Follow the Bloodshed (The Executioner Trilogy Book 3) (11 page)

“Right,” she shook her head again, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not important. Not many good times these days.” She sighed and pulled her legs up onto the bed so her knees were tucked under her chin.

“Not that it’s not important,” I said as I walked to the bed and sat beside her. “It’s not what’s going to help us right now. Once we get all the major details out of the way of course we can talk about the good times. We need this first.” I had avoided looking at her, but decided to take the chance and glanced her way which caused me to cringe. She was huddled around her legs, arms folded across her shins holding them like she would fall apart. I felt bad for what I had said, but everything was moving so fast now.

“Yeah,” she breathed, “yeah. Well, after you died.” She paused. “Things went from the usual to a million times worse. Vampires were coming out of the woodwork. And Lilith. Lilith. She tore down the infrastructure so quickly. It was like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. It was like it had turned into
Battle Los Angeles
. The military was called, but of course they didn’t know what they were dealing with. Army, National Guard, Marines; all came in and all went down.” She snapped her finger to show how fast they had fallen.  “Then she created the crawlers.”

“And we know all we possibly can about them, right?” The question needed to be asked. She had hidden information from me about them before so I had to be sure this was all there was to know. I felt a sigh of relief deflate my lungs and I used one hand to rub my face in frustration. I was freaking out on the inside and the more I heard the more terror seized me, forming a solid pit in my gut. If only things were as simple as they had been before I died. If only.

Chapter 17:

Buried

Because of the fact that I had incinerated the crawlers we had come into contact with, we had no clue they didn’t fall to ash till their first feeding like their full blooded vampire counterparts. They remained whole. Once I walked out of the room Gordon and Chase were hauling the stalky remains to the back door, ready to bury him. He had been a human once and deserved a proper burial. Following them outside, I grabbed a few waters. There would be no telling how long we would be digging a grave in the yard. What mattered was the respect I felt the man deserved.

My attention turned to Chase as he and Gordon laid the man on the ground, placing his severed head inches from the neck. His mouth was still open but his eyes had closed after rolling back into his head. I suppressed a shudder as the men moved to the shed behind the house, taking two shovels out of the darkness as they worked under the light of the moon.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I questioned as I crossed my arms. I knew what they would say, but I figured I’d ask anyways. Gordon’s eyes scanned my face and I saw his face warm.

With a grin on his face he stated, “Honey, all you can do right now to help is sit your pretty little ass right there on the steps and give me something nice to look at. You don’t need to be doing any physical labor.” He winked at me, his eyes twinkling in the light with glee. There was no way I could hold my own smile back, winking in return.

“That I can do.” I planted myself on the steps just as instructed and watched them work, both men glistening in the moonlight as sweat beaded on their skin.

Their heavy breathing was the only sound. After what felt like an eternity the hole was six feet in width and six feet deep, long enough and deep enough to house a body so it wouldn’t be dug up and strewn all over the yard by wild animals after the barrier fell. Strangely enough, there wasn’t a single mosquito inside of the barrier. It had only taken five minutes of sitting outside without the protection of bug spray to figure it out. Not even a moth hovered around the light on the back stoop as they moved the man’s body to the hole, Chase stumbling slightly and trudging towards the grave with a grunt of effort. Gordon seemed to be able to handle his load with more ease, taking his time to give Chase the opportunity to align the body with the side of the grave. There would be no delicate way to do this so they swung his body back slightly and dropped him into the grave with a loud thud against the dirt. I cringed, gritting my teeth even though I knew he wouldn’t feel any pain or discomfort. It was hard to watch. I had to turn away before tears spilled from my eyes and down my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if the sorrow I felt was because of his death at my own hands or the hormones of my current pregnancy.

Placing my hand over my mouth I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to hold back the sobs that tried too hard to rack my body with their ferocity.  I was able to hold them back until after   a few seconds. I felt a warm and callused hand on my arm and turned to find myself staring directly into Gordon’s pitch black orbs. Chase was behind him i, shoveling loose dirt into the grave as Gordon tried to comfort me.

“Are you alright?” His eyes were watering as he watched me, emotions shifting from concern to sadness and finally despair.

I could only shake my head as a response for fear my voice would crack and I would shatter into a million pieces as we sat there. The look on his face intensified the feeling running rampant through my body, making it easier for the first few tears to begin to cascade down my cheeks. Gordon moved to sit beside me, taking me into his arms, one hand rubbing my back as the other held me. All of the events of the past six months had been bearable until that moment. I wanted so badly to cling to the past like a security blanket, but I knew that wasn’t possible. At least not until Lilith was gone.

