The Devil’s Peak II, page 25
Isabella nodded. “It goes on for miles. A forest, fed by the warm water, and all fed by the green light.”
The glow made the tops of the trees shine and they could see some were enormous, reaching hundreds of feet into the air. There were swathes of grass in meadows, reeds bordering ponds, and some plants even with the buds and blooms of flowers.
“And I’m told Adam and Eve turned their back on all this,” Drake scoffed. “Bad move.”
“Remember who talked them into it.” Francesco’s eyes were narrowed as he looked about. “We need to be on guard as there may still be evil in here.”
“What are we looking for?” Leonidas asked.
Isabella turned slowly. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was an apple. It grew on the tree of life.”
“It made them mortal,” Francesco replied. “In fact, a single bite made them mortal.”
“But it cleansed them first,” Isabella replied. “We’re already mortal, so we just need the cleansing part.”
“Let’s hope the tree hasn’t gone the same way as that cherub thing.” Drake pushed his slick hair back. “Which way?
Isabella pointed. “Always head toward the light on the hill.”
Drake turned to see a soft starlight pinprick of light a little higher than the surrounding trees.
He half smiled. “Our guiding light.”
Isabella turned. “Everyone keep your eyes open. We have no idea what to expect in here.”
She waved her team forward. “Rocco, Marco, take point. We move two abreast. Let’s move.”
They headed in with Drake and Isabella just behind the two lead Knights. Drake marveled at how something could exist like this, and for any of the first people finding this, it would have seemed like a religious experience.
Overhead he thought he heard something and looked up. He wasn’t the only one as Isabella’s brows were drawn together and she stared upwards as well.
Several of their flashlight beams moved across the dark sky above them, and a few times they just caught a glimpse of something up there. Something big, dark, and bristled.
“We’ve got company,” Drake said.
“It’s moving too quick to see clearly,” Isabella said. “Everyone, keep your…”
The buzzing grew furiously and then something like a small truck zoomed in at them. There was a thump amongst them, and then a grunt, a sharp scream, and whatever it was had vanished before they could see what it was that attacked them.
But Aria was gone.
“No, no, no.” Isabella ran a few dozen paces after it, as the screams of the woman grew fainter.
She continued to walk into the forest, looking upwards.
“Bastardo!” Isabella screamed.
“Get back here!” Drake yelled.
The buzzing came back, and the remaining flashlights swung toward the sound. In the combined beam, they saw the massive fly with the face of Octavius Conti, coming right at them, or rather, this time right at Isabella.
Drake and several of the Knights began to sprint toward her. But Isabella spotted the threat and all she did was face it head on, widen her stance, and in seconds it was on her before Drake and the other Knights could even get close.
But Drake had never seen a human being move so quickly. In a blur, she had drawn her sword, and in an arcing loop brought it around and into the face of the speeding monster.
The mass and velocity of the thing didn’t allow it to slow down, and its usual super-fast insect reflexes were no match for Isabella’s.
In a crackling slice, the blade passed all the way through the giant blowfly from the bulbous eyes in the grossly human face, punching through the thorax and bloated abdomen, and out the pustulant end.
The Conti fly was cleaved into two halves that passed either side of the woman and skidded in the dirt.
Drake pulled up in awe of what he had seen. “Wow.”
“Yech!” Isabella yelled as she was covered in the contents of the disgusting abomination. She rushed to one of the small ponds and threw herself in, rubbing herself and also cleaning her blade. In seconds more she climbed out.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I am now.” She looked back at the butchered fly. “That was the thing that escaped from Hell.”
“The feet,” Marco said. “That’s what made the tracks.”
“Yes.” She walked closer to the monster, and her mouth turned down as she saw the half face. “Octavius Conti.” She spat. “So this was your reward.” She leaned closer. “Was it worth it?”
She turned away in disgust. “Yes, it explains the pug marks. But not the boot marks. We have to assume there will be other threats trying to thwart us.” She sheathed her sword and pointed to the hill. “Let’s hurry.”
They threaded through the dense forest, and from time to time, birds spirited from tree tops, and small furry animals bounded from their path. Each seemed to take their time as if they didn’t know what a human being was and therefore perceived no threat.
Once again, Drake wondered whether the bible stories were true – did a man and woman really live here for thousands of years, and then only left when they disobeyed their God’s rules?
The things he had seen were testing his reluctance to believe in some sort of omnipresent being or deity, but he couldn’t deny there was something mystical about this place and everything he had seen over the last few months had few scientific explanations.
It took them another half hour to make it to the base of the hill. In the distance and up the slope was a huge tree, its limbs spreading for hundreds of feet and at its center something was glowing like a tiny star.
Isabella stared up at it, and then turned slowly. “This is too easy.”
Drake turned, noting how the undergrowth was flattened in these areas.
“Maybe it is meant to be,” Leonidas said. “The Garden of Eden was a place of warmth and joy. That revolting beast you slayed forced its way in.”
From out in the shadows there came a sound of heavy sliding and breaking undergrowth.
“Maybe, just hold that thought,” Drake said softly.
