The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  "Yeah, but what about you? You think this is all going to end well for you? If my sister and brother don't hunt you down, I bet Amy will turn on you next. If you were smart, you'd take off right now. Just ask yourself, do you truly trust the witch?"

  He gave a little snort as a way of an answer, clearly he didn't.

  It wasn't much to hang her hat on, but the girl knew desperation intimately. "Yeah me too. I know she was lying about the pain and all. I saw what it did to my sister...it's going to be..." Katie broke off. "But maybe it won't happen the same, I can still be rescued."

  "No, your brother's walking into a trap. Ms Harris has powers; she seemed to know all about him and how many men he was bringing along. Somehow she knows everything."

  A pain struck her deep in the chest. It was so bad that Katie wondered if it was possible for a fourteen-year-old to have a heart attack.

  "She doesn't know everything. She doesn't know that you're second-guessing yourself. I know that you're just as afraid of Amy as I am, and I know that you want to help me." In truth, she didn't know this, but it was her only hope. "Please help me. We can be gone before she even knows, ok? Look, if you don't we're both doomed. Your soul is going to be right there next to mine burning in hell, is that what you want? If not then drive, please."

  Pedro looked thoughtful for a time and then turned to the steering column. The cold in the jeep grew and minutes ambled slowly on and still the big man just stared at the leather bound circle.

  "Pedro, are you all evil? Is there nothing about this life that you care for? Not even yourself? You know that when you're in hell, you'll have nothing, you'll be nothing. But it's not too late for you." Katie heard the fear in her voice. The words gushed out of her in a rush. "All you have to do is put the car in gear and drive away. Leave Amy behind, leave your past behind. You can do it. I know you can...God knows you can. God has given you a great opportunity. He's put my life in your hands; he's giving you a final chance to turn from the path that leads straight to hell. Drive away, please. Save me, please! If you do you'll be saving yourself as well."

  Briefly, Pedro looked back, his eyes now full of doubt. However, he didn't drive away.

  Now Katie had a terrible dilemma on her conscious. Her hand traced the outline of the knife in her sock, she could have it out in a matter of seconds and she guessed her chance at killing Pedro with it hovered well below fifty/fifty. With his huge thick neck, the target if she were to make the attempt, the possibly could even be as low as one in ten.

  Did she strike now while she had a chance, even a poor one, or did she wait to see if he would come to the right decision and drive away? Did she kill in cold blood or did she give the man a chance at repentance? Her hand slipped into her sock and felt the hard unforgiving steel and just then, Pedro shook his head as if he were in the middle of some internal battle. It was only a slight movement, but it was a start.

  "Pedro, please. Make the right choice. I need you." The words were an admission on her part. She wouldn't strike down a man poised to turn from evil. She put both hands on his shoulders, "Please."

  The knife remained hidden.

  Chapter 25

  Will

  Will closed his eyes. Leaving his body behind, he stepped down into the Void and was immediately surrounded by beings and creatures, which pawed at him and his light.

  They were everywhere, above and below, hands reaching for him, some were clawed spectacles of horror, others were human, but grey and rotting. Many of these last would crumble at his touch and cries of pain would erupt when they did. He was pressed in upon. Pulled and pinched and bitten. It was all too much and all too unnatural. Panic had his chest in a flutter, and in seconds, the closeness of the souls was too much for him and he tried to run—it was like running underwater. Slow and pointless, for as soon as he left one set of miserable begging hands another found him.

  Even his breath was sought after, and creature after creature fought to force their face into his and drink up the fear that came panting out of him.

  A terrible thing that sprouted many heads threw down the last of the others and came before him. All the heads had dead blank eyes, many of which were ruptured and ran with a viscous milky substance, but the heads weren't entirely devoid of life. Each had active hungry mouths, the lips of which were black and blistered and they opened wide to him. A harsh rotting stench smote Will, tipping his mind over, sending him screaming in hysterics.

  This excited the many-headed thing and it pressed itself onto Will and now he felt the mouths sucking and biting on his flesh. Will went wild in panic and thrashed and kicked but the creatures only bit or sucked harder and he was pinned beneath it. Madness began to overwhelm him and he screamed again but this time pathetically, blubbering to be let go, crying to be released. Over and over he begged but to no avail and he felt himself dwindling beneath the many teeth, he was being eaten alive.

  Still his cries were not unanswered.

  A greater darkness came forth and the dreadful head-creature fled before it, as did all the rest. It was a demon. It came upon Will in a rush like a giant black shadow and it completely engulfed him. It was everything he was not and he was everything that it wanted. The demon brought Will in close and the horror that was the demon's face made the many-headed creature seem angelic in comparison and Will screamed again in harsh misery and madness. His world above, his family, his coming baby, Amy and the sword were all forgotten in that time. Only the demon and its overpowering evil mattered to Will. It was everything and he desperately wanted to die to free himself of it.

