by Tim Marquitz
The last piece of the puzzle was in Shaw’s hands now. I had to hope her desire to take me out overrode everything else. As I stood there, my senses picking up the barest whisper of the essence I’d tagged Venai with, I was feeling as confident as I could. Before common sense could take hold, I dropped down from the roof and landed in the street facing the last of the DSI’s properties left untouched by the supernatural masses. The ground trembled at my arrival, the entirety of my essence on display for those who could see it.
“Let’s get this over with, Shaw!” I shouted, amplifying my voice so it rattled the glass in its frames.
It didn’t take long until I felt an answering pulse of power; one I recognized, followed by a handful more. A grin forced its way onto my lips as a battered Venai and Thud emerged from the building, flanking their mistress, Rebecca Shaw. Trinity hovered at their backs like glowing storm troopers. A number of soldiers I couldn’t determine gathered on the rooftop.
“I’ve often mistaken you for stupid, Triggaltheron, but not for suicidal,” Shaw said. “Where are the rest of your friends?”
“Just us this time, sweetheart, just like you wanted.” I’d activated a shield around myself to keep her snipers from putting another bullet into my skull. None of this would work if they capped me right off the bat. “Just you, me, and your mysterious ally hiding in the building behind you.”
She nodded, acknowledging my guess.
“Maybe you should tell the backstabbing asshole behind the curtain to come on out and see what he’s wrought.”
“Do not speak of the Lord that way,” the old man shrieked and started forward, but Shaw stepped in between us. “You dare, woman?” he screamed at her. Dude was old school, no doubt about it.
Shaw stood her ground. “Do you think he’d provoke you for no reason?” she asked, not bothering to give him time to answer. “Don’t be a fool.” She pushed Venai and Thud to the side. “Surround him, but stay ready. No matter what he wants us to believe, he is not here alone.”
I grinned as the group did as she said, Thud and Venai keeping themselves between me and Shaw, but Trinity rose up into the air and floated closer. The Son and Father took up positions to my sides while the revenant floated in front of me.
“You’ve got them well trained, Shaw.” My gaze drifted back and forth between the three parts of Trinity. “I wonder, though, just how obedient they would be if they knew they were being used yet again, just like Longinus used them.”
The old man laughed. “We are in the service of God now, demon spawn. The Christ himself commands us. Our mission is of the highest order. Do not dare to defame our integrity.”
“You sure about that?” I asked. “When’s the last time you spoke to God? I mean, really sat down and had a chat with him? Does he even have a Skype account these days? Email?”
The Father sneered. “Christ has given us our mission, his hand blessing my brow just moments after you arrived to surrender to us like the coward you are.”
Shaw glared at me, realizing what I was playing by goading them into talking. “It’s time to end this.”
“So true,” I said before she could give the order for them to attack. “Perhaps the tainted savior would like to come out and tell these fine crusaders the truth about their mission.” I raised my voice, using magic to hurl the sound into the building. I turned to Trinity. “God has fled this world long ago, leaving you and everyone else behind. That’s not him pulling your strings but an imposter.”
“Blasphemer,” the revenant shouted, ready to tear into me, but she froze as I tossed the thirty-sided die to the ground in front of them. Trinity stared at it as though it were a bomb, unsure of what it was. The silver of it gleamed against the asphalt. Shaw knew what it meant, though. She’d been found out.
“I’ve met both God and Jesus recently,” I continued. “Ran into both of them in a dimension a billion miles from here. Saved Christ’s life while I was there, as a matter of fact. I’m sure it still chaps his ass, too.”
“You lie!” The Father screamed, then charged. “You will not speak false of our Lord. I will cut your lying tongue from your mouth.”
I stood my ground, letting him advance, the rest of Trinity doing the same. Only Shaw had any sense.
“No!” she shouted, but it was too late.
The Father roared at me, his magic flaring up, and then he was gone, swallowed by the portal that cleaved the air in front of him. His momentum carried him through. The rift disappeared behind him, leaving no trace of the old man.
