Dark Exodus

  Fulcroft Maximum Security Prison in Boonville, Missouri, was a cold and heartless facility, made of brick, stone, steel, and barbed wire. It was exactly where one would expect to find the fragment of a key from the lower regions of Hell.

  Fritz hadn’t a clue how they were going to gain entrance but did not bother to ask.

  The Cardinal always seemed to have a plan, and all Fritz needed to do was wait for it to be revealed to him.

  They parked the car in front of the gate to the prison and immediately caught the attention of the guard tower and the armed guards within it.

  A spotlight immediately fell upon them.

  The Cardinal glanced at him. It was as if the demon lord could sense his concern, his discomfort with the situation at hand.

  • • •

  “This seems to be the beginnings of a predicament,” the Cardinal said.

  “It appears that maybe it does,” Fritz answered.

  The demon lord laughed a horrible-sounding laugh, as doors across the expanse of the prison property came open, and armed guards began walking toward them.

  “Do you continue to believe in me?” the Cardinal asked. “To believe in our mission?”

  Fritz turned his gaze to the demon.

  “I do,” he told his master.

  The Cardinal smiled, or at least Fritz thought it was a smile.

  “And so you should,” the demon lord said, dropping down to its knees in a squat, and plunging its fingers into the blacktop, the tips of its long, skinless fingers sinking deeply into the tar.

  Fritz felt the effects almost immediately, a numbing shock that coursed through the ground that awakened the nightmare section of the brain, sending all those touched by the power into a strange, dreamlike state.

  He, too, was about to succumb to the horrors of his past, when the Cardinal spared him with a glance.

  “Not you, Fritz,” the demon lord said with a shake of its head. “Not you.”

  His head cleared immediately, and he followed the Cardinal into the prison unhindered, the doors of the correctional facility opening for them as if the demon lord of Hell knew all the secret words.

  • • •

  Jordie Olson knew his time was up.

  He was serving two consecutive life sentences for the death of a convenience-store clerk and a patrolman, and it was only a matter of time before something came for him.

  Something to truly punish him for his sins.

  His mother had always told him, If you’re bad enough, the Devil’ll come for you personally.

  The screams of his fellow inmates echoed about the floors of the secure wing, a symphony of misery to welcome the creature from Hell.

  And as Jordie looked out through the bars of his cell at the man—was it even a man—he couldn’t be sure—clothed in a robe of human flesh that moved and pulsed with a strange, disturbing life, he knew that his mother had been right. He hadn’t thought he’d be afraid when the time finally came, but he was completely wrong about that.

  “What did you do to them?” he asked, backing up onto his bunk so the demon could not reach him.

  “I gave them a glimpse of what is to come,” the Devil said with a terrifying smile. “A peek of what awaits them when they partake of the final sleep.”

  “But you’re really here for me, aren’t you?” Jordie asked from the safety of his bunk.

  “Clever boy,” the Devil said with a grin. It then placed its arm through the bars and motioned with a skinless finger for Jordie to come closer.

  Jordie just about died there and then. He wanted to scream, hoping that maybe somebody who could help might hear. He even considered praying. What was it that preacher who visited them every other Sunday had to say? That the Lord God was always listening, waiting to accept you into his arms so you can be forgiven your sins.

  Any sins.

  “I don’t think so,” Jordie told the Devil. “I’ll just stay right here.”

  The demon pulled its arm back through the bars.

  “Do you think I can’t get to you in there?” the demon asked.

  Jordie remained silent, knowing there probably wasn’t much that a demon from Hell couldn’t do if it set its mind to the problem.

  “I’m not going to go with you,” Jordie said, his voice trembling with fear.

  “Excuse me?” the demon asked, seeming surprised.

  “You heard me,” he answered. “I’m not going with you . . . I’m sorry for my sins . . . God is . . . God is going to protect me!”

  The Devil laughed at him, a horrible, gurgling sound.

  “God isn’t even aware you exist,” the representative of Hell told him.

  “Then maybe I should make him aware,” Jordie said, folding his hands before him and beginning to pray. “Oh Lord, I humbly beseech thee . . . please listen to, and hear this poor sinner begging for your forgiveness.”

  “Do you think He’s listening?” the Devil asked, looking skyward as Jordie continued to pray. It held a hand up to a hole in the side of its head where an ear would be. “What’s that, Oh Lord of Light?” the Devil asked.

  Jordie didn’t know what he was doing but continued to pray louder than before.

  “You want me to leave the sinner be?”

  Jordie’s heart skipped a beat. Was the Devil man actually talking with God?

  “That he is now under Your most holy protection?”

  The Devil looked at him through the bars.

  “The Lord of Lords said that you are now under His protection, that I can no longer take what doesn’t belong to me.”

  Jordie actually felt a spark of hope, a feeling in the pit of his belly suggesting that yes, maybe God was listening, and maybe he was actually going to be forgiven.

  And that he might survive the night.

  But that feeling in his gut quickly went from a weird churning sensation to one of burning.

