Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

my skin like a bloated slug, bringing with it a whiff of new rot and old decay. I gagged and coughed against it, refusing to submit to the weakness of my body. My burning, tearing eyes opened when I heard the pound of flesh against metal, and I saw Ryerson and Charlotte step away from the cauldron. Alejandro rose from the depths of dark liquid of his own accord, his wounds healed and his flesh smooth and unblemished. He lifted his arms up in jubilation and laughed at the heavens before he climbed awkwardly over the lip and addressed me with my father’s icy grey eyes.
“Hello daughter,” he hissed at me with the cruel, familiar accent of my father carried by the body’s mellow voice. My father’s voice had been harsh and gravelly when I had known him, and the sound could not be reproduced by the new vocal cords. “It has been far too long since the last time we spoke. Come to me that I might embrace my most precious child again.”
I flew into a wild panic of spitting and bellowing curses as I fought the bonds holding me to the chair. I bit and kicked anything that got close enough to me, and screamed wordlessly as tears of terror streamed down my cheeks. I would not have that thing touch me and speak the small cruelties that I thought I had left behind when I walked away from Budapest. When the fighting did not work, I wept and begged like a cowardly thing as my father walked toward me with his new arms out stretched.

Chapter 28

I was stiff with terror as my father held me hard against his chest in a crushing embrace. My heart pounded with terror as the familiar scents of leather, dirt, and unwashed flesh beneath the rich flavor of fine Irish ale washed over me like a tide of filth. For a moment my crazed mind became coherent enough to marvel that Alejandro’s body smelled like my father now that the loathsome soul inhabited it. Despite all appearances of life, the creature holding me was still a corpse. I fought and pushed against the cold, rubbery feel of his skin and muscle and gagged in revulsion at being gripped by the dead.
“Be still,” he hissed in my ear with old dead words. The voice was warping and changing into the ancient tones that had once given me nightmares whenever I heard it. I wondered how long it would be until I stared into a face that was wholly transformed.
“What do you want from me?” I whimpered pathetically. It didn’t matter that the face filling my vision was Alejandro’s; all I could see was the dreaded visage of the man who made my childhood a living hell.
“I want the immortality you stole from me!” he snarled and then dragged me toward the altar.
“I didn’t steal it from you!” I wailed and dug my heels into the soft earth to keep from going forward. I had stopped the useless pummeling with my fists and put all of my energy into simply getting away. Snarling, he shook me so hard that my brains felt as if they were rattling around in my skull, and I collapsed into a puddle of piteous cries.
Rough hands picked me up and hoisted me onto the altar. I screamed and fought, using every dirty trick I had learned over the long years. I bit and spit and kicked; I tore hair and shredded skin until my fingernails broke. But there were too many hands that were stronger than mine, and they didn’t seem to feel pain. I got no reaction from them as they pressed me to the cold surface and forced me to be still.
The crowd roared all around me until my ears throbbed from the sound. The noise was quickly dulled by Charlotte’s shrill voice as she leaned over me to chant a new spell. The wind whirled and tore at the hoods of the men holding me down, baring their faces and exposing the eager light in their dark cavernous eyes. The vague smell of rot grew profoundly, so that I was sickened by it in the midst of my hysteria.
Ryerson chanted along with Charlotte, adding his strength to the cloying magic. The words blasted through my skull and stripped me of my senses. I fought it as best I could, but to my dismay, I learned that there are somethings that cannot be defended against. Suddenly, the circle of malicious, eager faces withdrew and I found myself staring up at the demon spear Areadbhar clutched in Ryerson’s sweaty hands. It felt as if I was staring into the eyes of some predatory creature and I was its favorite prey.
I screamed as Areadbhar went up and then crashed down, shattering my sternum and piercing my heart and lungs. Terrible pain wracked my chest and then spread in electric streaks along my limbs as Areadbhar drew my blood into its blade like a dying man sucking at water. Ryerson snarled as he wrestled with the greedy spear to remove it from my body, twisting it one way and then another until it felt as if my insides had been put through a shredder.
I struggled to breath, to move, to do anything but lie compliantly on the altar and suffer bitterly. But I was trapped, weak and useless until they decided to let me go. For the first time in my life I realized what it meant to die and that I have done enough wrong in my life that my afterlife might mean that I might suffer this terrible pain forever. I was afraid. I made promises to any god that would have me that I would serve them faithfully if only they took me into paradise.
