Chapter 12: The Call to Arms

The doors slam to the storage room. Trash and Spooky pile boxes up behind them to hold the doors shut. Spooky looks at Jacob. "Why the hell did we bring a corpse in here with us?" He points at him nonchalantly. "We should have left him with the rest of the cadavers."

Snake stares him down. "No one is touching Lances."

"What if he turns into one of the undead?" Trash says, nervously.

"He will not." El interjects.

Snake turns his attention on El. "How the hell would you know?"

El squares his shoulders to Snake. "Because he isn't dead," he responds in a matter-of-fact fashion. "He is in neurogenic shock." This is a lie, El has no idea what happened, but frightend men need a sense of control, some understanding that someone is in charge, someone knows and understand everything. El is willing to play that roll.

Snake squints in confusion and says, "What is that?"

El glances down. "In case you didn't go to school, neurogenic shock is a form of paralysis resulting from dopamine overdose, much like combat fatigue. When frightened or injured, most all omnivorous animals enter a state known as the fight or flight response. During this, one's heart rate rises, as does blood pressure. Muscles tense, and dopamine is introduced into the bloodstream. In the instance of prolonged trauma, a cooldown stage must be interred in order to prevent damage to the brain due to depressurization, which induces the condition called shellshock--the inability to act within normal parameters without the chemical agent. Neurogenic shock is a forced cooldown to prevent brain damage. I've seen it a dozen-and-a-half times. He will be fine in twenty minutes."

Snake laughs in irritation. "Well, Mister Wizard," he says covering his eyes as if a headache seems to set in, "do you get a kick out of busting my balls?" He smiles forcibly. "I mean, really, is there anything you don't know?"

"If so, I haven't figured it out yet," El replies sassily.

"Ouch!" Larry yells, "Incineration! You set the high score!" he jokes.

"OK." Snake starts undoing his tie and shirt. "That's it 'Coin-Dexter,' I am sending your ass to school."

El exhales hard. "You're not really going to do this, are you?"

Snake cracks his neck. "The name of the class is Pain. My name is Professor

Gekks, and I will be your instructor."

Snake throws down his coat. He steps into El, throwing a punch. El grabs his arm and spins him around, tucking the appendage behind its owner. El places his free hand on Snake's shoulder, bending him over. He jars upward, pushing Snake's own elbow into his shoulder blade.

Snake raises his head and starts shouting nonsensically. El cocks Snake's wrist downward. "Will you look at this?" he says, taunting. El starts dragging Snake around the room, bent over. "It seems I have your arm." He pushes his catch into a wall face-first. "I think I might just chop it off."

"Oh, fuck no!" Snake cries out.

"Why not?" El whispers to him. "It's mine now to do with what I want."

Lacerti knows well that El is simply playing with him--not that El couldn't rip Snake's arm off right now. To the contrary, he could have snapped his spine just as quickly. But El doesn't kill people that don't need to die. Killing those people is my job, Lacerti thinks, snickering at the fruitless conflict. Pistol stares on in shock, not knowing whether to help Snake or stand back and let El have his fun.

El is a combat artist. He could have thrown Snake to the ground and he wouldn't have felt a thing, but instead he twists Snake's arm a little farther. El wants him to feel it, and he does. " You want to know about pain? Let me take you to school, wiseass," El teases him. "Pain is a nervous response of the body stimulated by the interruption of the brain's electromagnetic resonation. There is a thin line when it comes to pain; if the resonation is slow and rhythmic, we perceive it as pleasure. But if it's fast and violent, even a good touch can turn into a painful one inexplicably quickly, as is the case with phantom limb syndrome. The trick is to learn the differences. I could rip your body into beef jerky and so long as your brain is functional, I can slow roast your bits and pieces and you will feel the burn. I bet the detachment could be amusing to a weakling like you."

"Snake," Larry yells, "are you OK?" Larry rushes over to help his brother. Lacerti holds out an interposing hand.

"Fight back! Fight me, you worthless maggot!" El commands, smashing him into the wall again. "Prove you're not as worthless as you look!" Snake can do nothing but call out for help. "God damn it!" El shouts as his inner demons make their way to the surface. "Do something. Do something! Do you hear me? You sack of shit! Fight for your life! Fight for your rights before I take them away!"

"I can't," Snake cries.

El squeezes his wrist, and the bone starts to make a tense, pulling sound. El smiles devilishly. He understands that Snake is helpless, and if he squeezes any harder, all the cartilage in his arm will be destroyed. "I spent three years getting stabbed in the rips by a baboon, sitting in waist deep water being electrocuted for the dam of it. All to prove my love to Uncle Sam, what did you ever do to prove you are an American? you disappointment. Kids like you have never seen evil, never seen war." El spins around and throws Snake partway across the room onto his back. "Now get the troops organized, figure out who knows what about what, and stop wasting my time with banter."

"Holy shit, Snake," Larry whispers as he helps Snake to his feet. "It looks like you just got owned."

Snake nods as he grabs his shirt and coat, redressing. "I guess I did." He cradles his arm. "What are you going to do?" he says, looking up to El.

El rubs his eyes. "I have to think." He walks to the back of the room and sits down. He stares around the room at the men that are now his brothers at arms, noticing each one uniquely. He seems to lose himself in his thoughts.

***

El produces from his coat a tape recorder, he sits down for a moment talking to himself.

"There was a man that lived in Great Britain in the 1880s whose name was Dr. Joseph

Bell. His field of expertise was social science. Professor Bell ran classes at Edinburgh University. He believed that man was capable of seeing and understanding far more than we realized. "Most people see but do not observe." The eyes of men are the windows to the truth of mankind.

He was the real Sherlock Homes, it was said by the local papers. He often would attend "fire sides," pep speeches," and host "power points" and other debates. His favorite game--and claim to fame, I might add--was to invite a guest onto stage with him and tell them who he thought they were and then ask if he was right. From what I understand, 70 percent of the time he was right. "Glance at a man, and you find his nationality written on his face, his livelihood on his hands, and the rest of his stories in his gait, mannerisms, watch-chain ordainments, and the lint adhering to his clothes."

I myself have been practicing a similar art, hoping it would help me understand a world that I am otherwise separated from. Allow me to take down this record that should anyone ever follow our footsteps, my knowledge may guide others. My unit is now nine bodies strong, consisting of: six able men, two women, and one man, currently disabled.

Six are MIA, including who I assume to be the older of Lances Jacob's children.

The most recent addition to my combative party calls himself Pistol. I wager it's either a sexual connotation or a nickname given by his colored confidant. He is likely in his early forties but has the energy of a man in his twenties. His posture is loose, but he stands bladed. He has some training as a warrior. His hands are cracked and filthy, indicating that he works with his hands and in a place too tight for gloves. His eyes are lively. My best bet, he is a boiler engineer or technician. His friend looks like a boxer, but his skin is too glossy for active fighting--maybe he is a personal trainer, or mayhap a PE instructor. Trash, the girl with them, looks like a student. If she works, it is not legally.

Snake is by far the greatest thorn in my side at this time. He and his brother seem to have dreams of the better things in life--expensive clothing, a custom-fit Mag revolver, tattoos, and gold rings on most every finger. They're likely drug dealers who've never worked a real job, born and raised on the streets of some backwash city filled with wanna-bes, soft, small-time criminals running from underpaid or maybe corrupted law enforcers. Snake is the loud one, fairly unsophisticated, and the elder of the two. He sees his brother as a rabble-rouser, or maybe as if he were mentally ill. I think he is just without discipline.

Next there is Lances Jacob. It's obvious that he is a priest or parishioner, to what faith is unimportant. He has two children, both girls, and I'm pretty sure they're not his biological children seeing how he would have been in his mid-fifties when they were born. Not impossible, but not likely. He is intelligent and fit as a fiddle. His stern realist point of view is a welcome one. He seems to have a tattoo on his chest but I can't make it out, looks like some form of writing, my first impression is it is an early Christian, he also has a ring on his left hand, gold with a blue stone in it and silver etching, the letter 'G' is imbedded in the stone as well as two triangles. The is the sign of the knights of the Masson Brotherhood.

Lacerti--one may ask, how can one become like him? The secret is male selective breeding, a ritual first documented as having been practice in Rome. The hypothesis is, if you take one man with a desired trait, such as excessive height, and mate him with a woman of similar magnitude, there is a one in four chance the spawn will be greater still. To determine success, look for the child to be born twice the size expected. If this is not the case, kill the runt and try again. The change over a century is small, but after several iterations it is extreme, as is in my partner.

He and I fought together in Vietnam. We were both field commanders for the Marine Corps sniper division. We were stationed together after the two of us returned from separate but equally disastrous missions. To my understanding, both our units were annihilated at the hands of Vietnamese guerrilla warriors--we were the sole survivors. We served out our terms thereafter and retired from the armed forces. We have an agreement never to speak of those times again.

Today we fight again, and again we fight an enemy we can't ID. One with no weak spots to exploit, and we fight them on their terms. Not a fun situation at all. I myself am not a doctor, investigator, or even a man of arms anymore. I'm only a driver. But today I will have to resume my old job. El Driver XIV will once again have to become Lt. David Lay, black ops agent. _ _

***

"OK," Snake calls out to the team, "what do we know so far?"

