“Emile!” she pleaded. “Please, let’s get away from this terrible place while we can!”
Emile was shocked to hear these words from his wife. “Alexandra! How can you say such a thing? After all these brave souls have done for us.”
Another ghostly apparition took shape from a small whirlwind of iridescent mist. A graceful and dapper figure dressed in a smart black suit and tie. Emile observed Rev, who became fixated on Abby immediately. Their feelings for one another were so evident there was no mistaking.
“Besides, true love should never be allowed to wither on the vine,” Emile added.
“True love? What do you know of true love?” Hatman placed his palm at the back of Abby’s neck. Passionately, he consumed her in a rapturous embrace.
“Hey!” Rev sped in a flash of lightning to the scene of the repugnant tryst. It was at that point when he realized, in his envious haste, he’d made a tactical error. It was another one of Hatman’s sinister and clever traps, a way to pry Rev away from the Petrovics and lure him into a wall of soul snares, which the hooded henchmen were quick to provide.
Understanding the seriousness of his mistake, Rev changed course and swept through the amphitheater like a mystical typhoon. He returned to Emile and Alexandra, back to his duty, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Hatman sensed Rev’s rage and frustration. He loved it.
“What’s the matter, Rever? Bitter? You should be. I possess Abby now. You will never succeed at winning her everlasting love. You do not know how to treat a lady. You show her no respect.”
“And drugging her, manhandling her, destroying all that she’s worked for and believes in, killing her living friends and enslaving the dead ones…that’s treating her with respect?”
“You forgot one thing,” Hatman chortled, placing his hands around Abby’s throat. “Taking her soul.”
“Stop it, Hatman!” Emile had seen enough. He couldn’t stand idly by and watch this monster harm Abby. He knew what it meant to Ghost Guard. Abby was a tenacious protector of the spirit world, and her loss would be devastating. But more than that, Emile knew how much Rev and Abby loved each other. “I’ll finish the Controller. Just don’t harm the girl.”
“No!” Alexandra hung onto her husband. “Don’t do it!”
“I must. You know it. Now, don’t try to hold me back.”
She mingled her energy with his in one last supernatural kiss before he forced her to become her own separate entity once again. She cried at his callousness. He didn’t want to do it. He had to. Their love was the one thing that kept him enduring all this time. And now it was time for him to do what he was put into this universe to do.
“These people need me,” he whispered to her. One last whisper. “Abby needs me. Rev needs me. Look at them. Look at how much they are in love. Does that remind you of anyone?”
Alexandra couldn’t deny the affectionate connection between Rev and Abby. She was more than sensitive to it. “Emile, I-I cannot fight you on this.”
With that, Emile Petrovic descended to floor level, where a small army of robed men waited with soul snares at the ready. They all wanted badly to trap this soul, but Hatman nodded a temporary truce, telling his henchmen to show restraint.
“Not now,” he said. “Let the doctor pass. He has work to do.”
“Yes,” Emile looked upon the Controller. His eyes, glowing with ghostly effervescence, scanned the disaster that was supposed to be his work. “Here I am to do your bidding, Hatman. Finally, after all of these decades, you win. I will unlock the riddle of the Controller. Only if you promise that these good souls will go free.”
“I promise,” Hatman said solemnly. “I always keep my promises.”
“So you do,” Emile admitted. “You always do what you say. But I’ve never heard you promise something that wasn’t truly malicious, so forgive me if I harbor just a slight hint of dubiousness.”
Hatman chuckled in acknowledgement. “You have a point. How can I make it clear to you that my word is golden? Ghost Guard will be free to go, each and every one of them. So long as you complete that machine.”
“You can count on it,” Emile said.
Chapter 26
Emile studied with apprehension the tangle of wires and misconstrued mishmash of what was supposed to be a functioning prototype of his brilliant Controller design. Instead of functioning, though, it fell woefully short, and its inadequacies were perfectly clear to Emile.
“Who assembled this?”
