The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  "Thank you, Lord," he said, quietly relishing that one moment, perhaps the last touch of happiness his soul would ever know, but it was short lived and his mind raced. Ba'al Zubel would demand his death any second and a delay would very quickly reveal the fact that the Demon Ba'al Fie-ere was no longer with them. His only hope was that Talitha would turn in that one instant and shoot the gypsy.

  He flicked his eyes in the gypsy's direction, and Talitha in a show of steady casualness gave a look into the room and Will saw the muscles of her face clench, but only the slightest. Just then, as Will had guessed, Ba'al Zubel spoke through Luke.

  "He has prayed enough, kill him now."

  Will looked over at the demon and saw that Luke was advancing toward them, a knife in his hand, but worse, he now stood between Talitha and the gypsy. Will was at a complete loss; to hesitate would invite an attack he didn't think they could win. Luke looked for all the world like some sort of zombie puppet and with Ba'al Zubel pulling the strings, he might already be dead and thus unkillable in a normal sense.

  At that moment, his vision from earlier came back to him, complete with that tiny fringe of hope.

  Will unzipped his jacket in a quick motion and then tore open his button-down shirt. The cold instantly attacked him, but he ignored it. His plan had already sent a shiver of ice down his back. It was actually quite simple, Talitha would kill him and when Ba'al Zubel was relaxed or wasn't ready, she'd shoot the gypsy.

  "You have to kill me, then her. There's no other way," he whispered, but didn't dare say anything else, Luke was very close now.

  Still she hesitated and he was forced to give her a glare. "Take care of business," he warned.

  Finally, she brought the gun up and Will was so proud of her to see it steady in her small hand. She aimed it square into his chest and fired.

  The pain was a shrieking terror and just as in his vision, it was surprisingly so, but when Ba'al Zubel looked upon him, greedy for his soul even before he died, the pain got worse. Much worse.

  Chapter 27

  Death and the Eternal Void

  When Will yanked open his shirt, a button kicked loose and skittered on the ice near Jim's foot. It looked like a piece of plastic trying to masquerade, as a piece of wood, there was even imitation wood grain running through it. It had four little holes and in two of them, a tiny filament of white thread ran.

  There was nothing else to the button, but he kept staring at it nonetheless. The alternative was to watch a man, a friend actually, die in front of him.

  Jim hoped it wouldn't hurt him too much.

  His own death was also a certainty. Will had foreseen it and Jim believed it wholeheartedly, he only wished to kill Luke before it happened.

  He hated the man.

  This was the only feeling that he could commit to. Everything else seemed far away, buried beneath the heavy strength-sapping lethargy that surrounded him. He figured it was his exhaustion, the numbing cold, and the closeness of Ba'al, looking out from his black cloud, that caused this lethargy, but also it was Talitha.

  He had seen the girl he loved for the last time; of this he was sure and that knowledge left him unable to do anything but stare at a stupid useless button.

  One would've thought that his hatred would've been toward the female demon, after all the trouble she had caused. However, in Jim's eyes, this was what demons did. Not that he liked her in anyway, far from it, but he would've sooner blamed the sun for being too warm.

  Luke had no such excuse and neither did the gypsy, who Jim had sworn to kill as well, however that was more out of necessity. With Luke, he expected to feel just a little bit of satisfaction.

  Suddenly, he noticed something new about the button. The exterior of it was raised...

  Bammnn!

  ...relative to the interior. It looked like a poorly constructed bowl.

  Will's hand came down on Jim's shoe and gripped feebly at the laces. There was blood between his fingers, it wasn't a lot, but it was very wet looking and the freshness of it bothered Jim. So did the rest of Will for that matter. The problem was that he wasn't quite dead, he was making a horrible choking noise, and his body twitched and jerked about as it lay face down.

  It made Jim a little sick to his stomach and he looked up from Will expecting to see the gun pointed at him. However Talitha stood looking with ill-disguised shock at her brother. It almost seemed that she was horrified by what she had just done and was trying not to appear so.

