God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (19 page)

“So what, I have to read it or what?” AJ looked at the unreal thickness of the book. It was bigger than any he’d ever seen.

“You’ll want to read it all eventually, the parts that are unlocked to you, anyway, but most of it won’t help you now. Two days ago it might have made a bigger difference, but the main thing is we have it and He doesn’t. But you have to confront Him and stop Him before He gets too strong.”

“Won’t He just kill me?” AJ asked. He saw Clover flinch at that and under the table she wrapped her feet around his ankle.

“He can’t. You have something else He wants.”

“The book?” Clover pointed at the one, true bible in the center of the table. Logan shook his head and looked up into AJ’s eyes.

“Your soul,” Logan said, and it was AJ’s turn to flinch. “The only way to ensure His own success is to consume your being, your life essence. He’d have no one to stop Him in the future, your family line would be stopped.”

“So basically He doesn’t want me to have kids?”

“No. As long as your
soul
exists, it will find a body to host it. Reproduction is just the most convenient method of passing on a Purpose.

“I have held council with Enopac and Jha’ask, through their intermediary, a man by the name of Cain Dulouz. At least, he takes the shape of a man. He told me that Daed is more powerful than ever before, but He is also more vulnerable. The possibility of success has clouded His mind since the dawn of His time, and now that it seems the closest, the final confrontation will be different than any other. You are going to be the first Munroe He will try to consume.”

“So you’ve never done this before?” AJ asked.

“In a sense,” Logan replied.

“In a sense? This asshole is going to try and eat my soul and that’s all you can say? Well I guess,
in a sense
, we’re fucked.”

“The only person that can stop you from succeeding is you,” Logan said, his voice still calm and level.

“You sound like a fucking guidance counselor! Don’t lay that bullshit on me!”

“It’s been lain on you!" Logan said, finally becoming riled. “It was lain on you hundreds of years ago and that’s all there is! It might not be fair, or right, but...it...
is
.”

AJ stood up so fast his chair was knocked to the floor. He slammed both hands down on the table as he stood. “I’m afraid!”

“Good. Get used to it because you’re going to be fucking
terrified
before all this is done.” Logan’s voice had become calm again, almost indifferent. The tension in the air grew thick; it was a living, sweating thing. The two of them stared at each other across the table, Logan sitting and AJ standing. One was a man five hundred and sixty-five years of age, a man without a childhood, a wanderer through the worlds. The other was a twenty-two-year-old kid on the brink of his own destiny, and the fate of mankind as he knew it was suspended over his head like an executioner’s finely honed blade.

“But what if I fail?” AJ asked again quietly.

“Then success wasn’t meant to be yours in the first place,” Logan said.

AJ picked up his chair and sat back down, lighting a cigarette as Logan spoke.

“Each life has a Purpose, one thing that must be done. If you fail, then your Purpose was not to succeed. If you confront Daed, the hands of fate will do the rest.”

“Then I don’t have a choice?” AJ asked.

“You have a choice. You always have a choice. You just need to make the right one.”

AJ let all that sink in. He took a deep drag from his cigarette and spoke. “How do I find him?”

“When the time of confrontation nears, the Entities will come to you in a dream—or send their emissary—as it always has been and shall always be. They will show you the way, and probably very soon.”

John got up from the table and went to sit on the couch. He poured a cup of coffee. Not knowing what else to do, AJ picked up the giant, ancient book and went to the bedroom. He sat against the headboard with the book in his lap. He didn’t open it to the middle; he opened the cover and was going to check the front to see if it had a table of contents or a foreword or something, but pages turned with it.

The book opened itself and he read:

“The universe has been looked upon by two Beings since before the dawn of time, in as such that they created it. They are androgynous Entities, faceless, sexless. One is Life, Jha’ask. The other is Death, Enopac. Neither is good or evil, although they created both.

These Beings are creators of all things with and without a soul.

Each soul is assigned a Purpose that must be filled before it leaves the living body. The Purpose of one may seem more significant than that of another, but each Purpose is a vital part of the eventual whole, the One.

When the amalgamation of Purposes is complete, life as it is will become obsolete. All Beings will reach a level of perfect balance between body and mind and soul, and all shall become an Entity all their own.

This is the plan, the gift of Jha’ask and Enopac bestowing upon us the ability to become what they are, albeit on a different level.

When the One is reached, all pain and evil and suffering shall cease, and all shall know a level of pure happiness that is as of yet incomprehensible to any conscious mind.

