The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  Without a sound the thing pounced on the seemingly defenseless man, but Will was not quite so. In his heart, he felt the power of the love that his God had bestowed upon him. It was a white-hot fire compared to the darkness and when he opened his mouth to rebuke the demon, the Word of the Lord exploded from him in a blinding flash. It was almost like the light that had poured from him when he had been trapped by Ba'al Fie-ere in the Void, but whereas then he was only part of a vision, now he had an actual connection to his body and its warmth fed the energy of the Word.

  The demon was lit by the power for a moment and then in a great deafening explosion was destroyed so thoroughly that nothing remained. Black wisps eddied throughout the air, yet strangely, the darkness continued. Will stepped back unnerved despite the ease of his victory and just then, a barking, hacking laugh came to him. It turned his insides cold.

  "You are a fool and see not through the simplest illusion." These words did not come from a human mouth, but from something not at all natural. They hung in the darkness for only a second and were followed by the appearance of the demon once again. "You are nothing and Ba'al Zubel is all."

  Too late, Will realized his mistake. The Word had left him—he had wasted its energies on an illusion! And without the power of the lord Will was nothing. He saw before him only despair and pain. There would be no challenging the mighty demon—there would be no buying time for the priest. There would be no victory. The despair and the fear were crushing.

  "Run! You are afraid. You fear pain."

  The demon, so dreadful, was right. Will wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. This wasn't the Void or the earth—this was different. He was part of the connection that had summoned Ba'al and there was nowhere to run. His fears escalated to such a point that he began to back away.

  "This is how you fight the great Ba'al?" The demon's voice betrayed its disappointment. "You are nothing and never defeated the great Ba'al. This you will learn." For the demon, their pathetic battle of wills was over. Ba'al bent over and swallowed Will Jern whole, taking his soul as captive and then the creature turned back to the portal.

  Ba'al peered through the gate and saw the priest on his hands and knees, bleeding and moaning, it saw the bodies of Will and Talitha Jern lying full out on the concrete, unmoving. Finally, it took in Gayle Jern, who looked close to passing out, yet still clawed feebly at the hand of her daughter. The demon began sucking the life out of her and Will knew that the beast would leave her alive, but barely so, just enough to keep the gate open.

  Will was utterly defeated. His will, his sense of being was only a vague memory. He saw what Ba'al wanted him to see and felt what Ba'al wanted him to feel. Right then Ba'al was happy to show him the souls of his mother and sister, Talitha. For now, the souls still resided in their respective bodies, but Will knew that Ba'al could take them at any time it pleased. The demon was connected to them, Will could feel it since in a way he was connected as well.

  He could feel their life and knew a moment of jealousy, their bodies would live forever, while his had already stopped breathing and his heart was counting down its last beats. Ba'al turned away from the women and looked upon the priest, who keeled over immediately and began to twitch and kick.

  Strangely, unlike the demon who was enjoying torturing the priest, Will didn't turn from the women. He had no will of his own, but he had desire and like a moth to flame, he was drawn involuntarily to the connection that he shared with Ba'al and his mother. She was alive. Very alive and warm. And alive with the Word of the Lord, the love of God. The power was in her, only she didn't seem to know it or recognize it, but Will did and he craved it and he reached out along the connection with a part of himself that wasn't in any way physical, but was all together spiritual. That part of him touched his mother's heart, releasing the word.

  Love and light ignited the world of darkness in a blinding flash and now a scream of rage and pain erupted from Ba'al.

  In an instant, Will blinked his eyes, amazed and overjoyed to find that the black world that he had shared with the demon was gone and that he was back in his body. He felt so good he wanted to dance and sing; only the nearness of the gate stopped him. Imbibed with sudden energy, Will leapt up and took stock of their situation. The gate still boiled away and the demon was just beyond it but it hesitated, perhaps still reeling from the shock of what had just happened. Father Vogel, a man of proven courage, but finite strength was just getting to his hands and knees, moaning and bleeding as he did and looked on the verge of collapse. Talitha lay unconscious, and next to her Gayle knelt, blearily staring about, massaging the hand that had only very recently grasped her daughters.

