This was important.
Charlie was unstable, and his instability would be the downfall of them all. No Electus would be needed. No Realm Protectors would storm the gates. The Shadow Eaters and their Master would rot from the inside like cancer in the bowels of some once great and powerful beast.
He wasn’t doing it for the dead soldiers on the floor. No, he was doing it for the Realms.
Finally, he turned his head from the mess of flesh and blood. Charlie had kept looking to the bookshelf. Even a blind man could’ve noticed that. And on the bookshelf was the thing Otis had come here for.
It was a vial of blood. Part of it was red; part of it was black. The two parts only mixed slightly. One part Mortal; one part Demon. Together it formed the blood of the Electus, and the blood of the Electus was all Otis needed to open the box.
He grabbed it, dimly aware of how the liquid buzzed inside of the glass, and thrust it down his breast pocket.
With that, he left, heading down the steps for the last time.
* * * * *
Moments after Otis had rushed out of Charlie’s meeting room not avoiding the puddles of blood and tracking down the hallway and hundreds of steps, Charlie had gotten his mind in order.
I will be okay. Everything will be okay.
Those thoughts rolled around in his head much the same way Otis’ thoughts of the dead scouts had.
Everything was going to be great.
Then he saw the lock hanging from the door, and the massacre he’d left behind in his meeting room.
His mind reeled.
Who would dare break into his chambers? So many names came to mind. A hand of death crept up his spine as he thought of Felix or Harold Storm. Maybe they’d gotten in. Maybe they’d be waiting for him as soon as he stepped inside. Three swords against his one — two if he counted the Deathblade he’d taken from Storm. He didn’t like the feel of it, though. It was just…off.
Maybe you’re going crazy.
He stepped inside. His muscles tensed up in preparation for a fight, but nothing came. He scanned the room, looking for any disturbance besides the footprints scattered among the floor, footprints he wasn’t sure were his or someone else’s.
Then he saw the bookshelf. A row of books leaned the wrong way, and where a heavy, leather-bound book of old incantations had been, masking the vial of blood from prying eyes — he was never really worried about someone ever coming in here and taking it — was nothing besides a dark hole.
He scrambled up the bookshelf. Patting down every copy, shifting aside dictionaries, fables, and dark, dark poetry.
It was gone.
But the seeing glass was not, and in the ball, his head a perfect circle, his eyes scared, round Os, was Otis.
Charlie turned and ran for the door.
CHAPTER 36
In the prison he walked, and he had been walking for as long as he could remember. Heavy steps, each one a pain through his legs and spine. It was always the same scenery. He never veered from the road, and the mountains he walked toward — the dark and jagged mountains like that of a broken, glass bottle — never seemed to get any closer.
Yes, it seemed he would walk for all of eternity and the road would never end. He could no longer remember his own name — Or names, he thought. For some reason, I have more than one name. Who he was. What he was. His past. His future. His loves, desires, and hates.
It was always the same. He’d move his fastest when the blazing sun went down and was replaced by a moon veiled by black clouds. It was during these nights he thought the clearest. During these nights when he almost remembered who he’d been.
Sometimes he’d call out a name, and that name would be Charlie. He had no idea who Charlie was, he just knew Charlie was a god. Charlie brought the thunder with his voice, the rain and drinking water in his tears, but most importantly, Charlie brought the food.
He was a thin man. On his body he wore a black t-shirt. A skull and crossbones in bleach white emblazoned the front. His pants were jeans, the hems frayed and tattered, often caught beneath the soles of his boots. His hair was of shoulder length and it was the color of a poisonous honey. He had never looked at himself, there was no way to do that.
He wondered if he’d gone crazy, wondered if at one point when he’d started this journey if he knew his name or why he was even walking.
Oftentimes, he thought he was walking to his death, and then he’d figured he was already dead.
Then something happened. Something that made him question everything in this tiny world he lived in.
It was a voice, but it was not Charlie’s; it was not his god of food and water and rain. It was a smaller voice.
A familiar voice. A voice laced with loyalty.
“Master,” the voice said. “I’ve come to set you free. It’s Otis. Do you remember me? It’s Otis!”
He walked on.
The sun went down and came up and went down again.
“I’ve got his blood, the blood of the Electus.”
He walked on, boot heels clicking on the pavement, and then something else happened. Something he’d never expected, yet hoped for for what seemed like millions of years. The mountains he’d been chasing that seemed to alway get farther and farther away from him stopped.
Each step he took now, each pained step, brought him closer. He could see the wrinkled land, the cracks and crevices of valleys and dried rivers of long ago. Dead trees. Boulders. And at the pinnacle, a tower jutting into the sky.
He walked faster, ignoring the pain.
His head tickled as if whatever was inside of his skull, the basis of all his actions and thoughts, was jumpstarted by this voice.
He remembered the pain and suffering, but it was not pain and suffering he had endured; it was pain and suffering he had caused, and he had loved it. Loved every second of it. Craved it, actually.
There was a village a long time ago. He had walked up the muddy road the same way he walked up this barren highway. Voices caught in the wind. Laughter. Talk of love and life. Each torchlight he passed flickered, then died out, the flames absorbing into his soul. When the villagers saw him, they stopped all their chatter. He wore the same clothing then, all the way down to the same boots.