Chase let us be and continued to fill the grave. He walked silently around us and I could hear Gordon whisper to him, but couldn’t make out the words through my cries as the anguish poured out of me and into the air, filling it with grief. I may not have known him as anything other than a fledgling crawler, but I swore to myself   I would avenge him and I would do whatever it took to make sure he didn’t die in vain.

Chapter 18:

Down the Rabbit Hole

I was still covered in the blood of the crawler Gordon and I had put to death. I hadn’t had a chance to relay Beth’s information to Gordon or to reflect on it before I had a complete break down while watching the stranger being laid to rest. Plus, I was concerned about Sam. I realized it wasn’t about her current state, but the state of her mind after we had returned to the world.

When I came into the room Gordon was shirtless and on all fours on the floor with a rag, a steel brush, and a bucket of hot soapy water. I stooped down in front of him and reach into the red tinged water for the second brush at the bottom.

My stomach began to turn as I pushed the already red water through the blood of the crawler that was congealing on the floor. Pushing through the nausea I let my thoughts drift as I moved the brush between the floor and the bucket, not seeming to make a dent in the amount of crimson still on the floor. I stood, taking the bucket to the sink, pouring the filthy water down the drain and rinsing the bucket. Once it was rinsed and filled it up with the hot soapy water. I brought it back to sit next to Gordon and began to scrub again. The hard bristles made a scraping sound on the floor as we did so. I didn’t care about scratches. I cared this was cleaned up before I hurled and made a larger mess.

I didn’t realize he had been speaking until I felt a warm hand on my shoulder, but I didn’t stop. I watched the clean water swirl with the blood as I moved the brush back and forth, harder and harder with each stroke. It was hypnotizing and Gordon began to shake my shoulder, finally snapping me out of the reverie and back to the present. With a deep, hissing breath I turned my face to look at him. His dark eyes bore into mine and I saw determination there; distress, determination, and frustration all wrapped into one beautiful muscle bound package. I had barely noticed before, but he still wore the scruff he had earned while in Hell, only leaving a five o’clock shadow. Apparently he had been trimming it though. I found it oddly sexy on him and grew accustomed to the look.

“You don’t have to do this,” he breathed. His breath was still minty as it came to greet me. I was confused and wasn’t exactly sure what I didn’t have to do, but I had a feeling he was about to tell me. “You’re looking a little green.” 

“No, I’m okay. Really.” I could tell he didn’t believe me as soon as the words spilled from my mouth like vomit. I let out an exasperated sigh and moved to sit on the floor, barely missing an untouched puddle of blood to my left. “You’re right. I’ve felt the need to throw up the whole time I’ve been in here, but I want to help.”  Resting my arms on my knees I watched him stare at me. He didn’t move and looked like as statue as we sat there.

“I know you do, but you don’t have to do everything. I’m here, Chase is here, and Beth is here. We are all here to help you. Not the other way around,” his shoulder flexed as he said the words, holding himself up was beginning to put a strain on his arms. He moved around the puddle of bloody water to sit next to me. “You don’t have to do everything yourself. I know you feel like you have to, but you don’t. Don’t put any undue pressure on yourself, especially now.” He moved his hand to my belly. It wasn’t big enough to really notice.

My hand came to rest on his and I blew out a nauseated breath. I rested my head on his shoulder, feeling the sweat coating him absorbing into my hair. How could I say anything to him about how I couldn’t stop? I was beginning to think there was no nice way to do it. Not too long after we had first met I had told him the same words, but in a different context.

“You know I can’t stop being the Executioner. It’s who I am. It’s who I’m destined to be. I can’t stop fate.” We sat in silence. Not even the crickets outside made a noise. There was no wind, no rain. There was nothing. It was like the death Lilith brought to those she had physically killed, but to everyone and everything around her. The night air was dead tonight and I blamed her for the silence.

“Well,” Gordon breathed as he turned towards me, taking his hand away from my belly to entwine his fingers in mine and crossing his legs. I hadn’t noticed before but his feet were bare and, the hem of his jeans were a little too long for him. Now they were sitting in a puddle of bloody water, soaking into the fabric as he looked at me. “I will be here to help you. We complement each other. You’re the light, and I’m the dark. You’re the fire. I’m the ice. We are meant for each other, like she had said, and nothing will keep me from you.”

