Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series

by Gregory Lamberson

  Setting his ax down, Jake grabbed a fire hose out of another recessed compartment and twisted its pressure valve. The high-pressure jet of water knocked back two watchers closing in on him, and Abel proceeded to dismember them with brutal efficiency, flames trailing in his wake.

  Jake continued to drive watchers back with the powerful spray, and Abel charged the remaining creatures, swinging his burning sword as water ricocheting off the watchers doused him. He struck one at knee level, then another in the neck. As the first watcher collapsed on its hobbled leg, Abel swung the sword overhead and chopped off the creature’s feelers, which spewed green fluid. The creature’s wail sounded almost human. The other watcher fell against him, spraying slime from the gaping wound in its neck. Abel shoved the creature to the floor, then plunged the sword deep into its wound, separating its head from its shoulders.

  Another watcher leapt at Abel, but Jake forced it back with the jet spray. Still another watcher came at Abel, who slammed the sword’s pommel into the thing’s face, driving it against a wall. Then he swung the sword into the head of a watcher Jake had pinned to the wall with the water. As the creature sank to its knees and pitched forward, Abel swung the sword like a baseball bat, decapitating the other watcher.

  Jake felt movement above his left knee and looked down to see the feelers of a wounded watcher crawling up his leg like eight snakes. The feelers opened their jaws, which snapped at his groin. Jake aimed the hose at the center of the thing’s head, and the water blasted the watcher’s feelers from its face. The force of the water striking at close range also slammed Jake against the wall. He managed to drive the nozzle closer to the creature’s head, which flattened out and gushed in several directions at once.

  When the muscles in Jake’s arms gave out, he dropped the hose on the floor, allowing the water to strike the wall near Abel, who stood with his sword raised, all of his foes vanquished. With his chest rising and falling, Jake realized they had wiped out the watchers: genocide.

  Cain rose from the scorched remains of several of the creatures, and the unmanned fire hose blasted fish guts across the floor. Cain also grasped a sword in one hand. The flames on his black blade crackled deep red.

  “I don’t suppose I can have one of those?” Jake said.

  Cain and Abel shook their heads in unison.

  Jake returned to the recessed case and fumbled with the valve, shutting off” the pressure. The corridor stank like the Fulton Street Fish Market in Chinatown.

  We make a pretty good team, he thought as he retrieved his ax. It felt good to have backup again. “Let’s go get the generals.”

  They walked side by side along the corridor. The flaming swords distracted Jake, but he certainly did not object to them. At least he had the ax. The trio reached the stacked crates. Jake took one down and split its nailed lid open with his ax, which he then tossed aside. Pulling the broken wood apart, he removed the packing materials and revealed a score of shiny black metal machine guns.

  “Now I get one.” He snatched one of the high-tech weapons: compact, with a thick body, unlike any weapon he’d seen before. Rummaging through the crate, he found a thick clip, which he slapped into place ahead of the gun’s trigger. Then he examined the device beneath the weapon’s barrel.

  “Bullets will do no good against Mother-Father,” Abel said.

  Moving the guns in the crate aside, Jake took out what appeared to be a hand grenade with a hole bored through its center. He slid the grenade over the secondary barrel and snapped it into place. Then he flipped off” the safety switch and switched on the laser sight. “You were saying?”

  “You’d need an army equipped with those to do any good.”

  “WE’LL SEE.”

  Glancing at Cain, Jake led the way up the stairs. On the midlevel landing, they stopped at the viewing window and glimpsed a single tentacle uncurling, its suckers opening and closing in a nervous pattern.

  “Let’s rock this joint.”

  The three of them emerged from the stairwell onto the dock. Avademe’s great cone remained above the water’s surface, its eyes aimed in their direction. The seven cabal members stood facing Cain, Abel, and Jake, who marched forward with the machine gun in his hands.

  Portions of Avademe’s tentacles broke the water’s surface and sank from view again, like the humps of whales. They continued doing this as the monster watched its enemies approach. For the first time since Jake had met them, the cabal members looked frightened. Weiskopf still held his Glock.

  “I suggest you stop right there,” Reichard said, his attention drawn to Cain.

