by Drew Foote
He nodded once more. “I am.”
Kalyndriel smiled affectionately at Walter. If they were going to put their fate in the hands of a human, this was the one she trusted. She could ask for nothing more. Barnabas sighed, shaking his head, and turned back to Pazuzu.
“Well,” he said, despondent. “You heard the idiot. We need a vegetable.”
Pazuzu cackled maliciously. “You’re in luck, then. I know just the one. She’s in the park right across the street.
He turned to Walter. “Suit yourself, human. It’ll be your funeral. Again.”
~
Pazuzu led them across the street. The roaring bonfires tinged the sky orange in a bacchanalia of despair. They burned fiercely, fueled by anything that could feed the pyre; tires, televisions, bodies. Like the rest of the world, New Orleans was firmly in the grip of chaos and insanity, the death throes of humanity.
Drunken, howling revelers filled the street. They wore grotesque masks and costumes as they gleefully tore the world down around them. Frenetic frenzy ran through the mob like an electric current, animating them with deadly intent. They fought, they ravaged, they rutted, and they died. They descended, once more, into animal savagery. It was a sobering sight, and all but Pazuzu seemed deeply unsettled.
The Possessor chuckled as he guided them through a knot of savage men who fought in a terrible, free-for-all melee. The party passed through the humans with no resistance, and the mob continued its horrible blood sport, striking each other with bats and tire-irons.
“Boy,” Pazuzu called over his shoulder. “And I thought the Roman Empire was bad!”
Barnabas grimaced. “Let’s just get on with it. You said the body is in the park ahead?” he asked.
“Yep,” Pazuzu replied, and there was a note of pleasure in his voice. “You’re in luck; vegetables are in short supply with the hospitals burning and the infrastructure trashed.”
He snickered. “There just so happens to be a sweet old lady who very recently left her home to find some food … and got clubbed over the head. Major brain damage, and her body probably won’t last much longer.”
Barnabas groaned, and Walter and Kaly looked uncertainly at each other. “An old lady? You can’t be serious,” Barnabas muttered. “Isn’t there an offensive lineman who was in a car accident, or something?”
Pazuzu laughed wickedly. “Afraid not, buddy. As you can see, times are tough. That’s what I got; take it, or leave it.”
Barnabas turned to glare beseechingly at Walter, who merely shook his head. He refused to be swayed. Barnabas sighed despondently, and continued after Pazuzu.
The Possessor now led them into the shadowy depths of a small park that bordered the road. The park’s lamps were dark and its tall, ancient trees shrouded the ground below in ominous shadow. What once would have seemed a pleasant place was turned into a foreboding tomb filled with dreadful secrets. Smoke wreathed the thick air, meandering through the arms of the waiting evergreens.
Death lived there. Walter could hear it calling to him, calling to them all, in a guttural voice of smoke and ash. He had met death before, and he feared he was about to meet it once more.
Pazuzu continued into the darkness, leaving the manicured path for the tangled brush. The canopy above blocked stars that struggled to pierce the haze of smoke. After a time, the tiny Possessor stopped in front of a thick copse of azaleas.
“Here we go,” he muttered as he parted the bushes carefully.
Pazuzu reached down, grasped something unseen, and dragged an awkward burden backward to the waiting onlookers. It was the delicate body of an elderly woman. She was clothed in a simple pink dress that matched the nearby azaleas.
Her face was wrinkled and kindly. It was one that had undoubtedly given countless kisses to her grandchildren, and one that had often grinned at the terrible jokes of her husband. Laugh-lines crinkled the corners of a face that had been quick to smile. It was the face of a woman who had lived a full and happy life.
No matter how full it had been, though, no matter how happy, it had still ended with the worms. It had ended with cloudy eyes that were open but unseeing, lying upon a bloodstained carpet of rotten leaves. She deserved better, but that was the epilogue God gave her. Gristle matted her white hair from the savage blow that felled her. Her breathing was faint and uneven.
