Resurrection

Chapter Twelve

Normally, I’d have just driven out to the Mount and worked my way up the hill, but Katon was a professional.

Or lazy.

Either way, he contacted Rahim and had the wizard teleport us onto the mountain, just a short distance from the cross itself. There, I peered up at the monument and was certain it was the one Michael had seen in Chatterbox’s mind. It looked exactly as he described it.

The hill was covered in yellow-green scrubs and explosions of hardy, wild grasses. From where we popped in, our route up the backside of the mountain was fairly inconspicuous and for the most part, easy. We’d be able to spot anyone on top of it before they could us.

Not that it mattered.

As it turned out, no one was there.

We crept low until we had a clear view of the monument, then walked the rest of the way once we were sure it was abandoned. Though, while there wasn’t anyone around, a whole bunch of evidence showed that someone had been there.

The first thing I noticed was a huge hole dug at the base of the white dais, just before the stairs. Mounds of rocky earth were piled to either side, each a couple of feet high and wide. There was a lot of dirt. While I couldn’t see into the hole from where I stood, it was clear by how much was excavated, it was deep.

As we moved closer, the brush clearing from our view, other things became apparent.

Scattered about the grave were dozens of zombie pieces. Arms, legs, and a myriad of other less definable body parts lay spread about, stained dark with wet blood and what looked like ashes. Scorch marks were present on some of the larger sections. Their presence probably explained Reven’s need for additional corpses, but it sure didn’t shed any light on what had happened here. Just as lost as before, I kept looking for clues.

Broken and melted candles surrounded the hole, most knocked to the side and trampled. Distorted and misshapen footprints were everywhere. The loose topsoil had been stomped down and stirred up across the entire area.

With my eyes peeled for an ambush, I peered into the hole as a thick, pungent scent wafted up and saturated my nose. Inside, the entire thing was filled with black, frothing blood. I couldn’t see the bottom through the dark murk, but there didn’t seem to be anything obvious lurking in the pool. Its inhabitant was likely gone.

“Care for a dip?”

Katon moved to my side and examined the hole with me. Seeing the blood, he went to the edge of the monument and retrieved a long branch from one of the bushes. Back at the hole, he shoved the branch inside, stirring the liquid and feeling for the bottom. He sighed, letting the limb slide from his hands into the pool. “It looks like Reven has succeeded in raising Longinus.”

I shook my head, remembering what Lilith had told me. Things didn’t add up. “I’m not sure he did.”

Katon raised an eyebrow.

“A source told me Reven had possession of Longinus’s body, stolen from its resting place in Limbo. If that’s true, given the body’s importance, why would he re-bury it out here and risk letting it out of his hands?”

Katon didn’t ask where I’d gotten my intel from. He knew the way I worked, understanding I wouldn’t name my source until necessary, but it didn’t stop him from questioning the factual integrity of the information and where it’d come from. “Can your source be trusted?”

It was a good question. “At this point, I can’t say for sure. But beyond the likelihood of manipulation, take a look around.” I gestured to the scene. “While there are candles all over the place, there aren’t any necromantic symbols. Wouldn’t Reven need some kind of a ritual to raise the dead?”

Katon glanced around, spinning in a tight circle, his eyes narrow. “Maybe they were drawn in the dirt.” He didn’t seem to believe that.

I pointed to a couple of areas where the dirt had been unmolested. “There were symbols everywhere in the mausoleum where he raised the zombies, why wouldn’t he need them here?”

It was Katon’s turn to shake his head. “I’m not familiar enough with necromancy to say.”

“And all this?” I pointed to the zombie pieces. “It looks like there was a fight here, and it doesn’t look like the zombies were on the winning side. Going back to my point, given the presumption Reven already had the body and he knew others were looking for it, does it make sense he’d leave it somewhere, guarded only by a bunch of corpses?”

“No it doesn’t, but you’re placing an inordinate amount of trust in what you’ve been told.” He held up a hand to shut me up. “Whether he raised Longinus or not, there are other things to be considered here. Reven may have been interrupted as he went about preparing the body, caught before he reached the symbol-drawing stage. There’s also the possibility Reven didn’t have the body to begin with and came here to retrieve it, or he left it here and someone else found it.” He shrugged. “There are a ton of scenarios for which we don’t know enough to discount.”

I sighed as I let his words sink in. He was right. There were far too many possibilities I wasn’t giving any thought to.

“Moreover, this could have nothing to do with Longinus.” He added fuel to the fire.