  Jake slowed to a stop and Abel did the same. Cain strode past them, but the sight of Avademe brought him to a standstill. The fires in his body traveled along his muscles at a faster rate. He glanced over his shoulder at Jake and Abel, steam hissing from his body, then faced the cabal members.

  Avademe’s body rose, undulated, and sank halfway into the water. One set of eyes stared at Abel, the other at Cain. The cabal members gaped at Jake’s comrades and their flaming swords.

  “You’ve proven to be even more troublesome than I’d feared,” Reichard said to Jake. “Are all the children dead?”

  Avademe’s four eyes settled on Jake, who felt vulnerable despite his backup.

  “Very,” Jake said.

  Reichard looked at his god for guidance, then turned to Jake. “I’m afraid that’s not going to—” His body turned rigid, his eyes widening. Avademe’s tentacle impaled the old man’s skull and lifted him off the dock, twenty feet in the air.

  The six remaining cabal members gawked as their nominal leader turned dead cold. Jake’s Glock shook in Weiskopf’s trembling hand.

  “You’re in charge now,” Avademe said to Weiskopf through Reichard’s mouth. “Karlin bungled things badly. The children were his primary responsibility. Settle this.”

  Weiskopf’s wrinkled face contorted with newfound power. “Drop your weapons,” he said, but he aimed the Glock only at Jake.

  Glancing at Cain and Abel, Jake hesitated. Their swords did not waver. He looked at the barrel of his own gun. “My Glock won’t do any good against these guys.”

  “Maybe not, but it will do a number on you. Do you see the irony?”

  Jake raised the machine gun’s stock to his shoulder, training the laser sight on Weiskopf’s forehead. “You’ll kill me anyway.”

  He triggered a burst from the gun and through its muzzle flash saw Weiskopf’s head explode in a shower of gore that spattered the other cabal members, who flinched. The headless body dropped the Glock and fell into the water with an unceremonious splash.

  Cain turned to Jake. “I LIKE THAT!”

  “You’ll like this even more.” Jake cocked the gun’s grenade launcher.

  “Stop him!” Avademe said through the mouth of its flesh puppet.

  The five remaining cabal members stared at Jake.

  “Bring it on,” Jake said, gesturing at them with the gun.

  Instead, all but Madigan ran for the door behind Jake. In a flurry of motion, four enormous tentacles rocketed from the water, extending straight out from Avademe. Jake dropped to the dock, and a tentacle just missed decapitating him. Flat on the ground, he saw Cain and Abel had dropped as well.

  Hearing screams behind him, Jake ran in a half crouch across the dock and scooped up his fallen Glock, which he shoved into his waistband. The tentacles dragged Bradley, Browning, Coffer, and Schaltter screaming across the dock. The old men clawed at the floor as the appendages pulled them into the water and out of sight, the water churning in their wake.

  His tattered face burning with rage, Jake charged at Madigan, whose eyes and mouth opened wide. He had almost reached his target when something snared his feet and he slammed facedown on the dock. As he felt himself being dragged, he glimpsed Madigan, smiling now. He managed to roll over onto his back as Avademe pulled him toward the dock’s edge. “Abel! Cain!”

  Avademe raised four of its tentacles into the air, suspendi
ng its four latest victims level with Reichard’s corpse. None of the cabal members moved except for their fluttering eyelids, which revealed the whites of their upturned eyes.

  Jake clawed at the dock with the fingers of his left hand, the machine gun still gripped in his right hand. His ass slid off the dock’s edge, and just as he expected his body to smack the water, the tentacle jerked him upside down into the air, dangling him like a doll, and turned him around. He saw Cain and Abel standing side by side on the dock, Madigan rooted closer to the edge. Avademe’s tentacles curled and uncurled, the five corpses and Jake rising and falling.

  “You’re now the most powerful man in the world,” Avademe said to Madigan in five different voices. “Do not fail us as these fools did.”

  Madigan nodded so fast Jake thought his neck would snap. “I swear it. I swear it!”

  “You’ll lead a new order,” Avademe said, its voices echoing each other. “We will provide you with the names of the next generation.”

  Jake struggled in Avademe’s grip. It wasn’t fair for Madigan to be rewarded for killing Marla.