Trash speaks up. "Well, they're already dead. That part seems noteworthy."

"They're undead, not dead," Spooky pipes up. "The dead don't walk and talk."

"Well, we can't kill them," Larry adds.

"Jacob killed one," Pistol explains.

"And I impaled one, but it got back up," Trash adds with a look of annoyance on her face. "Are you confident he killed one?"

"Well, it burst into flames. I'm fairly sure it's dead." Larry jumps in, "How did Jacob do it?"

"He blasted it at point blank." Pistol explains.

Snake looks agitated. "Bullshit, I pumped one with a half dozen .44s. Shooting them won't do shit." He pauses. "Wait, Lances is a priest." He thinks about that for several minutes, then he leaps to his feet and confidently rallies the team. "All right, gentlemen, we are dealing with ghouls, undead parasites. Now, I don't need to hear any skeptical tales, because I'm a skeptic myself. But I know the undead when I see them, and that's what I'm seeing right now, so ..." He paces about. "Tell me about ghouls," he requests.

Everyone looks around as they think about it. A good deal of confused looks are passed back and forth before Snake looks to Larry. "You read Demonology and Witchcraft in school, didn't you?"

Larry looks up for a moment and narrows his eyes. "You mean the Frank X. King book about the occult?" Larry strains to remember. "Nothing. I can't remember." Trash sits on her knees and adjusts her skirt before enlightening the group.

"That's because ghouls are not associated with witches. If anything, they are vampiric. Ghoul, or ghoulah, is an Arabic term that refers to an animated human husk that was the body of a vampire or of a vampire's victim. In modern mythology, the traditional Ghoul is now a half-bred zombie. A figure from Haitian folklore, Ghouls and Ghoulah are the reasoning behind burying the dead. When a body isn't disposed of properly, it stands back up and attempts to resume its former existence, but with a taste for the flesh of its own kind."

"there is also that little part where they walk around graveyard's or seek out the sick and dying and eat them, some people think they can also shapeshift." Pistol looks surprised. "How do you know that?"

"J. Gordon Melton's book, Vampire: Encyclopedia of the Dead," Trash responds.

"How can we fight them?" Snake asks.

Trash exhales heavily. "We can't, unless you want to cut them all into kabobs. Zombies are indestructible; you can't kill the dead."

Jacob begins to stir about. "Snake, Snake!" he calls.

Snake leaps to his side. "Lances!" He kneels. "You're OK."

Jacob reaches up and grabs Snake's arm. "Snake, I'm sick!" he coughs.

Snake tries to comfort the old man. "You're fine, Lances. You are in some form of shock."

"Damn it, Snake, listen to me!" Jacob shakes him. "I'm sick, and I'm going to die." He coughs again. "And it is going to be soon." He turns his head and spits up some blood. "if not in the flesh in spirit."

Snake nods. "OK, Lances."

Lances sits up as he regains his balance. "Snake, I want to kill as many of those monsters as I can before I fall."

"Lances, I'll get you out of here," Snake explains. "Gentlemen, let's get out of this hellhole!"

Spooky speaks up, "Did you forget about the door problem?"

"We'll use the back," Snake proposes.

Pistol joins the conversation. "There is no back door."

Larry joins in also. "There is always a back door."

Pistol shakes his head. "Not here."

Snake says, "There's always a back; the Federal Health and Safety Committee ordered all buildings constructed after 1896 to have one installed."

"I know the law, but there is no back door," Pistol insists. "I spent forty-five minutes running around downstairs, and I saw no doors."

El approaches. "The building is on an incline, so there won't be a back door."

Larry looks to El. "There has to be ... cat burglars count on it." Snake cuffs him on the back of the head.

El looks annoyed. "Fine, we will look for a back door."

Spooky looks to the group, changing the subject. "Won't a holy sign work against them?" he asks.

Trash looks at him. "A holy sign is only as powerful as the man holding it." She thinks, But a blessed object will work for anyone.

Jacob takes Trash's arm and nods, not needing any more explanation. "I'll do it," he suggests. "I can bless our weapons." "You can?" Ashley asks.

Jacob half-nods. "Just like wine." One by one, he prays over the adventurers, blessing their guns, knives, and every other object in sight. With a new confidence, the group gets ready to set out again. Pistol can see something is wrong, but he can't put a hand on it. Jacob looks colorless and pushes his child away as she tries to hold him while he works on his prayers.

Pistol narrows his eyes as he considers the circumstances. What sort of darkness is hidden within us?

Chapter 13: A Broken Union

The men all nod, knowing what needs to be done. Trash shakes herself in disbelief. After all that has already happened, they want to go out and fight some more. She looks at Ashley as Jacob blesses the artillery. "You aren't for real, are you?" Trash looks puzzled.

"Can't we wait for the National Guard or something to show up and rescue us?"

El racks-n-taps his Jackal after Jacob hands it back. "Not likely." He looks down the end of the barrel then makes a strange adjustment. "If the Guard were coming for us, they would be here already." He drops out the magazine and counts his shells, then reloads.

"So, what is the ultimate plan?" Trash asks.

Snake takes the lead. "We knock down that door," he points at the barricaded door, "we blast every flesh eater behind it, secure the floor, and head downstairs and out the back." He looks around. "After that, it's every man for himself, if that's the way you like it. I'll call the cops and have them clean up the mess, and by the time they get here I'll be well on my way to Mexico," Snake finishes.

El momentarily has an ill look on his face as he turns his attention back on his gun. "I'm not too sure I like this plan," he says to himself.

Jacob grabs his own gun and notices that his knife is gone, so he takes a bat instead. He looks severe. He clutches his weapons. "Gentlemen," he addresses the team, "let's go sanctify this unholy place."

"You said it, Lances!" Snake calls as he, Lacerti, and El topple the barricade for one last time.

"Lacerti," El looks up, holding the door shut while he gives final instruction, "you, Snake, Pistol, and myself will go out first," he recommends. "We are the front line. Jacob, stay behind Pistol." He looks around. "Trash, Spooky, you are the core men. You come out at the rear as a resistance line. Keep Ashley and Larry between you," he explains. "And for God's sake, nobody get dead."

El swings the door open. Instantly the army of zombies takes notice and rushes in to attack. Snake is the first out the door. Gun blazing, he shoots his way into the crowd. His first shots are two to a zombie's chest. The ghoul hits the ground hard and with a grunt burns to ash. Next, one slug to another's shoulder--its arm singes off like the head of a match. As it leans in to attack, Snake side kicks it and shoots it once more in the chest, turning it to embers on the ground. One fiend jumps in from his side. Snake tucks his gun under his arm and like a cowboy blasts it away, swings off to the other side, and with his last shot shoots out another's eyes.

Larry runs out behind his brother and draws his revolver from his coat. With an uncanny amount of precision, he closes one eye and squeezes off two rounds, firing one shot over either of Snake's shoulders so close that the bullets blow Snake's hair back.

One zombie falls with each shot.

Snake looks up with no small amount of shock on his face. "That's me, dumbass!"

"No, its OK, I can see them," Larry justifies.

Snake reloads and swings to Larry so they're back-to-back. "You can't see shit; you broke your glasses, remember?"

Larry nods as he continues fighting side-by-side with his brother. "I know, funny, ain't it?"

Almost like well-tuned soldiers, they fight toe-to-toe with the undead beasts, guarding each other. "What are you seeing, anyway? Your vision is something like twenty-eighty."

Larry bobs his head. "It's weird. At first, I didn't see nothing, now it's like heat vision or something, like in a comic."

Snake shakes his head in disbelief then simply responds, "Gnarly."

El and Lacerti rush in next. They're both old and experienced fighters, having spent years side-by-side fighting all types of monsters ("mostly other men," they joke). The two of them need not exchange another word to know what needs to be done. Lacerti pulls his blades and in a whirlwind begins sending his enemies howling back to the abyss from which they came. A slash and a stab and two vanish, a cleave and another is gone, a thrust and one more. A scissor attack and five bursts into flames at once.

El fires his mighty Jackal and massive holes are blown in several; a hand, an arm, and half of one's head all evaporate with a single blast, a leg and half of a torso with the next. Wishing to conserve his last two shells, the next monster to approach meets the back of El's arm. El shouts a battle cry as he grabs the next nearest zombie and twists its head nearly clean off. He throws the undead into Lacerti's spinning knives to finish it off.

Now that the heroes are armed with "the right stuff," zombies fall just as easily as anyone would. Pistol steps out next. His whip, Soul Eater, behaves outlandishly, glowing with a blue-white flame when he grabs at it. The flames do him no harm, but the monsters all leap away in astonishment before ultimately charging in, drawn in by the power of Soul Eater.

At last Soul Eater seems to recognize its master. Pistol grins, empowered by the memories of his ancestors. With foolish persistence, masses of beasts' lunge at Pistol. He lashes his whip from side to side, killing waves of the tormented monsters. The Wolfin was right, Belmond lives, Pistol thinks, and he lives in me. As the beast swarm begins to thin out, Pistol hops into a zombie, kicking it over as he continues his onslaught.

Jacob stands alongside him fighting with what might he has left, but it is clear to Pistol that Jacob has little left to offer. The holy man fires his shotgun twice, killing one. He then pulls his bat and begins smashing one into the dirt. He seems half exhausted after only three swings. Jacob stands up straight and cracks his neck and back. Caught unaware, a zombie grabs him from behind.