The Son, all fire and brimstone, just kept coming. He crashed into me, fists flailing, magic throwing up sparks as he worked to batter his way through my shield. I drove an answering punch into his solar plexus, and he buckled with a gasp. Then I tossed him aside as the revenant came at me. I growled and let my power pour into my hands, holding nothing back.
The Holy Spirit slowed as I reached out with my energies, sending them searing toward her. Her eyes narrowed, and she raised her defenses to meet me. Our magic collided sending both of us skittering backwards. My feet dug into the asphalt to keep me upright, and I smiled at the ghost.
In the air, she’d nothing to leverage herself against. She flew back into the waiting arms of the portal that appeared in the sky behind her. There was time for one, furious shriek before it sealed her away.
I smiled at Shaw. “Not going quite the way you expected it to, huh?” Thud and Venai returned to her side. They’d taken enough of a beating from me to not want to take another now that Trinity had mostly vanished. “And you, little man,” I said to the Son, going over and picking him up by the scruff of his neck. “You and me are gonna have a chat.”
He squeaked and thrashed, throwing everything he had at me, but his blows were like pebbles cast against a Tsunami. Still he fought. I ignored him as a murmuring rumble sounded from somewhere below the street, then grinned at Shaw as she heard the sound, too. She stared at the asphalt as though she could decipher what the noise meant.
“All this ends today, Shaw,” I told her, grinning. “There’s only one way for you and your people to make it out alive.” She and her minions backed slowly toward the building as the sound grew louder. I pointed at the die still sitting in the middle of the road. “Give him to me, and I’ll end all this. We can go back to hating each other from a distance, and I’ll stop tearing your world apart so you can get a win out of this and hold onto your position. Defy me and, well…you’ll see what happens.”
I drifted into the air, the son dangling from my hand as he hurled ineffective blow after blow at me in an effort to break free.
“The choice is yours, Shaw. Make the smart one.”
A sewer cover blew open, the steel hurtling way to crash loudly in the distance. The sound was buried by another cover erupting, then another, dozens in a row, only to be drowned out by the roar of the were-creatures that spilled from the sewers and charged toward the DSI building, threatening to tear the limbs from anyone who stood in the way. Shaw, Venai, and Thud turned on their heels and bolted for the building.
Floating high above, I watched them scramble inside, sealing the doors against the lycanthropes’ attack, for all the good it would do them. Still, Shaw wasn’t one to lie down and die. And if she did, good riddance, but I knew better.
I turned to the little bastard who’d killed Karra, and he slowly stopped fighting, sensing the weight of my stare. “You’re in for a very long night, boy. I suggest you make peace with what you’ve done because you’re not gonna find your God on the other side of all this.”
He spat at me, and I grinned. His resistance would make it all the more enjoyable.
Twenty-One
I spent the night in Hell, but I wasn’t the only one.
Though it was the God-proof room to be more correct. As it turned out, the priest had been more than helpful with regards to Trinity. Add that to a little deductive reasoning—which Scarlett had actually put together once I’d told the group what Lance had sai
d, much to the disappointment of my pride—and we had everything we needed to defeat the holy rollers. A quick plunge into the essence of Longinus helped to confirm it for me, at least in my heart if not my head.
Covered in guts and viscera, I sat outside of the cells that had been crafted in the heart of the God-proof room, clutching a meaty slab of muscle in my hand. My fingers squeezed and relaxed, blood pooling in my palm and dripping thickly to the floor.
“Rise and shine, assholes.” Despite the fifty feet of stone between me and the surviving members of Trinity, my voice carried through to them. They raged and stormed and threw themselves against the stone walls to no effect. Just like the kid had with me. I smiled.
“I learned something about you today, Trinity,” I called out, only barely able to hear their response. It wasn’t polite. “It would appear you are much less powerful when separated from the little threesome you’ve got going on. Split you apart and you’re not firing on all cylinders.”