  As if something were moving inside him.

  “Guess you get to stay right where you are,” the Devil told him as it again extended its arm through the bars, skinless fingers splayed as if reaching for something. “I’ll just take what belongs to me and be on my way.”

  The Devil opened its fingers even wider, as if beckoning to him.

  No, Jordie realized, as the pain in his stomach intensified. Not to him.

  To something inside him.

  That something exploded out from his stomach like a bullet, dragging a slithering trail of large intestine behind it like a tail.

  “You can stay right there,” the demon continued, catching the projectile and closing its bloody hand around it. “I’ll just take my prize and go.”

  Jordie placed his hands upon his belly, trying to keep his insides from spilling out, but it was too little, too late. Whatever had shot out of him had turned his inner works to paste. Slumping back against the wall, he watched as the inside of his cell grew dark, and his time grew short.

  The Devil made it a point to show what had come out of him, the strange metallic object changing shape as it was presented.

  Jordie felt his eyes grow so very heavy, and he closed them for what he was sure was the very last time, slipping into a darkness accompanied by the cries of his fellow inmates.

  Of the fellow damned.

  But there was something else . . . something he could hear just below the screams and wails.

  It sounded like the blare of trumpets.

  • • •

  Fritz thought of it as an all-you-can-eat buffet; as the Cardinal did its thing, he was allowed to meet his vampiric needs with the life force of the prison’s other residents.

  Opening the cell doors was like cracking the shell on some delicious crustacean to get at the delicious meat inside. Fritz gorged himself on the life forces of the incarcerated, taking so much that he actually b
egan to feel a little bit drunk.

  He was lying in a bunk, the corpse of a large, tattooed man lying beside him, when he heard the sound.

  Was that a trumpet? he wondered, sitting up and rolling the three-hundred-pound corpse to the ground.

  Shaking off the life-force buzz, he scrambled from the cell and out into the corridor. The prison was suddenly silent.

  Fritz passed a few of the prisoners he’d chosen not to feed upon for one reason or another—physically unattractive in some way, their life forces tainted by illness. They were no longer caught in the grip of nightmare; in fact, it appeared to be the exact opposite.

  They appeared euphoric.

  Again came the blare of trumpets, and Fritz began to panic.

  “Cardinal!” he bellowed, running for the stairs. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. He could feel it in the air . . . on his skin. It was like the tingling of one’s flesh when a powerful storm was about to hit.

  “Cardinal,” he called again as he reached the next level of the maximum-security wing.

  He found the Cardinal, but the demon lord wasn’t alone.

  Outside the cell of the man who held the latest piece of the key, the Cardinal stood tensed. The demon’s back was to him, the flesh of its hooded cloak had come alive, veins of bluish energy flashing across its patchwork surface.

  Something had aroused both the Cardinal and its cloak, and at the far end of the catwalk, Fritz saw what it was that had.

  There were two of them, and they appeared to be dressed as . . .

  Boy Scouts?

  Fritz had no idea what was happening but knew that his place was by his lord’s side as he slowly approached.

  The figures at the end of the catwalk remained perfectly still. He noticed the inhuman glow of their eyes, as well as from the insides of their mouths.

  “The key,” one of the Scouts spoke, the older of the pair. His voice was loud, booming within the confines of the metal prison. “We feel its accursed presence upon you.”

  The younger of the two extended a filthy, open hand, palm up.

  “Give it to us now, and we will be as merciful as we can.”

  The key? They wanted them to give up the key? Who were these people? Fritz wanted to know.

  “You’ve traveled far, messengers,” the Cardinal said. “How long has it been since the last of your ilk walked this world?”

  The pair remained silent, watching with blazing eyes.

  “Much has changed, hasn’t it?” the demon said. “Do you feel it?” The demon raised a bloody hand and waved it in the air. “This is a world in the midst of change . . . of transition.”

  The Cardinal seemed to be listening to something that Fritz could not hear.

  “This is no longer His world,” the demon lord explained. “It is too far gone for that.”

  “You will give us the key!” the older bellowed, the Cardinal’s words seeming to have a disturbing effect upon them.

  “You know it as much as I,” the demon cajoled. “This place is closer to Hell now than Heaven.”

  The pair began to glow, the inner fire hinted at behind their eyes and inside their mouths burning all the brighter, causing their pale flesh to glow.

  “Let us have this one,” the Cardinal continued. “No harm, no foul . . . I’m sure you can find another.”

  And with that final suggestion, the world seemed to explode.

  But Fritz knew that it wasn’t the world per se, it was the pair at the end of the catwalk, their bodies erupting in a release of energy so powerful that it tore the prison apart.

  Bolts of humming power leapt from their bodies, striking with the ferocity of a venomous snake, causing the bars of the cells, as well as the physical structure of the prison itself to disintegrate.

  The walls and ceiling of the prison came down with a thunderous roar, the bellow of trumpets heard above the din of destruction.

  Fritz realized that he could do nothing, the prison was collapsing in upon him, as was his world.