The group were spread along a pathway that was more an opening in the forest between trees and bushes.
The light was already muted so underneath the canopies there were pools of shade and an ominous darkness.
“At arms,” Isabella said and drew her sword again.
The Knights pulled their guns or swords.
“Hold,” Isabella said. “All quadrants.”
The group knew what she wanted and some turned to face the left, others to the right, and the ones at the rear faced backwards, while Rocco out front held his huge broadsword pointed that way.
The snapping and sliding came again from out to the left this time. Then it vanished, but minutes later it came again from behind, and then the right side.
“Whatever it is, it’s circling us,” Drake observed.
It sped up, circling faster, and getting louder as it got closer.
“Anyone have eyes on it?” Isabella said.
“Movement!” Drake shouted as he caught a glimpse of something shiny that went by a break in the bushes fast. From further ahead a tree was pushed aside and then another that was only twenty feet out from them.
“It’s right here.” Marco raised his gun trying to track it.
“Hold your fire,” Isabella said.
Drake knew the man didn’t have a target, and once he fired the sound would make it impossible for them to track the thing.
Then the forest exploded from the left side. Gunfire did erupt then along with shouts.
But it all happened so quickly that one minute they were trying to see into the green depths, and the next something came out of the trees – huge, fast, and torpedo-shaped. The following impact, and then the muffled scream, told them it had taken one of their own.
The thing kept travelling through the group and bullets smacked into its enormously long and scaled body, but if they penetrated the armored plates it didn’t seem to show it.
“Snake!” Drake yelled, hardly believing something so big could even exist.
“We lost Matteo!” Marco yelled.
The group pulled in closer together as the monster snake came at them from the other side, once again coming through their group like an unstoppable freight train. And once again the mouth opened and its passage was punctuated by the death scream of someone’s life being cut short.
“Knights, we are leaving.” Isabella had her sword in her hands and pointed to the light on the hill. “Move it.”
The remaining men and women began to sprint up the hill. Drake noticed that this time the huge Rocco was missing.
He could still see trees being pushed aside just behind the wall of brush, and knew the thing was still there, dogging them. Drake had heard that in Earth’s primordial past there were giant snakes, and he read that just a few years back in India they discovered the fossil remains of something called a Vasuki indicus, a fifty foot snake.
Could this thing be a remnant? he wondered. Or could it be the thing that was woven into the Garden of Eden story about the snake.
The crashing of the underbrush behind him snapped him from his thoughts and he spun in time to see the massive green and golden bullet-shaped head emerging along the path they were using.
Its black glass-like eyes were fixed on the slowest moving of them, Bianca, and Drake flipped his gun to full automatic, and waited.
As it bore down on her the massive mouth opened, and instead of two fangs, there was a row of teeth that looked like a serrated saw. And that was the moment he hoped for – Drake fired his gun, keeping his finger locked on the trigger and aiming for inside the mouth to the softer palate where there was no armor plating.
He didn’t know how many bullets hit their target of those he fired but it must have been enough to dissuade the monster, as it veered away into the brush, and Bianca stood with sword raised to strike, frozen.
After another few seconds her shoulders slumped, and she lowered her sword. She turned to Drake to nod.
They continued up the hill, the remaining group now in tight and wary of every shadow. Not a single Knight holstered their gun or returned their sword to its scabbard. The glow from up ahead drew them on, and in a few more minutes they came to the top of the hill and saw where the glow was coming from.
“The tree,” Francesco whispered.
“It’s true, all true.” Marco smiled and pointed.
Ahead of them was an enormous tree like a mighty fig, but it was a fruit tree that seemed as old as time. Its gnarled branches stretched for hundreds of feet, and in amongst its leafy ends, they saw apples growing there.
The trunk glowed a ghostly white, and had been the source of the emanation that had drawn them to it.
“It’s magnificent.” Isabella held her arms wide as she walked a little closer.
But then she froze as a figure walked out from underneath the spreading branches. Isabella backed up a few steps, and the other Knights spread out, lifting their weapons.
Drake frowned as he walked forward. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Ethan?”
It was his twin brother, exactly as he remembered him – tall, strong, and with that confident smile. He held one hand out, and in it, there looked like something burning there.
“Ethan.” Drake raised a hand, feeling a swelling in his chest at seeing him again.
“That’s not Ethan,” Isabella warned as she edged toward Drake.
Drake couldn’t help himself but feel pulled forward. He wanted to embrace his brother, cure him, find out what had happened to him. He had so many questions for him.
“Stop, Drake.” Isabella’s voice rose. “Remember what he did to Addison.”
“Brother,” Ethan said, holding his arms out and continuing to advance. “Join with me.”
“Spawn of the Devil, I see you,” Isabella growled and turned to Marco and Bianca. “Take him down.”
The two Knights advanced, Marco with his sword, and Bianca holding a gun. They didn’t wait, and Bianca, with her gun in a two hand grip, began to fire. The bullets smacked into Ethan, and he pushed back a step, but the wounds didn’t bleed and just left black holes in the flesh.