Pistol spins around and throws one of his knives into Jacob's attacker's forehead.

Pistol calls out, "Eyes open!" Jacob nods in understanding.

Trash holds Ashley back with one hand as Spooky takes the point, the two friends staying close together. They mathematically aim and fire at separate targets, offering cover for the forward combative party. "Hey, Spooks, do you think El was right and I'm sick?" Trash asks, thinking back to when El had called her mentally ill.

Spooky thinks for a moment or two. "Maybe." He snipes a zombie. Trash asks as she also blasts a monster. Mohamed Quinn, fires a shot, but he grimaces as it finds the wall instead of a monster. Lucia Wingate brings one of the last zombies to its knees with another shot. "Your aim kinda' sucks, you know that?" she teases.

The last zombie runs at Snake, who drapes his revolver over his shoulder with the intent of shooting behind his back at it but is shocked to find his next bullet a dud. The foul monster wraps its arms around the man. Snake swings his arm down and elbows it in the gut; he stomps on its foot, grabs the monstrosity's head, and flings it over his shoulder. "Do I know my shit or what?" Snake jokes, stomping on his fallen enemy several times.

El takes one of Pistol's knives from the ground, struts over to Snake, and flings the knife into the broken beast's body. As the monster smolders away, El turns his gaze to Snake. Snake leans back with a look of momentary surprise, or perhaps fear from El's frozen, intent look. Snake can feel he has done something wrong, even if he can't tell what.

***

The Lamia pulls herself back up onto the catwalk, a look of fear and concern on her face. What was otherwise a typical hunt has suddenly become something awful; Lord Cravixs is here, Belmond is here, the temple guardians have been killed, and know the pups' downstairs are practically unprotected. Can this week's hunt get any worse?

The Lamia silently slithers along the catwalk, following the party to the back. They make their way down the stairs to the first basement. Well, they're not sailing clear yet. Cravixs and the male Wolfins will still give them hell. Not to mention the labyrinth of doors and halls before they get anywhere, anyway. The maze is well-known to normal visitors, but the strangers will have difficulty. The snakelike monster thinks, If I survive this, I think I will go home and lay a lot of eggs and never come back to this place. She hisses aloud to herself, "For now, I have to go tell everyone to hide."

***

The party gets down to the first basement, where the walls are cluttered with a painted representation of an epic battle between Heaven and Earth. The group is overtaken by the vastness of its splendor. A hall half a mile long, every inch covered with the landscapes of holy war. Hundreds of men are all identifiably different, with the horrible armies of God descending on them with divine fire. Given time to look, all the party members would be capable of finding likenesses to themselves in the mural.

Pistol shakes his head, awestricken. "Th-this," he stutters, "was not here an hour ago."

Snake looks back at him. "Are you sure this is where you were?" He spots his likeness as a shirtless man with a red sash drawing a bow with a dozen other men around him doing the same.

"Well," Pistol thinks, "there is only one stairwell going down."

Jacob removes his glasses and squints at his likeness, a man in a blue robe holding a staff overhead and calling down the flames of the sun itself through the thick clouds. Jacob notes how the painting seems to sink into the ground and resume below. As he kneels to examine it, the ground shakes.

Walls spit from the ground in some spots and other walls fall, creating new rooms and locking off the group members from one another. Pistol grabs Jacob's arm and pulls him out of the way of a wall shooting from another wall. Lacerti leaps over a rising partition and tackles El. Snake and Larry stand in shock as four walls enclose them.

Spooky and Trash get pulled away from each other as a wall grows between them.

Ashley yells for help, but everyone is lost....

"Dad!" Ashley calls. "Charlie!" Strange carnival-like music begins to play. "Trash!" The wall behind her falls out, revealing an evil-looking merry-go-round. Ashley whimpers, "Where is everyone...."

Chapter 14: Surrogate Mother

Ashley stands unprotected in the depths of the maze. The music draws her in. birds line the hall, wings outstretched in a bow waving the child on. Ashley walks slow and soft she grips the leather coat to her chest. Lights shine in the deep until at last the channel opens to a room, large a quiet. Cravixs sits at a throne surrounded by blackbirds, their heads lowered and tails fanned in kowtow. Cravixs holds a hand forward invitingly. "come to me my daughter." He expresses, "have a set." A second throne appears "I want to talk."

Ashley turns to run away. The maze has shifted again, the way back is now a wall. Crow brings a hand to his chest to introduces himself, Ashley bets him to the punch "Fillous- Mammon." She shouts "I know who you are."

Crows eyes go wide in confusion as he hears his name spoken. "I am." Crow pulls a leg up to his chest hugging one of his knees "and who are you princess?"

Ashely looks around for a weapon, she picks up a poker next to one of the many pots of coal. "I am Ashley Jacob."

Crow taste the air. He whispers to himself "Page Alouette Crow." He smiles to the child "you think you are a simple scribe like your father, don't you."

Ashley holds the stick up overhead as if it was a sword, she is ready to do battle with the black god. "I am a Jacob. I am Jesuit. I will fight you." She is shaking, she is terrified, and rightfully so.

The skin that Cravixs wears is not his own, when on earth, without the 'Keys of Salvation' he must assume the identity of a smaller, weaker, creature than that which truly is. On his last trip to this planet Cravixs took A man named Adam Crow as his avatar. He was strong, beautiful, wealthy, and hungry for wisdom and power alike. Mammon thinks this must have been sometime around the 5th century, it can get hard to keep track of time when one can jump around the cosmos freely. Crow was granted indestructibility and immortality as payment for letting Mammon use his body.

This of course means that somewhere in side the twisted body of Cravixs. Crow is still awake and active. Crow can still see with his eyes, even when Cravixs controls his hands, Crow can still hear, even if Cravixs is speaking, and Crow can still dream. Crow remembers who he was when he was human and he has spent a good deal of time and energy tracing his family, keeping track at first to the movements of his mother, then his sister, today 100 generations or so out, he can still smell the scent of his siblings in the blood of thousands of people that he would ever know. Ashley Jacob, she is one of Crow's sister's offspring, the smell of her blood is stirring Crow's soul, making him unquiet, hard for Cravixs to keep a grip on.

At the moment Cravixs is weak, the majority of his mind is tied up in his affairs on other worlds, less than 1% of Cravixs can pass over into this world. And that fact alone makes Cravixs avatar a creditable threat. Cravixs must quite Crow or risk being forced to discard this body and find another.

At the moment the cost of finding another avatar would be more then Cravixs can afford. The price in time, the price in resource, unexpectable. Of course, Cravixs has taken measures to try to elevate this dilemma but Karin isn't ready yet.

So, using a tactic that has been successful in the past to subdue Crow, Cravixs conjures a fantasy. The room full of birds lit only by torchlight explodes outwards into a banquet hall. The scholars cloak rapped around Crow transforms into an elegant silk coat, his hair works its way into a braid secured by a ribbon, Crow the void mage takes on an appearance much more like that of a prince.

The army of bird dance around and in a flash of feathers seem to shift into the shapes of men and women dressed in bird costumes. The carnival like music fades into a waltz. Ashley finds her clothing turn to smoke and float away from her body only for a new outfit to take shape on her after Crow has taken a moment to look the child up and down.

The outfit Crow provides is her is a second empire ballroom dress "Now that is a look far more suited to a child of the Crow clan." Ashley's head spins about as she is looking around. She can almost see past the vale of reality, she can almost see herself faint as a phantom forged from glass grabs her from behind. She can even almost see the void mage grab her and his fangs growing out. But the fantasy takes hold and blocks her vision.

Some scholars seem to think that there is one thing that is beyond the power of the gods, one thing so sacred that not even an evil deity would dare turn their nose up at. The sanctity of thoughts and feeling. This is ridicules. There is nothing that prevents the gods from forcing their way into someone thoughts. To force your will on another person, even a weak human, is unethical but far from impossible, after all if an illusionist has this power why shouldn't god?

Crow extends his hand and his will. Ashley drops her weapon, she holds her hand out tacking Crow by the hand. He pulls her in close to him, he grips her head to his chest and the two dance. Memories of his lost life fill the sorcerer's mind. But the warmth of the child against his chest turns the nightmares of reality into a waking dream. Crow is robbed momentarily of the will to fight.

It was once told that the crow traded his skin for feathers, his hands for wings and his heart for freedom, the crow gave away the ability to feel warmth for the privilege to rise above the world. Did the crow get a good deal? Now to feel warmth the crow must take that warmth from another.

Ashley can do nothing to fight Crow, yet Crow is sedated for the moment. That moment brakes when a voice calls out in the darkness, Lucia is looking for Ashley.

***

As Trash stumbles clumsily around the maze of walls, a strange music starts to play, like a sick music box. The sound pulls at her like a mystic rope. All at once, the trance is broken by the sound of Ashley's scream. Trash, in a maternal panic, runs down the endless halls, chasing the child's voice. Chains, ropes, and banners drop from the ceiling, obstructing her path. A faint of metal grinding chases her, like the hollow sound of a fan blade on an aluminum cylinder.