  Is this the end? he wondered, as tons of plaster, rock, and steel caved in upon him and his demonic master.

  It could very well be.

  How disappointing, Fritz thought as he felt his body crushed beneath the weight of it all. He had been so looking forward to what the Cardinal and the forces of Hell had in store for the world.

  But then he felt the suffocating load shifting.

  Concrete and metal and glass were pushed aside, allowing slivers of daylight to shine in his one undamaged eye.

  And through that eye he saw a hand reaching down into the rubble, grabbing him around his collar and dragging him upward, toward the surface.

  The pain was unlike anything Fritz had ever experienced, skin torn away, bleeding lacerations, broken bones grinding against one another, crushed and ruptured internal organs. There wasn’t any part of him that wasn’t severely damaged, and he imagined that death was only moments away.

  Hauled from the rubble of the prison, Fritz was laid upon the broken ground, the horrible, skinless face of the Cardinal looming over him.

  “Oh no, Fritz,” the Cardinal said. “You can’t leave me just yet.”

  It was still wearing the cloak of skin, the map, and it draped it across Fritz’s body.

  Fritz had felt himself falling, the pull of death so very, very strong, but the cloak stopped him before he could reach the bottom. He gasped as some of the life energies contained within the cloak of flesh flooded into his body, and he realized that the pain he had been experiencing was merely a warm-up. His body was healing, knitting itself back together in the quickest and most painful of fashions.

  “Oh God!” Fritz screamed in agony as he thrashed upon the ground.

  “No,” the Cardinal said with a shake of its head. “Not Him . . . me. I’m the only god you need now.”

  The Cardinal paused, watching Fritz as the healing process tortured him to the brink of madness.

  “And I have need of you.”

  The demon lord then reached down and swiftly pulled the cloak of skin from Fritz’s body and returned it to its own.

  Fritz was a trembling mess, the echoes of the agony he had just experienced hanging about him like a bad smell.

  “Rise,” the Cardinal commanded. “We have no more time for you.”

  And Fritz did as he was told, rising on trembling legs. He looked about him, at the smoke and fire. There were no more cries now, no more sounds from the prisoners affected by the Cardinal’s nightmarish influence.

  They had all been silenced.

  From somewhere in the distance there came the wail of sirens, rescue vehicles on the way. He imagined that they would be sorely disappointed when they arrived.

  The Cardinal was climbing across the rubble like some huge insect. Fritz followed, amazed that he had the ability to move at all.

  “Those two,” he called after his master. “Where . . .?”

  “Gone,” the Cardinal answered. “Their time upon this world is limited, their host bodies only capable of sustaining their divine energies for so long.”

  Fritz stopped, considering his master’s words.

  “Divine energies?” he questioned.

  “Accursed though they may be,” the Cardinal said. “Yes.”

  “Are you saying that those two were . . .”

  They emerged from the smoke and dust to where they’d left their car. The Cardinal went to the front passenger door as Fritz opened the door to the driver’s seat.

  “Angels,” the Cardinal spat, reaching up to rip away the tattered face of the young man he’d found so attractive. “Which means that Heaven is onto us . . .

  “And time is of the essence.”

  • • •

  They didn’t have much time.

  John Fogg moved about the warehouse,
barking orders to the Coalition staff that had been sent to assist him with his task.

  The interrogation of a Heavenly being.

  A Coalition transport van had arrived at the nursing home to take them to an undisclosed location, an empty warehouse that had been quickly purchased by the secret organization for John’s needs.

  The data that he had requested, most of it from the writings of King Solomon, had been loaded onto a computer tablet and was waiting for him.

  The binding spell that he’d used earlier at the nursing home was failing, and he was desperately in search of something stronger, maybe something that would have been used against one of the more powerful divine entities, like an Archangel.

  John glanced over to the protective circle, watching the angelic being that inhabited the body of a twelve-year-old boy writhing in its center.

  “Anything?” he called out to the Coalition staff, who were frantically going through computer files as well as ancient tomes and scrolls. “Help me out, people,” John urged. “Having a pissed-off angel in here with us won’t be even remotely good for our continued health.”

  He glanced over to Griffin and Nicole, both standing around and looking as though they were going to jump out of their skins. And he couldn’t blame them. If he’d taken the time to really think about what they were doing here, about the forces that they were tampering with, he might have jumped from his skin as well.

  The blare of trumpets echoed throughout the space, nearly deafening them. It was something that seemed to emanate from the divine being’s body as it exerted its strength.

  It was something that said John’s time was running out.

  He decided to try to use the same binding spell he’d used before, knowing that it wouldn’t last but hoping it would buy them a little more time to find something stronger.

  Glancing over to the circle, he watched as Theo paced, a panther-like quality to her movements as she watched the angel.

  Predatory.

  The angel had begun to thrash, its glowing eyes and insides starting to burn all the brighter.

  John had to act.

  The finger that he’d cut earlier was bandaged, and he tore the covering away. With his other hand, he ripped at the wound, reopening it so the blood with flow.