It hadn’t sunk in when we’d killed the Son the first time that’s what had happened. Caught up in vengeance, I simply thought our surprise ambush had worked, but the reinforced metal of the trap they’d set had affected their powers. They’d weakened themselves, expecting us to walk into the trap, not get caught in one themselves.
Longinus’s act of splitting them apart in Limbo was more than simple psychological torture. They would go insane together as easily as they would alone, but he knew their powers fed off one another. He’d separated them to make them weak so they’d never be able to escape Limbo. That was a torture a million miles beyond death, something Longinus would have enjoyed.
“Now there’s only two of you.” I squeezed the heart in my hand even harder, jets of blood spewing free of it. “I know you felt me kill the Son,” I told them, unable to stop smiling. He died painfully, his torment lasting all through the night until I couldn’t hold back any longer. I ripped his heart free of his chest and watched him collapse against the restraints, the last flicker of his life slipping away.
I’d regret my cruelty later when what I’d done settled over me, but Karra deserved justice and my soul cried out for vengeance. Death wasn’t enough for the kid who stole the mother of my child away. Maybe I’d taken it too far, but I wasn’t gonna cry about it.
“And soon there will be none.”
Their voices cried out, screaming obscenities and threats and the biting words of their Lord, but none of that was gonna help them. God had abandoned them long ago, and the man they followed claiming to be Jesus was nothing more than a pretender to the throne. He’d get his soon enough. Right now, they were in the hands of the Devil.
I said my goodbyes to Trinity, wishing them a horrific eternity in the void, and triggered the mystical device I’d put in place inside the wall of their prisons.
A bigger nerd would have made a Star Wars joke as a great, grinding arose, slabs of stone sliding across stone. Above it all, I heard Trinity’s screams, and I willed them louder, letting the sound build until it hurt my eardrums. They shrieked and hissed and prayed and cried, and I savored every moment of it until the walls closed in with a resounding boom, bringing silence to Hell once more.
I let the heart slip from my hand. It was almost over.
#
The morning light brought presents with it.
Camped out at the old, abandoned airstrip where Karra had resurrected her father so long ago, I stood waiting as a black cargo van drove down the runway toward me. The sunlight reflected off its roof, and the essence of the people inside pecked at my senses. It was a good feeling.
The van pulled up in front of me, and I could see the driver staring at me through the windshield. She looked nervous as she climbed out of the van.
“Grace,” I said, acknowledging her. She gave me the barest of nods and opened the side door. I smiled, seeing what waited for me inside.
Thud stood in the back, clutching to a man who had been secured with duct tape—almost mummified—and blinded with a black hood over his head. I didn’t need to see his face to know who he was. Thud tossed him out of the van without ceremony. The captive stumbled and crashed to the tarmac, unable to arrest his fall. No one else bothered to try. He landed with a muffled grunt.
“And you gagged him,” I noted. “How nice.”
Thud shrugged. “He talked too much.”
“Like someone else I know.”
He grunted, getting ready to say something back, but Grace shut the door, cutting him off. “He’s all yours,” she said. “Shaw expects you to hold up your end of the bargain, you know?” She handed me the silver die I’d tossed in the street.
“Of course she does.” I shooed the girl away, and she didn’t bother to argue. She got into the van and started it up, tearing off down the runway, happy to be gone.
I waited until they vanished in the distance before reaching down and plucking the hood from the man lying on the asphalt.
“Hello, Judas. I’d been wondering where you’d run off to.”
#
“You can’t do this to me!” Judas screamed from the pit I’d placed him in. His resemblance to Jesus was uncanny. Well, more that his resemblance to the westernized version of Christ was spot on. That’s how he’d sold himself to Trinity, preying on their ignorance. Who better to imitate Jesus than the guy who knew him personally and had sold him down the river?
“Who says I can’t?”
“God will strike you down. He will see what I did for him, and He will know you as the foul serpent of Satan that you are. He won’t let you do this.”