Fading from light to light is a man that moves like a living shadow, dancing down the chamber in a maddening fashion. The hall makes a sharp right, and Trash clashes with the wall. It seems to be wooden here, with faded flower wallpaper. There are numbered doors along it, but the numbers are backward. Trash, struck with nostalgia, stops her chase momentarily to regroup. This is her home, or at least a good resemblance.

She looks from side to side for the hall she had left, but it is nowhere around. The ground is soft and soggy, and there's water on the walls, creating a fall-like effect as it rushes down to fall through the cracks in the floor. She walks slowly, dazed by her surroundings. The sound of cars outside, people on the street, the smell of drugs burning in the apartment--all remind of her preteen years, before her father came into her life, before her mother left it.

Thirty-three. This is my home, she thinks. She brings one hand up and touches a door. Her heart pounds hard. Something horrible is behind this door, she can feel it, but her hand goes for the handle nonetheless. The door opens, revealing a two-bedroom apartment. The smell of burnt food and cigarettes is pungent. There is a man asleep on the couch wearing cowboy boots; the TV is set to static, and an oily cracking sound can be heard. Trash turns to face the kitchen. In the kitchen, Trash's mother is standing over the stove in a red and white checkered dress. She is a tall, bony woman with thick, red hair. She is twitching in an inhuman way, head and shoulders and one arm jerking side to side.

"Ghost," she speaks in the high-pitched voice she always had, "you worthless cow, home already?" Trash backs toward the door; Trash's mother always called her Ghost when she was mad.

"Yes, Mother," her voice cracks fearfully. The smell of burning cider hunts the young women. Her mind will not except what her eyes are seeing. She can't be here, there is no here. Lucia's mind shouts.

Trash's mother turns slowly to face her. "And I'm sure you're bringing your needs and drama home with you." Her face is black and swollen, like a burning marshmallow. Her eyes are rolled up into her head and are filled with blood. She wisps across the room, as if a tape in fast-forward. Trash yelps and falls over backward in fear. "I told you to leave yesterday," she howls like a banshee. "Why are you back already?" The banshee-like mother flails her arms dramatically. "Do you want to hurt me?" She leans over Trash as the girl crawls away, half-paralyzed with panic.

"N-no, Mother," Trash stutters. Wake up, Wake up, she shouts in her thoughts.

The banshee lifts Trash to her feet and shoves her to the wall. "You like to hurt me and your father, don't you?" She brings up one hand threateningly.

"No!" Trash cowers from the hideous apparition.

The banshee places one hand on the wall to pin Trash against it. "You have been hurting me since before you were born."

"Don't touch me, Mama!" Trash sniffles as she raises her courage.

The banshee brings her hand down to slap the child.

Trash aggressively thrusts herself at the banshee. "Stop hitting me, Mama!" Trash hits her spectral mother with such rage that she stumbles partway across the room. Trash pants and cries as she marches toward the off-balance ghost. "You can't hurt me anymore, Mama!" She pushes the banshee over. "I called the police and they took you away." The girl turns her face from the nightmare image of her mother. "And they said you can't have me no more!" Trash crosses her arms and sobs.

Trash thinks back to her days with her mother. Her parent was neglectful and abusive. Her whole life was run by a drive to be with many men and live a life of flashing lights and music. Trash was an inconvenience to her and her life. Only a handful of months before meeting up with Pistol and his friends, Trash engaged in a fight with her mother. Her mother won. Trash, battered by her own mother with a rolling pin, called the cops. Trash's mother was thrown into prison for eight months for child abuse and six months for drug charges. She also lost all rights to her child. Lucia was sent to live with her father, but that was short lived also. It turns out that Lucia's mother just couldn't attract men that weren't abusive in one way or another.

As Trash struggles to overcome her emotions, the fake world of her dream fades back into the depths of her mind and she is faced instead with a room with six halls. The sound of the music box is becoming clearer. "Trash!" Ashley's voice comes from the left. Her sense of urgency renewed, she begins to run.

A number of yards down, a new room comes into sight. It has gray stone walls and is filled by a functioning merry-go-round, from which the music is emanating. Apparently asleep atop one of the horses, Ashley is still clad in Pistol's biker jacket. Trash runs to jump the railing to reach Ashley, but she is frozen by the sight of the black-cloaked man she had seen in the hall. Now he is hanging like a monkey by one arm from a nearby horse looking dead at her with his vexing, purple eyes.

"Freak!" she yells. "Stay away from her!" Crow hungrily curls his lip revealing his viper-like teeth. He lets go of the bar and floats over to Trash.

"Such loveliness; mayhap your veins will quench my thirst." Crow smiles at her.

"Have no fear, the child will suffer no more wickedness from me."

"You bastard, what did you do to her?"

"Nothing worse than I'm planning to do to you ..." Crow approaches slowly with a devilish grin on his face.

Chapter 15: Medal of Honor

El and Lacerti duck and jump the maze of walls until at last there is only one path left to follow. When the commotion finally stops, El slaps Lacerti on the arm and smiles appreciatively. The old partners go "dungeon happy" as they make their way down the halls armed and ready for action. "Lacerti, what sort of shit do you think we're in this time?" Lacerti gives a look of severity. El nods. "That's what I think, too."

The hall grows dark and vines begin to drop from the ceiling, creating a thick jumble to push through. A strange sense of familiarity follows. A hand stretches out at El. It is gloved, and a masked face comes into view next. It is a gas suit. It makes a groaning sound as it reaches to squeeze the life out of El. El grabs the hand, pivots around the soldier, throws it over his knee, then elbows it, snapping its spine. The soldier lets out a high-pitched scream, and ten more masked men reach out, seemingly from the walls.

"Lacerti!" El calls, but there is no answer. He swoops down and steals the Red9 off the belt of the soldier he just dropped, then he spins around to find himself surrounded. El shoots the nearest soldier in the knee and then round kicks it away. He twists around to find another at point-blank range, so he pistol-whips the adversary and adds a backhand to make it stumble. He blasts it in the head as it falls, only to find three more walking up to take its place. "You're like roaches; you're everywhere." El can clearly see now that his fancy karate moves and the sixteen bullets he has between his guns won't be enough to fight this accumulation.

El picks a direction and runs for it. He smashes his way through two men while making his break. The vines thin, and he finds himself outdoors. He is outside a farm community at dusk. There is a fire tower and two silos, three barns, and six farmhouses. Past that lies a seemingly endless rice field. Behind him, the now dozen apelike soldiers march out of the jungle.

El's heart sinks. He knows where he is now. Feelings better left forgotten flood into him; faces from a dead life fill his mind. Fear, hate, disarray--things a soldier learns to ignore come to remind him of his own humanity. The first and most significant memories are of his own men and of his commander, Edward Reeves.

El couldn't imagine for the life of him why a man like Reeves would join the armed forces. Clever, educated, and analytical, he was a mathematical theologian. El recalls a dozen times when he found himself whispering with Reeves about formula and rhythm. "Everything is a pattern," Reeves would say. "If you could find all the patterns in the world, nothing would be able hurt you." The concept fascinated him to no end.

"In the theological world, we find everything is made of numbers and variables. Isolation problem solving--this is the world we live in." El would always find Reeves and his puzzles captivating.

"Here is how mathematical theory works. Imagine two brothers, Elroy and Lee. They work together in a commerce kitchen. Elroy is a dishwasher, Lee a busboy. Every hour an identical load of dishes arrives for them to clean and sort. Elroy follows a pattern without fail; twice a minute, he places up a coffee cup out to be sorted. After ten cups he washes a plate, and every other plate he sets out a tray. With every other tray he cleans a pan, and seven times a day he is given a soup bowl to clean. Lee moves in harmony, sorting each dish as it is put up. The pattern is flawless. Due to each man's focus, they only see each other before and after their shifts. One day several hours into a shift, Elroy looks up from his work momentarily and sees on the drying table ninety-one cups, eight plates, four serving trays, two skillet pans, and one soup bowl. How long ago did Lee abandon his post?"

The answer leapt out at El, and that was the beginning a new passion. "Fifty-two and a half minutes," El recalls. "The bowl is an anomaly, the zero number. That's why there was an odd number of cups."

El shakes himself back into the now.

El dashes for the town, and as he runs, a woman with a cart full of manure drops her cart and shouts in a strange language. Suddenly a dozen more men come into sight and start to chase El. "This is simply unacceptable," he mutters.

El leaps through the window of one of the barns like Superman and rolls to his feet. A man with a pitchfork lunges at El and pins his left hand to the wall between the spokes. The man draws a cleaver from his belt and, holding it over his head, sprints to finish the job. El leans out of the way, and the knife gets buried in the wood. The bald veteran swings out his free hand and knocks his aggressor off his feet with a solid swing. He pulls the trident out of the wall just as some of the pursuing men come in through the broken window.

El rushes to open the door to the barn to escape, but a scythe cleaves the door inward when a woman swings it at him. El shoulders past her as trains of enemies form behind El while he rushes through town. He thinks to himself, The silo, picking his next safe haven. So far this all seems frightfully familiar to him. Within the silo there is only one entrance to the upper floors, a ladder propped against the wall. El flies up the ladder.

At the top a dead soldier lies clutching to his combat knife. El takes the weapon from him as the crazed townsfolk pursue him. The first up is a man in a hemp hat and patchy overalls with a hoe. El kicks him back down the ladder, but he barely looks stunned by the fall. El tips the ladder over as four more begin to climb. They shout at El in their alien tongue. The American stands at the edge with his newly acquired Red9 and begins sniping them. His plan for dealing with the townsmen seems to work fine as he executes two flawlessly.