Marco charged, raising and swinging his sword in an arc, bringing it down toward the man. Ethan moved unnaturally, his body bending backwards in a way that wasn’t possible for a human being. And no matter how Marco sliced, stabbed, or thrust, he couldn’t hit Ethan.
Then Ethan came upright and caught Marco’s blade in his bare hand. In the other, he still held the fiery something, and he thrust his arm out to press it over Marco’s lower face and held it there.
Marco’s eyes went wide, and he gave a muffled grunt of fear and pain.
His face lit up with red fiery veins, and Ethan, grinning, then let him go.
“Marco!” Isabella screamed.
The spidery veins travelled down the Knight’s body, right to his fingertips, and then with a juddering scream, the man exploded and the bits of Marco showered the area with all of them still steaming like roasted meat.
Ethan then threw the flame like a bolt at Bianca, and it covered her like flaming glue. Her screams as she caught fire were unnerving in the twilight darkness. Drake rushed to her, and had nothing but dirt to try and kick over her, but he was too late and in seconds she was nothing but a smoldering pile of bones on the ground.
“You came for the tree?” Ethan laughed out loud. “The cure to everything.”
He turned to glance at it behind him, then back at Isabella. “But there will be no cure for you. The Master is already rising. Soon the world will belong to us, and we will have great fun hunting down the last of you pathetic humans as sport.” He grinned evilly. “And food.”
“It will be you that is brought down, scum from Hell.” Isabella advanced, holding the jeweled blade tightly in both hands.
“No tree, no cure.” Ethan turned and threw the flame at the center of the tree. It hit the trunk, spread over it, and the massive tree burst into flame. Branches, leaves, and fruit, all began to wither to blackness. The flames quickly moved from the trunk to the branch tips.
“No!” Isabella screamed.
Leonidas ran forward, pulled his blade, and threw it – the sword travelled with great speed and unerring accuracy to strike a branch tip, severing it just as the flames reached the outer branches. The last three apples that grew there fell to the ground.
Ethan growled and went to throw a fiery ball at both Leonidas and the apples, but Isabella let out a battle cry and charged with her sacred blade.
Ethan turned to her and instead threw the hellish blast at her.
It struck Isabella mid chest, and she was blown backwards off her feet as her sword spun away in the air. The agonizing flames spread over her torso.
“Isabella.” Drake sprinted to her, and ignoring the pain, reached for her fragmenting top and ripped it away, leaving her bare breasted. The suit top quickly turned to melted mush but he had made it in time as the fiery substance scalded her skin but didn’t make through to the subcutaneous layers.
She moaned, semi-conscious, on the ground, but reached up to grab his forearm. “Only you. Only you can.”
Drake turned to see Ethan was going for Leonidas, who was crawling away with the apples held tight to his body. The remaining Knights had formed a line between him and Ethan, but Drake knew they stood little chance against this creature that wore the skin of his brother.
Tears welled in his eyes as he knew what he must do.
He went and picked up Isabella’s blade and began to walk, and then run at Ethan. The blade glowed a soft blue in his hands.
In the last seconds, Ethan turned, and by then Drake had the blade held high.
Ethan threw up a hand. “Drake, don’t,” he pleaded.
Drake brought the blade down in an arc, and managed to chop deeply down beside the man’s neck and into the shoulder.
Ethan barely reacted, even though the blessed steel sizzled in the flesh. But in the next second Ethan opened his mouth. Something began to emerge, like a horn of bone.
It was covered in a slimy black mucous, and it kept coming, getting bigger, and then with a bone crunching and tearing of tendons the jaws dislocated as what came out of his mouth began to take shape as some sort of deformed head, complete with jagged horns.
Drake could only stare, feeling both revolted, and more terrified than he had ever been in his life at what was happening to his brother.
Next, a long taloned hand reached from the torn mouth and began to peel Ethan’s sagging body down like an old sack as the beast continued to emerge.
The head lifted to look at Drake, and he stared into multiple black eyes of a spider pressed into its bloody forehead, and the viper teeth of a deep sea fish. He recognized it as a thing from Hell and not of this world.
In seconds more, as Ethan’s former body dropped around it like rags, the beast fully revealed itself.
The flame that was in its hand now covered its entire body and it straightened to about eight feet tall, but still with the blue glowing blade embedded in the meat of its shoulder. And Drake saw that the wound was getting bigger as the blade continued to melt into it.
The beast’s form was crowded with horns over its head, back, and shoulders, and still running with black slime and viscera from its climb out of Ethan’s body. The eyes burned like hot coals as the huge taloned hand reached up for the blade. But when it gripped it, its hands immediately began to sizzle and rot. It screamed a sound that hurt the ears of the surrounding Knights.
It tried again with its other hand, but it too burned.
“Now, Drake!” Isabella yelled.
Drake heard her and reached forward to yank the blade out. The wound immediately began to knit closed.
“This is for stealing my brother’s face, you fucking demon.”
He then spun to gather momentum, and this time cut right through the neck. Ethan’s head spun through the air, and the flames over the demon went out.
Drake ran to Isabella and helped her sit up. There was a furious-looking burn on her chest, but she coughed and nodded.
