God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (22 page)

“Have a nice rest, my sweet?”

She looked up and saw Daed Sixxez approaching her. “Can I sit down, or something?” she asked, not expecting much or making eye contact.

“But of course, my dear, all you need but do is ask.” Daed gave His hand a lazy wave, the grey matter that encased her grew warmer, the feverish heat uncomfortable on her skin. It began to move, shifting and turning, making dead whisper sounds as it reshaped itself, and Clover found herself sitting in a terrible throne. Her wrists were secured to the arms of it, her legs to the base.

“Now then, how’s that?” Daed asked, leaning a little closer. She watched lice hopping gleefully in the matted clump of His hair and saw the dried smear of blood on His chin.

“B-better.” The sight of Him seemed to freeze out and kill everything inside her that was once good or kind or beautiful. And as disgusting and vile a creature that He was, she was terrified to learn it was getting steadily harder and harder to look away from Him, to break the stare that was almost involuntary in its beginnings. It seemed He was slowly taking her mind for ransom, holding it against her will just as He was holding her body. Finally she was able to break the eye lock and look back down again, this time at her lap. Before she did, she saw a smile form on His lips, a demented grin on the face of all evils. He moved to her side and bent in very close, whispering in her ear, the smell of death riding His words as if they were a pale horse.

“Fight it, my sweet. It’s so much more fun when you fight it.” His cold tongue flicked out and circled her ear. Her skin threatened to crawl right off in defense of the touch.

“You’re wrong,” she whispered.

“Really?” He asked, His voice playful like a child.

“Soon you’ll be dead, too.”

He laughed at her.

“You’re afraid--” she began.

“Afraid? Of a boy?” The playful note drained from His inflections like a sink full of blood, replaced with something angry, something deadly.

“You’re terrified of the very thought of him! You--”

“Silence!” He roared in her ear, making her jump. He moved around in front of her in a single fluid motion, kneeling down and taking her head in His hands.

“I don’t
have
to keep you alive.” His black eyes bored twin pits in her soul, and, staring into them, her brain began to itch. It threatened to give way, to let Him completely in before she again looked to her knees, shaking hard. Clover had never feared for her life before, had never been put in a situation where she thought it was likely she would die. She decided in the interest of self-preservation that it would be best just to keep silent and not antagonize Him until AJ showed up.

God, she wished it would be soon. She wanted to see him more than anything, and prayed she would live to, no matter what followed. The only thing that would make her happier would be to watch him rip the sinister, sneering head off this monster shaped like a man.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Logan rode in silence in the back of the police cruiser. They were headed to one final motel, one final resting place along the way. Outside the window the city rolled past them, unaware and uncaring of their problems. Logan wasn’t sure if Daed Sixxez could be killed.

He supposed AJ would find out. Logan had a feeling about him, had faith in AJ’s victory.

The moon was getting fuller, and so far every confrontation had taken place on the night it was at the fullest.

The cruiser pulled into a parking lot.

“You two hang here, I’ll go get the key from the office,” the driver said. AJ nodded and, when the cop shut the door, turned to Logan. AJ seemed as if he were about to speak, but he said nothing. Logan knew he could have coaxed it out of him but if it were important AJ would talk about it on his own soon enough.

The two of them sat in the car until the cop came to take them to their room. It paled in comparison to their suite at the Fireside, but it was adequate. Logan had slept in worse places.

“Well, at least there’s a fridge,” AJ said, the sarcasm heavy. He shut the door on the foot-high refrigerator that would have trouble holding a six pack of long necks.

“I can live with it if you can.” Logan sat down on one of the single beds.

“I’ve slept in worse places,” AJ said as he lit a cigarette and propped a pillow against the headboard.

“Like my apartment,” he added, blowing out a stream of smoke.

Enopac and Jha’ask saw all this. This and everything else, they watched, constantly watched.

He is younger than all the rest
, Jha’ask observed.

He is a very brave boy,
Enopac replied. The two Entities watched as the day in AJ’s world went by. For him time passed, for them it was of no consequence.

When darkness comes we must hold council with him,
Jha’ask said. Enopac silently agreed.

And the girl?

Not until we must.

* * * * *

“John,” Sherri said. His eyes popped open and he sat straight up in bed, pulling an IV tube out and scaring the hell out of her in the process.

“Ah Christ.” John lay back down on his sweat-soaked pillow.

“Are you all right?” Sherri asked.

“I am now.” John was wide awake with pain and an adrenaline rush from the dream. Dream? Gruesome fucking nightmare.