El's moment of victory is cut short, though, when the ape-men catch up and pull handguns as well. The ape-men are good shots--better than El would have given them credit for. The first shot splinters the wood just over El's head. El leaps to one side, diving behind a water bale. The monsters prop up the ladder again so they can climb to their victim.

From a crouched position, El runs across the loft to the third floor steps. Four more bullets fly and are deflected by the infrastructure. On the third floor, El piles up some wheat bags and awaits his pursuers. As they start up the steps, El pops up and fires three times at them, killing two and wounding one. The ape-men blast at the barricade.

Noticing he is losing ground fast, El makes a break for the window.

The man springs through, crouched into a ball, and he glides gracefully out of the silo and into a second-floor window of a house across the way. He rolls to his feet and is met with the largest, most powerful looking man in the village--a six-foot-six man in a checkered shirt with a bag over his head, like the monster in some slasher movie. The large foe swings a hand axe at El, who ducks in time, but the man in the mask catches El with a jab.

El grunts as he stumbles back and falls onto the bed in the room. The masked man swings his axe down at El, but he leans to one side and the man's momentum carries him onto the bed as well. El rolls him over and whips out the combat knife. The masked man grabs El's arm, and the titans engage in a power struggle. The masked man has the power--he outweighs El by likely fifty or more pounds, but El has the experience. The masked man is young and doesn't know how to pick his punches.

El is thrown onto the ground as the men wrestle with one another. He allows his arms to get pinned. The masked man struggles to raise one hand to swing with his axe again, but El makes his attack, swinging his knee up into the masked man's groin. He falls forward and El knees him again, smashing him through the handrail and toppling him down the steps.

El leaps down the steps in chase. The masked man has just found his feet by the time El is point blank with him, nose to nose as El plunges his combat knife into the Vietnamese man's gut. The masked man gasps as blood starts running freely out his mouth and he slowly stumbles backward. El pulls his combat knife out of the man's stomach and slits his throat with it.

Suddenly there's a pounding at the door and the smashing of windows to both sides, and El feels he must think fast. With enemies on all sides, it is only a matter of time before he is overrun. He looks left--nothing--and he looks right, finding nothing as well. Behind him, a door, likely a storm shelter.

It's the Alamo, the last great chance for any gunfighter. It will be an uphill battle, which is bad, but it will be a narrow walkway through which they will have to fight him one on one and in an extended battle. Where one decides to fight plays a tremendous role in the outcome.

El swings open the cellar door and hustles down the steps. It is exactly what he thought, a stone chamber with two ninety-degree angles in it--one at top, the other at the bottom, no windows, and only one door....

***

Lacerti continues to watch in confusion. Several minutes ago, El seemed to just buckle over. He kneels in the dark hallway and snaps at him numerous times, but to no avail. Then he slaps him once, getting no reaction. "Hmm," he grunts.

Down the hall, he hears Trash scream, "Freak, stay away from her!" Lacerti knows exactly what he needs to do. He lifts El onto his back and swiftly runs through the labyrinth with exceptional speed and proficiency.

"Looks like it is hero time again." Lacerti smiles

***

In a mess of organized chaos, the possessed townsmen and ape-men make their way into El's trap. His knife in one hand and his Red9 in the other, El hides around the second corner as the first townsman reaches the bottom. El smashes the man's nose with his elbow, turns the corner, and cuts the throat of a second. By the time the Vietnamese have figured out what has just happened, El has brought up the Red9 and started unloading on the next three.

The ape-men do El a favor by starting to discharge their weapons into their own people trying to reach El even while El locks knives with the townsmen. In this way they kill easily half their allies in a fruitless spray of bullets.

El was counting on all of them carrying Red9s like the one he found for this reason precisely. He remembered that the Red9 is a low-caliber handgun that was carried by naval officers in World War I and that its bullets would not pass through the human body under normal conditions. His plan of being able to hide behind a wall of his own enemies seems to have worked. El picks up a wounded townsman and charges up the steps using him as his shield. The ape-men waste their precious bullets firing upon the living shield. Once in close range, El's glory as a fighter shines through--a duck, a spin, a roll, and some calculated knife swings and he has the hapless ape-men fighting each other in the stairwell as they grope for their enemy.

As it comes to the last of the soldiers, they finally reorganize and retreat from the "would-be warlord." They had the numbers, but numbers don't win wars these days. El looks to the ground to count the bullet casings. Two hundred and seventeen. There's not a bullet left between them. El raises his head tauntingly. No one runs from El unless he wants them to, and he can see no reason to let these ones go....

El's nightmare begins to fade away. Early in the war, on December 19th, 1968 at 5:45 AM, El and his men had made the decision to attack a nonmilitary target, a direct violation of their orders to avoid contact with civilians. El believed that they had been set up, and his first objective was to escort his men back to friendly soil. Seeing that he had no transportation and no radio, they would have to access a domestic channel, which meant marching into a town and making empty threats and ideal promises in spite of having inadequate resources to back up those words. To unarmed citizens, fifty-three soldiers with guns should have looked too imposing a force to contest. Even though El was worried, he knew that his troops were not combat ready, and any reasonable amount of resistance would have proven a threat to his team.

At 8:00 AM the town seemed accommodating to them. For some unknown reason, the townspeople were sympathetic to their needs and purpose. They where hidden away in a community of underground shelters, and their interpreters where permitted to use the phone lines.

After the war on their return home, El and Lacerti's units became amongst the most decorated to leave Vietnam--Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Stars, Purple Hearts, and The Joint Service Commendation Medal were all awarded to nearly everyone. And as for El and Lacerti, they also returned home to the Medal of Honor with clusters.

***

When at last El awakes, he slaps Lacerti on the arm to alert him of his condition. Lacerti places El on the ground and they run together. In a matter of moments, seemingly all can hear the music box tune. Then they run into a dead end. Lacerti looks down at El for advice. El rubs the wall and looks to Lacerti. "Two-and-a-quarter-feet of sandstone." He steps to one side. "Break it," El states simply, waving to the wall. Lacerti lowers his shoulder and runs at the wall, which shatters apart under Lacerti's weight.

Trash and Ashley both lie atop the merry-go-round. El and Lacerti step into the room cautiously. Crow in his divine form drops from the ceiling without warning like a devil bat. He takes El by the head and launches him across the room into another wall, cracking the wall to pebbles. Lacerti spins to face the adversary. Crow swings one arm back smashing Lacerti along the jaw, and Lacerti falls over, twisting.

Crow flips down off the ceiling and leers at them with a grin. "If you want to run, now is the time," he taunts. Lacerti kick flips to his feet, landing with a mighty thump and shaking the room under his tremendous build. The titan points his gun-blades at Crow and fires relentlessly.

Crow glides up the walls and around the room. Black ripples of power emanate from within him, the lead passing through him as if he were mist. With dizzying speed, he flies at Lacerti's chest and fires a beam of lightning through the man. El staggers to his feet covered in dust and rubble and reaches for his Jackal. Crow divides his attention and with one hand triangulates the lightning beam between the two.

El is dragged into the air by Crow's godlike powers. Lacerti summons a stoic might, walking toward Crow in spite of the burning sensation of the magical attack. He brings down both hands as a hammer and clobbers Crow. Shocked by the idea that a mortal can even touch him, Crow laughs for a moment. He spits up some blood and rises to his feet as he suddenly understands the truth of Lacerti's heritage.

"A Tamriel," Crow hops back, hovering out of Lacerti's reach as he attempts to hit him again. "And here I had the folly to think I might be the only one of our kind on the godforsaken rock." Crow holds his arms out and a red sphere glow around him. El and Lacerti both make to run at the warlock.

"I'm curious, how far developed is your power?" the evil man asks. El stops dead in his tracks as the expanding wall of energy hits Lacerti's arm and instantly scorches it black. "Enough so to fight me, perhaps?" Lacerti stumbles away, cradling his arm.

El points at a large rock. "Lacerti!"

Lacerti nods. El runs around the diameter of the room to the girls. Lacerti lifts the indicated boulder and flings it at Crow, who is forced to drop his spell as the rock hurls toward him. The rock splinters as a reaper boomerangs into Crow's hands and he cuts it to pieces. Crow chuckles, lowering his eyes to his worthy enemies. As his eyes close, he vanishes, and a flock of ravens takes his place and scatters in a mocking cry.

The battered duo picks up the girls and the merry-go-round melts to dust, just as El's nightmare had, and Trash's before him. A troublesome idea presents itself to El. That demon could have killed all of us easily, but it instead is playing with us, holding us by our tails and letting us believe we can get away, as a fiendish cat might. What is he? What power does he hold? And how the hell can we escape unless it's by his will? Lacerti and I are exceptional fighters, but with the exception of one lucky punch, we couldn't touch him.

***

Crow retires to the portal room at the base of the shrine. He draws a conjurer's seal on the ground, summoning nine spheres of energy. A gray light bathes the room as lighting hops from sphere to sphere. Within the center of the circle appears a Middle-Eastern-looking man in a deep blue traveler's robe made of silk and with the image of the Kirin on the back. His hair is tied in a bun on the right side of his head. As he overcomes summoning sickness, he locks eyes with Crow. "Fiend! I command you, why do you summon me?"

