Rise Of The Soulless

by Erik Lynd

  “Can you search who the building owners in that area are? Exclude name corporations like, Apple, Amazon, and big banks that we would all recognize.”

  “Sure, but what are we looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. A list of owners is just a start. Look for anything out of the ordinary, any unusual business structures. You know, small companies owned by other small companies.”

  “Just because I’m good at math doesn’t mean I’m a forensic accountant. But I know one.”

  “You know one?”

  “Sure, when you hack at my level you meet all sorts of interesting characters. I’ve been in contact with him for the last fifteen minutes. I’ll put together a list of potential buildings. But what are you going to do with this list?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but if we can narrow it down it will be a start. Hell, it’s the only thing we have to go on. Meanwhile, I’m gonna take a walk and see what I can dig up.”

  13

  At first, there were blobs of cloudy light, then fade to black. At some point, the light splotches stayed and the dark curtain stopped being drawn. The light solidified around Christopher, bringing images into a fuzzy focus. A wall of stone, chipped and old, passed before his eyes like he was being lifted on some sort of elevator.

  Then more images became clear. He could see two of the brothers, their shoulders at least, standing at an impossible angle. Then he was aware of the sensation of movement across his back and the sound of something heavy being dragged across the ground.

  He realized that sound was coming from him. He wasn’t going up, he was being dragged by the Apophis brothers.

  His thoughts were still slipping and sliding out of place, but he knew enough to stay quiet. They hadn’t seemed to notice he was awake. And he needed time to think this through. The last thing he remembered was fighting them in the streets of Old Town Cairo.

  Then it came back to him in a rush. They had no souls. These were not dark souls, they were something altogether different. What were they and was he even equipped to deal with them? Apparently, the answer was no, based on his current situation. His whole shtick kind of revolved around soul taking and damnation.

  As his thoughts solidified and he could think somewhat straight, he realized he no longer had the Weapon. He must have dropped it when he was knocked unconscious.

  Soulless or not, it was a powerful tool he no longer had. He hoped it wasn’t just lying in the street for anybody to pick up. But then again if it had fallen into these guys’ hands, the situation would not be any better.

  Christopher opened his eyes and tried to get a better look around without alerting his captors. He was being dragged down a narrow tunnel just wide enough for the two brothers carrying him to walk with him in tow. Occasionally he would see pictographs or hieroglyphics on the walls or a small statue tucked away in a nook or carved into a corner.

  Where was he? Was it some ancient Egyptian tomb? It looked like something right out of a Discovery Channel special. More importantly though, why was he being dragged through it?

  They didn’t speak, just wordlessly turned in unison. Their silence was unnerving. They walked in almost lock step, moving together as though they could read each other’s mind. Could they read his?

  Hey Apophis? Can you hear me? Guess you couldn’t take me one on one huh, little bitch?

  Nothing. His relief was short-lived as Christopher was suddenly tossed into a room. He tried to roll to his feet, like in the movies, but the aches and pains, coupled with the dizziness brought on by movement, kept him from executing that feat. Instead, he settled for a moan and coming to rest against the far wall.

  The stone he sat against was not natural, but only roughly carved. This place didn’t have the finished look of most old Egyptian earthworks. He was unsure if that was because of its age or just sloppiness.

  The room was small with no carvings or marking of any sort along the walls. He thought all these ancient ruins had carvings. Although it was pitch black, his gifts allowed him to see perfectly in natural darkness. It seemed Apophis and his brothers shared his gift. They stood in the doorway with no lights.

  “We wanted to kill you. To destroy your office as revenge for imprisoning us all those centuries ago,” Apophis said.

  Christopher used the rough wall to pull himself up. If the fight were to continue, he would do it without the Weapon. His power was formidable enough.

  “But that would have been too easy. Too much of a mercy.”

  “I wasn’t the one who imprisoned you. I don’t even know who you are,” Christopher said.

  Apophis just shook his head. “It doesn’t matter who you were, all that matters is what you are now. We can see that you are not the power that stopped us before. But you have chosen to take on the job of the most hated entity in the world. The insignificant mortal you were before is irrelevant. The power that you are now is deserving of our vengeance.”

  “So, you wanted to kill me in this cave? Even though I have done nothing to you?”

  “No, we don’t want to kill you. We will not give you the mercy denied to us. Despite your mortal path, we know that like us, you cannot die—not from nonviolent means that is. As we were trapped for thousands of years, so shall you be. Deep beneath the desert sand, trapped in eternal darkness.”

  “No,” Christopher said, panic was setting in as he realized what they intended.

  “I wonder how long your power will protect you from the madness. In that sense we were lucky I guess. My brothers and I lack souls, we don’t have true emotions. This protected us from madness.”

  “You are mad.”

  “Then perhaps that is the trick. Embrace madness. You will be here a long time, perhaps forever. Whatever that truly means. This place has no real use, a minor tomb that has never been discovered and never will given its unknown and uninteresting location. We were also lucky that the seal of our prison was a stone of powerful forces and of much use to those who understood. Here is nothing but sand and stone.”

