by Alan Baxter
‘What?’
‘Walk along like there’s nothing in the way.’
‘I can see in the dark like a cat, I have a body that has been trained for centuries in martial arts and all forms of physical endeavour and I can control matter at a molecular level. Why do you insist on asking such stupid questions, Samuel?’
Samuel laughed. ‘It just pisses me off, I guess. Are we near yet?’
VILLALOPEZ HAS SPOTTED HIS PREY, ISIAH. YOU ARE CUTTING THIS TOO FINE.
Isiah nodded, becoming serious again. ‘Yes, we are. We’re very close. Now then, I guess it’s time to let on to you that the Devil is already there.’
Samuel stopped dead. ‘What?’
‘Come on,’ Isiah pulled at Samuel’s arm, dragging him along. ‘It’s really no surprise, surely? You knew he was on to us, and I warned you he’d probably wait at the site. Well, he is. So here’s the plan. We’re going to approach the site from the south. The pyramid is at the north end. I’m pretty sure that Lucifer will step out on us as soon as we approach, probably while we’re still some way from the site proper. At that point I’ll grab him and hold him and you just leg it for that pyramid, all right? Don’t fuck about, don’t try to be sneaky, because I’ll only be able to hold him for a few minutes.’
Samuel nodded as he stumbled along in the dark. ‘So I just make a bee line straight for the pyramid. What do I do when I get there?’
‘Just grab the skull and that’ll be it. Events will play themselves out from then.’ In fact, before then if all goes well.
Samuel took a long, shaky breath. ‘All right, man. Shit, I hope you know what you’re doing.’
Katherine looked up as Father Paleros re-entered the dining tent. His face was grave as he came over and sat with them again. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘The old man is convinced that tonight death will come here and, I’m so sorry to say, he’s convinced it’s at least in part because of you.’
Katherine smiled weakly. ‘It’s all right.’
Father Paleros said, ‘He claims that the first death had already occurred, and it was the first of many.’
Pedro Sanchez looked up. ‘Did he say who?’
‘Young Eduardo went to fetch something and has not returned. He says that Eduardo is dead.’
Pedro shook his head. ‘I’ll ask someone to go and look.’ He raised his hand and caught the eye of a rugged looking middle-aged man nearby. Pedro spoke softly to him for a moment. The man nodded and went outside.
Father Paleros was not comfortable, shifting in his seat. ‘I have to say that something is not right tonight,’ he murmured, uncharacteristically speaking his mind. ‘I feel a great presence of evil.’
Thomas looked at him. When their eyes met Thomas nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Carlos waited in the bushes, cleaning his guns, glancing up from time to time to see if there was any more activity around the site. Returning his weapons to their proper places he removed the little plastic bag from Marco from his pocket. He dipped his little finger into the powder and gently rubbed it into his gums as he watched the site in front of him. Just a little more, just to keep alert. Just to keep the pain from returning to his leg and side and head. There was very little of the white powder left now.
Come on, Paleros, how about an early night tonight.
Isiah put his hand out against Samuel’s chest, slowing their pace. ‘We’ll have to go a little easier now,’ he said. ‘We’re getting close.’
Samuel nodded, walking carefully, trying to look all around himself at once.
‘Don’t worry,’ Isiah said. ‘He won’t snatch you from behind. You’ll know full well when he’s here. We’re more likely to stumble straight into his path.’
‘And then I run like hell?’
Isiah smiled, reminded of Pink Floyd lyrics. Are your nerves in tatters, Sam? ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘then you run like hell.’
Samuel was looking all around as they made their way carefully through the jungle. The thick branches and vines hung like grasping limbs, swinging down to grab him and deliver him into Satan’s hands once more. Shit, they were so close. He had been so lost in the running and the hiding that the goal had always seemed so far away. Now it was truly, almost literally, within his reach. Just a little while longer, Samuel, he told himself. Just a little longer.
Father Paleros leaned over to Katherine. ‘May I have a word with you?’ he whispered.
Katherine looked at him, into his deep, honest eyes. ‘Of course.’