Crow raises his head and grins devilishly. "Job the Endless, forsaken by the slave's god, condemned to my servitude and by endless hunger, hear the voice of your savior."

Job snaps at Crow vengefully. "Damned servant of the dead gods, free me from my suffering that I my take my rightful place at God's right hand with my brethren. My beloved awaits me in eternal death."

Crow growls furiously and waves one hand at his defiant servant, whipping him with psionic energy. "Slave! Do my bidding, for only through me shall you ever know peace, if only for a moment!"

Job falls over, holding the sides of his head. "Come, my sheep," Crow says as he holds his hand down in a fatherly fashion, "for I am the way."

Job takes Crow's hand and is led up to his feet. The pain from the psionic assault stops instantly. Job lowers his head in defeat. It was foolish of him to disobey his lord's will, and he is blessed that his punishment was so mild. Job knows well what he will be commanded to do, and however painful it is to do so, if he should not perform for him, his lord's wrath will be eternal. More so, it will be without pity this time.

Chapter 16: Pure Souls

** ** Calling out, "Old man!" Pistol snags Jacob's arm and mightily yanks him from the path of a falling wall. Jacob falls to the ground and rolls along it, propelled by Pistol's strength.

Pistol comes tumbling after shortly as the quaking earth shakes him from his feet. Pebbles and tiles crack and fall from the roof. Only half on his feet, Pistol dives again, throwing himself over Jacob's back while sheltering the old cleric from the shrapnel.

Jacob covers his head with his arms, holding his nonexistent hat as he lies on his stomach. He briefly looks up in bewilderment. Pistol chuckles as he often likes to do when uncomfortable. "It's like a ride, ain't it?" Jacob shakes his head disapprovingly once confident the event has ended.

Pistol shrugs and helps his company to his feet. Jacob walks with Pistol, resting on the younger man's arm for support, seeming to lack the strength to keep up pace.

"Your name is Pistol, right?" he queries.

Playing the role of the good son, Pistol nods and in his high, fake, kiddy voice, answers, "Yes. No. Sometimes. What is the right answer?"

Jacob looks up with a look of seriousness. "A yes will work."

The unlikely partners carry on slowly, Jacob apparently unable to catch his breath after the last scare. He slaps Pistol on the back several times after another minute. Pistol looks to him and sees he is white in the face, lips squeezed tight as if to hold back vomit.

Pistol looks frightened. "What is wrong, old man?"

Jacob swiftly pulls himself away from Pistol and throws himself at the wall face-first. He gags furiously until finally spitting up a cancerous-looking piece of rotten flesh. Pistol approaches him and reaches out to touch the old man. Jacob thrusts his arm back, barking at Pistol, "Keep away form me!" Pistol leaps back in shock then turns his back on Jacob disappointedly.

Nearly in tears, Jacob slides down the wall onto his knees, panting and wheezing from pain and exhaustion. Jacob composes himself. "I ... I'm sorry, Pistol." The ghost hunter is sitting at the wall behind him, knees up resting his arms over them. "I don't know what came over me." Jacob's voice has returned to its calming self. "It was a bestial rage."

Pistol lowers his head, listening. "Can I help you, Father?"

Jacob rolls over to sit. "No one can help me anymore." He exhales heavily. "Not you, not Snake, not even me."

Pistol raises one eye in concern. "What is ailing you?"

Weakly, Jacob's head falls to one side. "I'm becoming the maggot undead," he coughs, the whispers, "just like Larry."

Pistol leans in. "How? You don't have a scratch on you, and ... and, uh, you need to have been bitten to transform."

Jacob shakes his head. "Nope, not true. Lots of things can turn one into the maggot undead, not just bites."

"But my father told me--" Pistol stops himself mid-sentence, slapping his own mouth shut. Jacob snaps to attention, captivated by Pistol's sudden wealth of information.

"What did your father tell you, Pistol?" Jacob inquires.

Pistol spits up a rant before he can cover his mouth. "That no man can fall into darkness without falling whole-hearted. A drop of blood, the kiss of a demon, or the whisper of a hag can show one the way, but the damned cannot be damned without damning themselves first."

"Hmm." Jacob sits back, satisfied. "Your father is damn smart," Jacob sighs, "but

I'm not confident that the ancient wisdom applies anymore."

"Ancient wisdom?" Pistol asks.

"I'm a parish, son. My old eyes have been privileged to see a lot of things that most others aren't. Such as holy books two thousand years old, ancient tools claimed to have been wielded by prophesized heroes. I even once held the Spear of Longinus," Jacob boasts. He pronounces it LON-gin-us.

A look of confusion overtakes Pistol as he goes to correct Jacob. "Isn't that the Lon-GINE-us Spear?"

"No, sir. Longinus was a man, not a place. He was the Roman that dragged Christ up the hills of Golgotha."

Pistol leans in. "The who?"

Jacob's head rolls side to side as he struggles to hold it up. "'The where?' would be the right question. Golgotha is the so-called Skull Mountain. The place of death overlooking the meadow of blood in Rome--the place of crucifixions." A thin, gray fog has risen as Jacob wipes his eyes.

Pistol drops his head back against the wall. Jacob can feel the presence of Crow. He is watching them, not in the flesh, but instead by some other means. Then like lighting it hits Jacob. Crow plans to harm Pistol in a way that medicine cannot heal; he is going to attack him from the ethereal world, just like he did to Jacob. Jacob was not capable of fighting Crow to protect himself, but maybe he can save Pistol nonetheless.

But how? Crow is so strong, and has proven his dominance with his game of catch here. Why the hell not? Jacob thinks. Insubordinate to the last. Jacob throws himself over Pistol and starts reciting the Rights of the Dying from his book of prayers. Jacob grabs his holy symbol from around his neck and sets it to Pistol's forehead, chanting briskly.

***

The fog clears from Pistol's eyes. He finds himself lying on the ground in a dank backstreet alley. He is soaking wet and stinks of brandy. He can hear a girl shouting and panting in fear and pain, obviously struggling somewhere, against something. Pistol thinks hard for a moment; he knows where he is, and he bets he knows whose voice he is hearing, too.

Pistol follows the alley around to the back of the gentleman's club named Pink. Placed on top of a discarded pile of books and movies is Trash, pinned down by a greasy-looking street hoodlum who is giggling evilly as he cuts the shirt off her body.

Pistol whistles to the hoodlum. "Hey!" He drops his whip off his belt. "The lady, I don't think she likes you," he says in a fake a Spanish accent.

The hoodlum stands. "And who the hell are you?"

Pistol smiles. "I am Guy Fawkes."

Pistol has always had a fascination with history and its obscure heroes and villains. Guy Fawkes is both. As with many men that become legends, most of the facts behind Fawkes' life have been offered as a sacrifice to the myth. The facts are, Guy Fawkes lived in the late 1500s. He was honored as a war hero by Her Majesty and died as a traitor in1607, two years after failing to destroy the Houses of Parliament on November 5th, 1605, as the story is told.

The hoodlum turns to Pistol as his voice dramatically changes to that of Roman heritage and his eyes fade to a wicked red filled with hate and lust. Pistol stumbles in primeval fear. The man grows into the form of a grand inquisitor. Pistol has never come face-to-face with this man, but as if an inherited memory, he needs no introduction. "I've come for you son, Belmond." Pistol kicks over a trashcan as he less-than-gracefully falls back. "Your father, his father, and his father's father spent their lives waiting to meet me. Have you remembered to prepare for my arrival, as well?" The devil Nithies, Pistol thinks. He found me, and so soon.

Nithies glides over to Pistol. "You still have my whip; do you remember how to wield it?"

Oh man did I make a wrong turn; I cant fight that, a Patriarch undead. I really blew it, Pistol thinks. The demon senses his distress. "You aren't ready, are you, Belmond? You have been running thinking I would never come looking."

Trash stands up, eyes glowing red, just like Nithies's. She walks to him as if possessed by the monster. Pistol backs into the wall as the buildings around him seemingly stand and move to prevent his escape. "I want to play," she says in a snakelike voice. She runs her hands up her hips then leans in teasingly. "Love me, Pistol."

Pistol makes a valiant attack, lunging at the vampire and slashing with Soul Eater. Nithies pivots in too close to attack and lifts Pistol by one arm, interrupting his action. Pistol reaches for his knife, but Nithies takes his other arm. Trash throws herself at the man's feet, hugging his legs.

Nithies whispers into Pistol's ear, "For three thousand years man battled monsters, but after all the bloodshed ended what no one spoke of was that the monsters were the ones that had won." Nithies snaps out his fangs and sinks them deep into Pistol's chest. Trash bites his leg. Pistol yells as the vampiric pair start devouring him.

***

Jacob hastens his spell as Pistol starts convulsing. I was right, Crow is killing him. Jacob holds his holy symbol to Pistol's head and starts shouting the sacrament prayer. The symbol turns white-hot, burning into Jacob's hand. The priest howls in agony, forcing himself to carry on. Dark energy floods out of Jacob's body, dimming the room. In a polar response, the holy symbol starts shoving Jacob away. With an exertion of stone will, Jacob grabs the holy symbol with both hands and lays his weight onto it to hold himself still. The holy fire creeps up his arms, and Jacob starts one final prayer as he chants the ordainments....

