The Second Coming (46 page)

He nearly
gasped at what he faced. The man before him was, in fact, Miguel
and John would have driven the Spear through him right there, but
next to him, knelt low and humble, beads in her tiny hands and
garbed in a white dress of fanciful lace, was a shock of red
hair.

“
Little One,” he whispered. John dropped to his
knees.

She giggled
and his heart soared. The shroud of darkness lifted from his heart,
and tears choked him. He felt locked in place, like he could not
move.

The sun
dropped beneath the edge of the western window and he knew his
choice would lead to ruin, no matter what.

Miguel spoke,
his face alight with a look of happiness. “Praise be, brother. You
were lost and now are found.”

John swallowed
back the tears and his words.

“
I found her washed up on shore and she has recovered. She was
baptized this morning and will take residence at the convent just
north of the city.”

Meega held up
the rosary. “Beads,” she said.

John’s disgust
and anger ran deep. And he chose, there, not to take the innocence
of one, but two. The blade he shoved deep into the chest of Miguel,
spilling his blood to the tiled floor. It ran fast and red towards
the feet of the Christ that hung upon the cross. He muttered the
spell to take Miguel’s soul as the man collapsed to his knees.

The look of
shock and betrayal was almost too much to bear, but John kept his
eyes locked on those of Miguel, if only to say he had looked into
the man’s eyes when he took his life. And with the soul of Miguel
went the innocence of a little girl whose beautiful blue eyes were
filled with tears. Her mouth was wide with shock and John scooped
her up with bloodied hands and carried her out of the church.

Meega wept
with her head nestled in the crook of his neck. John found a place
to stop where the ghoul would come to him. He pulled her face into
his black robes and summoned the creature.

“
Do not look, Little One. This will be over soon.”

The ghoul’s
apparition came to him swift and sudden, its face covered by its
cloak.

“
I have your toll,” he said. “The life of an
innocent.”

It sniffed at
the urn and looked at the girl. Then it inhaled the soul of Miguel
and John could swear he heard the fat man’s anguish.

“
There is more in here than just the life of an
innocent.”

John nodded.
Meega’s innocence and his guilt occupied it as well.

“
You bargain well. It is now complete.” It reached towards his
arm and passed its chill fingers over the wound. The hole sealed
itself leaving a scar that looked like the mouth of the
leech.

Then it was
gone.

John pulled
Meega’s face from hiding. She still clutched the beads in her
little hand. In her other hand was the little straw doll that she
had carried from over the sea. He cast the rosary to the ground and
scooped her up once more and ran for the ships, abandoning his
chances of redemption to a land that stank of refuse and
remorse.

***

Approaching
the docks, Paine saw that the ships were already leaving the port.
Dismayed, the runners screamed for them to wait. Fang stood at the
stern of one of the ships, barking at them as it departed. Paine
waved.

“
Wait!” he called. He looked about, wondering how he would
actually get on the ship. The knowledge of things he now possessed
was not enough.

The others
screamed frantic calls, trying to get the attention of the
Portuguese sailors.

Paine heard a
voice behind him.

“
Too bad. Since Thurmond gave up on you, now you are
mine.”

They all
turned and found a short, lumpy man with a gaping wound and nasty
stitches across his midsection. His hair was mussed and his face
charred. There were gaudy rings on his fat fingers. Paine knew what
the little man was and what lay inside him.

Mira wavered
where she stood. “Breland!”

The demon
thrust green fire towards her. It struck her and she fell screaming
under flames that consumed her flesh. Paine almost stopped it. He
had wanted her demise reserved for himself, but he delighted in her
wriggling and howling.

Good.

Great Bear
charged with his war club, his anger as mighty as the mountains,
but the little man jumped upon him with a blade and jabbed his
neck. The sun disappeared beyond the horizon as the large man
fell.