Morris was embarrassed. He had been hanging his head in shame, uncertain if he should shut up or cop to the miserably inadequate effort. Emile noticed him no matter how hard he tried to fade into the background.
“You. Come here.”
A breathtaking moment. Morris fought back the lump in his throat and the fogginess in his brain.
“I say, young man,” the doctor asked. “Were you the one working on this project?”
“Y-yes,” Morris had no ability to process this dramatic turn of events. He had known the prospect of a face to face meeting with Emile Petrovic was likely given the nature of this particular mission. Still, even with all the time he had to prepare, when the moment finally arrived, he was star struck.
“I say, my dear sir, come closer. There is something about your design that impresses me, but you are missing a crucial component. Come here and let me show you what I mean.”
Impressed? Emile Petrovic was impressed with Morris? The very thought absorbed him in bliss. He had to collect himself, though. For the team. For the fate of all spirits everywhere. For himself.
“D-D-Doctor Petrovic,” Morris developed a speech impediment on the spot. “Sir, I mean. I mean Mister…Doctor…I mean…”
“It’s all right. I wanted to show you something here, in the transducers,” the doctor pointed out something Morris hadn’t appreciated previously. Right away he was awestruck by the man’s thought process. “They have to be recalibrated otherwise you’ll have an overload. That’s why you had the failure.”
It felt as if Morris had to pick up his jaw off the floor. “I-I never would have thought of that. Not in a million years.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” the doctor was a maestro, and the nuts and bolts, wires and cables, microprocessors and data drives, were the performers.
“We want to make this a scalable system,” said Doctor Petrovic. “In such a manner as to—”
Quite out of the blue, Morris was stricken with the end of the sentence and blurted it out without thinking. “To maintain the polarity and frequency levels no matter how much output is achieved.”
Emile had a glisten in his eye for this new pupil of his. “Smart boy!”
“You’re stalling!” Hatman bristled.
Emile worked without looking at Hatman. “I can assure you this is not a stall tactic. This is delicate work, you must understand.”
“I understand. I understand you’re trying to pull a fast one!”
Hatman gripped Abby’s throat. She struggled for breath, for consciousness, for her very life. He signaled a footman to bring forward his soul snare. The loyal servant obeyed, tipping the end of the nasty device toward Abby, ready to capture her essence once she passed.
“Your friends won’t cooperate,” he whispered to her. “I’m going to kill you now. But before I do…one last kiss…”
His lips met hers. She tried fighting him off. He was too strong, his magnetism too powerful. Her will was shredded for that moment, and it was only a moment, for as soon as it happened, Hatman was interrupted by a swift and stout push, like a sneaker wave in the ocean. Rev had one or two more tricks up his sleeve, and he wasn’t afraid to use them. Via his unparalleled speed, he bypassed the spirit snares and penetrated into Hatman’s intimate space.
“Get off her, you son of a bitch!”
Hatman’s sudden usurping came as a total shock to the audience, all of whom believed wholeheartedly in the omnipotence of their dark god. He was surprised himself, surprised t
hat a mere ghost could hold such power over him, even for an unguarded second.
He seized Abby’s throat again. She was furious that she had allowed herself to become so vulnerable. Furious that this deluded, self-absorbed fiend could get the drop on her like he had. She felt her physical as well as mental faculties returning, yet not enough for her to mount much resistance.
“Hatman,” Emile stood erect, wiping his hands together as if to congratulate himself for a job well done. While the others were fighting, he had been laboring diligently. “You can let her go now. You can let them all go. The Controller is complete.”
“Excellent!” Hatman did not rely on ceremony this time. He thrust the doctor aside and hastily powered on the device.
At that moment, all of reality took a frightening turn. The first real evidence was the screaming. Not from the audience. They were screaming, but it wasn’t them. It came from below their feet. Without her clairvoyance, Abby never would have heard it. The ghostly cacophony had a spine-chilling effect on her, as if she was standing on the tomb of endless hordes from the depths. Timeless depths in which even the darkness dare not travel for fear of being infected with bleakness far worse than desolation.