Walter let out a rattling breath, struck by the tragedy of the empty woman in the flowered dress. He desperately hoped that she was in a better place now, far from the land of madness that Earth had become, but he knew better than to speculate on such matters. Such speculation invited madness.
“Kaly,” he asked, his voice forlorn. “Do you still believe in justice?”
The Angel stared silently at the shallow rise and fall of the woman’s chest. Her wings were tense behind her. She closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly.
“I don’t know anymore, Walter. Not as I used to believe,” she admitted quietly.
“No?”
“No. I know now that justice is not an absolute thing.”
She shrugged, and sadness suffused her delicate features. “Perhaps the feeble pursuit of it is all that we can ever know. Chasing at shadows and echoes. Maybe that is our lot.”
“And is that enough?” Walter whispered, looking down.
“Do we have a choice?”
Walter nodded and took a deep breath, steeling his resolve as best he could. Even if he could not choose his fate, he could choose the way he would face it. He had fallen to despair once, already, and he would not allow it to vanquish him again. He would face the darkness with bravery.
“Then let’s see if we can find some justice for this woman.” Walter turned to Pazuzu. “Her soul is gone?”
“Yes,” the Demon replied, irritated. “So, are we going to do this, or what?”
“We are,” Walter said grimly. He turned to Barnabas.
Barnabas shook his head slightly with resignation. He took a breath. “Very well, then. I hereby relinquish ownership of the soul of Walter Nathaniel Grey, to Walter Nathaniel Grey,” he intoned in formal cadence.
The universe heard the Demon, and the shape of reality twisted around the power of the infernal bargain. Words had power, and such power was binding. They were the laws that held the material and spiritual together, the laws of the Wager. Walter felt a rush of exultation as he felt a weight lifted from his heart, the sweet release of an unclenching talon. He was, once more, his own man.
“May your obnoxious soul treat you better than it ever did me,” Barnabas added with a disheartened frown.
“Now come here,” Pazuzu ordered Walter, beckoning with a withered finger.
The Possessor looked somewhat nervous. Walter joined his side next to the comatose woman, looking down at her with sadness. He didn’t even know her name. Pazuzu placed a gnarled hand, hot to the touch, on Walter’s shoulders.
“Now,” Pazuzu said sourly. “This is probably going to feel … a bit strange. And remember; I positively do not guarantee satisfaction. Or success.”
“Shut up and do it,” Walter growled. Barnabas chuckled, but it was a nervous sound.
Pazuzu sneered, licking his black tongue over broken teeth. He gripped Walter’s shoulder tightly, impossibly tightly, and it felt as though he seized the core of Walter’s essence in his misshapen hand. The Demon’s grip was an elemental vise, a force far greater than Walter could have ever imagined. The pressure was unbelievable.
Howling, the Demon drove his clenched fist, Walter’s soul clutched within it, toward the woman below with blistering speed. The world wrenched and swayed.
Pazuzu struck the woman’s chest as if hammering an anvil, punching Walter’s soul directly into her being. Walter felt himself forced through a burning keyhole, one that contorted him into unknown shapes. The pain was unbearable, and it seemed to linger for millennia.
Time slowed as Walter’s monumental soul, now grown swollen with knowledge that no human had ever possessed, was forcefully wedged int
o a vessel never meant to hold such a monstrous thing. Walter’s essence held the weight of eternity, the sins of both Angels and Demons, and a crushing mass of knowledge. There was no way he could fit.
It was an impossible task but, somehow, Pazuzu managed to succeed. Walt sunk, once more, into the clay of the material, a dancing ember in a mortal coil. His spark lit the darkness of the body’s synapses.
“Holy shit!” Pazuzu exclaimed, jumping backward and grasping his hand. Smoke poured from his fingers. “What the Hell have you been feeding that soul?”
“You don’t want to know,” Barnabas replied glumly, looking down at the elderly woman.
Walter felt … alive. He could feel the warm cells of the body encasing him, miniature solar systems working in a partnership of breathtaking beauty. The body was old, beaten, and damaged, but it was his. He sensed the acute damage to the woman’s head, a brutal mosaic of destruction that rendered higher brain functions useless.