His words settling in, I looked the site over again, trying to piece it all together. The more I thought about it the more distorted my train of logic became, veering off the tracks to tumble into a chaotic pile of nonsense. What if he was right? What if the site hadn’t been for raising Longinus? What then?

A sick, bitter feeling crept over my stomach. There could be another player in the game, that’s what.

Growling, I turned to Katon who’d walked to the edge of the clearing, scanning the horizon. “What a mess.” Things were complicated enough, but if someone else were involved, there was no telling what we were looking at.

Katon nodded as if reading my mind. His face was a mask of lined frustration and sour thoughts. “You need to speak with your sources again, find out what you can. I’ll go and talk to Abra-”

His eyes went wide, his body rigid.

Before Katon could react, a sinewy hand burst from the ground beneath him, wrapping its fingers around his ankle. With a twist, he stumbled backward pulling his leg free, drawing his blade as he fell. He landed on his back, a cloud of dust billowing out around him.

An explosion of dirt filled the air as the arm was followed by a lithe, motley creature whose smile was filled with rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth. Its large, round black eyes swirled, sparks of fury lighting off in their darkness. It set its sights on Katon and barreled forward, steely claws and gaping mouth spearheading the way.

It took me as long to recognize the creature as it took for it to reach Katon.

It was a frickin’ ghoul.

A metaphorical cross between a zombie and a wolverine, ghouls were the clawed equivalent of a demolition derby. Fast, strong as a bear, and utterly fearless, they were the shock troops of the undead.

I shrugged off my surprise and drew my gun as three more ghouls rose up from their earthen hidey-holes. My first thought was for Katon. Spinning, my gun leading the way, I aimed at the creature hovering over him, its gnashing snout snapping. But before I could fire, Katon got his feet beneath it and sent it flying, sending it tumbling down the hill.

He hopped up as I turned to face the others. They were nearly on us.

Without aiming, I squeezed the trigger, my. 45 barking in rapid succession. The ghouls charged forward, oblivious to the threat, hell-bent on tearing us to shreds.

My first shot slammed into the lead ghoul’s shoulder spinning it around, its momentum hardly slowing. The second bullet crashed into the meat of its back with thud, the third winging past without impact.

It stumbled and fell to the ground with a guttural snarl, its claws reaching for me as I stepped to the side, inches from being caught. The rest, showing no interest in me whatsoever, raged past me and headed for Katon. Confident he could hold them off long enough for me to do what I needed to with mine, I pointed my gun at the fallen ghoul’s head and fired.

It snapped up, spoiling my aim, my shot searing a black crevice across its cheek, but doing little more than irritating it. Cursing, I tried to jump out of its reach, but it was faster-an occurrence so common I feel embarrassed to admit it. With a backhanded swipe, it sent my pistol flying from my hand, over the edge of the monument, and down the mountain. It seemed like an eternity passed as I watched it bounce down the hill to disappear behind a steep drop.

In reality, it was only a split second. Just long enough for me to end up on the receiving end of its follow through. Sharp claws raked my face, tearing burning trails along my check and jaw. Out of instinct, I rolled with the attack, whipping an elbow around through my spin. It connected to the back of the creature’s head with a satisfying thud, driving it forward and down into the dirt. I didn’t give it a chance to clear its mouth before I hopped on its back, wrapping my legs around its torso, my arms around its neck.

Undead, with no need to breathe, a choke would normally be a useless maneuver to pull on a ghoul. However, given my devil-enhanced strength, augmented by a couple of handy soul transfers, the position gave me the edge I needed. On its back, I was largely immune to the power in its hands, its claws unable to gain the momentum needed to do real harm. It also lacked the leverage to pull me off or shake me loose, my legs locked around its waist in a securing body-triangle.

It squirmed beneath me as I squeezed, working my shoulder into it to apply as much force as I could, arching my back. It grunted and screeched, tearing at my arms. I hunched up a little, pressing my full weight onto the back of its neck. Then with everything I had, I twisted my upper body, screaming with effort.

Its neck snapped with a horrific pop that rang inside my ears.

Though a broken neck wasn’t something that would kill a ghoul, their ferocity stayed only by overwhelming damage, I was content with separating the engine from the drive shaft, so to speak. Unable to coordinate its body’s movement, it could only thrash about on the ground once I’d gotten off of it, as its head swung limply, like a slobbering tether-ball.