  The demon, however didn't want that. It loved its newfound soul in the hateful way of demons, and wanted the misery to last, so it withdrew it face. Will immediately went limp and found himself in an odd partial consciousness. He could see and hear but couldn't move. The demon carried him in one of its great clawed hands through the Void and Will saw many visions that threatened to break his mind wide open—so he closed his eyes and was surprised to find that this did nothing to stop him from being able to see. At first, he thought this was just how it was in the Void, but then he recalled his sister. Her beautiful face came clearly to mind and he remembered her telling of her time in the Void and never had she been able to see with her eyes closed.

  Will closed his eyes again and still was able to see all, just as before and he wondered if this was a form of his vision, his special talent. Foolishly, he tried to see the future. In a flicker, his body went into spasms and for long seconds he screamed with an inhuman voice until his throat shredded from the violence and his mind clicked over. It was like a circuit had blown and he ceased to think or to see and he lay there without knowledge of anything. After some time, he felt a stirring and a cold painful touch on his face. He recognized the demon whose countenance held the closest thing it possessed for concern, which happened to be anger. Its rage was familiar, leading Will to begin to remember all that had happened to him, including his vision of the future.

  His future was all misery and pain. Endless misery and pain.

  Depression smote him like a hammer and he lolled again in the grip of the demon, which infuriated the thing even more. Apathy was perhaps the only sin in the Void. The demon demonstrated its rage by shaking him and squeezing him until Will felt his ribs snapping, he was then flung down and stomped upon by the beast.

  "Please stop, please," he begged in a tiny voice. The demon didn't, yet it didn't stomp him to death either. It was too cagey for that. Only when Will began crying like a child in his pain did the demon relent and it scooped him up again to recommence its journey. For a long time, Will moaned as his broken limbs jarred and grated against themselves, the pain was intense of course, but Will, who generally wasn't effusive when it came to such things made sure not to hold back. He was learning.

  He realized that he would have to hide his true feeling if her were in any way to survive.

  Just then, Will remembered what his sister had advised about hiding his light. How long ago
that felt. It had been hours at least and the idea that he had dallied in his panic and had failed his sister threatened to sink him again. Out of fear of the demon, he rallied the remnants of his spirits and as he did the black of the Void shrank back in the slightest. This amazed him and he brought his hand before his face and saw that he did in fact glow. The warmth of the light filled him and he was glad for it and he wished to bath in its soft radiance, but the demon saw it also and gloating over the light, brought him up to its horrid face. The face was terrifying and Will didn't so much as hide his light as much as it fled within him.

  The demon chuckled at this, happy at the display of fear. Will was happy as well, not only did the demon go back to its journey, but also he had felt the light. Long ago, Talitha had told about the physical properties of light and how that it was actually made up of matter, that it had weight and something called "rest" mass. All that he had got out of the explanation was that there was more to light than met the eye, but now, he could feel the light. It was like warm water inside of him.

  Gently he drew the light deeper into him and as he did, the Void seemed to gather about him thick and viscous. The demon was oblivious and failed to notice until after Will had the light of his soul balled into the tiniest knot and this he covered over in darkness of his own creation. All that remained of him was his shadow and it was nothing to slip between the great claws of the demon and slink away, blending in with the darkness. Behind him, the fiend suddenly raged in an unintelligible language and searched high and low, but soon Will could no longer see the beast.

  Blessedly alone, he wandered in a daze, pondering the possibilities left to him. They were only two, flee the Void as fast possible and find some way to live with his guilt, or stay and find Henny Harris. He glanced around, the cold was eternal and absolute, the dark infinite, the fear all-encompassing, and the screams innumerable, he despaired. There seemed to be no way he could accomplish his task even if he wished to.

  Some time passed and Will began to walk faster through the gloom. It was silly, but he was afraid to be alone. Every shadow bore the resemblance of a demon and apparitions hung on his periphery, disappearing every time he turned his head. Strange sounds came to him as well. Whimpers and wailing, every sort of misery, his loneliness was so great that he chased the noises but it was like pursuing echoes.

  Another noise came to him, different than the rest. Water on water. It was a tiny drip, drip, drip noise and he followed it to the source. It was a man. The little skin that remained on his body showed that he was a white man of middle age; his eyes were a deep red and tears descended from them without effort, dropping to a pool of them that had gathered at his feet. Beyond the trickling from his eyes, the man didn't move and could have been a statue, so still he remained.

  Will didn't know what to think. "Excuse me?"

  Never before had Will seen a man react with such a passionate fear. As if attacked, he screeched like a girl child and tore off into the dim, caterwauling horrendously. Will loped along after, easily keeping pace. Now the Void was a maze of shadows, some deeper than others, some thicker as if they were made from black silk and all came together in the most bizarre kaleidoscope of shapes. At times these resembled the night forest and at others a craggy desert, but mostly it felt to Will that he was underground—so it was when following after the skinless man.

  Around shadows that loomed from the black floor like stalagmites and over sudden and alarming drops into nothing, Will stalked after the man, only to lose him quite unexpectedly. One moment he was there, the next, only empty shadows surrounded him. Will tore at them, but they only shifted like fog and after a few moments, he was quite turned around and had no clue which way he had traveled from.

  A sigh escaped him, and renewed despair had him sitting amongst the shadows.

  Drip, drip, drip. Off to his right the same sound as before. Hurrying after it, again Will came upon the man, but now he looked much changed, his skin was healed nearly completely. It was as if years had slipped by in seconds.