  The tentacle turned him right side up and lowered him to face Avademe’s four eyes. “Your death would have been swift had you provided us with Afterlife. After killing all our children, that is impossible.”

  Jake gripped the machine gun in both hands, ready to fire.

  Avademe rocked back, angling its cone away from him even as it raised the two slits on its bottom above the water’s surface. The slits opened and closed, like giant gills.

  Abel stepped forward. “The power you offer mankind is short-lived, Mother-Father.”

  Cain seized Madigan, who screamed. “VERY SHORT-LIVED.”

  Cain flattened his palms against the sides of Madigan’s head. A moment later, his hands pressed together in prayer, dripping the man’s brains and fragments of his crushed skull. An eyeball dangled on its stem from one of his thumbs. The headless body fell and a dark soul rose. Cain’s body shuddered as it absorbed the darkness.

  Yes! Although Jake had wanted to kill Madigan himself and Cain had reneged on his promise to allow him to do so, at least the man was dead and had left a disgusting corpse.

  Avademe spoke through two of its puppets, Reichard and Schlatter: “Qayin, Hevel, why must you disappoint us so? Leave this plane and never return. Your mother and I would rather be childless than suffer your betrayal.”

  Abel held his sword at the ready. “Leave this world to your brand of evil, Father? You know that’s impossible.”

  “YOU’VE ROBBED US OF MANY SOULS. WHAT PARENTS STEAL FOOD FROM THE MOUTHS OF THEIR CHILDREN?”

  Avademe spoke through the other three corpse puppets. “Your father is right. I regret ever giving birth to you miserable little monsters.”

  “You have your kingdoms,” Avademe said through Reichard and Schlatter. “Leave us to ours. ‘Honor thy mother and thy father.’”

  “I serve a greater master than either of you can ever hope to be,” Abel said.

  “YOUR INVINCIBILITY ORIGINATED IN THE DARK REALM. NOW THAT I’M IN YOUR PRESENCE AT LAST, I RECLAIM THAT POWER FOR MY MASTER.”

  Reichard screamed in rage. So did Schlatter. And Bradley. One by one, each corpse puppet joined the chorus.

  Jake aimed the gun between Avademe’s eyes, then raised it to the center of the cone, the laser sight tracing the crevice that separated the two halves of the giant brain. He squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.

  Avademe’s body shook, and the corpse puppets burst into laughter. As Jake examined the controls on the weapon, the tentacle squeezed him, cutting off his oxygen and pressing his rib cage to the point of rupture. Pressure built up in his head until he no longer heard the laughter.

  Flipping a safety switch he had missed, he aimed the gun again and squeezed its trigger. This time he heard a piercing sound, like a cannonball fired through a giant silencer, and a trail of concentrated smoke streaked toward the cone. A moment later, a concussion of hot, wet air blasted him, followed by a downpour of sticky flesh. The last thing he saw before the tentacle released him was an enormous fissure forming in the cone, splitting it almost in half.

  Then Jake plunged into the cold, dark water. Chunks of flesh the size of traffic cones sank beside him, followed by the puppets. A tentacle jerked through the water like a shark, just missing him. He saw the old men staring facedown at him with unblinking eyes as he swam to the surface; he felt the water passing between his torn flesh and exposed muscles.

  The tentacles moved about, stirring great waves, the monster far from dead. One tentacle crashed down on the surface beside him, like a tree trunk falling into a river, and the impact slammed him against the dock.

  Clawing at the side, Jake pulled himself up and swung one leg over, his soaking wet clothes weighing him down. He had lost the machine gun and had only his Glock for self-defense. The tentacles flopped on the dock with tremendous noise, and he jumped to avoid them.

  Where the hell were Cain and Abel? Turning, he saw the brothers racing across the slick, pale surface of Avademe’s upturned bottom side. With their swords raised, they stopped at the slits and hacked their way inside the orifices, fluid gushing over them. Within seconds, they vanished into the membrane.