  Christopher started pulling his power from the shadows, it gathered about him in an aura of energy. He had to move now before they could do whatever it was that they planned.

  Christopher lunged forward with inhuman speed and power. But Apophis was quicker, as though he had known it was coming. Despite the strength behind Christopher’s blow he missed, and he had put too much into it, he was off balance. A fist like a thousand sledgehammers slammed into his gut. A second struck the back of his head when he leaned forward from the first blow.

  He tried to block a kick coming for his face only to have pain explode in his side as a different foot slammed into his ribs, cracking them. The brothers worked in perfect unison. If Christopher blocked one blow, two more struck with unerring accuracy as though they intuitively knew where each would strike next. He had fought multiple opponents before, but none had been this in sync.

  It’s like they shared one mind.

  Christopher was soon overwhelmed. He was still injured from the earlier fight, and he was not making out any better in this one.

  A fist smashed into his face and his head snapped back with a crack. He felt his feet leave the ground as he flew back toward the rear wall. They were just too fast, too strong when they worked together. His back slammed against the stone wall, his head cracked against it and he fell forward struggling to hold onto consciousness. The room swam around him.

  He could hear a rumble, like an earthquake approaching. Then his vision was obscured by dust and sand; it filled his nostrils, coating his throat with a dusky dryness. His body shook in a sudden surge of coughing. It was all around him, a dust storm, thick and rolling like smoke in a burning house.

  The intense coughing was bringing the world back into focus. He coughed and hacked, spitting out paste-like snot covered with dirt. He pulled up his hoodie to cover his mouth and help filter out the worst of the crud. He tried to stand as the dust settled, but the best he could do was get to his knees. At least the coughin
g was going away.

  The tunnel that led out of this small room was gone. Instead, there was a pile of rock. There were many small stones, ones he could easily move with the Hellpower fueling his strength, but there were also giant slabs, probably weighing several tons. He was strong, but not Superman strong.

  When he tried to lift a stone, his body screamed in protest. It seemed that no matter how strong he was, his bruised and battered body was in no condition for excavation. He would have to rest. He slid down the back wall until he was sitting on his ass.

  At least he could breathe and the dust was settling, but for how long? He looked around the room. Nothing. No holes, no other doors, not even a small crack. He knew that he could not die from lack of oxygen, but he could be affected, maybe lose consciousness. He imagined shifting back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness in some quasi-dream state, suffering but unable to fully grasp his situation. He shuddered and forced himself to turn away from those dark thoughts.

  In the distance he heard long rolling growls of thunder. It took him only a moment to realize it wasn’t thunder; they were collapsing the entire passage. Even if he could move the giant boulders, it would take him forever to claw his way out. And he would run out of oxygen before then. Once that happened he would be in no state to plan an escape.

  When he was feeling a little better, he stood gingerly and slowly, meticulously working his way around the room looking for… anything. A secret passage, a crack, something. But it was smooth cut stone, old and cracked, and nothing that he could use.

  He searched his pockets. He had his cell phone, the light flared to life, startlingly bright after he had become so used to the dark. No service. Of course. He was in the middle of nowhere, who knows how far underground. Apophis must have seen the phone, he just knew it didn’t matter.

  He tried it anyway. Nothing. Dead air. On the plus side, he could play Candy Crush to pass the time. He turned off the phone and put it away.

  He sat that way for a while listening to nothing, trying not to think. It was too scary to think. He heard sounds, quiet rumbles that he knew were just the broken ceiling settling into its new home, content to wait for the next few thousand years or few million. It was as though the rock was talking to him, asking how long he would be here. Would anyone miss him up there? Was he just a fleshy time capsule? He stopped that train of thought, that way led to madness.

  Time passed, he was not sure how long—hours maybe, minutes? The rocks had stopped talking a long time ago.

  Why the hell did he just go charging off? Here he thought he could take care of three dark souls when he could barely take care of one at a time. If he had listened to Hamlin, he wouldn’t be here, not alone. At least the detective would have known where he was and could somehow arrange a rescue party. The arrogance, the pride, when did this power become so much to him? No, he shouldn’t blame the power; it was his decision. They were right, Hamlin, the Erises: he was becoming something else and it was clouding who he was.

  But he was the Hand of Perdition. He determined the damned and judged redemption. He had the right of might. This power was his and his alone, the others had no idea what he went through. They could never understand what was inside of him.

  He had stood and power radiated around him, his eyes flared with the heat of anger, hatred. He could feel the power washing over his body. They could never understand what it was to be the Hand of the Devil. Of course, he wasn’t sure he had really ever tried to tell them. No, not really. He had let the power win to some extent, maybe. He liked to think that he had held back from them, stayed aloof, to protect them. But maybe it was because he was afraid of what this power would do to them.

  He knew what it was doing to him, how it was changing him, tearing him in two. He knew that if he got too close, if he cared for them too much, this power would turn on them somehow and they would be hurt. He had lost a family once before.

