Redemption of the Dead (18 page)

Bethrez couldn’t help
himself but ask: “When will you enter, Master, and oversee the
completion of this domination?”

“That is for me to know,
Bethrez, not you,” he replied.

“I’m sorry.”

“Now, leave me, for I have
matters to attend to.” He touched the portal.

Both Bethrez and Vingros
bowed and began to back away when the portal suddenly activated and
the vortex came back to life. At the same time, a brilliant white
light appeared far into the darkness.

“Go see,” Lucifer
said.

Immediately, Bethrez and
Vingros spread their wings and flew through the dark, heading
straight for the white light. Glancing over his shoulder at his
creation, Bethrez shuddered at the sight of hordes of demons
returning after having just left.

What went wrong?
he
wondered.

“Keep your eyes forward,
you fool,” Vingros told him.

Bethrez faced front again and kept his eyes on the white
light. As it came more into view, a jolt ran through him when he
saw Nathaniel, the very angel they had come to capture, flying down
toward the floor of Hell. In the angel’s glowing light, Bethrez saw
a crowd of demons harassing a man who did not belong here, for if
he did, he would not still be wearing his clothes from
Earth.

“How did he—” Before he
could finish the question, Vingros had his sword drawn and was
heading right for Nathaniel.

Somewhere in the distance, Bethrez heard:
“
Joe, it’s me, Billie! Can
you hear me? I can’t move, Joe. Help!
” He turned around midair and went to investigate the
source of the sound, a human voice, a
female
human
voice.

As was his habit, he looked
over his shoulder and Vingros was already too late; the white fiery
trail of the angel was already ascending at extreme speed with the
man in tow.

The master is going to be furious, if he finds out,
Bethrez thought, even though he
didn’t quite know what to make of it himself.
Better return instead.

Returning to the portal
and hovering above it, he was dismayed to see that the
legions of demons had already come back, but what was this? His
master was pressing his hands against the portal, seeming to be
feeding his energy into it, manipulating its very size and the
sheer illumination of power as exhibited by the red glow and orange
and yellow spider webs which were now shooting back and forth
across the portal’s frame as big and as thick as bolts of
lightning.

“Return. Return! RETURN!”
Lucifer shouted. “After him!”

How does he know Nathaniel was just here?
Bethrez wondered.

Scores of demons about-faced and re-entered the portal. At
first Bethrez thought that by meddling with its size, Lucifer had
sabotaged it because the demons did not disappear through the
vortex the moment they entered, but went
through
it,
carrying a trail of the power’s overflow with them as they sped off
into the dark and after the ascending angelic light of their enemy,
which was now a mere pinprick against a mat of black.

Bethrez stopped midair and reconsidered returning to his
creation with the prospect of being reamed out by his master for
yet another failed attempt at usurping the power of Heaven. And
even if he did explain that it was his master’s fault for changing
the portal, it would
still
be his
responsibility and he’d quickly become a disembodied spirit, doomed
to wander the Earth until ultimately cast to his doom in the Lake
of Fire along with the damned of humanity.

When the last of the demons
went through the portal and disappeared into the dark high above,
Bethrez mustered his courage and flew down to his master’s side.
Landing, he was surprised to find his master laughing.

“Amazing,” Lucifer said. “I
knew I could do all things if permitted, and I am
permitted!”

“Master?” Bethrez said. “What did you do?” The words
slipped out.

The devil removed his hands
from the portal. It went dark, but retained its size.

Lucifer turned to him. “Do
not take me for a fool, Bethrez. You will receive this one warning.
You fail to remember that I see things differently than all here,
for I was created the most beautiful, the most powerful. You are
but a shadow to me!”

Bethrez cowered just as
Vingros landed beside him.

“And you,” Lucifer said,
storming over to Vingros. “He was here and you let him get away!”
The devil shot his hand out of the clouds surrounding him and
grabbed Vingros by the neck and yanked him into the cloud. From
within, Vingros shrieked and was silenced. A small wisp of red
floated off the devil’s gray cloud and dissipated; Bethrez knew it
was Vingros’s spirit rising to the Earth where he would remain
undetected by his kin until the time came for his sentence to be
carried out.

Bethrez kept his eyes to
the floor, not daring to look up after what just
happened.

The devil went past him not saying a thing. He didn’t have
to. The message was clear.

* * * *

17

Crystals

B
illie, Sven
and
Bastian stood outside the
cottage. Billie said she needed to get some fresh air so the two
came with her to keep her company and stand guard. However, air
wasn’t the real reason she wanted to go to the cottage above. Her
bracelet had begun to glow white while she was alongside one of the
walls in the large room beneath. If what she was looking for was
nearby, it had to be accessed from outside unless they blasted a
hole in the wall, which she doubted Isabel or the others would go
for.

“Can I walk around the cottage?” she
asked Sven.

He looked to
his brother, then nodded. The three went to the side; a shed stood
on the left side of the cottage about four feet from it. Billie
kept an eye on her bracelet; the stone in the center glowed white
until she moved around the shed and to its furthest side from the
cottage.

“What is that?” Sven asked, pointing
toward her bracelet.

“I’m not
sure,” she said. “To be honest, I’m just learning about it myself.”
He looked at her like he didn’t understand. “I’m sorry. I don’t
make sense. This bracelet” —she held it up— “is supposed to lead me
to something. The problem is, I wasn’t told what. All I know was I
was supposed to follow it when it glowed white.”