A man had came out into the street in front of him, a pitchfork in hand. “Get out of here,” the man said.
“Just passing through. I mean no harm.” And now he remembered that was true. He was just passing through, on his way somewhere else.
The man didn’t move.
He could sense the eyes looking out from the windows, through the cracks in the blinds.
“You leave us alone. We know who you are.”
I wish I knew who I was, he remembered thinking.
The man dropped his pitchfork lower, raised it up in a defensive position, but the Dark One kept walking. He walked and walked until the points of the pitchfork stabbed into his midsection. A woman screamed in one of the buildings. A child cried until the prongs could be seen sticking out of his back, and the sight was enough to shut the kid up. The man dropped hold of the handle, yet it didn’t crash to the muddy ground.
The Dark One smiled from ear to ear, an upsetting thing. “If you know who I am, it would be wise for you to step aside.”
The man took his suggestion.
And the Dark One burnt the town down regardless. But he kept the pitchfork. He kept it for a long time, and somewhere in the tower, he knew it was there.
He had gone all over the Realms, walking through Hell and the Mortal’s turf, even disguising himself on more than one occasion and setting foot in the Clouds where the Protectors huddled together and whispered about ways to stop him, but the way the air burned his lungs made his visits infrequent and short. A place he loved to walk was the streets of America, a place one step above Hell itself. He would stroll through the inner cities, feeding on the evil done in the back alleys — the murder, the overdoses, the assaults. It had fueled him.
He was there whe
n John Wilkes Booth held the Derringer to the back of Abraham Lincoln’s head. He watched the actor shake and sweat through the whole show, constantly switching back and forth on whether he should pull the trigger or not. In the end, the Dark One had pulled it, forcing that same uneasy smile on Booth’s face. Kennedy, too. Except Oswald was not a man who didn’t make up his mind. In the end, sitting on a backwards chair, his head propped up in his hands, he had watched Oswald assassinate him with a smile. The Dark One hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he’d whispered into the man’s ear.
Each time something like that happened, he wasn’t there, but he was. His spirit. His ideals. His soul was locked away; had been for thousands of earth years, but they couldn’t contain him. No, they could try and they could make themselves feel safe for the time, but in the end he would get out, just as this voice said he would.
Lincoln, Kennedy, and so many more. Each time you thought of hurting someone, each time you thought of stealing, of killing, of cheating on your husband or wife, he was there whispering in your ear. A voice like a snake. A voice like temptation. A man with no name, and a man with too many.
But his time and growth was stunted by the confines of lost memory and this damned cracked highway and those unreachable mountains.
“I’m going to perform the ritual now!” the voice said. “Time is short. He’ll be coming for me. I stole it from him. He wasn’t going to do it. I know he wasn’t, Master. He was going to keep it for himself and take over your kingdom. Yes, he was,” the voice spoke again, so far away.
He kept walking.
More time passed. He thought he might have aged years in that time, thought he might have died and been resurrected.
The final thing happened. He was as close as he could be to the mountains, almost at the foot of them. The sheer size took his breath away, brought chills down his arms.
But they were no longer mountains. Now they were volcanoes. The tower punched the sky, and he no longer cared for it. He cared for the rumbling of the ground, the smell of sulfur, and hot death.
An explosion rocked the highway, spraying a bright red from its mouth. He almost lost his footing, almost fell into a crack in the highway that slowly opened and revealed a blinding, white death.
But he stood strong, that’s all he could do.
The lava flowed down the mountain side as quick as a rushing river, and the Dark One stood with his arms wide open, embracing it all. And when the lava reached him, he expected to be burned to ash — and how sweet of a relief that would have been. He would’ve accepted anything over taking one more step on this highway.
Besides, he would be born again; he always was, that he was sure of.
The lava was not burning hot as it first washed over the toes of his boots. He smelled copper, though his memory was not yet strong enough to associate the color of the liquid and the smell of copper with what it actually was. He knew if it was deadly his boots would’ve gone up in flame, would’ve at least sizzled and smoked.
They didn’t.
Another explosion from the mountain, this one sent a burst of the red liquid into the atmosphere. Big, fat drops rained down on him. Like a child in a snowstorm, he stuck his tongue out, and the beads landed with a splash. He laughed a chilling, echoing laugh. His arms were out to his side, his eyes closed. He spun around and around as the dark, red liquid soaked through his clothes.
He smiled that uneasy smile, realizing what the liquid was, realizing how much he had craved it now.
It was blood.
And the Dark One — also known as Satan, also known as the Devil — was freed from the prison, and his soul entered Hell.
CHAPTER 37
Charlie heard the piercing screams rock the tower. For a second he thought the structure which had stood there for millennia would topple over. But it did not.
He was too late, and now he was in trouble.
You should’ve just jumped off. You should’ve gone to the Black Pits and thrown yourself in. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
He switched directions. Instead of going down, he went back up to his bedchamber where, behind the bookshelf, he kept the Dark One’s pitchfork. There was still a chance he could save himself. Still a chance he could blame his reluctance to free his Master as precautionary. So until then, best to suck up, he figured.