  He knelt and slammed his fist down on the stone floor; cracks radiated through the stone from the impact. A hollow boom rang through the floor and walls. He had to stop these thoughts. They would get him nowhere. They were the thoughts of the weak, not of the Hunter of Lost Souls, the Lord of Damnation. He would be strong, he had to be. Time to whine when he was out of this place.

  If he had just known they weren’t even dark souls, he could have done some research, worked with Juan and Hamlin and… He stopped cold.

  The Librarian.

  He quickly searched through his pockets and pulled out a tiny book of stamps. Even as he removed it from his pocket, it shifted and grew, becoming a pocket size journal. The Book and the gateway to the Library. He didn’t know if it would help at this point—what good would it be to know anything about his enemy now that he can’t do anything with it—but it was the only chance he had.

  He opened the book and looked at the first page.

  It read: TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH

  The words began to blur and shake as his journey began.

  14

  Apophis stood just above the hole in the sand while his brothers finished sealing it up. It was hot despite the early hour, the sun just up over the horizon, but they didn’t sweat; the heat did not touch them. Wind whipped through their clothes, cracking the cloth in violent fits. Tiny grits of sand flew at them like the driest of all hail.

  Apophis surveyed the hole, now no more than a dent in the sand. This would hold him, maybe forever. If not, he would at least suffer in the darkness for millennia just Apophis had. He would understand what prison really was. Just as he condemned others to the eternal darkness of Hell, this was to be his damnation. Yes, this was more satisfying than a simple death. And they even had a prize.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded knife. He could feel the power inside it even if he couldn’t access it. The Weapon of the Hunter, of the Beast, of the Gate Keeper of Hell, the legendary First Weapon. Its power was vast.

  He couldn’t force it to serve him, not yet anyway, but they had time. Time to test it, to find its weakness, to shape the weapon just for him. All they had was time. The question really was, what to do with all this time?

  They were masterless, and this was not right. They needed a master, someone to give them purpose. Their vengeance done, they now craved a purpose. Without one, they were a ship without a rudder.

  For the last few days, Apophis had been feeling something. They had ignored it to focus on the vengeance at hand. But now, now he reached out to it, searched it with his mind. He knew he didn’t have a soul, they were not weak mortals spewed at random from some woman’s thighs. They were lovingly constructed, with purpose, with beauty. They were the First Bleeders and stealers of lives. They had no mortal coil dragging them down.

  No, he did not reach out with his soul, but with his mind and he could see it. Far across the sand and mountains, far across the fields of grass waving in the wind, far beyond the great ocean and its crashing waves. He could see it, the only beacon they had in this time of lost purpose and wandering.

  It was the rock that had sealed their prison. Someone had taken it. Whoever had unwittingly released them had the stone, and they might know what power it contained. They knew its value, but nothing of the First Bleeders slumbering beyond. This interested Apophis. To know the value of that stone was to know secrets long since dead to the world above. Whoever wanted that stone might be a worthy master.

  They could see it there, over the vast distance. They would be drawn to it. Yes, that was their purpose now. Find the stone and its master and decide if he was good enough to be the master of Apophis.

  He turned back to the Jeep parked a few hundred feet away. They had stolen it, but it would get them to the airport. This made him smile. For the past one hundred years as they slumbered below and dreamed, as their minds learned the world, Apophis longed the most to fly. To soar through the sky like the birds. Boats he had done a million times, albeit smaller than the grand ones of today, and cars while interesting were just
chariots lacking horses.

  No, the plane was the work of wonder. He did not feel like mortals, this he knew, but he did know excitement and this trip to America would be a pleasure he had never experienced.

  It would require money to purchase tickets, but he also knew that here, cash could go a long way. While they slumbered and learned of the world, they had studied all its cities, but none so much as Cairo. They knew this place. Its beauty and its sins, its corruption. It would take a day or two at most to steal funds and arrange to be smuggled into America.

  His brothers jumped in the back, and he took the driver’s seat. There was no argument, no discussion on who would be the driver. It just was this way. It did not matter. In the end, the brothers were all one. They were Apophis.

  The Jeep turned abruptly and kicked up sand. Then, as the sun rose higher in the sky, Apophis headed in the direction of the city. Money, travel documents, and his dream of flight came first, then they would seek the one who had taken their tombstone and freed them.

  15

  “How dare you?” bellowed Golyat as he slammed open the door to Grace’s room. The force of his entrance shattered the wood as it slammed up against the wall. Grace jerked up from where she was sitting. Startled, she fell from her seat.

  Golyat stood in the doorway. His bulk filled the space, giving her no room for escape, not that she would have even gotten by him. He was dressed in his usual tailored suit, custom because it was the size of a six-man tent—you don’t find that at Armani—but also because Golyat would never wear anything but the best of the best and only for him.

  He was huge, but not all fat, more like a giant sumo wrestler; outer layer of fat, but still full of muscle. And tall enough to duck his head when he entered most rooms. That’s why his homes were always oversized with cathedral ceilings. Even Grace’s room was designed to allow him comfort.