  The broken and burned sword sat on the ground, looking ugly and forgotten. It was a bleak reminder that though Will yet lived, he had won nothing. Temptation pulled him to it; with Ba'al delaying his return to the gate this may be Will's best opportunity to destroy the hell blade. No one else seemed to have his energy or focus, but Will held himself in check. To go for the sword was the same mistake he'd made only a bare minute earlier.

  "Ba'al Zubel!" This time his voice was a strong bellow and it was with a touch of sadness and a great deal of pride that he heard himself sounding like his father. "Ba'al face me, you coward." A second slipped away and then another and Will could only hope that more would slip by since Father Vogel could barely make it to his feet. "Ba'al!" he roared again.

  The demon could not long ignore such a blatant challenge and it sent its mind through the gate and Will again felt his world go shadowy and black. He stared up into the dark, but the demon was nowhere to be seen.

  "Ba'al?"

  "You are nothing. You hide behind your mother. You are coward and weak."

  Will almost jumped out of his skin, the voice, small compared to the powerful one that he had heard before, came from very near him and much lower than he expected. A grizzled creature of roughly eight foot in height stalked out of the gloom. It was thin, hard, and pitiless. Its figure looked to be made from sharp black quartz and had edges that were jaggedly cruel.

  "You are small. You are weak. You are nothing." Ba'al continued on, coming closer as he spoke and Will took a step back with every word. "I have beaten you. You have never won against the great Ba'al."

  The words suddenly struck Will as affirmations and he countered them, "I have won every time. I am not weak. I have grown stronger. It is you who are weaker than before." Despite his words, Will felt fearfully nervous and wished that the priest would hurry up and grab the sword. Foolishly, he cast a look back into his world and saw the priest moving as if wading upstream through a river of molasses. Time as always was against Will.

  When he brought his distracted mind back to bear on the demon, he was shocked to see the creature flashing toward him and a split second later the demon had him by the throat. Its skin was jagged but slick like barbed and oiled marble and though Will beat on its arms it was like beating on the side of a mountain.

  "You lose. You are weak. You are flesh." The demon grunted into Will's red straining face. He was starting to see flashes before his eyes and knew he was just about done and decided to change tactics. Instead of hammering on the creature's great arms, he exerted all his strength on a single one of the demon's thumbs and was able to pry it back enough to breath.

  Will gulped in air and felt his energy renew, but instead of looking to attack the demon, or scramble away, he hugged the thing close. This wasn't a fight that he necessarily had to win, he just had to keep the demon occupied long enough for the priest to do his part. It wasn't easy however. The touch of the demon was dreadful. It was as if Ba'al was constructed from infinite layers of sin that had stratified over eons to create its form. Nothing Will had ever touched was more miserable.

  The demon sensed the shift in its opponent's tactics and changed as well, it brought it arms together and squeezed. Air shot from Will's lungs. The demon squeezed harder. Ribs began to snap in his chest and horrifyingly Will felt something burst within
him like a balloon filled with grease. He let out a garbled choking scream. The sound only lent more energy to the demon and it began to crush the life out of the man. Will didn't care as long as he held on long enough. The pressure of the demon forced his head back and he was able to watch as Father Vogel slowly raised up the hell blade. Unhurriedly, as if time had lost meaning and his death unimportant, Vogel seemed to pause with the blade held up high.

  Despite the fantastic pain, a smile came to Will's lips, "You...lose."

  Ba'al cranked his head around and Will was gratified to see something close to shock in its dead eyes, "No!" the beast cried out in his fell tongue and then it made to turn on the clergyman, but Will Jern hadn't lost the battle of wills yet, nor had he lost sight of his objective: delay. With renewed vigor at the proximity of his objective, he held onto Ba'al tooth and nail, until time finally drew against his opponent. Ba'al was too late.