Diarmuid
pulled out a silver sword and pushed Paine behind him. The demon
cast lightning from the skies, but the pepper-haired man dodged it
before it struck. Green fire sped along the docks towards Paine and
coiled about him like a snake. Paine whispered a spell of
protection. The green flames did not harm him.

The little man
stepped forward. “You are mine.”

Diarmuid
looked at Paine, but he said nothing. He knelt upon the docks, his
head lowered. A cloaked creature appeared before him, partly
visible. It had no legs, instead at the base of its cloak appeared
a thick trunk of entwined branches and reeds. It wore a necklace of
bones and skulls about its neck.

Something in
Paine, as much as it wanted to simply use Diarmuid as a thing of
pleasure, felt something other than a passing fancy for the man. He
did not like what was transpiring. He reached out.

Nahash spoke
to him, recognizing it for what it was.

-Ghoul.-

What will it
do?

-Steal the
soul from his body if he has not paid its price.-

Paine stepped
forward. A briny wind ruffled his hair.

Then I must
stop it.

-You cannot.
The deal is set. Once a deal has been sealed in blood, it is almost
impossible to break.-

With twisted
fingers the ghoul touched Diarmuid’s face and then seized him by
the hair. Diarmuid winced.

Paine
retrieved the parchment and spoke the words that had been hidden
from him for what seemed an eternity — his mother’s spell. He
reached deep within him for help. He called upon those that resided
in his blood. Nahash and the Sovereigns spoke the words with him,
reciting the ancient enchantment.

As the little
man known as Breland stepped forward to claim his quarry, Paine
decided to use him as the target with which to trade. The switch
was swift and unseen by the ghoul as it pressed its hooded face
towards Diarmuid’s and drank of the soul that resided within.
Diarmuid’s body shuddered, his fingers scratching at the wooden
planks beneath him. Paine heard two souls screaming; the demon that
had taken Breland’s body and the soul of Breland himself.

An
innocent?

Diarmuid’s
body slumped to the ground and the ghoul faded away.

Paine then
called upon the incantation again, to send Diarmuid’s soul back,
but as he reached within him and called upon the others for help,
he realized there was no soul left within Breland’s poorly
stitched, festering carcass. Without the demon, the body was
incapable of surviving and Diarmuid was now gone.

No!

He heard
Nahash and the Sovereigns chuckling.

He opened his
heart and arms in the hopes that Diarmuid’s soul would come to him,
but there was nothing. He had not taken the man’s life, so his
memories were not Paine’s to witness. And he stood there, arms
open, tears in his eyes.

No. I will
call him back, resurrect him.

-You
cannot.-

But another
did once before.

-Parlor
tricks. Once a soul has moved on, there is no bringing it
back.-

Paine fisted
his hands. He looked back to Fang on the ship that was sailing
away.

He reached out
to her, wondering what she was capable of.

Could she do
something?

He was being
left behind.

No. I will go
to her.

He called upon
everything within him, and stepped out onto the surface of the
water. He would walk. He commanded Nahash and the Sovereigns to aid
him.

Their laughter
came again as he sank beneath surface. It was deep, and Paine,
unable to swim, sank. The water and the waves tossed him about,
turning him over. He struggled to get his head above the surface.
He took in one breath and saw the ship sailing.

Save me
, he demanded.

-Save
yourself.-

They laughed
again and he felt their presence drift. They were abandoning
him.

-You are
weak.-

No!

He convulsed,
not something feigned, but for real. He felt an outpouring of power
as the Sovereigns departed. They took with them the darkness that
wrapped about his heart and soul. The tentacled arms of Nahash
struggled to remain, but the strength with which he had held the
being to him was leaving with them.

Paine longed
for them to return, their knowledge was slipping from him. He
begged.

Please.

But they did
not respond.