Remembering Katon, I looked to see where he was. In the time I’d taken out my one ghoul, he’d finished off two and was on the way to ending the third, as well. It lay pinned to the ground with him sitting on top. The creature bucked and hissed as it tried to hold back Katon’s sword, it claws wrapped around the pommel.

I retrieved my gun and hurried over, but as I ran I realized Katon wasn’t trying to stab the ghoul, he was trying to pull his weapon free. The ghoul had locked its grip onto the sword and was pulling with all his might to yank the blade loose, snapping at Katon’s hands with its teeth.

While a bit thrown off by the weirdness of the situation, I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. Once I’d reached their sides, I let a kick fly, my steel-toed boot crashing into the ghoul’s jaw. Its growl turned into a gurgle as the force of the blow rolled its head to the side, pus-green spittle spraying the dirt.

Katon yanked his sword free and stood in a single movement, swinging his blade in a wide arc that circled over his head and swept down in a symphony of viciousness. An instant later, the ghoul’s head rolled free of its neck, blackish-green ichor streaming out across the dirt. One last startled snarl rumbled out of its mouth before it went silent, its un-life ended in a heap.

“You all right?” he asked.

My manhood swirling down the drain, I glared at him as I returned to the ghoul I wounded and stomped his head into jelly. “Yes, daddy, I’m fine. Thank you for rescuing poor, little old me from the big, mean bogeymen.”

He chuckled, a cold, pretentious chuckle, making me feel even more useless, and sheathed his blade. “They were after my sword.” He gestured to the re-dead ghouls. He seemed truly offended.

I did the math. “Undead, plus Longinus, plus an attempt to steal a sword made from Longinus’s spear, all seems to equal Reven.” I hoped I was wrong. If not, it would seriously hamper my chances of sleeping with Karra if I had to kill her master.

“There are still too many unknowns to make that leap for certain, but yeah, it does seem to lean that direction. With Reven being the only actor we know of who has the ability to raise the dead, I’d say he’s trying to stack the deck in his favor as much as possible. Longinus reunited with his weapon would be quite formidable.”

Forget what I said earlier. Katon was the new recipient of The Understatement of the Year award.

Frustrated, I wandered over to the edge of the monument, staring off at the desert below. Miles and miles of brown and muted yellows stretched out before my eyes, broken into giant rectangles by the harsh lines of fences that divided the ranch properties that spanned the area. I followed the dark stripe of a road and spotted where the highway met the private, narrow lanes.

At their union, I saw the Cattle King restaurant, a high-dollar steak joint built to capitalize on the owner’s monopoly of the region’s cattle ranches. Suddenly thinking of a t-bone, my mouth watered while my brain swirled, a half-formed thought bubbling up out of the muck.

“It can’t be that easy, can it?” I asked, mostly to myself.

Katon moved to my side. “What?”

My mind shuddered, the gears grinding as it struggled to engage. “The ranches.”

No doubt impressed by my ability to speak coherently, Katon stared at me like one would a toddler, waiting for me to put it all together into words that made sense.

“Michael said he saw the capital letter ‘B’ three times in Chatterbox’s mind.” I pointed down toward the steakhouse, my finger trailing off to the open fields a little ways beyond it. “The Triple B Ranch.”

Katon narrowed his eyes and let them follow the direction of my finger. He was quiet for a moment, no doubt deciding whether my suggestion was brilliant or bat shit stupid. “You might be right.”

The judges say, “Brilliant.”

“It might just be coincidence but it can’t hurt-much-to check it out. Besides, it’s all we’ve got. We’re still in the dark here.”

Right then, someone made me a liar.

Way off in the distance, the sky lit up in deep reds and searing yellows layered in black, a mushroom cloud of fiery hell erupting. The ground rumbled as a booming crack reverberated through the air, the clouds wavering before my eyes. I felt the pressure build against my ringing ears as I stared off toward the conflagration.

“That’s Old Town!” I sputtered as I watched raging flash fires spring up in the vicinity of what appeared to be Fiesta Street.

Katon, the glow reflected in his wide eyes, nodded solemnly. “We’ve got to get down there.”

Certain I knew who was responsible, I hesitated to agree as he put the call into Rahim.

I climbed down the hill and retrieved my gun, my eyes staring off into the distance as Old Town burned, the fires spreading through the slums and warehouses, consuming each with passion. Black smoke billowed up while licks of flames illuminated the blackness. It was like a war zone, a battlefield upon which Hell was unleashed. It wasn’t someplace I wanted to be. Even more so, I certainly didn’t want to confront the architect of its destruction.

Baalth.