  The priest slammed the blade into the gate and literally all hell broke loose. It was as if two black holes had smashed into each other. Smoke and howling wind rent the air and the cold grew so intense that Will felt his arm's stiffening around the demon. What he took for the floor heaved and buckled, before suddenly turning fluid, becoming like a storm tossed ocean. The wild action under the two combatants, flung them apart and Will was down among the rearing shadows, but he feared for his mother and sister and was up again in a blink and threw himself on the demon's back.

  Above, the room looked remarkably tranquil and he saw his mother right herself before reaching for her daughter's hand. The gate would be closed in moments.

  The demon did not seem to realize. It threw Will to the rolling floor and raised his stone hard foot to crush the man.

  "Look!" Will pointed and the demon turned to see Gayle closing her eyes and now they both knew that she was about to close the gate and end the connection. The floor bucked again abruptly, turning a cartwheel and suddenly Will was up standing over the prostrate demon. "I have won. Go back to your hell and know who it was that beat you...Will Jern."

  The demon opened his mouth to speak, however Will demonstrated his supremacy by turning his back and commanding his spirit to return to his body.

  The change was dramatic. He went from the tempest of a tornado to the open floor of an empty building in a heartbeat. Surprisingly his body still stood, just as he had left it and he wobbled slightly on his feet as his mind adjusted to the sudden calm.

  After a second, the realization that they had won sunk into him and he made to shout for joy, but then he saw his mother kneeling over the still form of Talitha. "Mom?"

  Gayle's tears were a warm rain on a cold body. "She wouldn't come back. I tried to bring her out, but she wouldn't come. She...she kept insisting that she was evil and not worthy of..." Gayle broke down and couldn't go on.

  Despite the fact that he wasn't surprised by the news, Will felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. His legs went weak and he sat down hard. "I'll find her, don't worry. Just give me a few minutes." The strength that he had felt a few seconds earlier was gone completely and he started to get the shakes.

  "Oh...oh my. This rather hurts," Father Vogel sat down next to Will grimacing and wincing. "I take it we won." The man was a disgusting bloody mess, however his wounds weren't gory, but razor thin and only a few bled still.

  "Yeah...except that Tal refused to come back."

  The priest nodded, commiserating, "I heard and I'm very sorry. When you go to the Void, will you need any help?"

  Will was about to answer, when his mom jumped in. "You're not going." She held up a hand to silence his protest. "I...I can't risk it. Not again. You've done great, Will, but your luck is going to run out. And don't be mad, but there is no 'Good Talitha' anymore. She changed in the Void. When we were there watching what was happening, she transformed and seemed to go crazy. It was just how she was back in the hospital. I tried to bring her back around, and then...and then," Gayle paused as her chest hitched. "And then, she threw me down and she smiled this insane smile as she did, but just as the sword went into the gate, she became confused and then calm again and turned back to her normal self. She was sad and full of remorse for what she had done to me but she explained that she wasn't going to fight her evil side any longer. She told me that it had finally won and this was the last anyone would see of the 'good' Talitha."

  "I don't believe that," Will said with quiet conviction.

  "I didn't want to believe it either, but there was nothing good about her. She was evil to the core and so dangerous. And...and the demon Talitha has to be far worse."

  Will felt a little put out over his mother's lack of faith in him. "I beat the demon before. I saved dad and escaped, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did great, but Talitha...the demon Talitha, Ba'al Fie-ere. She has Katie and she knows you. She knows you'll be coming for her. Do you think she'll let you waltz in and take Katie? Do you think she isn't right now plotting to trap you in some fashion?"

  He hadn't thought about any of that and it drained the impetus out of his zeal to find either of his sisters. "Then what do we do?" At that moment, he missed Talitha so terribly it hurt. She would've had an answer, she would know what to do.

  Father Vogel spoke up in a solemn manner, "We put our faith in God."