  Avademe convulsed and roared. One tentacle whipped along the dock at Jake, who dove over it and rolled across the floor. The fissure that had formed in Avademe’s cone finally split all the way open, and the monster used its tentacles to tear its body in two, each half still controlling four tentacles. One half of the monster sank beneath the surface, creating a whirlpool, and the other half hauled itself onto the dock and fell over on its side. One of its two eyes had ruptured and filled with blood, but the other one zeroed in on Jake, who stepped back. The thing dragged itself forward, bearing down on him. Even separated from his better half, Adam loomed large and threatening.

  A tentacle swept Jake’s feet out from under him, and he crashed to the dock. Another climbed into the air, high enough to touch the ceiling, and came crashing down.

  Jake rolled to one side, and water from the impact splashed him. He struggled to his feet and a third tentacle snared him, pinning his arms to his sides so tight he could not wrest his Glock free. The tentacle coiled around him, pulling him close to the monster’s remaining eye. Jake saw unbridled hatred in the massive orb. In the water, a single tentacle of Eve’s rose from the surface and thrashed around. Then it stiffened and sank from view. Jake knew the two halves of Avademe were dying, and Adam was determined to snuff him out first.

  As long as he doesn’t turn me into one of those puppets, he thought.

  The tentacle squeezed him tighter, crushing his helpless body.

  Closing his eye, he accepted his fate and thought of the one person who could bring him peace. Sheryl.

  His chest burned with fire, then turned numb, and a tingling sensation gave way to a soothing warmth. He felt his soul departing his body.

  No, not my soul . . .

  Opening his eye, he saw golden energy in the air beside him solidify into a human figure.

  Sheryl!

  Like Abel, she brandished a sword burning with golden flames. Avademe’s eye bulged in its socket, and Jake recognized fear in the dying god. Sheryl raised her sword in both hands and brought it down in a clean arc that chopped into the tentacle, separating the half that held Jake from the half attached to the body.

  A shriek emitted from somewhere inside Adam, and Jake fell back. Loosening the tentacle from around his waist, he got to his knees and saw Sheryl drive her sword straight into Adam’s remaining pupil. Opaque yellow fluid gushed out of the wound, drenching her. The monster turned spastic, its three remaining tentacles slapping the dock. Then they quivered and stilled.

  Sucking in his breath, Jake stood. Beyond Adam’s immense corpse, the water grew calm. A black shape rose from Adam’s shell. For a moment, it resembled a man. Then it compacted on itself, forming a dark sphere, and faded.

  “You saved my life again,�
� Jake said.

  Sheryl’s sword glowed bright with golden energy and melted into her arm.

  “I used the portion of my soul that I left inside you like a homing beacon.” She spread her hands apart. “I feel whole again.”

  Abel materialized beside her, without his sword. Before he could say anything, she embraced him. For an instant, their bodies melded together, as surely as Adam and Eve’s had. Jake knew there was no denying they belonged to each other now.

  Cain materialized as well, a triumphant smile on his skul-llike features, and Abel and Sheryl separated. The fire within him burned brighter and hotter than ever. He glanced at the dead monster on the dock. “I KILLED MOTHER AND RETURNED BOTH THEIR SOULS TO THE DARK REALM.” He Faced Jake. “A PITY I COULD NOT CLAIM THE SOULS OF THE ENTIRE CABAL, BUT AT LEAST I GOT MADIGAN’S.”

  “Make him suffer.”

  “HE ALREADY IS.”

  Jake thought of Marla. “What about the souls Avademe devoured?”

  “They’re gone,” Abel said. “Mother-Father destroyed them. And a part of me.”

  Sheryl grasped Abel’s hand.

  Cain set his hands on his father’s corpse. Jake thought the demon was about to show remorse. Instead, Cain sank his fingers into the dead flesh. The entire carcass vibrated, then disappeared.

  Jake looked for the severed tentacle, but it had vanished as well. He walked to the edge of the dock and looked down at the water. Five of the six corpses floating facedown had holes in the back of their heads through which crushed brains were visible. The sixth corpse had no head.

  “If you’re getting rid of the evidence, I’d like to see what you intend to do with these.”

  “I CANNOT REMOVE THOSE BODIES, BUT THE WATCHERS ARE GONE.”

  “The watchers never should have existed on this earth,” Abel said. “But these men . . .”

  Jake grunted. “The authorities will have their hands full. As long as I don’t get blamed.”