He smiled nervously. ‘Could we go somewhere private?’
Katherine nodded. ‘Let’s go to my hut.’ She smiled crookedly. ‘Well, your hut.’
Father Paleros nodded. ‘Please, excuse us,’ he said to Thomas and Pedro.
As they left the dining tent, Thomas looked at Pedro Sanchez. They stared at each other silently for a moment, then simultaneously stood and followed Katherine and Father Paleros from the tent. They watched Katherine and Paleros walk across the site, to all intents and purposes simply taking the evening air.
‘I thought I should tell you more of what the old man told me,’ Father Paleros said to Katherine as they walked.
Katherine nodded. ‘Certainly. But couldn’t you have said it in front of Thomas and Pedro.’
The priest shrugged slightly. ‘I thought it best not to. You see, the old man said that he sees the same death that you saw. He described this death to me. Perhaps you would like to hear the description?’ Katherine nodded, so Paleros went on. ‘He tells me that it is an angel of death in the body of a man. A truly evil man, with the clothes of a soldier and shining black hair. He has an evil, smiling face and he will distribute death indiscriminately.’
Katherine shivered at the description. ‘It does sound like the vision I saw in the pyramid. But how could he know? Surely he’s just guessing, like astrologists generalising enough to convince the gullible.’
They had reached Katherine’s hut, Father Paleros’ old home. Paleros opened the door, stood back to let Katherine in. ‘The trouble is,’ he said, his voice small, scared. ‘The old man says that the only reason he is blaming you for all the trouble is because you will get in the way of things.’
As Katherine stepped into the hut, Father Paleros stepping in behind her, she said, ‘What do you mean, get in the way of things?’
Paleros’ eyes were sad. ‘The old man says that the angel of death is coming for me. If he could simply take me and leave then all would be quiet afterwards, but you are the one who is complicating things.’
Katherine’s eyes were wide. ‘The angel of death is actually here for you? When did you become the focus of all this?’
Father Paleros shook his head. ‘I really have no idea, but I am praying harder than I ever have before, Miss Bailey, because I am truly scared.’
Carlos could barely contain his excitement as he watched Paleros heading towards the hut with a beautiful American woman. How perfect. I get to torture that son of a dog priest and I get to fuck a pretty American bitch. In front of the priest, that would be most satisfying. Perhaps fuck her and kill her while the priest watches helplessly, then slowly kill him too.
Carlos was grinning with delight as he settled his weapons and prepared to move in. He would have to silence them quickly and secure the hut as fast as possible. But he would give them a moment. Let them settle into place for a few minutes before he surprised them.
A roar reverberated around the site, echoing off the pyramid and back again, a bellow of unchecked rage and hatred. Every head turned, every heart began to beat faster. Katherine’s stomach turned to water as she grabbed Father Paleros’ arm. The priest’s eyes were wild. Thomas Drake and Pedro Sanchez began to run towards Katherine’s hut, looking frantically about themselves. Carlos flinched, but remained rigid, looking slowly around.
The old village elder, leaning against the post smoking his pipe, slowly turned, a knowing look on his face, and climbed down into the dig in front of the pyramid.
He tapped his pipe out on the hard ground and started down the steps.
Isiah and Samuel stopped dead in their tracks as the howl of rage deafened them. They were only a few hundred metres from the site. Samuel felt the warm spread of urine across the front of his already soaked jeans as Lucifer stepped out in front of them, taut black skin, steaming hooves, viciously curving horns. ‘Time!’ he roared. ‘It’s over, Interferer. Get out of the way.’
ISIAH! VILLALOPEZ IS MOVING IN TOWARD KATHERINE BAILEY.
Isiah launched himself straight at Satan, even though the Devil towered over him, driving both fists into the devil’s chest. With a scream of terror, Samuel ran for the site.
18
Pedro and Thomas skidded to a halt by the door of Katherine’s hut, meeting the wild eyes of Katherine and Father Paleros with hopeless looks of their own.
