder of one sleeve still clinging to her left arm over her dark sweater. She could hardly walk. A tear in her slacks ran up to midthigh on her slender right leg, the knee bent inward, bulging unnaturally.
“Where is the talisman?” the man demanded.
Helo snapped his eyes to King’s.
“Where’s the what?” Helo returned testily.
Desecration flowed away from King, blanketing the area around them in its ghastly hue.
The pain of Helo’s wounds ignited. Hot fire erupted around the torn flesh of his chest like he had just inhaled burning gasoline. He convulsed, his scream bottled up under King’s unrelenting grip around his throat. An agonized groan, strangled and guttural, squelched out.
King took his other hand and slid his fingers up under Helo’s exposed sternum, hefting him skyward and releasing the hold on his neck. Helo’s scream belted out with full fury. Finally, King lifted him high enough to escape the desecration, extinguishing it, and Helo’s muscles went limp. How much torture could he take? The stupid talisman was in his pocket. King would find it anyway.
King’s cold eyes bored into his. “Let’s try that again. Where is it?”
For some reason, Lear came to mind. “Oooooklahoma, where the wind—”
Again the desecration pulsed, and King set his feet into it.
Helo howled in pain, shaking like he was being electrocuted, his nerves jumping like live wires. Nothing in his vision registered. Only the pain existed.
“Where is it, Trace?” King demanded, stopping the desecration again.
In his peripheral vision, Helo saw Dahlia quietly slip into the pool and reach into the water.
“Okay, okay,” Helo said, voice faltering. Even without the desecration, his weakness claimed him. “I’ll tell you where it is. Just—just no more.”
King let go of the sternum, catching Helo by the neck on his way down. The bones of his spine cracked as they stretched under his weight, neck straining with the downward force. He hung a foot above the ground, legs flopping like a puppet’s. King pulled Helo’s face to his.
“Where is it? Now. And I’ll make your death a quick one.”
It was Helo’s turn to sneer. “Look down.”
King’s eyes fell, mouth dropping wide in horror, as Dahlia drove the glowing length of rebar into his back and out the front of his bare chest. It continued on into Helo’s exposed rib cage, pinning them together. The sanctified light of Cassandra’s sacrifice burst from the seams of King’s eyes, washing out their color. His countenance again wavered and wobbled to that of Devon Qyn and back to King like someone flipping channels on a TV. The light coursed into Helo, and a vision exploded into his mind, a memory not his own.
Abel stood in the shade of the fig tree, smiling at Aclima.
Cain wanted her. He wanted the flocks of fat goats chewing at the pale grass of the hillside. Abel’s fat, perfect goats. He couldn’t have them. The goats were Abel’s. Aclima was Abel’s. So their father said. So God said. With slender fingers, she pulled a fig from the tree and teasingly put it in Abel’s mouth, brushing her body against his. Cain gripped his spade and turned away, breath stalling in his chest. It wasn’t fair.
Their blithe laughter needled him like thorns. They were laughing at him. He knew it. Laughing because he was a fool, a fool under the heel of people who got whatever they wanted. Got praise. Found favor. Left him rooting around in the dirt with a garden not good enough. He needed more.
They laughed again, and he turned. Sure enough, their eyes took him in. Abel with his perfect face, the face of his father. Aclima with her dark tresses flowing over her shoulders and breasts, the sun igniting the edges of those waves in glowing white. Her eyes, the color of the richest brown earth, regarded him with mirth. She could be happy now. She thought herself free.
“Brother!” Abel called. Abel was happy too. And why shouldn’t he be? “Come out of that sun and eat with us.”
So kind. So magnanimous.
Cain faked a smile and dropped his spade. As it fell, the handle banged off a wedge-shaped rock. He stared at the stone. He turned to find Abel’s sunny face beaming at Aclima. Cain looked back at the rock.
“Come, brother!” Abel called. “You’re standing around like one of my goats.”
One of his fat goats. Cain stooped and grabbed the rock, raspy even against his calloused hands. Cain felt a void, an empty hole he needed to fill. The flocks were what he needed. Aclima was what he needed. When he had them, the void would be filled. His face would shine like Abel’s. Her face would shine back. The serpent that wasn’t a serpent promised him he would know the secrets that would make her bow before his power. Make them all bow. Then he would have whatever he wanted. He would pile everything he took in front of him and drink to the lees.