I let my hand drift up to touch his perfect face, the thick hairs on his face were slightly prickly and rough, as I touched him. His eyes were still as black as onyx, but I was beginning to see a fire in them. A passion had been renewed. Not only was this passion inside of him. I felt it rising in my chest and causing my heart to flutter as passion bloomed between us. In Hell he had been broken and tortured, even after we had found each other. It didn’t matter how many creatures we slew together to find our way home. He was still haunted by his time there when we got back, but now the hope was resurfacing and I couldn’t help but smile at him.

He beamed back at me with a crooked smile. A smile that made me melt and turned my legs to cooked spaghetti. “You know, it’ll only get harder from here,” I whispered as I looked deep into his eyes. He nodded, taking my hand and putting it to his lips. It sent a shiver down my spine, causing him to smile. I felt the spread of his lips against my fingers, warm and inviting.

“I know, but with you by my side we can do anything.” I let his words move through my hand as his voice vibrated against my skin, and down through me like he was touching my soul. His voice and gaze held onto me, gripping me tight so no one could separate us. Not Lilith or her children. “We had proven that in Hell. We can do it again.”

“Yes, we did.” There was a lilt in my voice. After speaking to Beth and now, sitting here with Gordon I was strangely at peace. With our last sliver of protection about to fall there wasn’t anything that could steal it away. This was true happiness. It didn’t matter how much blood we were bathed in or how much death was around us. Not only did we have each other, we also had our unborn child. Our child was meant for something more than us. I wasn’t sure how I knew. I   did.

Tendrils of whispered, unintelligible words reached through my mind, curling around my thoughts like smoke. The voice was getting stronger each day. This ability to speak to me was what told me our child was meant for greatness. I was more than ready to meet our child, but until the time came I was perfectly content with this small form of communication. Gordon wouldn’t be able to hear our child’s consciousness reach out and speak to him. It seemed to be something special. Reserved for me. Things were getting weirder and weirder as we moved along, burrowing down into the ground and into the depths of the strange and the wonderful.

“Deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole we go.” The words left my mouth before I had thought of them. Or at least before I realized the
Alice in Wonderland
reference was one I was going to be making to describe our situation.

We had gone down the rabbit hole and came back, stronger and more powerful. The same thing happened to Alice once she as returned from Wonderland.

Deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole we go.

Chapter 19:

Waiting for Danger

It was now morning and the sunlight was filtering in from outside like a kept promise for safety. Once Gordon and I were both cleaned up I decided the only thing we could really do was sit and wait. I was sure the eclipse wasn’t something we could stop, but we could always find out what we could if there was anything to find. Lilith would’ve more than likely use some other avenue when it came to taking us down like a seer or something of that nature. She was about one million steps ahead of us and we seemed to be taking one step back at every turn. The living room was still stockpiled with books as well as our study, which I lovingly called my own personal library of everything creepy and crawly. All others in between were in there somewhere. You   had to look really hard. We didn’t own a single work of fiction because there was never time to read for pleasure. I was hoping, after all this was over, that would change.

I made my way down the stairs and across the foyer into the living room where I was certain any book containing Lilith’s name would be, my black combat boots making a harsh thudding sound on the hardwood with each step. Once my feet crossed the threshold I spied Chase sitting on the couch, back turned to me, and in front of a roaring fire. I would’ve sworn he was staring into the flames if I didn’t see him turn the page in a rather large book that hadn’t been in our collection before my demise. From a distance I could see its tattered edges over his shoulder; the brown leather it was bound in was worn and had definitely seen better days.

“Hey. What are you up to?” I probed as I slowly made my way over to the crimson couch. He jumped like a snake had bitten him and turned to stare at me, eyes wide with fright and icy because of my intrusion. Well, as anyone can attest, wasn’t a part of my original plan in the least. A smile splashed across his face once he had a moment to recover, but the light didn’t reach his eyes. He was a big fat faker, but I decided to act like I hadn’t noticed how withdrawn he really was form Gordon and I, especially after the result of the pregnancy test that had literally rolled itself out to him.

Shutting the book with the soft thumping sound of paper on paper, he adjusted in his seat to have a better look at me. “Not much. Reading.” He set the book on the couch in front of him and continued, “We had found some more books mentioning Lilith at the library and grabbed them up while we still could. Everything was crazy and we needed more resources then we had. That’s where this came from.” He pat the book in front of him, showing me this was the one he spoke of.  “How’s Sam? Is she awake yet?”

I shook my head. Before coming downstairs I had managed to look in on her. Gordon had laid her on her back with her head turned to the side in case she vomited. Her sheets were clean and she was still lying in the same position. I wasn’t surprised. After the few hard knocks I had received over my time as the Executioner I remembered being stiff when I woke up because I hadn’t moved an inch. I was sure she would feel the same. I decided to turn the subject back to Chase and the book he had been flipping through.