  Weird for a demon, he thought.

  She even looked into his eyes and he was shocked to see a guilty sadness there, something he would never have expected from a demon.

  She's trying to trick me.

  It wasn't going to work; he had been played for a fool once too many times. He suspected that she'd try to make him think he was going to live, and then, Bam! Right between the eyes. At least he hoped it would be between the eyes, Will was still twitching gruesomely, and the idea of being shot like that gave him the willies.

  He decided right then, he was no longer going to play their games. Will had been biding his time looking for an opening to do something and he had bided all the way into a grave.

  Not Jim.

  Throwing off his lethargy as best as he could, he stepped around Will's twitching body, expecting at any moment to be shot by the demon. However, she only stood there eyeing him with a strange expression on her face and Jim made a point to keep his head turned away from her, ignoring her. He walked past her and two steps into the room he found Luke.

  Jim balled his mighty fist and punched Luke square in the face. It turned out not to be as satisfying as he had hoped.

  For starters, Luke acted like a puppet and felt like a puppet. It was like hitting a frozen body rather than a man and what's worse, Luke didn't moan or whimper or cry as Jim had secretly hoped. Instead, he only took a few steps back and gaped at Jim with an odd blank, glassy-eyed stare, ignoring completely the fact that his nose had been crushed and was now a bleeding misshapen blob.

  Jim paused a heartbeat at the oddness of the situation and then went to hit Luke again. Right then Ba'al Zubel looked at him.

  It was beyond excruciating. It felt as if flames had been poured over his body. With pain like that thinking was impossible and he flung himself to the floor, rolling, kicking, screaming. The pain felt endless and he had no clue how long he endured it, but suddenly two gunshots echoed in his mind and just like that, he was released. The flames disappeared as if they had never been.

  His eyes went wide, staring all around him and the room was a dizzying place, swirling about, and for a second or two nothing made sense. When he could, he sat up and felt his skin, afraid it would be crispy and black, but it was surprisingly smooth. He was just touching his face when another gunshot rang out and he felt the wind of a bullet caress him gently just beneath his ear.

  This was neither alarming nor curious to him. It simply was. His mind was in a state of shock and it was only then he realized there had been two earlier gunshots. He looked over to where the sounds had come from, and saw Talitha standing rigid, gripping the gun in a tight little fist, her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Clearly, Ba'al Zubel was attacking her in the same manner as he had been attacked. For a span of three seconds, he watched this blankly and uncaring, without a thought, but then he realized this was the scenario that Will had described.

  A tremendous urgency overcame Jim.

  His one job, and the only way he had a ghost of chance at getting out of there alive was to kill the gypsy. He dragged himself to his feet and turned to kill the gypsy who stood watching everything with wild eyes.

  However, she wasn't going to cooperate with his plan so readily and just as he turned toward her there was a flash of an arm and Jim looked down to see the gypsy's knife sticking out of his chest.

  The woman stepped back grinning wickedly, eyeing her handiwork, but that was a very stupid thing to do. The knife's blade was five inches long, but curved like a sm
all scimitar and barely three inches of it had been driven into Jim. Though it looked nasty, it hadn't even scraped against his ribs and was stuck in the tremendously thick muscles of his chest.

  It didn't even hurt a lick, especially not after the pain Ba'al Zubel put him through. The gypsy let out a squeal of terror as he leapt forward, far faster than she had ever expected him too, and he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her roughly into him. She fought back, but it was a useless gesture and his great hands squeezed her neck with a force few could withstand. A few seconds of this and she'd be dead, but just then Luke attacked Jim and his knife proved far more capable than the gypsy's.

  A wild murderous pain shot down Jim's spine and a moment later, he felt the individual teeth of the serrated steak knife running along a bone in his back as Luke withdrew it. The villain pulled back his arm to strike again, but he hadn't count on Jim's quickness either.

  Most people, when they see the enormous leviathans who play the line on football teams, assume that men that big aren't very fast. Those people are dead wrong. Jim released the unconscious gypsy and spun in one move, bringing an elbow around as he did so. The blow caught Luke flush on the side of the head and cranked it around far to the right.