The dying body tried to force him out, trying to guarantee its natural place amid the worms and the beetles. A lesser soul would have been cast, once more, into the hungry afterlife, scattered into the ether like the body’s original owner. The natural world sought to maintain its primacy.
Walter, however, was tempered in the forge of the Tower of Knowledge. His soul burned with a vigor unlike any human’s before. He had seen Heaven, Hell, the Garden, Limbo, and everything between. He had triumphed in the greatest glories, and participated in the blackest betrayals. He had given counsel to the Archangels and Lucifer himself.
Walter had grown into something else entirely, and he was far above letting a material body dictate its terms.
With a mere thought, he knit together the horrendous damage to his skull. He wove new connections within his aged brain and powered new life into limbs that had become weak with time. His puissant essence filled the feeble vessel to the brim, and strength cascaded out of it in a radiant froth. A primal growl issued from a throat that had never made such a noise.
Walter seized control of his eyes. They snapped open, and he stared out at the world with grim determination. His sight was clear, his body was strong, and he was ready.
Her name had been Arlene.
Power surged through him. He propelled himself off the ground in one, swift motion. His floral dress billowed around wizened legs that were powerful and sure. He cracked his neck, flexed his wrinkled knuckles, and hitched up his bra.
“That’s better,” Walter declared in a sweet, feminine voice. He smiled, displaying pearly-white dentures.
The onlookers stared in shock.
“Looking good, granny,” Barnabas finally acknowledged, impressed. Walter’s octogenarian body looked ready to run a marathon. Even Arcturus gave Walter a round of tiny applause.
Pazuzu looked at him, baffled. “Well, I knew I was good, but damn,” he admitted, awestruck. He turned to Barnabas and pointed a finger at him. “Well, Barney. We’re even now, and whatever you lunatics are up to, I want no part of it.”
The Possessor hawked a mouthful of black phlegm, spat on the ground, and scurried off into the darkness.
The travelers looked at each other in silence for a time. They felt the trepidation that comes with the knowledge of an upcoming plunge, a descent into the unknown. They were on the precipice of either disaster or salvation.
“So … what now?” Arcturus asked in a small, worried voice.
Chapter 32
Samael’s Hymn
“Have you lost your mind, Apollyon?” Beelzebub howled.
The Board of Directors watched in ominous silence, arrayed in a dire circle around the stone table of Cocytus. They were perfectly still, their muscles burning and prepared; they knew they were witnessing the fate of Hell being decided. The frozen air of the 9th Circle felt hot with destiny.
This was the moment.
Apollyon loomed over the Board, a monster of the end times. He looked down at Beelzebub with inscrutable black eyes, wells of midnight. Terminus slept sheathed across his back like a dreadful promise. They all knew what it meant.
“The Directorate of War marches,” Apollyon declared. His voice ushered the slaughter of the world.
“This is not Armageddon, you monstrous oaf! We must wait, and bide our time. You risk everything!” the Prince of Flies argued.
“I do not deal in risks, and I do not find your equivocation surprising,” the Destroyer growled. “I know your game, maggot.”
The emotion drained from Beelzebub’s face, replaced by subtle cunning. “And what does that mean?” he asked softly.
“It means what you think it means, coward. Your debts will be settled, ere this day is done.”
Apollyon grinned widely, revealing rows of onyx teeth. They lined his mouth, interlocking like ghastly railroad spikes. He fingered the glowing orbs hanging from the chain about his neck.
Beelzebub said nothing, his face shrouded.
Asmodai the Magnificent stood to speak. Jagged spines unfurled from his hulking, muscular form. “Where the Hell are Babylonia and Leviathan?” he growled. “I find their absence suspicious.”
No one answered. Apollyon continued to stare at Beelzebub, smiling that terrible smile. Beelzebub felt uncertainty clutch at his writhing innards, the fear that everything was spiraling out of his control. The Prince of Flies rose once more to address the council.