Something emerged from the Controller. A malignant and supernatural glow. It was a strong and senseless power, aiming straight to the sky and sending the stars a sudden and sinister show of force. Everyone in the amphitheater saw it happen, and the bulk of the audience was scared stiff.
That was just the beginning. A tremendous rumble emanated from the ground. It sounded like the end of the world, and it might have very well been. The earth cracked apart like a hungry mouth eager to slurp up all life and everything innocent and pure from the world.
And then, literally, all Hell broke loose.
All the legendary horrors that once upon a time prowled the earth, all the noxious nightmares that stalk mankind’s fears erupted from that hole in the ground. Malignant and maligned beings from the folklores of countless cultures. Tiny beasts with glowing red eyes and frothing fangs. Musclebound grendels and contorted golems. Horned monsters resembling Baphomet. Bizarre animal hybrids afflicted with necrotizing fasciitis. Humanoid creatures with two, three, and even no heads. Abby couldn’t believe her eyes when she beheld the totality of the horrors lunging, slithering, and leaping from the pit of desolation like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
“Hear me!” Hatman stood at the highest point on the altar. “I command you, denizens of the underworld, guardians of all that is dark and unholy, do my bidding!”
The beasts from the underground stood along the edges of the chasm and looked at one another incredulously. Grunts and snorts. Sounds of debate amongst the ranks of vile. Laughter began emanating from these beings, and it was clear they would not be ordered around by the likes of this pretender.
“I order you, my children, obey me!”
The creatures looked upon him with an air of smugness. Hatman could sense it. And, as if a command had been given, they rose up together in one solid front. Those with wings went airborne and swirled about the outdoor arena, cackling and shrieking and filling the air with fear. The wealthy men and women in their tuxedos and diamond necklaces cried for help as the demonic beings rushed among them. Scenes of terrible debauchery broke out ubiquitously. Giants took shrieking women who begged for mercy and for help. Their men were no help. They ran in fear though there was nowhere to run.
Abby’s first instinct was to help these people. They were a part of Hatman’s scheme. Pawns in his supernatural game of chess. Though they knew the nature of his nefarious plans, and though they desired to gain from the pain and suffering of the world, they now found themselves victims of a cruel fate. The underworld’s most fearsome monsters were set loose upon them, and Abby couldn’t bear to stand by and watch.
But she had trouble of her own. A snarling ogre the size of a small bus leapt from the abyss and snatched Abby with both of his gruesome, wart-covered hands. She swatted groggily at the beast with everything she had, but she was still so weak. She felt herself ascending as another giant brute stole her from his rival. As if she was a fly, he picked her up and dangled her in front of his yellow eyes, studying her with hunger. He opened his gaping jaws and held her high above his head.
At the last second, as she headed straight for the beast’s mouth, she knew it was over. Everything was in slow motion, and she glanced over to find Rev in the melee, hoping beyond hope he would come to her rescue.
What she saw tore up her insides.
Rev was busy coming to the rescue, all right. But not Abby’s. It was that woman, Katherine. She’d been beset by what appeared to be a savage, horned, humanoid creature, and her husband was nowhere to be found. Rev soared in the air like a blur, plucked her from the monster’s arms, and whisked her to safety. And now the woman was clutching Rev like he was a god. It made Abby ill.
All of this Abby saw in the time she was falling into the jaws of a beast from hell. And when she saw it, she almost wanted to be eaten. Then she had a flash of reality. If Rev wanted that woman, so be it. Abby wasn’t going to shrink like a withering flower. She wanted to live. She all of a sudden was filled with the desire to survive, to defeat this stinking ogre. She found her footing, found her strength, found her faculties, and caught herself at the last moment before plunging into the giant’s hungry maw.
She saw the angry expression on the beast’s face. It was cheated out of a meal. But that didn’t mean she would cower from the fight. She didn’t know the meaning of surrender, and wouldn’t let something like the small matter of a few monsters scare her.