  Jim then went to punch the man again, only just as he did he felt a crippling pain lance down his back, all the way to his tailbone.

  With a cry, he sank to one knee, reaching around to find the cause. For a second, he thought the gypsy had attacked him again, but his hand came back wet with blood from the same wound that Luke had given him. There was a hole in his back that seemed to go directly through to his vertebrae and for a moment he feared that his spinal column had been injured. However, he had no time to worry about it, because Luke attacked, swinging his knife at Jim's face.

  The blow cut him across the forehead as he ducked, and blood ran like water into his eyes. Jim was now practically blind and didn't see the next blow coming. He saw Luke's arm heading in and tried to pull back, but the knife sunk deep under his collarbone, but luckily stuck there. It was only lucky in the sense that he couldn't be stabbed again, but just then another shooting pain in his spine collapsed Jim completely and he fell back with Luke on top.

  Luke went to pull the knife out and Jim grabbed him by the wrists and he now had a view of Luke that sickened him. The two gunshots he'd heard less than a minute earlier had both found their mark. Part of the right side of Luke's face was shorn clear away, leaving a grizzled valley running along his cheekbone all the way to his ear. In addition, there was a second wound—a hole the size of a nickel—dead center in his chest, which should have been fatal.

  For a moment, Jim could do nothing but stare with words like ghoul and zombie running through his mind, but then his situation became even more precarious when unbelievably, Luke started bending Jim's great arms down.

  Jim began to panic.

  There was no way a man this small could do such a thing, but nonetheless it was happening and his left arm began to hurt with the terrible strain. The arm held out only a second longer and when it came down, Luke slammed him in the head with his elbow, sending stars across his vision.

  Luke struck him again with the same elbow and the blow was like a kick from a horse and suddenly there was no more fight left in Jim. His head swam and he was dazed to such extent that he was seeing things, because another person who should have been dead came up just then.

  Will stood behind Luke holding a partially charred wood board in his hands; this he slammed into Luke's head, sending pieces of wood flying in every direction.

  Luke flopped over but immediately struggled to his feet.

  "What the hell?" It was the choked whisper of Will Jern. He stood swaying, his hands in a fighting stance, eyeing with revulsion the creature that was once Luke.

  Jim's eyes went to Will's chest, expecting to see a gaping bloody hole, but instead saw only a dreadful bruise and an odd shaped bleeding cut, but also, swinging back and forth, still on its leather string was the pewter cross that Father Alba had given him. It could hardly be called a cross now, because of how it bent inwards forming a shallow 'C'.

  Joy and excitement raced through Jim and he wanted to yell out to his friend, but he was too woozy, besides which, Luke attacked Will. It was a lunging attack, a grab for Will's waist, but the man dodged back, very nearly coming into contact with the smoking demon behind him.

  "Look out!" Jim tried to call out, but he lacked the strength in his lungs for anything more than a loud whisper. However, Will didn't seem to need his warning and managed to step aside in time not to touch it.

  "Get the gypsy!" Will yelled back.

  Grimacing at the shooting pains in his spine, Jim sat up and saw the gypsy lying as if already dead. Her body lay stretched out near the fire. He couldn't walk, so he crawled to her, casting looks at both Will and his sister as he did. Will lurched about clutching his chest, dodging this way and that; however Talitha was on her knees, her hands straining at her head as if she were trying to crush her own skull.

  She couldn't last.

  Jim had no time, seconds maybe. Certainly not enough time to choke the gypsy to death, something that could last two or three minutes. So instead, as he came up to the gypsy he yanked the curved knife out of his own chest and plunged it with all the force he could muster into hers. With his strength the knife sheered away bone like butter and plunged deep into her heart.

  In an instant, Jim became part of the connection—the connection that linked a demon, a gypsy, a virgin and his Talitha.