‘Is this some ridiculous hoax that we’re all falling for?’ Katherine asked, her hands visibly trembling as she clung to Paleros’ sleeve.
The echo of the hate-filled roar still reverberated around them. ‘I think not,’ Thomas replied, a humourless smile tugging the corners of his mouth. ‘I think something enormous has just begun and I wonder where we would be safest.’
Pedro took a deep breath. ‘In truth,’ he said, ‘I don’t think anywhere is any safer than anywhere else.’
Before anyone else could speak there was another roar from the jungle. It did not seem too far from them, though it bounced around the trees and huts, seemingly everywhere at once, bloodcurdling, liquid sound. Then there was a flash of bluey green light over the trees to the south of them, bright and unreal, like a science fiction special effect. As one the four of them began to back away from the treeline, heading towards the open centre of the site where dozens of people had begun to gather. Everyone was looking around, talking hurriedly to each other, their faces worried.
Carlos was angry and confused. This wasn’t right. He looked around frantically trying to make sense of it all. One moment his prize had been there, right before his eyes, ready for the taking, with a beautiful bonus to boot. Now suddenly there were horrifying noises bursting from the jungle like he had never heard before, the entire workforce of the site was gathering in plain sight, and Paleros was among them. And what the fuck was all that noise over there? Then there was a flash of light, surreal and eerie. Why was all hell breaking loose all of a sudden?
The Devil roared in rage once more as Isiah crashed double-handed into him. As he fell backwards he made one wild strike toward Samuel, black claws raking through the air. With a high pitched scream Samuel ducked sideways, stumbling and staggering on. The Devil’s claws raised hot, stinging welts on his upper arm. Samuel barely felt them through his fear as he crashed onwards, the peak of the pyramid, a black shadow above the treeline, his only focus.
As the Devil tumbled back Isiah followed him, turning and rolling as they went down. The moment Isiah was up he hammered a kick down onto the Devil’s face, driving his boot heel hard into the shining, black skin. With a roar, Lucifer hooked his arm around the back of Isiah’s legs and flipped him, effortlessly raising the big man into the air and down onto his back. Isiah leapt up as the Devil did and they faced each other, both slightly crouched, ready for the next wave of attack.
‘Why do you insist on hindering me?’ Satan hissed, his face a mask of fury.
Isiah steadied his breath, holding himself in check. ‘I’ve already told you, you black-hearted son of a bitch. Samuel has work to do for me. In time you can have him, and not much more time at that.’
Satan growled deep in his throat. ‘I will have him when I want him, Interferer, not when you say I can. You fucking worm, who do you think you are?’
Isiah laughed, deliberately taunting, trying to give Samuel as much time as possible. ‘I’m the worm that is a constant thorn in your side, black angel. You’ve never beaten me yet, after all.’
The Devil screamed his rage and pulsed a massive bolt of raw energy at Isiah. Isiah blocked it in kind, generating a huge flash of light, hot and static, as the Devil rushed him. As two massive, clawed black hands came charging for his throat, Isiah sidestepped, raising his left arm, slightly hooked at the elbow. His forearm, steel hard from decades upon decades of conditioning, slammed into the Devil’s face with crushing force. Satan took it with a pained grunt and turned, his own arm flying upwards, taking Isiah in the chest, lifting him up and back as the wind was forced from him.
Gritting his teeth, desperately dragging air back into his lungs, Isiah staggered, staying on his feet by force of will alone, barely managing to avoid the Devil’s next lunge. As Satan spun again Isiah leapt in, pumping out his leg in a powerful side kick, driving his booted foot into the Devil’s ribs. Satan bent sideways, grunting again. Isiah could see his annoyance, his rage that a mere human could actually hurt him. Isiah could feel the energy rising as Satan began to let pulse upon pulse of energy flood from him, washing Isiah with agonising bursts of raw power. Isiah gathered his own will, barely withstanding the onslaught, and began returning the attack. Flashes of light and static swam and shifted around them as the battle became psychic as well as physical. The energy began to whip up a storm of whistling wind, screeching through the trees like tormented banshees as the battle continued. Maintaining his wall of energy, Isiah began to rain blows upon Satan again, desperately hoping that Samuel was close to achieving his task. He had no idea how long he would be able to hold off the Devil in such a fury as this.