***

The loss of blood quickly takes a toll on Pistol. He starts to fall as his eyes drop with a conceding weight. His vision fades until all he can do his hear the devils sucking and chewing of his life away. A single echoing drop of water rings in Pistol's ear, and now life finds its way into his veins. A cross burns itself into Pistol's forehead. He flings his arms out, howling with mystic power. A flaming white cross explodes in a grand flash from within Pistol's body, levitating him into the air and blasting away his enemies. The two vampires vaporize within the divine light.

Such graces, such power. The symbols of the Belmond family, the hex, the whip, and the holy fire "Grand Cross," their immortal vengeance--no Belmond dies without his enemy. Pistol knows all the tales of the Belmonds. He has read every scrap of paper his father ever slid in front of him. He understood the truth of the war against the night from the start but has refused to take responsibility for his part in it all. He has seen half a dozen monsters before this, but they have all run away--except one, the one that scarred him, the one that attacked Trash last year.

Pistol thought he could outrun his fate, hide from destiny. He has moved from city to city, changed his name, and even tried to discard Soul Eater, but nothing seems to work. There are only two things left to try: giving up or giving in.

Pistol's eyes open. He is back in the hall with Jacob. The cleric is flush white and lying against the wall, apparently wavering on death's door. "Pistol," he beckons, "I need something from you now. I spared your life. Now...."

Chapter 17: Silent World and White Coat Fever ** **

"Snake!" Larry yells at the wall that has sprung between them.

"Larry!" his brother yells as well.

"Snake!" Larry bellows again.

The brothers' efforts are fruitless; they can't hear each other "Larry I'm coming! Stand still," Snake calls before turning to the hall that is opening behind him. He pulls his revolver and cocks the hammer. He holds his revolver to his forehead as if it was a sword and quotes from his favorite series, The Sword of Truth, "Blade be true this day." Snake runs down the hall in a blind search for his brother.

Snake finds himself in a hall with sculptures on the wall in the shape of heads. A triad of female voices comes from behind. "What is that?" voice A says.

"It's a boy," responds voice B

"I want to play with it," intones voice C.

Snake looks back to see three nude women with fuzzy bat legs and matching wings. They seem hideously charming.

"Do you think he is lost?" the smallest of the three asks "I think he is handsome," her tallest companion says.

"I don't think he knows what is going on," the third giggles. "I don't think he even knows this hall is booby trapped."

The three demon witches warp into leathery animal monsters. "And now he is, too!" they giggle diabolically.

With grace and luck on his side, Snake steeps backward as the floor springs up at a ninety-degree angle. He falls forward, sliding down it. Sixteen spears shoot out of the wall above him in a box shape, but Snake manages to crawl under them. A spiked ceiling falls toward him. He cartwheels out of the way, but one final set of spears juts from the opposite wall. He flattens against the far-side wall, and the spears fail to graze him. "Slick as grease," Snake applauds himself as he steps out of the hall unscratched, chuckling as he brushes himself off.

Snake rounds the bend. The three bat demons appear in front of him. They cackle like hyenas. "The master is away, time for the rats to play!" the tallest one hisses.

Snake scratches his head with his pistol. "How the hell did you get over there?" he says, looking baffled for a moment. The three bats flutter to him. One of the three slashes at him with the hooks on its wings. Snake takes a graze to the side of his face. Another smashes into him, and the thief hits the ground with a crash. The diabolic women laugh as they spin around for a second strike.

Snake punches the ground in frustration. He rolls left, then right as two of the hell-bats fly around him. The final flies directly into him, rending with its talons. Snake guards his face with his arms crossed over it. The first chance he gets, he swipes his arms at the demon, and she runs after her sisters, regrouping.

Snake climbs to his feet just as a fourth monster comes into sight. It is a gipsy-looking woman with a cow's head and a large mace that it is dragging behind itself. Snake squints at it as he tries to comprehend the monster. "This is getting to be a bit much," he groans.

The first hell-bat flies at him, but Snake ducks under it. The second dives in, and he twists fully around, backhanding the witch as it soars past him. The last in line hits him head-on, and they both fall to the ground as Snake wraps his arms around it. Snake rolls her onto her back as she shrieks angrily. The man head butts the beast several times until it stops screaming before finally dropping it to the ground.

The two remaining in the air swoop around again as Snake stands up. The bat women fly in; the one at point dives down, wrapping its arms and legs around Snake and trying to bite him. As its teeth touch his shoulder, Snake shoots it twice in the chest. It looks shocked as he thrusts it to the ground. The last of the bat women lands from its flight, understanding that Snake is now in control. Snake snaps open his revolver and pours out the empty rounds.

Enraged, the last diabolic sister runs at Snake. She fan kicks him and he stumbles, dropping his revolver She spins around and side kicks her enemy. The bat knee strikes and Snake falls to his knees, and finally an axe kick finishes the bat demon's flurry of attacks and drops Snake to his back.

The bat woman places one foot on Snake's chest, holding him down. "I'm going to enjoy making a slave out of you for my master. Your back will be my bed, and you will lick my ass on command, Dog."

Snake looks around and remembers where he is. "Well," he jokes, "I kinda just got out of a relationship like that, and however fun and sexy sadomasochism is, I'm just not ready for that kind of thing again so soon." Understanding the traps he saw earlier, he slaps the ground to his left and sets off the "guilty lances." Snake smiles as the spear trap activates and shoots into the last witch. He crawls out of the trap's path and props himself against the wall, wheezing for breath.

"You," a voice says from his right side.

Shit, Snake thinks, there were four of them, weren't there?

"You're not one of Cravixs's legions," the cow-headed monster says as it places its mace on the ground.

"So, what is it to you who I am?" Snake asks. "And why aren't you attacking me like every other monster down here?"

"For almost a hundred years now this has been a hideout for travelers like myself running from various things. A man from this world named Adam Crow has opened a gate for us to get here and told us he would protect it so long as we did what we were told."

"What do you mean 'this world?'"

"He demands sacrifices of blood and children as a tax."

"You didn't answer me," Snake says, annoyance entering his voice.

"Most of us are afraid of him and the things he makes us do."

"Ha?" Snake leads the monster on.

"He likes women; he wants us to have children in his name so we can then sell them to him."

"What?"

"He is scared of you and your friends. I hear he has summoned his warrior angel, Job, here to fight you if the Wolfins prove ineffective," the beast says.

Snake interrupts, "Stop--"

But the creature continues, "Cravixs is indestructible they say, but if you can

crush his body, maybe he will leave us alone."

Snake grabs her by the arm. "OK," he shakes her, "whatever you want! But first I need to find my brother and the others. Can you help me?" Snake shuts his eyes in part, the way the bats talked, the minotaur and what she had to say, something starts to click with Snake but it just isn't all there. This monster, this Cravixs. He seems unstable, almost like he is more than one mind living in a singular body. Moses, he knows something about mythology, maybe Snake can ask him about this trinity thing that seems to be in effect, assuming that he can get out of this maze.

***

"Snake!" Larry yells, "Snake, Snake!" There's no answer. "Snake!" he yells one final time before giving up.

He steps back away from the wall, and as he does the room morphs, transforming into a gray-tiled room with a sink and an operating table. Silence overtakes him like the dread of night. The sink's faucet drips and a defining echo sounds when the water hits the aluminum of the sink.

Larry holds his ears and screams without sound. He jogs over to the sink and twists hard to stop it from dripping again, the sound of his feet on the hard stone floor being little softer.

The room is small and has chain-link windows and no doors. Larry sits on his knees waiting for his brother to show up and save him as he always has. A hard crash comes from the opposing end of the room. Larry looks to the source of the sound and sees that an ash-covered man has materialized. The man is clad in gray and looks lightly burned. He has no face--only a rubber, stretched head with no identifying features other than its inhumanity. A flicker of light reflects off a blade in its left hand. The phantom doctor slowly marches forward, not making a sound as it shuffles about the room.

Larry's ears sharpen. He can hear his heart beating in his chest and his lungs stretching. He stands, following the movement of the phantom stepping opposite him. Larry's every move makes a clapping sound. The phantom flashes the blade, leaping at Larry who side steps, bringing up his arm to absorb the shock. He suffers a deep gouge to the arm as the tiny blade cuts deep into flesh. Larry flinches back, clutching his arm. The phantom steps in to slash him again and Larry suffers another cut, this one down his neck and into his chest. He falls forward with a mighty thump, grabbing at his neck to hold the wound.

The phantom stands over Larry, holding the knife far over its head. Time slows down for the man; the air ripples around him, and the flapping of cloth can be heard clearly. Larry learns to pick apart the painful noise, and everything becomes clearer. Larry's wounds stop bleeding, his eyes fill with blood, and he growls a monstrous bellow. In an animalistic rage, Larry kicks up to his feet. The phantom tries to stab him as he stands, but the berserk man snatches his wrist with one hand and his neck with the other in a single swift movement. Larry snarls. He squeezes the phantom's wrist until it shatters, forcing the demon to drop the knife. Larry squeezes its esophagus, causing it to twitch painfully. Unrelenting, Larry lifts the figure into the air, holding strong until the last of the phantom's strength is gone.