  It was the strangest feeling. He could sense the gypsy and knew her name, and knew as well that she would live out an eternity of death in this shadow land. He could feel Ba'al Zubel as well. It was a monstrous horror that lurked behind everything, a creature of gluttonous appetites without equal in the void.

  And he knew and sensed Theresa Brabec as if he were an old friend of hers, which was strange, because he now knew she had no old friends and very few new ones either. She stood far from him, deep in the void, but despite the distance, he could still feel her fear. It was rich and a delight to the fiends that flocked around her—few of which dared to stray to near because of the proximity of the horror of the shade, the tyrant.

  Then there was Talitha Lynn Jern. She was a part of the connection as well and there was an intimacy the two of them shared in the fraction of time that the connection lasted. It was the same love that he'd always felt for her, but now he could feel her love in return, it was unhesitating and it was no small thing.

  He could sense, in a way, all of them as soon as he crossed into the void. The void itself was inexplicable; indefinable beyond the simplest terms, which in no way can give it meaning. To say it's cold, or dark, or drowned in a caressing fear means nothing until one stands within it.

  For James Anderson the most definable aspect of the void would be the fear. It was the air he breathed and it grasped at him, trying to choke him with itself. It sought to bath him in its foul purity and it left him feeling blemished and slick with its texture.

  There was darkness as well, but it was not all consuming as the fear. Shadows layered on shadows gave the darkness a nightmare quality that pure blackness never could have. Moreover, the darkness wasn't absolute, there was actual light spoiling it.

  The light was dim and far off, but it was real and it beckoned to Jim. But in order to come upon the light, he would have to leave the path that he stood upon, something his soul cried out against. He turned and saw he could leave the void and return to the world, if he so wished, simply by walking back up the path.

  However, his heart cried out for the light as well, and he knew the distant glow was not a trick or a will-o'-wisp designed to lead him astray, but it was the light of the souls that he knew and they were in mortal peril.

  Leaving the path, he flew to the small lights on winged feet, and the darkness gave way before him. In time, not time as is counted on the planes of the living, but as counted in the void, Jim found the ligh
ts of three souls and now his heart quaked in real fear. The great Tyrant of the void had stepped back and in essence had given up his claims to the light, and now a multitude swarmed over them in an effort to devour their light, that is to say their souls.

  The lights of his friends were dimming quickly, there was first Talitha, she glowed brightest of all and battled with a desperate ferocity. Then there was the girl, Terry. She had already lost her battle with fear and lay as a feast for the many creatures that dined upon her light, sullying it and diminishing it. Finally, there was the gypsy, whose name he knew, and whom he had killed in the world, but still looked upon as a person. She foolishly searched for a patron among the demons of the highest rank, resigned to deceiving herself in the belief she would be safer with one of them.

  Jim saw this from afar and came as a hurricane in his wrath and he felt a great power within him, and he wished to unleash it on the hordes to save his friends. He drew himself up and the darkness slunk back for a time, all save a single shadow, which stepped forward brazenly.

  It was Ba'al Fie-ere.

  "Save your breath James Anderson," it said, forming its shadows into a pleasing form.

  The form was that of a wickedly sensuous Talitha Jern, who shined black as jet.

  Jim turned away from her saying, "Don't talk to me, I cannot trust you."

  "You have no choice. You are far from the path back to the world and you will never save Talitha without my help."

  Jim became troubled not knowing the truth and beckoned the demon to follow and he approached closer to the souls.

  He wanted to rejoice, even in the crushing darkness, at the sight of Talitha, and he went to her and made to kiss her, but the feeling of the void, which was everywhere, intruded, fouling the pleasantness of her lips.

  "Jim you should not have left the path," she said holding him to her.

  "That couldn't be helped, I came here for you," he answered and looked at her light closely. It was dimming slightly and he worried, for the swarms of creatures had not retreated far and were becoming bold. "I'm afraid I may not be able to find the path again," he said. This was an unfortunate truth, he had looked back for path almost as soon as he had left it, but it had been swallowed up in the endless void as if it had never been.