The pitchfork hung on the stone wall horizontally. It’s three prongs gleamed like a twinkling star, everywhere except the points where blood had long since crusted.
Each time he picked it up, he felt the power course through him, heard the haunts of long-dead souls, tasted their sweet blood. And each time Charlie picked it up, he didn’t want to put it down. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and turned from the bookshelf, heading back to the courtyard.
When he got there, he saw Otis kneeling before a shimmering cloud of blackness. Inside of the cloud, purple lightning crackled. Smoke drifted off of it. The black box his Master had been contained in was nothing but a flattened hunk of ash. Even the graves beyond the box and the circular courtyard looked deteriorated.
Charlie paused under the overhanging, viewing the scene with a sense of macabre horror. This was bigger than him. Much bigger.
He walked on, smelling the blood and the burnt landscape. Otis was still bent over. He sniffled and sobbed happiness intermingled with fear, which made a sort of wailing, dying animal noise.
“Master,” Charlie said.
The black cloud seemed to look in his direction. The being inside of it seemed to see right through his exterior, right into his thoughts.
“Charlie,” the being said, “It’s so great to look upon you. I’ve heard your voice for so long not knowing who you were. I had forgotten.”
“Master,” Charlie said again. It was all he could say.
“Where is my body?”
Charlie didn’t answer right away. He was unsure how he could without giving himself away. Finally, he said, “Ah, Master, this was not planned. Otis had taken it upon himself to free you. The Realm is in danger, and I was waiting for the danger to be vanquished before I let you free. You were much safer in there than you are out here. Therefore, I do not have a body for you.”
The black cloud seemed to contract then expand violently. Bolts of purple-white lightning struck the stone ground. Charlie found himself slowly backing away, almost tripped over his feet.
“Otis is the one who freed me?” the Devil said.
“Yes, Master! It was me! Charlie was going to take the throne for himself. I know it!”
Charlie ground his teeth. The grip around the handle of the pitchfork got tighter. He would’ve driven it through the snake’s neck had the Dark One not been there.
In a soft voice, almost chillingly calm, the black cloud said, “I am forever grateful, Otis. You have proven to be a true follower of my ways time and time. Let us not forget the Battle of Stonefox, how you saved me…saved us all. You are a worthy soldier.”
Charlie had to will himself not to drop the pitchfork and run.
“Oh thank you, your Darkness. I am eternally grateful. I will do anything for you — ”
“But…” the black cloud said.
Otis’ smile quickly vanished.
“But no one likes a snitch, isn’t that true, Otis?”
The Shadow Eater who was on his knees and bowing to the dark cloud now stammered as he stood up. Charlie could hear his teeth chattering, and he could not move now even if he wanted to.
“I appreciate you, Otis, but you must die,” the Dark One’s voice boomed.
Lightning erupted from the depths of the blackness. It was only a flash, almost so quick that Charlie had missed it, but three prongs of purple struck Otis’ body with a crack. He was launched across the stone, hurtling through the air like a thrown rag doll. Then he hit the surface of the tower with a bone-shattering crunch. Bits of rubble and rock cascaded down on top of him. His eyes stared wide at the cloud. He blinked slowly, a trickle of black blood flowing down the middle of his face f
rom a cut on his forehead, then he blinked no more.
He died.
Charlie smiled.
Everything will be okay, he thought again, and this time he was sure of it.
The Dark One had not lost his touch. Maybe, if anything, the rest had proven to be beneficial for his power.
“I’m glad you did that,” Charlie said. “If you wouldn’t have done it, I would’ve.”
The black cloud hung in front of him as casually as a storm cloud on a spring day.
“Now about your body, I had several candidates in mind. But I’ve not tested them to see if they’ll be able to wield your power. Remember what happened to Grimly? Beth and I were cleaning up chunks of his guts for hundreds of years.”
The Dark One said nothing, only hovered. But something about the way it hung in the air brought that feeling of hopelessness into the pit of his stomach again.
“It will be okay,” Charlie said, he went on to talk about Felix and Sahara coming down from the mountains, about Beth capturing Harold, about her squashing a group of rebels as easily as bugs, but for some reason, Charlie figured Satan knew all of this.
When he was done speaking, he thrusted out the pitchfork toward the cloud as if he would be able to handle it. “I’ve kept it hidden and safe. No one has used it.”
No reply.
Charlie brought the pitchfork back to his side.
“I know of a body,” the Devil said.
“Who?” Charlie asked.
Two bolts like purple arms shot out from the sides of the cloud. They wrapped themselves around Charlie’s torso and brought him closer. His bones rattled beneath his skin as they took on the voltage of the Dark One’s anger.
“You, Charlie. You,” he whispered.
Charlie opened his mouth. No words were able to form on the tip of his tongue, his lips were not able to move.
“You! You defy me for years. You sleep with my woman. You try to take over my kingdom. Well, now, Charlie, it seems to me we are almost identical. Only problem for you is that I’m more powerful, and that’s how it’ll always be.”
Deathbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 3) Page 17