As soon as the phantom stops moving, Larry barks, lashing his head at it as if to take a bite out of the monster's flesh, but he stops himself short. For a moment he looks around in a state of confusion. His arm grows numb. Larry is stronger than an average man, but he's not strong enough to lift a fully grown man into the air and hold him for any length of time. Let alone strong enough to break bones barehanded. He drops the phantom and paces about, trapped in a half-dreamlike state.

***

Crow pulls from his pocket a deck of mystical cards like the ones used by gypsies. He finds himself a chair near a table in one of the many guest rooms the planeshifters were nice enough to prepare. He places his cards on the table smugly, laughing internally. Today is a fine day to be a dark god; doing little more than whispering into the right man's ear, he was able to invoke mass confusion that over the course of the next several years will net him thousands of souls and leave an entire country in ruins. Next it's time for some after-dinner entertainment.

A meaningless fight would be terrific--maybe root out some less-than-worthy subjects to kill some would-be monster hunters and claim a new mortal toy to play with for a handful of years. The outcome of the fighting here means nothing in the long run, but if he can get rid of Job or Belmond tonight, it would save trouble later. Both of them had outlived their usefulness about a century ago.

But the Tamriel ... that interests him. Only three Tamriel have ever been recorded to exist in this world, two of which were martyred, as is the norm for the divine seed. He himself is only an avatar, not born into their ranks, but ascended by drinking holy blood.

Crow flips the top card from his deck revealing "the magician"--all wisdom come unto me. The second is "the devil"--all things of the flesh bound to my flesh. Third, "the fool"--only I can lead man to the next century. Fourth, "fortune"--cast down from my brothers to balance the scales of purity and filth. Fifth, "the queen of daggers." Crow squints as he reads his cards. What a waste, he thinks as the future comes to light for him.

He should have played along with me.

Chapter 18: Final Combat

The smoke clears from in front of Spooky's eyes. He coughs, waving his hand from side to side, trying to find fresh air. He kicks the bench before himself, accidentally stumbling over it. He feels light. He looks at himself and his surroundings. He is dressed in his Ken po gi from when he was a Thai boxer in his youth--blue baggy paints made of cotton, a tank top made of the same heavy cloth, and a badge with the kanji Chi on his back and over his heart.

Up to just over a decade ago, Spooky made a living as a Moiré-Te warrior and teacher in both America and the Middle East. He fought in the middleweight division for his whole career. He called it quits when his age started to catch up with him. He found that he was losing his staying power and having more and more trouble meeting the weight standard. One day he bet his career on a fight, he lost. His teacher, Onaga Honzo, told him he could keep fighting if he wanted to; he just would have to fight in the heavyweight divisions. This concept scared the hell out of Spooky. He knew that in heavyweight the rules were different, and barely making the cut, he could be killed on stage by a high-end fighter.

Spooky spins about. He appears to be in a locker room like the one he used during the World Fighter's Cup in Weihaiwei, China in 1991. He was the only African American to fight that year. That was back when he was still Mohamed, and before he went to work for a school as a gym instructor. Those were the good days, the hard days, before he went self-destructive and still cared what people thought about him, and when he cared about others in return.

Spooky has played this game. The bulletin on the wall states that it will be his turn to fight in five minutes. He tightens up his boots and slicks his hair down. Finally, he takes a kota from the wall and waits his turn to fight.

Passing the time is hard, as it always would be before a fight. When the time comes, the locker room door opens as if on its own. A strange light pours through the open door, and cheering can be heard from outside. Spooky passes though the light to an outdoor arena. There are seemingly hundreds of men dressed in ninja masks shouting in unison "Kon." Only a handful of the guests in the audience look familiar; Trash, Pistol, and Honzo are present. Trash and Pistol are in their biking gear, while Honzo looks like some divine entity in a white robe to match his long hair.

Far in the back of the arena, an Asian man in a black leather trench coat with the symbol of dueling dragons on it sits on a throne of gold and bone. The man's eyes burn with hateful emptiness like the devil's might. The man yells, "Kill him," pointing at Spooky. "Then bring me my prize, Kon."

An eight-foot-tall man with a monkeylike head and four arms walks into the ring. His hair is in a bun and he has only three fingers on each hand. His skin is a dark brown and his eyes have no retinas; his chest is giant and ripped tight.

Spooky stares up at the monster, his face turning white. Aside from Lacerti, Spooky has never seen anything that size. The monster leans in, howling like a dragon, and Spooky staggers back as he finds himself in momentary shock. The man yells again,

"Finish him!"

"Puny man, you should feel honored that you face a High Belroge," the monster says, putting a classification to his large species. "Now before you die, try not to scream," he taunts. He brings up one hand and slaps Spooky once, knocking him to the floor of the gravel ring. Spooky is dazed; one hit and he is seeing spots. If it had hit him any harder, it may have knocked his head clean off.

"Get up, get up!" Pistol calls to him over the crowd as the Belroge stamps toward Spooky. The outsized man scampers to his feet. The Belroge throws one fist at Spooky, who raises one arm to protect his head, but the Belroge's tremendous weight shoves Spooky to one side.

Cheering continues as the bloody sport heats up. "Come on," Pistol calls, "hit 'im back!" Spooky rushes the Belroge, taking two swings at it. The towering monster catches both Spooky's fists.

"Give it up," the Belroge laughs, "I know all your moves." With its two free hands it hammers Spooky's chest then backhands him twice in a scissor-like fashion, dropping him.

Spooky hits the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He has never been pounded so hard in his life. This monster is going to kill him if it grabs him again. Spooky has to think fast. He does not want to know what the prize the man on the throne is talking about.

Trash yells, "Spooky! Do something!" Spooky lies still for several seconds, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

The Belroge picks up Spooky and throws him to the opposing side of the ring, heckling his miserable resistance. Spooky skids along the ground. "Up, Spooks, up," Pistol calls again to his battered friend.

Spooky starts to climb to his feet. The Belroge laughs, kicking him back onto his back. "Worm," the giant taunts as it throws him again, this time with only one arm. "Can't you get up?" It stomps over to him again and brutally punches his head into the dirt.

Honzo locks eyes with Spooky. Honzo whispers to him, "Mohammed, forget your weakness. Remember me, remember your strength." Spooky knows what his weakness is. His beers, his cigars, and his fear of the future. That's it, he was afraid--afraid of this sort of fight precisely, which made him quit. Pistol was there to help him pick up the pieces of his life afterward, but he lost a lot of weight and a lot of muscle and stopped taking care of himself for a while. Maybe now is a good time to start again.

Spooky finds his way up to his feet by kicking the Belroge in the stomach forcing it away. He then kick-flips up. "Yes!" Pistol yells, throwing his fist in the air. "Use the kicks!"

The two foes engage in mortal combat, throwing kick after kick and punch after punch, pushing each other in every which way. The Belroge well outsizes Spooky, but once Spooky has his wits about him he can easily outrun the monster. Blow for blow, Spooky finds himself well in the lead, but he just is not strong enough to do any lasting damage. The Belroge is not feeling a thing as it towers over him tauntingly. One, two, three hard blows to the stomach, but the monster refuses to flinch, like a child throwing punches at his father. Like a butterfly, Spooky flutters under two swift jabs, ducking and dodging with grace.

The Belroge stretches its four arms behind itself and withdraws a set of kitars. "I will grind your bones into flour to salt my breed," its bellows at him, gripping the punching knives tightly.

A flag flies out of the crowd, landing between the Belroge and Spooky. The human snatches up the long pole, spinning it around his body in preparation for the monster's impending assault. "Come on," he waves the beast forward, "let's dance." The staff and the claws clash several times before the Belroge smashes his enemy's weapon in two. Undeterred, Spooky slams the broken pieces of the flag into monster's neck. The monster kneels, and Spooky round kicks it in the head, dropping it to its side.

Spooky triumphantly dances in place, but the monster suddenly hops to its feet, enraged. Spooky makes a break for it, running through the crowd for the mountains beyond them. The Belroge lays chase on him, stampeding up the mountain. As he runs he can hear two voices echoing up the hill like a voice would echo on a stage. The first voice belongs to the devil on the throne, while the second is his master, Honzo's.

"Bold move, Laus-deu-O, but as you soon will see, utterly pointless," the demon speaks in a slow low tone.

"Filous-mammon, child of the earth, we will not tolerate you arrogance much longer. These shenanigans are not your purpose for being in this plane," Honzo commands.

"Laus, my dear brother, you are powerless. Two of your hunters are already mine, and in a matter of moments a third will be, too," the beast Honzo called Mammon responds. "The laws your ladies of fate placed on you, me, and the rest of our brothers clearly exclaims that you and I cannot directly interfere in each others' affairs. You can only act through your mortal servants. So as you can now see, you are without dominion."

"Silence yourself, serpent!" A crash of thunder shatters the air as Honzo yells.

"My dominion is my concern alone!"

Mammon laughs to himself triumphantly. "It would seem, my dear brother, you have no choice but to watch your mortals battle my monsters. I'm in no doubt it is going to be very pleasurable for us all, sun god, Laus-deu-O."

There ends the dialogue on an unfriendly note. Spooky now finds he is running through nothing more than darkness on an endless street. Without the help of the others, this nightmare will never end.