“Fellow Directors,” Beelzebub began, his voice unctuously reasonable. “Apollyon counsels us to muster for the final battle, but I urge caution. Precipitous action could cost us everything we have built toward for millennia! The prophecies are unmet, we are unprepared, and Heaven is no better position. We do not need to rush to action!”
Apollyon laughed, but it was a sound without humor. It was low and tremulous, the subterranean growl of magma, and the crust of the 9th Circle vibrated in harmony. He gazed at the members of the Board of Directors.
“The time for words is finished. War marches. Who marches with it?” he asked in a thunderous roar.
The Directors looked among each other, seeking to gauge their brethren’s response. Many feared unleashing their armies on the world lest it leave them vulnerable to their fellow Demons. After a time, Asmodai stood. The fierce edges of his razor-sharp skin shone in the glare of flickering torchlight.
“I march,” Asmodai declared in a venomous rasp. The Director of Pride could not allow himself to miss the glory to come.
Another dread Director rose. It was Bael the Brutal, Director of Wrath. He was second only to Apollyon in size, a towering terror with the head of a ferocious lion. “Wrath marches with you, Destroyer,” he snarled. Fire blossomed from his mane, an unquenchable wreath of fury.
Mammon the Insatiable, Director of Greed, then rose. Gold chains and ornamentation clattered against his blasted, craterous skin. “As does Greed. Armageddon or not, Heaven’s transgressions will not go unanswered.”
Apollyon’s inscrutable gaze searched the remaining Directors, but no others joined his cause. Beelzebub allowed himself a tiny smile, satisfied. Less than half the Directorates were committed, and it was unlikely that their forces could stand against the army Gabriele would muster. His plans proceeded apace.
The Destroyer unsheathed Terminus from his back, its black length weeping tears of oblivion. “So be it,” he announced, his voice overpowering. “The fate of traitors is sealed. Meeting adjourned.”
Apollyon swung Terminus with the speed of a falling star, shattering the stone table cleanly in two.
~
“What is the meaning of this, Uriel?” Archangel Raphael demanded, puzzled. “We do not have time to waste!”
The two Archangels’ towering forms stood beside the shimmering entrance to Limbo on Earth. The portal beckoned to them with hands of gray mist beneath an equally gray sky. The eldritch gateway lay within the center of the ruined ring of Stonehenge.
The ancient humans had felt the power of that place, the breath of the divine issuing from a gate they could not see. Th
ey built their stone monoliths around it, desperately seeking to be a part of the eternal. The masons had died, their work had crumbled with the ages, and yet the door to Limbo remained. It would remain until the world died.
Uriel turned to Raphael slowly. The Fire of God reared far higher than the tops of the stone monuments, a burning enigma concealed behind a mask. The pyre of his soul rumbled hungrily.
“Time?” Uriel replied, fiery essence weeping from the joints of his massive battle armor. “Time, Raphael, is all we have. It is all we have ever had.”
Raphael stared at his brother, confused. Dread rose within him. What lay hidden behind Uriel’s mask, or within his shrouded heart?
His siblings had always been a mystery to Raphael, the Archangel who was blessed and cursed with compassion. Raphael’s heart knew with love and understanding, something that he did not feel mirrored within the hearts of his fellow Archangels. Gabriele was cold and hard, Uriel was an incinerating firestorm, and Michael … Michael was far too perfect to feel anything as weak as compassion, or love. He loomed above all.
“Tell me, brother,” Uriel continued. The wheel on his back spun, and it seemed to move ever faster, building momentum. “Do you ever know despair? Do you ever feel as though the futility of the ages is too much to bear?”
Raphael was silent, his muscles tense. A terrible force built in the air. He felt it swell like a black tidal surge; evil was among them, and the fulcrum of the universe teetered.
“Speak plainly, Uriel.”
“I speak of an end, Raphael. I speak of release, and of respite. For all of us, for all of creation,” Uriel whispered. “Do you not dream of setting your burden down? The sweet sensation of a terrible weight eased?”