“Why would
someone give you something without saying how it works?”

“Well, it’s
from that angel and he’s big on the whole discover-for-yourself
thing.”

Sven lifted his gaze and scanned the
area.

Billie walked around to the far side
of the shed. The light on the bracelet went out. Turning back, it
lit up again and she walked between the shed and the cottage, the
light remaining all the while. Around the back of the shed and,
like before, once at the farthest side, the light went
off.

Between the
cottage and shed again, she stayed in that area, moving her wrist
about, checking to see the utmost range of where whatever-it-was
was supposed to be. After a quick step to the right, the stone
turned from white to bright gold, light shining out of it like a
fluorescent bulb. The bracelet started to vibrate and rich crimson
wafts of energy rose from the ground and into the bracelet,
striking the middle of the stone. A moment longer and the stone’s
light was extinguished. She tried to move the bracelet around again
to get the white light going once more, but it didn’t light up.
Upon further inspection, she noticed that a portion of the stone
had transformed from its clear state to the same deep red of the
energy from the ground, its form in that area like a diamond. The
rest of the stone remained smooth.

Not knowing what was going on, all
Billie could do was say, “Well, I guess that’s it.”

“You scary, lady,” Bastian told
her.

Sven didn’t say anything.

* * * *

Billie, Sven
and Bastian had been airlifted via chopper to a small village some
ways from the cottage. Billie didn’t remember the exact time of the
flight, but guessed it to be a good two hours. Isabel had mentioned
their contacts were at a base in a small town—Billie couldn’t
remember the name—and had radioed in and asked for any news. Isabel
told them about Billie’s arrival and that she would be sent right
away. Confused why she was the one being sent from place to place
instead of these bases simply coordinating over the airwaves, she
wasn’t sure, but knew the answer probably lied in recovering the
Divine Fragments.

Now, in a
small town that was utterly abandoned by both the living and the
dead, Billie, Sven and Bastian touched down in the chopper and
waved off a pilot named Jacob, who took the chopper back in the air
and left the three there so as not to draw attention to
them.

They
proceeded to a large brick and wooden structure further into the
town proper, each small home she passed a reminder of the
devastation the undead caused: broken windows, some houses burned
to mere ashy skeletons, others with doors open and blood streaked
down the front steps, bodies lying in a heap on the porches of
others, the smell thick and sour. At the large building, the three
climbed the metal staircase, which led to a tall metal door around
a story and a half up. There was a window beside the door and the
quick image of a short man in behind the glass wearing a navy blue
workman’s jumpsuit and matching baseball cap. The man opened the
slider on the door, said nothing, then opened the door
completely.

“Welcome,” the short Asian man said.
He waved them in.

“No security?” Billie asked Sven over
her shoulder.

“They were
expecting us and know what we look like.”

Right ahead
was a balcony railing which overlooked a large single room with
crates, tables, wire mesh booths, tools, army personnel and two
helicopters near the warehouse entrance.

Billie furrowed her brow. “Whoa, ’kay,
where
are
we? Feels like I’m in some kind of Chinese market.”

“Japanese,” Sven said.

“But we’re
not anywhere near Japan.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are
we?”

He shook his head.

“We try to make good on promise,” the
Asian man said.

“Promise?” Billie asked.

“What’s word I’m looking for? Not
‘promise’ . . . on delivery. We try and make promise good on
delivery.”

“Delivery of
what?” Would’ve been nice had Nathaniel briefed her more
specifically on where she was going and who she’d be talking to.
All she knew was she was supposed to recruit and
recover.

“We have weapons,” the man
said.

Sven held
out his hand to the man. “What’s your name?”

“Akiyo,” the man said and gave a deep
nod.

“Sven,” he
said, pointing to himself, then to her, “Billie.” He also
introduced Bastian.

“Nice to meet you,” Akiyo said, taking
Billie’s hand in his and shaking it quickly as if he’d been excited
to meet her this whole time.

Down below,
Japanese chatter floated on the air in a block of sound Billie
found intriguing and captivating. She always thought that if she
were to learn an exotic language, Japanese or Chinese would top
that list.

Sven gave
her a nudge, shaking her from her thoughts. Akiyo was further down
the walkway, heading to a set of stairs in the corner. Billie,
Sven, and Bastian followed and went down the metal, cage-like
staircase with him.

“Here we make bomb,” Akiyo
said.

“Pearl Harbor bomb?” Sven
asked.

Billie shot her elbow into his ribs.
“Not cool,” she quietly muttered to him.

Akiyo didn’t
seem pleased either. “No, not quite. Would never recreate that
which caused us so much pain.”

“Oh,” Sven said.

She was
surprised at Sven’s ignorance, but let it go. Who knew what kind of
education the big man had prior to the zombie uprising?

“We make own bomb. Big bomb,” Akiyo
said.

“Why make
new ones? Can’t you scavenge from your old country?”

“Headquarters in lockdown. No infiltration. We tried. After
Japanese army fell, emergency procedures set in place so enemies
could not steal our technology and use it against us once the war
with the monsters was over.”

“And you know this how?”

“Cousin was
part of system. He made it through first wave of defense, but his
squadron fell during the second attack. He and a few others
survived. Eventually, we connected. Unfortunately, he died on a
raid to get supplies from food chain warehouse. He was good
man.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Billie
said.

“Yah,” said Sven.

Akiyo simply nodded then led them
through the main level.