“Well I heard you scream from the hall--”

“You heard me scream?”

“Must have been some nightmare.” Sherri laid a cool, comforting hand on his sweaty forehead; it helped ease away the shakes.

“Must have,” John agreed, not wanting to talk about it.

“Do you need anything else? Something for the pain?”

John looked up at her and saw worry in her eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he said, and it seemed not to matter that they spoke. Their eyes stayed locked a little longer and there were a thousand things he could tell her.

She stood abruptly and straightened her white uniform, seeming a bit confused as to where she might be. “Well, I’ve got to get back to my rounds.”

“Yeah, there’s probably some TV I could catch up on,” John said, feeling better in making her laugh.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so, but you buzz me if you need anything before then,” she said, drifting toward the door.

“Will do.” John raised his good arm in a small wave and she was gone. He realized what was happening. Something which had not happened to him since he had worked with Anna Derkins from Narcotics.

Had it really been four years? John contemplated it a bit longer and decided it had been. Hell, maybe this time he would get lucky. Much stranger shit had been happening lately, and he was tired of being alone.

* * * * *

AJ was laying in his bed, sound asleep. A deep dreamless sleep.

Until now.

First it was black, all black, endless dark that stretched beyond the corners of time. Very slowly, the light came. It began as a pinpoint a thousand miles away, lethargically spreading and bringing beauty to a once dead landscape, like slowly breathing life into a lifeless body.

Two figures stepped out of the light and into view, identical save the robes they wore. Jha’ask’ wore one the color of cream and Enopac wore one a dark maroon. Both had hoods, and as they drew closer, Jha’ask reached up with one slender, graceful limb and pulled it back, revealing a perfectly featureless head and face. No hair, no eyes, ears or mouth. There was small protrusion where the nose might have been, but that was all.

Enopac didn’t remove the hood.

AJ Munroe
, Jha’ask thought and AJ received it telepathically. He found he had no need to speak, merely to think.

I’m here
, AJ thought.

Tomorrow you must seek out the empty god and destroy Him.

I’m afraid
.

As well you should be, child. He has the power to end everything that has already begun.

Where is he?

We shall guide you tomorrow and you must not hesitate when the time comes.

I want to end it. Not for a hundred years or a thousand, but forever. How can I do this?

Enopac took a step forward and communicated for the first time.
You must first offer him your soul
, Enopac began, then started to explain.

* * * * *

AJ looked at his watch. It was only two in the afternoon. He had been awake since about eight this morning, filled with a nervous energy and a cold fear. He wanted to get it over, all of it. But at the same time, each tick of the second hand sounded like death, and it each one was a little louder than the last. He was still confident that Clover was alive, although he hadn’t experienced a second mental connection with her. In the back of his mind there was a pressing realization that he tried to ignore.

Even if he won, if
he
saw the sun come up tomorrow, that didn’t mean that
Clover
would. And what an evil twist of fate that would be, the final punch line to a drawn-out and maddening cosmic joke that he seemed to be on the losing end of.

“When do you think it will happen?” AJ asked, sitting down on the corner of his bed and then standing right back up again and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Just before sunset,” Logan said. “That’s when it always happens.”

AJ checked his watch again, wanting to tear his hair out because only one minute had passed since the last time.

Sunset. Four and a half more hours to go, hours that would slowly pass with an agonizing speed. He checked his watch again and lit a cigarette. He stared at the glowing end of it, making a resolution.

I’ll quit smoking tomorrow,
he thought
. If I die tonight it won’t matter, but I’ll be damned if I live through this and die of fucking cancer.

* * * * *

Daed Sixxez sat in His throne, drumming His fingers against the armrest. Soon the sun would set upon this world one last time. With the coming of the blood-red moon, a new era would begin. Each passing minute brought more confidence to the empty god waiting beneath the city, confident that He would not only defeat the boy, but that the boy would actually give in. He had seen it in a vision, early this morning. AJ would offer life and soul, Daed would take it without a struggle, would drink the lifeblood from Munroe’s scrawny child’s wrist as the girl watched from beyond, screaming and crying. Daed had never had a vision that did not come true.

He looked over at Clover, who was slumped in her chair, asleep. Daed cackled wildly and ran His eyes hungrily over her body, anticipating. She woke, as if even in sleep made uneasy by His stare. She turned red when she saw Him looking at her and quickly looked away. Daed smiled a lunatic smile and went to her, bending down in her face.