“You mean like how he wouldn’t grant you eternal life, and then exile you to a prison realm outside of existence because he cares so much about you?”
Judas snarled. “I have served my penance, and I serve God. He will…”
I let him bluster on for a while, pretty much ignoring him, knowing he couldn’t go anywhere. The rebar stakes I’d driven through his hands and feet—crucifix-style, mind you—held him in place, the hooks at the top keeping him from pulling his hands free. When there was a lull in his tirade, I cut him off.
“You’ve been gone a long, long time, Judas. Did you really think God would just accept you back into the fold after what you did to His son?” I tossed the thirty-sided die into the hole with him.
He stared at it without understanding its significance.
“That’s the price of your betrayal,” I said, baring my teeth. “Thirty pieces of silver, more than a fair trade for what you’ve taken from me.” A cold chill settled over me as I thought of Karra. “God is gone, Judas, and he’s never coming back. That’s something Shaw never told you when she picked you up after Azrael’s thrashing. But why would she? You wanted redemption after all your years in the wasteland, and you were stupid enough to let her convince you that you’d find it by spilling the blood of Satan’s son.”
He glared at me from the pit, unable to speak.
“Everything she told you is a lie, except the part about me being the new Devil. There is no redemption waiting for you. Not now, not ever. Those days are gone, fled into the sky along with God and Lucifer, but there is one thing that you can be sure of.”
I raised a hand, and it was greeted with a quiet rumble and a loud, repetitive beeping from behind me.
“You can be absolutely certain that God’s gift of eternal life is the one thing of Him you still possess.” I stepped away from the hole as the truck backed to the edge, coming to a grinding halt. I grinned down at Judas. “You can also rest assured that I have learned the lessons of my father more than adequately. He’d be proud of what I’ve done here today.” I drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, the air bitter on my tongue. “You, on the other hand, won’t appreciate the lesson one bit.”
I waved at Marcus to start his work. He flipped me off as he clambered from the cab, and then pulled the trough from the back of the mixer, settling it over the massive pit.
“This is going to take at least five truckloa
ds,” he complained. “I’m going to be here all damn night, asshole.”
“Bill me for your time,” I answered. “I’m good for it. Or would you rather I keep you locked up in Hell a little longer?”
He shrugged, not bothering to argue, and opened the feed in a hurry to get done. Wet cement gushed down the trough. It fell into the hole with a heavy splat, an ominous sense of finality to it. Judas howled, only then realizing what I intended.
“I’ll kill you, demon!”
“Best close your mouth,” I shouted down to him over the sound of the mixing truck. “I can’t imagine you want concrete in your mouth for all eternity.”
He thrashed against the spikes, watching in terror as the hole filled around him, unable to do anything. His eyes were wild, and they bulged from their sockets as he screamed himself hoarse.
I stood and watched until he disappeared beneath the sea of gray.
Epilogue
Still covered in the blood of the Son, I returned to where I’d left Styg.
He met me just inside the door. His pale face was a serpent’s nest of black veins that pulsed and throbbed, squirming beneath his skin. His red eyes looked shades darker than they had earlier, as though he’d filled them with blood and they’d overflowed. Crimson tears stained his craggy cheeks, and he look spent, exhausted. He stared at me without blinking. He shook his head as I met his gaze. Fear shadowed his sharp features.
That was all I needed to know about the task I’d set him to.
He’d failed.
My heart skipped a beat at seeing the defeat in his posture, and I looked beyond him to see Karra lying in the center of his circle, just as she had been before I’d left: head still separated from her neck, her skin waxen. I pushed past Styg and went to her, kneeling at her side. My hand clasped hers, its coldness chilling me to the bone.
Where I’d expected to see life and vitality returned, I saw only death. Her eyes were empty black pits, sunken into her face. Where there’d been semblance warmth left in her flesh, there was none now. Her skin had grown sallow, sinking in on her, bones jutting out against the pale canvas. There was nothing left of her.