  Chapter 29

  Katie

  The jeep grew cold, only the girl was so keyed up that she didn't notice. She waited with her life on the line for Pedro to answer her, to come to a decision on whether or not he would save her and by extension perhaps save himself. Long seconds passed as the Mexican sat staring straight ahead and it was all the girl could do not to fidget or reach for her knife.

  "Pedro, I think there's still time for you," Katie whispered. His head moved up and down in a tiny nod and for a one wild moment, jubilation rocketed through the girl's heart, but just then a knock sounded on the window next to her ear.

  "Let's go, Katie."

  The blonde girl started in fright and turned quick to see Amy standing next to the jeep. The witch shook her head smugly as if she had guessed all that had gone on between the two and wasn't worried in the least. She then opened the door and stood well back, like she suspected Katie of something. She had every reason to. If Amy had been any closer, Katie would have tried to gut her with the knife.

  Katie paused. "Pedro?"

  Amy laughed. "What? You think you can turn Pedro? His soul is every bit as black as mine. He is doomed to hell no question, but if he follows me, he'll at least have power. What can you offer him? Nothing! Sorry, but after all the sin that has stained his soul, Pedro is mine." Amy flourished the gun and stood further back. "It's time, Katie. No more dawdling, but before you get out, leave the knife on the floor."

  "I...I..." Katie was practically speechless. How had she known about the knife? Even then it sat hidden under two layers of clothes

  "It's in your right sock, now take it out and drop it on the floor, or I shoot off your knee caps. You won't die but it'll hurt so bad that you will wish you had."

  There was nothing for it. Katie reached down and took out the knife, but she didn't drop it. The girl brought it up for Pedro to see and when she flicked the well-oiled blade out with the easiest motion, his puff-adder eyes finally opened wide. They both knew she could have attempted to kill him at any time in the last few minutes.

  "There is another option left to me, I could kill myself," Katie brought the razor sharp knife to her throat. She knew she wouldn't, there were still cards to play after all. Her brother could still rescue her, Pedro could still turn to her side, Amy could still mess up. But it was satisfying to pretend and watching Amy's eyes go very wide was worth the little charade.

  "No... if you kill yourself, it's a one-way ticket to the Void and it won't save you from the demon. She'll be madder than ever and it'll be worse on you, I can guarantee that." Amy looked frantic and lowered the gun slightly in order to pacify her captive. "You don't want to do this, Katie. I mean you never know, right? Maybe your br
other will show. He's quite the hero."

  "Or maybe you'll mess this up, like your mom did." Katie liked the little bit of power she had. It helped calm her ragged nerves.

  "Yeah, I could fuck up. It's true and then I'd be the one that the demon would be after," Amy agreed nodding her head emphatically.

  With a sneer, Katie tossed the knife into the car. "You already messed up. You should've gone after another girl."

  Where she had been a nervous wreck a second before, Amy's face lit in triumph. "Wrong, bitch. I haven't messed up at all. I've got this all under control. Your brother is currently driving hell bent for Phoenix. That's the wrong way, in case you didn't know, so I don't think he'll be saving you. As for me screwing this up? Fat chance! This spell is so easy, it's freaking scary. Anyone could do it—you could do it and you're a moron. And as for Pedro turning against me..."

  With stunning indifference, Amy pointed the gun at the big Mexican who had just come around the jeep. His eyes grew wide for the second and last time as she pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. Pedro flopped over onto the ground, turning and twisting in agony, making a choking gurgling noise. Amy aimed the gun again, but Katie couldn't watch and turned away in horror. That third gunshot was violently loud and stayed with the young girl for a long time, pulsing and vibrating, running up and down her insides, turning her brain numb.

  Even minutes later, after Amy had drawn her symbols with the Mexican's blood and pointed for Katie to lie still in the middle of them, she felt the sound of that final gun shot. It shook her soul. It made her weak. It robbed her of the will to resist and she laid there in dreadful fear, wondering if she had been wrong not to kill herself. But the sound of the gunshot was nothing compared to the words that Amy began chanting. These were not made for human mouths to utter, nor for human ears to hear.