We must realize there is a Good and an Evil, but only because it was created by the Entities. Evil serves a purpose, it is a part of the Balance, and without it there would be no Good. Although all live under the roof of free will, all must realize everything happens for a reason, and that the reason is the reaching of the One. No single man, woman, child, bird, beast, insect, or fish may reach the One without the combined efforts of every other man, woman, child, bird, beast, insect, and fish that has ever lived, is living, or will someday live.

It is a truth that not every Purpose can be filled before the soul exits the body. If the body dies before the Purpose is reached, that soul is altered, changed anew, and assigned a different body. In time, the One shall be reached and all souls shall be evolved into their perfect state.”

AJ looked up from the book and let everything sort itself out a little in his head. More pages turned on their own volition and when they stopped, he read on.

“There is one that serves against the Purpose, against the One. He is at a level of evil far beyond the imagination of mortal man, evil at a level that was unintended and is a danger to the Balance.

He has always been there, the Dark Lord of the Nexus, the Servant of the Random. He seeks death instead of life, ugliness instead of beauty, destruction instead of creation, nothingness instead of the One.

This third Entity has yet to realize the broad, sickened scope of his powers, and only this text may show Him the path. But it is necessary to have such potentially dangerous pages, for the book would be incomplete without them. This text shall be the charge and sole responsibility for whomever the Entities deem worthy the role of Guardian. No other but the Protector need to know of this text’s existence, and no other but the Protector need worry about its safekeeping from Daed Sixxez, the empty god. Only one Purpose is outlined and laid out before the soul it is assigned to, and that is the Purpose of the Protector. At all costs and at all risk to loss of life or love must the Protector keep the pages within from Daed Sixxez and all other servants of the Random. For if this book should fall into His keeping, should the knowledge within be conveyed to Him, the One shall never be reached, and all that has been fought over and suffered for will be destroyed and made obscene.”

AJ closed the book. He set it next to him on the bed and leaned back, closing his eyes for a moment, absorbing what he’d read. When he opened them again, Clover was standing in the doorway.

“Hi,” she said simply and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You all right?”

“I’m better.”

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.

“No, that’s the last thing I want right now, to be alone.”

She moved to him, sitting next to him on the bed. She held his hand and looked into his eyes as they began to fill with tears.

“They’re gone.”

Clover was at a loss for words. It’s hard enough to comfort someone after they lose a person they love, but under such malign circumstances it seemed next to impossible. What could she say? She’d never even known anyone that died before. So, instead of speaking, she put one arm around him, held his hand with the other, and leaned her head on his shoulders, hugging him as close to her as possible. It was perhaps the best thing she could have done.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Terrance had arrived for his shift of guard duty just after AJ had retired to his room with the book. On any normal case, having to pull a shit guard detail would have pissed him off...but this one was different.

In normal police work, there were a lot of grey areas. He knew it was a shitty world when you were down and you had to do what you needed to in order to survive. A lot of good people had to do bad things to get by, but the bad things were often rotten pieces in a larger, nobler puzzle. Sometimes it was hard to tell the bad people from the good. But this, this was as clear cut as you could want. Both sides were as clearly defined as high noon and midnight.

Time passed slowly for him, uneventfully. Everyone else was asleep. The two kids were in one room, Logan in another. John was asleep soundly in the tiny third room, the one in between AJ and the door. Terrance looked around; he knew the history of the place and was glad to see all that racist bullshit had been removed.

Didn’t leave much else,
he thought; the walls were bare and the few pieces of remaining furniture just on the other side were barely in good repair. He sat alone in the silence on a threadbare couch, slowly whittling away the minutes until his replacement was due.

Finally, there was a light tap on the door. Terrance flinched at the sound. He’d expected to be able to see the approaching lights on Steve’s car coming down the long, dirt road. He stood and moved across the room, quick and silent as a cat, his hand already on the butt of his gun. Terrance peered through the peephole and saw Steve Neilsen standing on the front stoop, staring off to his left. He exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He took his hand off his gun and unlocked and opened the door.

“Hey, man,” Terrance said as Steve walked past him and sat on the couch without so much as looking at him. Steve motioned for him to sit down next on the couch, still without speaking.

Terrance was getting a very shaky vibe; he almost dropped one hand back to the butt of his gun. He stopped himself and forced out a laugh. Had he really almost drawn his gun on Steve?

Terrance sat down. “Anything wrong?”

Steve looked at him with empty, black eyes. “Not yet,” he said in a low and deranged voice that Logan and AJ would have recognized. Terrance tried to look away and found he couldn’t.