  "Hey there. Wait, don't..."

  The man took to his heels a second time, but on this occasion, Will was more prepared and due to the man's newly grown skin, far less squeamish. He tackled the man, who was surprisingly light, as well as weak and held him pinned.

  "Just relax, I won't hurt you."

  These words were lost on the man who continued to squirm and wiggle beneath him. Will attempted to wait the fellow out patiently, yet ages seemed to pass and still the man bucked in a most annoying fashion. It was all Will could do not to punch him in the face and finally he barked, "Stop it damn it!"

  The man wilted into acquiescence, staring up at Will with teary eyes. "Tell me your name," Will demanded, lightening his tone only by the barest margins.

  "Uh...Uh, I'm..." The fellow looked stumped by the question. "I don't know. I don't remember."

  "You don't remember? How long have you been here?" Almost immediately, Will realized the question to be intolerably foolish. Time was meaningless in the Void. After a few more seconds of sputtering, Will waved his hand in dismissal. "Never mind how long. Can you at least tell me does the name Henny Harris sound at all familiar?"

  With a great deal of skepticism the man asked, "There's a demon with that name?"

  "No, she's a person, a soul."

  "A real person? With a name?" For a time the man looked thoughtful. "Henny Harris, Henny Harris. I don't think so. Why do you want her? Did you kill her? Or did she kill you? Are you on revenge? What are you going to do to..."

  His questions were asked with a hungry malicious tone and Will was considerably irked by them. "Shut up! Why I'm looking for her is my own business."

  "She did something to you, didn't she?" The man's look was insufferable and before he knew what he was doing, Will smashed his fist square into the man's leering greedy face.

  In the time it took for Will to draw his fist back a second time, guilt struck him heavily, yet he held back the apology that had formed on his lips. Instinctively he knew it would be taken for weakness. Instead, he held his fist up threateningly. "How would I find her? What would you do to find someone?"

  The question was beyond the man. He simply couldn't conceive of any reason to ever purposely look for another individual. This was transparent, but so too was his childish conniving mind. "You could, I suppose, ask a demon. I know where one is, Zoderath, Lord of the Chrystal Plain...it could tell you for sure. Here give it this," the man tore at the new flesh of his thigh and pulled a long peel of skin and blood from his leg. "Tell him I sent you...he's so...uh, nice, he'll tell you."

  Murder grew in Will's heart and he fought back against the unfamiliar desire. "And how would I find..." He was loath to name a demon; it seemed filled with dangerous potential. "How would I find this demon?"

  "How? What do you mean how? How do you think?"

  Oh the savagery that welled in William Jern Jr. at the man's impertinence. This time it couldn't be denied, his fists brutalized the man's face, turning it into a bleeding mush. When Will could finally stop himself, he stared in horror at the creation of his unbridled lust to destroy. Where this need came from, he didn't know, but it was now a part of him. He hated it and now he hated himself and he hated the miserable little creature cringing and mewling before him.

  "Sorry, please no more, no more," the man begged unintentionally throwing fuel on the fire burning in Will. With an effort, he got off the man and stomped around, concentrating on the shadows until he felt that he could face the soul.

  "Tell me plainly right now, how do you find a demon?"

  "Well its easy...you just...uh, you just," the man now looked perplexed not to be able to put into words what he had considered so simple. He started again, "All you have to do is say the demon's name and then head off, you'll find the demon sooner or later, or it will find you if you take too long."

  Will tried to recall if that was how it had been when he had dreamed Talitha's dreams of her time in the Void, he did
n't think it was. In his vague fading dream memories, he saw himself as his sister, dragging her feet along with great reluctance and usually crying over what was to come. He never remembered calling any names out, and for that reason, he eyed the man with suspicion. "And this Lord of the Plains demon, are you going to run into him now that you've said his name?"

  The man lowered his chin, "No, Zoderath has sold me. I'm to go...to go..." the rest of his words stuck in his throat along with a strangled cry. A moment of sympathy swept over Will and he grabbed a hold, it was the closest thing to his old self that he had felt so far while in the Void.

  "Never mind, I think I get it," Will said in kindly response to the man's painful silence. With the ever-changing landscape, there had to be some way to navigate the Void, yet the overwhelming background din of screams and cries had Will guessing that the physical act of saying the name was little more than a device to focus the mind on the particular demon a person sought. This information was interesting but his problem, of course was that he wasn't searching for a demon, but for a soul and from what he had learned from the demon Ba'al Fie-ere and what had been reinforced by the naked man, souls in the Void were nameless.

  Henny Harris was no longer Henny Harris in the normal sense. Will tried to wrap his head around the concept, only to find it beyond him. How did a demon trade for a soul if that soul couldn't be named? Did they use numbers instead or vague descriptions? It was stupid system, whatever it was. Thinking down this line made him lose whatever sympathy he had been feeling and now he felt irritated and snappish.

  He turned to the nameless man. "Thanks, you've been a great help. See ya." In his foul mood, Will had meant this to come across as sarcasm and he was sure he had said it in as rude a way as possible, but the man seemed not to notice one bit.