Rev watched with keen anticipation as Abby saved herself. He wanted badly to help to her, but complications were all around him. He had to rely on the fact that he knew Abby was strong. She’d trained with the best. He had to trust that she could handle herself among the evil animated skeletons and the malevolent shape shifters and the profane animal crossbreeds. Everywhere he looked was another mythical creature of darkness. Werewolves and bloodsuckers and hobgoblins. And other strange creatures Rev had never heard of. It was readily apparent that handling them all would be a problem.
Hatman, though, did not see it as a problem. This was his moment, and despite the numbers of unspeakable beings who had risen from their dark slumber, he was sure he could rein them in.
“Welcome, my pets,” he shouted over the screams, over the roaring and the clacking of hooves. He was self-assured. The Controller was at full power, running smoothly. Everything was working out exactly as planned. “You have all been waiting for this moment, waiting as I have been waiting…now all I ask is that you listen to me!”
Hatman’s declaration was greeted by indifference. A violent indifference. The vile and vicious beasts kept coming. It was maddening to witness, but the damage had been done. Everyone knew what was coming, and the humans in the crowd were in hysterics.
Abby would have panicked if not for her extensive training. It kicked in just as a pack of rotting, festering zombie like creatures encircled her. They moved quickly and with intelligence. Hands with rotted flesh reached for her, finger bones protruding, marrow seeping from the joints like sickly sauce. She would have cowered away and screamed if she wasn’t so well-trained, so determined, so strong.
Despite the overwhelming odds, Abby chose to fight. A roundhouse kick to the torso of the first and closest zombie pushed it back into a crowd of five others, toppling them over like bowling pins. She felt a hand on her back and swung around to clock the son of a bitch who had the audacity to touch her. She threw a monster of a haymaker, aimed directly at the zombie’s jaw. Instead of sinew and bone, though, she hit nothing but empty air. Baffled for a quick moment, she saw the dust coalesce into the shape of a man. Rev’s features materialized out of those dust particles into a fully formed and completely solid body. He frowned at her.
“Hey! Watch it! You almost throttled me!”
“You would’ve deserved it,” she turned and faced the oncoming
undead. They had regrouped and formed a solid front.
“You’re not mad at me because of Katherine, are you?” he asked uncertainly. “Tell me you aren’t that petty.”
“What am I supposed to think, Rev?” she threw a left, then a right, then an uppercut, laying waste to three zombies in a row. She was on fire. “I know you, Rev. I know what you are.”
“What I am?” Rev had his own attackers to worry about. It wasn’t zombies. It was flying reptiles with nasty claws and razor sharp teeth. One after the other they dive-bombed him, and each one he used his solid fists to punch out of the air. They came at him so quickly that he had to employ his supernatural speed to avoid being hit. Once that was out of the way, he went back to arguing. “What I am is a ghost madly in love with you.”
Abby wasn’t in the mood for arguments.
“Save it,” she ran and jumped and somersaulted so high and fast it took three beasts by surprise. In the rush, she hit one right between the eyes. Snorting, growling, drooling creatures just salivating at the thought of her supple and sweet meat. She pummeled and pounded and elbowed and kneed. She was a torrent, a literal tornado of mixed martial arts moves. She was so quick and agile and violently effective, it made Rev a little envious.
A little.
Rev had his own technique, which involved prescience and preternatural timing. Quite simply, he never let them touch him, dematerializing a fraction of a second before a scaly reptile or a fanged vampire or a drooling werewolf could get their claws on him, and then reappearing behind his attacker to deliver a devastating response. His tactic proved quite effective, just like Abby’s. However, just like Abby, he couldn’t keep up. As soon as he would dispatch one underworld fiend, two more took its place.
Hatman wasn’t pleased.
“How dare you challenge my authority! With the Controller I will send you all back to from where you came!”
The beasts only laughed while advancing on Hatman. Beset from every side, surrounded and surmounted, Hatman banged his fits on the Controller.
Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice Page 19