“Wh…wha…” Terrance tried to speak and was unable. His eyes began to ache and he was lost in the double black holes in Steve’s head. The eyes were huge...they...were...everything.

The pain moved through Terrance’s skull, creeping like an intelligent cancer and spreading even faster. Steve started to speak but not in a language Terrance could understand. The red-haired detective turned traitor put a hand on either of the Terrance’s cheeks and spoke faster and faster in a low voice so as not to disturb the others.

Terrance’s brain began to itch as if there were bugs crawling on it. He couldn’t stop looking into Steve’s eyes, Gina Lancaster’s eyes, Daed Sixxez’s eyes. Steve stopped talking and the voice that had been coming from his mouth was now echoing inside of Terrance’s skull. It told him what was happening and what he must do. Daed Sixxez had gotten inside his head.

* * * * *

Clover lay awake in the darkness, the soft, pleasant ache still between her legs. A syrupy smile crossed her face as she thought of it, how wonderful it had been. AJ lay next to her in the bed, gone to the world and sleeping better than he had in a long time. She nuzzled in a little closer to him, knowing she was going to have to get up and use the bathroom and not wanting to. It was so warm and perfect in the bed they shared.

Clover ran her hand lightly across his chest, which was narrow but strong. A perfect, thin patch of dark hair grew there and she scratched her fingers gently through it.

She was so glad she had come in to check on him when she had. At first she was nervous about it. She didn’t want to invade his privacy if he wanted to be alone.

He had cried, which was sweet and broke her heart a little. They began to talk and talking progressed to touching. Her nipples hardened now as they had when he touched them, harder as she thought of how he’d kissed them. She heard his soft, nonsense murmurs and lovesounds in her ears, felt the warm push of air across her neck as his breathing had grown a little heavier. She stiffened for just a moment when his fingers ran up along the inside of her left thigh. She’d had a very short run as a cutter in middle school, but she would always bear the scars, three long white lines, parallel to one another and each about half an inch apart. Those three lines had been the cause of some awkward questions at intimate times before, but now there were none of them. His fingers passed over them lightly as though he were strumming a guitar and she shivered with pleasure and opened herself up to him.

Clover had been with three other guys but it had never been anything like this. It had been long and slow and hot and delicious, the way she’d always thought making love would be.

She looked at him lying there asleep, sprawled on his back, snoring ever so slightly. Quite a performance from his end of things. He deserves his rest, she thought, and almost giggled in the darkness, considering waking him up for another go after she peed.

From the front room she heard a knock and her entire body stiffened. As if sensing her duress, AJ stirred in his sleep. The temperature of the room seemed to drop and she shivered. Then she heard the words of Terrance Wills and from his tone she knew it was all right. She relaxed again and lounged in bed a little longer, thinking of the sounds they had made when they came, how his whole body seemed to flex against hers before relaxing completely.

Her bladder finally won--it was what awakened her--and Clover got out of bed and pulled her jeans on over her dark blue panties. She was too cold to look for her bra or her top, but she saw AJ’s plain, white t-shirt on the floor next to the bed, so she slipped it on and walked out of the room.

She glanced into the front room as she crossed the hall to the bathroom. Detectives Nielsen and Wills sat on the couch, talking about something. It was a very intense conversation from the look of it.

When she was done she looked in the mirror. The shirt was baggy on AJ and huge on her; she pulled the neck hole to one side and saw a small, purple hickey on her collarbone. She smiled to herself and opened the door.

* * * * *

Logan sat on his bed, still fully clothed. This was wrong. It had been right, this house, this place, but it was wrong now. He could feel it in the air. He heard a knock on the door from the front room and listened until he heard Terrance open up and greet his relief.

Logan took in and released several long, low breaths, hoping to calm himself, telling himself he felt this way because the time was drawing closer.

No. Something was
wrong
.

He stood and crossed the room to his coat, which was hanging over the back of a shitty wooden chair with uneven legs, the only thing he had taken off. He dug through the pockets of his coat, his stomach sinking before he even found what he was looking for. There was no need to find the artifact for which he quested; he could see the light cast off by it now, so bright it was almost white, blazing, the full light of noonday sun contained within the pocket of his coat.

“AJ!” Logan screamed. He grabbed his shotgun and that was when he heard windows being smashed all over the house.

* * * * *

Out of the corner of eyes that had once been his own, Terrance saw Clover come out of the bathroom and go back into the bedroom. He thought she had looked up at them, but wasn’t sure. He had tried desperately to warn her, to warn all of them. To scream or even blink.