His face didn’t give anything away; not sadness, hope, anxiety. Not anything. He was an empty shell at that moment as far as I was concerned. Was it all because of what he had been through once I wasn’t here to hold Lilith and her animal children at bay? I was willing to bet Chase didn’t have the answer to that question. No one would. I had seen a small snippet of the world I had come back to but I kept asking myself   how much more there could possibly be that I hadn’t seen yet. It was a terrifying thought to say the least and something I didn’t want to fathom, but there was no way around it. This was our life now and we had only a few options. We could live in it and not   bat an eye to the troubles around us and act like nothing was happening. We could take the coward’s way out. Or we could fight with everything we had until the world was our again. I was more inclined towards the last of the three options. I nodded and began moving forward again. His eyes watched me inquisitively, like he was waiting for me to a magic trick of some kind. Technically I could, but it would burn the entire house down around us.

“What book did you need that we didn’t have?” I questioned. There weren’t a lot of old texts we didn’t have so I truly wanted to know. “We have so many it’s hard to believe there was something we didn’t have.” I gave a light-hearted chuckle after the words slipped from my mouth. I needed him to realize the remark wasn’t a snide poke at him or the collection I had spent years acquiring. Once next to the couch I sat on the arm of it and leaned forward, Chase watching every move I made without blinking. His amber eyes sparkled in the firelight and his lips were slightly parted like he could barely breathe with me around. I chose to ignore it. It was obviously in the small amount of time we had actually known each other he had feelings for me, but my feelings for Gordon were so strong I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else. And now we had our little bean.

“Interestingly enough you had quite a lot, but not the Talmud. I was shocked I didn’t see it anywhere. You even have the Kabbalah.” He smiled, showing way too much white. He felt awkward while I felt right at home speaking to him. That in itself was something I found thought-provoking. 

“Oh? Did you find anything new in the
Talmud
?” This was a legitimate question I felt needed to be asked. I wasn’t sure how much more we could find at all.

“I didn’t, but I did find some information somewhere else. The internet still works, amazingly enough.” Hope. I saw hope in his eyes, but beneath it was worry. Was there something to worry about? I cringed at the thought. As if enough already hadn’t gone wrong where she was concerned.

Things went quiet for a moment and it wasn’t because we didn’t have anything else to talk about. It wasn’t one of those silences that felt natural. This one felt extremely awkward. I didn’t want things to be awkward between us. If we were to build a friendship there was no room for that, no matter how hard it could be to form one in this environment.

Clearing my throat I pushed, “What did you find?”

He pulled a black laptop from the side table and opened it, the screen coming to life as he hit the space bar and making the annoying humming sound they all made when everything pulled up. Undoubtedly it was stolen, just like anything else we needed since everything fell apart. Looting was an unfortunate side effect of the apocalypse. He had left a website up that looked to have photos of some kind of old scroll and my interest in what he had found was peaked. Moving to sit beside him, I picked up the old text and held it in my lap, leaning over so I could see the screen.

“The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls are a wealth of information. If I could get my hands on the scrolls and be able to decipher them myself we would have it made, but for now we are stuck with what’s already been translated.” He cleared his throat and pointed to a passage on the screen, one I knew before reading it spoke of Lilith and what she was. Call it a sneaking suspicion. “This is a passage from the Bible. It doesn’t exactly say her name, but it’s pretty obvious who they are talking about. I think you, the Executioner, made your way in here too.”

Leaning over I read the passage aloud. “Her house sinks down to death, and her course leads to the shades. All who go to her cannot return and find again the paths of life.” These words came straight from the Proverbs 2:18-19. It seemed Chase was right, but as far as I was concerned the earliest mention of the Executioner was from Gypsy legend around the time of jack the Ripper in 1888. Apparently I was missing quite a lot. “What do you think this means?” I was fairly certain this spoke of my encounter with her and my trip to Hell, but I wanted to see exactly what his thoughts were regarding this passage.

He smiled again and voiced, “You’re one step ahead of me in my explanation here. I wanted to show you the text from the scrolls too. It’s too bad we don’t have them on hand to do our own translation. I may not be an expert on dead languages but I wanted to at least try.”

“And the passage is?”