He walked forward at a casual pace, watching as Aclima raised her arm to pluck another fig. She tiptoed, sun-browned calves lengthening as she stretched her body upward. Yes. He needed her.
Cain passed beneath the shade of the fig tree, the sun’s weight lifted from his brow.
Abel turned to look at him, some clever remark aborning on his lips.
Cain brought the rock down and silenced him.
Aclima screamed.
He didn’t care. He brought the rock down again and again until he could no longer see his father in his brother’s face.
The Vexus disgorged from King like smoke from burning tires, surrounding both of them in a thick cloud. Devon’s features took greater hold, but King reasserted himself, trying to cling to the mortal frame he had taken.
Cain reached down and pushed the rocks away. The three markings God had burned into his forearm were a dull black against his tan skin. Marked so all would know who he was.
Aclima’s second son, Kamal, stood behind him. A callow willow of a man he was. He would serve his purpose.
“What is this place, Father?”
“A grave.”
“Whose?”
“Your uncle’s.”
There wasn’t much left, but what the serpent said he needed was there. He pulled the clinging rocks away from the rib cage and reached out, snapping off half a rib that would have covered the heart, the heart he had stopped. It was the Bone of First Avarice, the trophy from the first man killed to satisfy the greed of another. The serpent had contracted with him to make him mighty, the master of great secrets. He would reawaken Kamal first. They might be cursed to wander, but the world would come to dread the family of Cain.
Cain secured the bone in the goatskin pouch at his waist. The serpent had not revealed its use yet. He scooped up a handful of dirt from Abel’s grave and put it in the bag. It was all he would need to make himself immortal when it was his turn. But Kamal was first. The runt of the litter, bitter Aclima’s precious boy. Cain had poisoned him against her to gain his trust for this one task. He would be the first to know the secret of the Awakening, the first to perform the ritual, the first to be silenced.
Cain waited, bound and tied within the stinking cattle hold of Noah’s grounded s
hip. Night had fallen. Noah’s family had spent the night arguing about what to do with him. The serpent had sent him to kill Noah’s family, one last task before the bone would be ready. But Noah and his sons had caught him hiding in the very stall where he had awaited his chance.
Light from a sputtering oil lantern cast sinister shadows on the face of the approaching man. Ham. The weak one. Cain could tell. But Ham had ambitions, and he had the bone in his hand. Like all the brothers, the bruises and breaks Cain had dealt them when they’d captured him had barely started to heal. Ham strode up and looked down at Cain, eyes questioning.
And then held it up. The bone. “What is this, Cain?”
Cain thought for a moment. This was his opportunity. “It is an object of power, the rib of my brother Abel.”
“How do I use it?”
Cain looked away for a moment. It was useless as yet, but if he could escape, surely the serpent would give him a chance. “Let me go and come with me, and I will share its power with you.”
Ham looked at the bone. “You lie.”
Cain smiled and shrugged. “Then do what you will, but you’ve seen what I can do. It took your entire family to restrain me. I have more powers than this. Do not turn your back so easily, Ham. You can start your dull life again and grow your grapes, or you can come with me and I can show you riches and power beyond description. Let me loose, and let’s leave.”
Ham spat on the ground. “I will leave, but you will stay and meet your doom. I know to whom you owe your allegiance. I know where the serpent lurks in our ancestral home. I will be the new master of secrets.”
Ham left, taking the bone with him. A bone Cain would spend thousands of years searching for.
Devon’s mouth dropped open in silent agony, as if someone stabbed him in the back. King fought back to the surface and yelled like he was pushing a great weight off himself. The light of the sanctified rebar burned ever brighter.
The year was 1944. At last Cain had found it among the Egyptian relics plundered by the Nazis, stuck in a decaying sarcophagus where Ham had buried it in a funerary jar. Noah’s son had spent a lifetime trying to unlock its secrets, and Cain had chased him just as long. The cursed Ham had hidden it well before he died. But Cain had it at last.