“Don’t worry, dear heart. It’ll all be over soon.”

“I’m not the one with something to worry about.”

“You feel it too, don’t you?” He mused. “You know that his soul will be mine.”

“You’ll be dead by dawn,” Clover spat back.

“You’re wrong. You know it and you can feel it. And I know it. I saw it all in a dream.” He paused for a second, His eyes like black holes in the sky. “And you’re the key, my dear. He’s going to give himself up to save you.” He walked away, laughing that horrible laugh.

Clover felt her heart sink. She loved AJ, she knew that and she knew he loved her. But was his a love that was strong enough to condemn the world? Surely not. It would be conceited of her to think that. Besides, she wouldn’t let him. She’d kill herself first, if that’s what it took.

But still the black thoughts lingered. It stuck in her mind like a mental leech now that Daed had voiced what she had been denying, after He had said the very thing she feared.

All I can do is wait, she thought, and so she did.

* * * * *

John Lubbock sat in his hospital bed, hating it and tired of being there. It was the cop in him. He chuckled to himself at that, as if there was anything in there
but
cop. A little heart maybe, but that was all. He didn’t paint or play an instrument or want to learn how to crochet a fucking afghan. He was a
cop
, and there was nothing more he wanted to do than go with AJ and Logan. The television set flickered from the perch in the corner, casting shadows in the dimmed light of his room. The sun set slowly in the west, burning away the blue of the sky and replacing it with the strangest sunset John had ever seen. As he lay there watching, the clouds twisted and warped around themselves, making shapes he’d never seen in the sky before. A cumulonimbus became an angry, red skull, glowing with doom. It faded as quickly as it formed, drifting off to the right and becoming a burning corpse. He watched this creep show in the sky, thinking of AJ’s visit an hour and a half ago. The kid had been understandably preoccupied. John closed his eyes against the evil in the sky, wishing he could reach the curtains to draw them.

John thought back to a couple hours ago, and the tiny knock on the door, so small he wasn’t sure he’d even heard it until the door cracked open and AJ came in. He had been antsy and paranoid. He jumped at every sound, turned his head to inspect shifting peripheral shadows.

“You all right, kid?” John had asked.

“Yes. No, well, as good as can be expected I guess.”

“It’s tonight, isn’t it?” John didn’t need to ask to know.

“Yeah. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I even feel about it. I’m numb. Mostly numb.”

“You’ll be fine, kid. Don’t worry--”

“I can’t
not
worry,” AJ interrupted. “Not with her there, and I could die tonight, very easily. I’m just not sure if I’m ready to leave this world for another.”

The two silently regarded each other, thinking of everything they had been through and seen.

“Hell, I don’t have the words, John, not like I want. But I came to say goodbye and to thank you.”

“AJ--”

“No, let me say what I need to. I plan on going to where ever He is and stopping Him, killing Him. I want to destroy Him. But if I can’t, I wanted to thank you.” AJ looked out the window, where it was still the middle of the afternoon. He collected himself and looked back at the detective “You’ve been in this as long as I have, John. And not a lot of people would have done that, I think. Most people would lose their shit if they got choked by a corpse in a city morgue, but you didn’t. You helped me.”

John held his good arm wide. AJ hugged the barrel-chested man carefully, trying not to hurt him. John whacked him a good one on the back with his good hand and AJ stood back up, wiping at his eyes.

“Just know that if I don’t come back--”

“Kid, if you don’t come back it won’t matter what I know, because I got a feeling if that happens, it’s game over for the rest of us.”

AJ’s face had visibly paled.

“No pressure, huh?” John asked, succeeding in making the kid smile a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow, either in this world or the other,” John said. AJ nodded and backed up a step.

“I suppose. I...I gotta get going, John. It’s close, real close.” AJ had then turned and walked out.

...and here we are, John now thought, stealing another look out the window, where the light was being slowly sucked from the sky. John wondered if he would ever see the kid again.

* * * * *

Across town, AJ looked at the bloody sky, watching the clouds.

“Do you see that?” AJ pointed as a skull turned to a body that changed to a rat. Logan looked out the window and nodded.

“Does it mean anything?”

Logan shrugged. Sometimes his indifference was infuriating. AJ tried to take his eyes off the sky. Slowly, very slowly, he began to feel different. The nervous energy crept out. So did the worry, and the excitement, and the fear. The only thing he felt was the need to move. He paced back and forth like a caged animal.

“Are you sure we don’t need the book?” AJ asked.