The playful smile was on my face before I had a chance at trying to control it. The impish grin spread like the plague in this house if anyone was around to see it. I may not have been in the mood to smile like a damned fool, but it was contagious. He turned back to the computer, sliding his finger across the mouse pad. I heard a few random clicks of the mouse and we were there. Oh the wonder of technology. You could get to information originated from all the way across the world in a few keystrokes and mouse clicks and I couldn’t begin to explain how happy I was the Wi-Fi was still in service.

“Oh, well, it’s here.” He used his finger to point the passage out like he had the one form the Bible and I leaned forward placing my hands on the coffee table. My fingers nearly brushed his and I had to be careful of where I put them. Didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. We were sitting so close our knees were barely touching and if I moved too much my elbow would shove into his gut, but I didn’t care and I had scarcely noticed at all. Chase was the one who noticed, but didn’t make a move to change it. His breathing was shaky as I tried to focus on the passage in front of me, squinting into the bright screen.

With a wavering voice he began to read the text out loud, like it would have more meaning that way. I listened to the words carefully as he spoke. “Her gates are gates of death, and from the entrance of the house she sets out towards Sheol. None of those who enter there will ever return, and all who possess her will descend to the Pit.” He leaned back, sinking into the cushion on the arm of the couch, sighing as he settled in. I sat there staring at the words, not exactly sure what to make of them. I could tell they were very similar to the verse from the Bible, but my brain wasn’t putting it together. I was going to call it baby brain until proven otherwise. I was normally sharper than this.

My eyes began to lose focus, turning the black and white screen into a large blob of light. Then it hit me and I knew what it meant in a roundabout way. Maybe not exactly and who knew if I was right, but if I voiced my opinion of this passage and Chase gave me the nod, whether verbal or otherwise, I knew I was onto something. My back straightened and I turned slightly to look at him. The grin was back on his face like he had put the whole puzzle together without   trying and none of us had noticed until he pointed it out. How had he   known where to look? This passage, all on its own, seems to describe mine and Lilith’s relationship and my own trip to a place full of fear, fire, and brimstone.

“How in the world did you figure this out? Or know where to look for matter?”

He had to have known someone would ask. He probably would’ve never guessed it would be me, but there was no way around it. Anyone who knew our situation and knew what it would all mean for us would have a few questions to ask. He crossed his arms over his chest like he was closing himself off, but then unfolded them, leaning forward until his face was only a few inches from mine and, because I wanted the answers, I didn’t back away.

“What does this passage say to you?” he whispered, his warm breath on my face, blowing a few wet tendrils of hair away from my face. I had been refreshed when I walked into the room, the shower cleansing me, but now I was sweating. I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t attracted to Chase in any way and only saw him as a friend, if not a brother in the fight against evil, but that was as far as it went.

Clearing my throat I said, “Well, it’s talking about Lilith and I for sure.” I leaned back and rested lightly against the soft arm. I wasn’t going to give him any hope of us if that’s what he would think if I had stayed close to him, our breaths mingling like two fronts in a storm. “If it means exactly how we could interpret it, it’s about how anyone who crosses her will not make it out alive. Obviously, so far we have. Of course, if that’s not the whole passage we don’t even know what it could go on to say.”

“This has been the problem. We don’t have the scrolls but, because they would be impossible to get at this point, it’s all up to interpretation. To me, it’s very clear what they’re talking about and Beth agrees.” His expression was insistent. I had my doubts, but I could see why he would think this and why she would approve of the theory.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of his face. So everyone knew about this before I did. Well, except Gordon. How could he? I understood wanting to try to iron out the theory with more proof of it before mentioning it, but at this point we needed anything we could get. This was something we had and we needed to use it. It was a shame we didn’t have more.  If only we had those scrolls in our hands. The Bible had a passage that hinted at the same clues, but how concrete was that? According to some it was written by God.               According to others it was written by a bunch of drunken monks. Who really knew? But things did mesh so closely with the Dead Sea Scrolls it was becoming harder to dispute.

One question still burned in my mind so I figured I’d ask it again. “How did you know where to look?”

He shrugged and sat back again, resting his arms on the back and arm of the couch, turned towards me with his eyebrows raised. He was expecting me to sit back and take his explanation without knowing how he knew where to look in the first place. Sorry. I never made things easy. He could ask Lilith herself.

“I have a knack for research,” he answered. With the look on his face I knew this was all I was going to get no matter how hard I pushed. He had closed down once I moved away from him, which I was expecting. What I wasn’t expecting was for him to shut down entirely because I didn’t feel the same way he did. I didn’t have to ask him. I knew the only way a woman does when a man has intense feelings for her. The look of shock on his face at my confirmed pregnancy was enough of an indicator as far as I was concerned. Of course, I could be wrong.