Terrance knew now what had to be done, what he would be forced to do. He didn’t want to do these things. All he really wanted was to regain control of his body again, enough to draw his gun and put a fucking slug into the head of this traitorous bastard.

Nothing had been literally explained to him, but when Daed Sixxez hijacked his body and entered his head, Terrance just knew. He shared Daed’s thoughts just as much as the Other controlled his. He had all at once just known that Steve had been promised things; he had been promised wealth and power and scores of slavegirls to bend to his will. They were false promises, all of them, but it had been enough to take a hold in the man’s brain, in his fucking
soul
, and turn him against them.

Terrance also knew that Steve had to betray them of his own free will before Sixxez could completely gain control over him. Steve had freely given them up at the Fireside Hotel, which had ultimately led to the death of several innocent people, some of them cops.

And Terrance knew that if he got the chance, he would kill Steve Neilsen.

You won’t get the chance
, laughed the god in his head.

Somewhere in the house, as though far away, Terrance heard Logan scream the kid’s name.

The front door was not so much kicked in as it simply exploded, knocked clean off its hinges and slamming to the floor. The walking dead flooded into the house after it. The windows in the front room—one looking out into the porch and a larger one looking to the side yard—shattered.

NO
! he screamed in the only place he could: his head.
Give me back my body
!

The only answer was sick laughter. Terrance’s head was turned for him, the tendons in his neck creaking. Though the windows were barred, the glass lay in a thousand glittering pieces on the floor. There were bars on the windows but those bars were already covered with the decaying hands of the creepers, pulling on them, smashing themselves against the place where the bars were joined to the house, the floor trembling against the onslaught of their combined efforts and mass. He watched as Steve made his way back out through the front door, the creepers parting to let him pass, untouched.

He heard John scream and fire his gun once, twice, again.

The creepers shambled past him, still coming in through the open front door. There was a screaming of metal on metal as the bars on one of the front windows came loose and he heard that same sound in another room of the house.

* * * * *

AJ was jolted awake by Logan screaming his name, only he heard it in his head a split second before the actual cry hit his ears. He reached out for Clover, finding her side of the bed empty, the sheets already cool. He then saw her, standing in the door to their room, looking out. Glass exploded in the front room. She screamed and slammed the door, locking it. AJ rolled out of bed and pulled his pants on. Gunfire rang out in the room next door, the sound of it slamming into his ears and seeming to suck the air out of the house, leaving behind a high-pitched whine that would be a steady backdrop in his head for the next two days.

“What—” AJ began but the small window next to the bed blew inward, cutting him off. He covered his eyes with his left arm, feeling little pieces and bits of glass bounce off him.

Arms were coming in through the window, between the bars, groping for the book that sat on the little stand next to the bed.

“No! Bastard!” Clover stepped forward, catching the heavy brass lamp as it fell off the bedside table. She raised it high and brought it down with a grunt on the arm questing between the bars. The crunch of the bones breaking was lost in another round of gunshots. She slammed the base of the lamp down again and AJ could see yellowed bones busting through slack, grey flesh, and there was not a drop of blood that flowed. He grabbed the book off the nightstand in one arm and tucked it to his chest, then pulled Clover back from another hand coming in through the window. They were on the bars now, those hands, so many hands, and he could see from the little bit of wiggle the bars already had that they wouldn’t hold for long.

“Come on!” AJ said, grabbing Clover by the hand and leading them toward the door. He flung it open and his body went cold.

* * * * *

Logan opened his door and heard three shots come from John’s room. He heard a scream and a crash from AJ’s. Terrance was now standing in the middle of the front room, his mouth a frozen rictus of pain and terror, his body locked at the joints and quivering as though an electric current were passing through it. Dead men streamed around him. Logan brought his modified shotgun up and fired, then shifted his aim, fired again, again, again, skull after skull exploding in a spray of bones reduced to shrapnel and the buckshot tearing through them.

He sensed more than heard the door to AJ’s room open. He fired again, and again, blowing one man apart at the chest. John’s door was kicked open from within and John backed out of it, firing his gun.

“They’re coming in through the window!” John screamed.

Logan fired again, knowing his magazine must be nearing empty, and then turned to AJ.

“Use it!” Logan screamed.

“What?”

“The book! Use the book!” Logan dropped one magazine out of the shotgun and slammed another one home even before the first had hit the floor. He racked the shotgun and fired again.

“I don’t know how!” AJ screamed over the noise.

* * * * *

Use the book
? AJ looked down at the book in his hands, aware now of the heat coming from it. The heat seemed to flow from the massive volume and into his fingers, right into the center of him.