I was grateful when Ryerson gave up trying to pull the spear from me. It eased my pain somewhat, and for a frantic moment I thought I might live through this. But he took Claiomh Solais in his hands and raised it over my belly to strike. This was it; the end of the road. There would be no more of this pain once this last stroke fell, and I could move on to meet my maker and learn my ultimate fate.
The short sword came down, and I was exposed to agony worse than any I had ever felt before, and that includes the time I was tossed into a volcano. It was as if I was burning and freezing at the same time while I was being stripped, one layer of flesh at a time. Unable to process the sensations coursing through my body, my mind succumbed to the numbing shock that blessedly washed over me.
All at once the fear, rage, and grief that had filled me was gone. They had been replaced by relief and an overwhelming sense of peace. I was lighter that I had been before, as if I was a tiny sparrow who could take wing on a whim and soar through the endless blue sky. I looked down at the mess that had been my body and I felt…nothing. I marveled at my sudden change in status and wondered if all mortals went through this when they died, or if these sensations were unique to me and the circumstances of my death.
I calmly took in the scene below me as Ryerson cast the sword aside and went back to trying to wrench Areadbhar from my body. He pulled with every ounce of strength he possessed to get it free, but it refused to budge. Curious, I peered closer and saw that my body was healing the wounds inflicted upon it even though I was no longer in it. The chest resumed its up and down movement, pushing red fluid out of the mouth as it drew oxygen into the damaged lungs. Even without my soul to steer it, the body would continue to live forever. How very odd.
My father moved to help Ryerson with the spear, shoving the man roughly aside to stand upon the altar and grip the pole in his hands. He pulled hard, his face turning toward the sky in his tremendous effort to dislodge it from the body, and showing me a mean and haggard countenance superimposed over Alejandro’s handsome features. As if the information was whispered in my ears, I knew that this manifestation of my father meant that his soul was not yet permanently attached to his new body. It was still possible to dislodge him. The trouble was that I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to try.
Areadbhar came loose with a pop, sending my father flailing from the altar to land in the dirt below. People rushed to help him, only to have him stab them viciously for their efforts. The survivors scattered in fear of their lives, and that’s when I saw the strange shadows clinging to their backs. I made out twisted limbs stretching out from the vague bodies as spiteful eyes of red, green, and yellow glared up at me and hissed.
At that I was ready to leave all of this behind and go on my way, but Charlotte brandished the Sword of Light and called to my spirit, naming me Rebecca Calden instead of using my true name. That surprised me. I had expected that either my father or the woman would give up my true name and use it against me. But that small triumph was short lived as I watched a dark, shadowy hand reach for me from the opal the woman held in her hand and grasp blindly for me.
The thing was blind and moved weakly, making it easy to elude. The sense of peace I had been enjoying was gone as I watched the flailing thing. There was bad magic with its demonic intent so clear that I could feel its evil pushing against my spirit like a greedy child in a temper. It was pitiful. Why wasn’t Charlotte wasn’t using my true name against me? Why hadn’t my father given it to Ryerson?
“Listen to me Rebecca.” Charlotte’s thin voice whispered to me from deep hidden place inside my spirit. “I have not given them your true name so that we might prevent what will happen. Your blood tie to your father made it impossible to block you from his consciousness entirely, but I managed to wipe your name from his memory. When I give the word, I will release you and you must retake your body. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
In the chaos caused by the magic at the altar in their midst, the common members of the Divine Inferno had fallen into a violent religious fervor, jumping and milling about desperately. They paused in their frenzy every few moments to turn on a fellow and rip him limb from limb. Then they tossed the gory pieces at the altar as an offering to the thing they were trying to summon. Old experience told me that when worshipers did this, they were hoping that the flesh and blood of their own would make the summoned beast more powerful.
As I watched this horror, I was suddenly aware of the perfection of the circle of men, women, and children that surrounded the altar with a few meek individuals clustered in small groups