In the bowels of the pyramid the old village elder wearily climbed the steps of the central dais in the circular room below the skull chamber, feeling his way in the dark. He hoisted himself up onto the intricately carved altar stone and laid back in the human shaped indentation. He began to chant, an eerie sound echoing off the walls.
As he continued to chant a watery light began to fill the room, pushing the darkness into the corners. The light emanated from small glowing clouds in each of the alcoves in the surrounding columns. The balls of light began to condense into shapes, each becoming the likeness of a human skull. Some appeared clear, some cloudy. One was the streaked purple of amethyst, another rosy pink. As the images solidified their light streaked across the room in bright rays, like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, flooding the old man in a rainbow cascade of impossible brightness. With a cry of both agony and ecstasy the old man’s body bucked once as enormous energy was channelled through it. Then a column of light, brighter than the sun, streamed upwards from the elder’s contorted face. The skull in the chamber above him flashed into brilliant light, drowning everything in total white incandescence. The old man released an echoing scream that reverberated around the pyramid, as loud as the light was bright.
In the basement of the British Museum of Man thousands of miles away a young night janitor stared in horror at the half smoked joint in his hand, then looked back at the crystal skull on the shelf in the locked cage storage room before him, pulsing with light like a glassy heart. In a hidden cave in Tibet ancient monks of a unique and secular order fell to their knees in prayer as their most powerful icon glowed with inner radiance. In a museum basement in France a skull pulsed brightly, unnoticed. A socialite in north America woke when light flooded his bedroom. He went to investigate what the strange pulses might be...
Katherine, Thomas, Pedro and Father Paleros stood huddled in the open centre of the site, among the dozens of others, staring at the lights flashing above the trees that whipped and bowed in the sudden, unholy wind. Their hair flew about their faces and their clothes were tugged and flapped by hot, irregular blasts.
‘Is this some kind of armageddon?’ Paleros cried above the increasing screech and whistle. Sand and dust and leaves began lifting and flying around in circles and mini whirlwinds. Thomas Drake shook his head, staring into the trees as if watching something only he could see.
Katherine held tightly to Thomas’ arm, her free arm shielding her eyes from the flying debris. ‘Would we be safer inside?’ she shouted.
Before anyone could answer there a bloodcurdling wail sounded behind them. Everybody spun around to see a shaft of light punch through the darkness from the entrance to the pyramid. Most of the local workers dropped to their knees, or ran screaming. At the same moment more flashes and pulses of light and energy flashed above the trees to the south.
‘What’s happening?’ Katherine shouted over the wind, her face betraying her terror.
Father Paleros hitched his robes up from his ankles. ‘If this angel of death is here for me then I go to meet it gladly!’ he cried, his eyes wild. ‘I would rather go to my death than have it come here to destroy you all!’ As he finished the last words he sprinted towards the trees at the south end of the site, heading towards the flashes and pulses and the wildly swaying trunks and boughs.
Katherine screamed, ‘Father, no!’ Without a thought she bolted after the flying priest, calling his name.
Thomas Drake shook his head sadly and trotted after them. He held up a hand as Pedro Sanchez came to join him. ‘I’ll get them,’ he called over the shrieking wind. ‘You should stay here and watch your people.’
In the underbrush Carlos Villalopez laughed a crazed laugh. He had no clue what was happening around him, with screams and wails and winds and lights bending reality out of all proportion, but his drug addled mind refused to accept that it was nearly as bad as he perceived it. And now, unparalleled joy, out of all the people gathered in terror in the centre of the site, that holy fucker priest and the beautiful American were running straight to him. If he had a god he would thank him. Some old man in a bizarre looking suit seemed to be following them, but no matter. One extra old timer would be no problem.
As they came crashing through the trees towards him he stood, a vicious, sharp blade glinting in his hand.
VILLALOPEZ ALMOST HAS THEM!