The sea tossed
him about and as a last desperate act Paine delved into the heart
of the entity that had offered to aid him. What he found was dark
and terrible, the knowledge that lay in there; for within the soul
of Nahash lay the years of questioning Dïor. The Firstborn Lord had
rescued Sephirah from the depths of the Earth, and had lain with
her. Next to the existing child in her womb he had placed his own
seed. And the first of the twins was a boy, a bastard child
fathered by a man possessed by one of the oldest spirits to walk
the Earth.

Paine then
learned of his mother’s labor. It had been difficult. She had
nearly died while delivering the boy-child. And then Paine knew the
birth of the insatiable creature that had dwelt within him. Once
seraph, one of the burning ones, highest of the order of angelic
beings, tempted like the lowest of demons towards the blood that
had been spilt during Paine’s birth. Sephirah had summoned it. Her
plans had fallen asunder when it desired the world that had been
beneath its feet for countless years and with all-consuming hunger
it craved to devour it. She had had no choice but to trap it where
it had been birthed and one of her handmaidens, a virgin, had
willingly given her life to do so.

And then he
learned of the deal his sister and the triune known as Puck had
made with the creature. They would release it and allow it to feed
if it would only serve her as required. Nahash had made a false
pact with his sister. Nothing could stop its hunger.

Paine accepted
his heritage there, without tears and without pain. He was what he
was.

I am.

The
cherub-faced little boy, Nahash, reached out to him. He did not
have a pleading look in his eye. He opened his mouth in a silent
scream.

*Holy, holy,
holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his
glory.*

He dissolved
into a swarm of fish.

Paine accepted
that this would be the end for him. He opened his own mouth to
breathe and waited for salt water to fill his lungs, but there was
air instead. He felt himself being lifted.

He was being
lugged onto a rowboat. He coughed and sputtered as he sucked in
life-giving air. His consciousness drifted as he was lifted onto
one of the ships.

As Paine fell
upon the deck, Fang jumped on him, licked him on the face, and then
backed away. He caught the sight of other wolves on the ship, eight
of them. They closed around him, sniffing the air.

He feigned a
smile. “Fang.”

His attention
then turned to a little girl with porcelain features and red hair.
She gripped a limp, straw doll in her hands. The girl ran up to
Paine to wrap her tiny arms around him. He knelt to let her hug him
and she laughed, a shrill sound that lifted his heart. For a brief
moment she held his face in her tiny hands and there was a simple
joy there.

He put his
arms around the girl to return her embrace, nearly falling over
with fatigue.

“
What is your name, little one?” he croaked.

She laughed
again. “Meega.”

The man in the
black robes, the one that Paine had learned was his unwilling birth
father, came over to him. The man held an urn in his arm. It was
marked with strange symbols making the pattern of a pentagram.

He offered a
hand. “My name is John.”

Paine retched,
spitting up water. “Paine.”

“
Is that your name, or how you feel?” The man smiled and there
was something about it that seemed charming. He even had gray
flecks in his hair.

Paine thought
it odd, yet intriguing. He licked his lips.

“
Funny,” he said. He’d heard that joke before.

He took John’s
callused hand and looked out to the sea wondering what had happened
to his sister.

He could no
longer feel her presence, nor the pain of her absence. And he
smiled.

Good
. She wouldn’t know he was
coming for her.

Though he was
unsure of how he would track her, he had taken from Nahash what he
needed; a few summons that would aid him, the art of enchantment, a
desire for much more, and the knowledge of his origin.

He would find
his sister.

And she will
die.

About the
author:

David H. Burton
was born in Windsor, Ontario to an agnostic mother that instilled
in him the love of the written word and a father that taught him to
question everything around him, including his own religious
indoctrination.

Fantasy and
Science Fiction novels have always been David's greatest vice and
he has indulged in the likes of Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan,
Margaret Weis, Mark Anthony, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin,
Robert J. Sawyer, Isaac Asimov, Melanie Rawn, Marion Zimmer
Bradley, J.K. Rowling and for interest, some Margaret Atwood and
Jose Saramago.