The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 33. Chapter 33

Wherever death goes, you follow.

Vanus and Bazzelthorpe followed Dougherty and his team down the path of death. The inside of the lobby was dark with only the blinding white-flash of the emergency lights lit their way. With each strobe of light new details revealed themselves: splatters of blood on the wall and floor, a dead corpse sitting upright in a wheelchair. Judging from the smell and the darkness of the blood, the massacre had happened only minutes ago. And of course we're too late to do anything about it, he thought.

"The admissions desk is just up ahead!" someone shouted. He couldn't tell if it was Dougherty or one of the other chaos magicians. Even though they were alone there was too much happening around them.

Vanus didn't realize he was at the desk until he ran into it. Curse-inducing pain shot through his thigh. A figure swung around the other side of the desk. Rodriguez's face popped into view over the glow of the computer screen. He shoved the computer chair away with a backwards kick. A red streak of blood slashed across the screen from one corner to the other.

"Accessing the hospital's mainframe now," he said.

"Make it fast," said Dougherty. Chaplain, Khan, spread out! Eyes on the corners and doors, but don't stray too far…I want you to be able to run back here in case something goes bump in the dark! See if you can get that damned alarm system to shut off!"

Two dark silhouettes dressed in black garb shot away from the table with staves in their hands. Vanus felt his heart speed up slightly. He clenched his hands into fists. We don’t have time for this. We need to keep moving. Anderson was here, he knew it. The litter of bodies on the ground - eyes staring sightlessly, blood everywhere, mutilated flesh torn and shredded like cheap fabric and the smell of copper so strong he had to breathe through his mouth to keep from gagging - was proof enough of this. He exchanged a frantic look with Bazzelthorpe. The Astorathian nodded back: I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.

“Looks like the guy we’re looking for is on the sixth floor,” said Rodrieguez.

“Kaufman?” Dougherty gave the death magician a sharp look: Aren’t you supposed to be the guy in charge? “What are we doing?”

“We get to the sixth floor and hope we’re not too late,” Vanus said. His voice came out sounding tiny and not at all his own. “Either way we kill them.”

Dougherty grinned, doing things with that annoying cleft chin the death magician didn’t like. “Groovy. Sounds good to me. You heard the man. Time to check on Chaplain and Khan.”

There was no need. Chaplain and Khan marched into view. Only now did Vanus realize that he could actually hear himself think - they’d managed to shut off the alarm system.

“Sir, we checked on the elevators. It looks like the whole hospital’s down. The generator’s been junked.”

“Anderson?” Dougherty asked Vanus.

“I’m certain of it,” the death magician said.

Dougherty grinned again. “Looks like we’re taking the stairs.”

Things got worse the further they went in: A man in white scrubs hung several inches off the floor from the wall; someone or something had impaled a metal pipe through his stomach. His face was permanently frozen in an expression of agony. Vanus wondered how long he’d suffered before he’d moved on to whatever life came after this one. The death magician hoped his next life was better. A nurse lay half out the shattered window of an observation room; jagged shards of glass glittered in her hair.

At the end of the corridor was the door to the stairway, which would lead them up to the sixth floor. We’ve got a long climb ahead of us, Vanus thought. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for it or not.

Then he found the bridge: a crack in the wall that went back further than the hospital’s layout; all the way back into Inferno most likely. So intent was Dougherty in his team on getting to the sixth floor they’d walked right past it.

“He’s here,” Bazzelthorpe said from beside him.

“Definitely,” Vanus agreed. “Let’s go, we don’t want to fall behind.”

Dougherty and his team waited for them impatiently by the stairwell. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” Vanus said. “We were just taking note of the bridge in the wall.”

Dougherty nodded. He pointed at the stairway with his staff. “Lead the way.”

The stairway felt crammed and suppressive. Vanus gripped the railing with sweaty palms. Dougherty was just ahead of him, no longer smiling or cracking jokes. They were in the thick of it now. Another body here, another body there dropped like confetti. He barely noticed. Am I so used to death I've become desensitized by it? For some reason this notion frightened him on a deep, personal level.

They passed the second landing.

Dougherty stopped so suddenly Vanus ran face first into his back.

Dougherty held the flat of his palm up: A gesture for everyone to stop. He pointed a gloved finger at his ear. Listen.

Vanus did just that. He stopped. His heart stopped. The world stopped.

He could smell Dougherty's fear. Or maybe it was his own fear he detected. He was sweating like a whore in church; conversely the stairway was so cold, his breath came out in clouds of white mist. Then he heard it. A scraping sound like cardboard scraping against concrete.

The grinning face of a woman appeared around the corner of the rail. She wore a grin that spread from ear to ear. Her face and the hospital gown she wore were both covered in blood. She held a scalpel in one bloody fist. Still grinning in that grotesque way of hers, she approached them. She didn't seem to mind that she was ankle deep in a puddle of blood.

"All hail the Blood-stained Patriarch!" she cried joyously. "All hail the Father of Perversion!"

"Keep back!" Dougherty's eyes bugged out of his head; they burned with an internal red flame. The tip of his staff burned with the searing heat of a tempered flame. Vanus readied his own mana, feeding it into his staff until he was a halo of silver-gray light surrounded by a red storm.

I am the eye of the storm, he thought.

The woman did not stop. She raised the scalpel above her head, still shuffling, still giggling, still worshiping. A case of terminal insanity, the power of Chagidiel at play.

Dougherty unleashed chaos. Red tendrils of mana shot out in every direction. Time slowed. Like a computer-generated effect in a horror flick, everything came into focus. The woman was there, looming larger than life the closer she got. Vanus could see that her teeth were yellowed from unwash, bared in a feral grin. Her eyes were shrunk down to slits.

The blast of light hit her head on like a speeding freight train. The force of the shot blew her apart. Her limbs flew in every direction. Before he could shield himself Vanus was caught in a torrential downpour of blood: hot, warm, sticky blood. Vanus wanted to scream. He couldn't. Just because you're afraid doesn't mean the world stops; it doesn't mean the dice stops rolling, he had time to think just as he sensed movement above his head.

Bazzelthorpe's hand clamped around the collar of Van's jacket. With a single tug, he yanked the death magician out of the way of the falling object.

A flash of silver in the dark.

The hint of a hollow eye socket.

Rephaim!

Already the creature was straightening up. Flaps of human skin with tendrils of greasy hair clinging to the edge of a sickle caught Van's eye. The creature raised its arm above its head, about to bring the tip of the blade down on Dougherty's skull.

"Dougherty!" Vanus had just enough time to shout before swinging his staff with a downward sweep of his arms. The blow knocked the nephrite off course and sent the creature careening into Dougherty. Dougherty hit the steps with a grunt.

Move, move, move…

Kaufman snagged Dougherty’s hand and pulled him to his feet. They exchanged looks, death and chaos, red and gray, before turning the focus of their combined fury back on the nephrite. The nepharite was engulfed by a plume of flames that forced Vanus and company to retreat back down the stairs. Heat charred the walls, turning them black.

The nepharite rose back to its feet in its unhurried way. In life after death it had all the time in the world to carry out its function. It advanced towards Kaufman and Dougherty, weapon once more upraised. By this time Chaplin, Rodrieguez, and Kahn were sending their own volleys of mana at the undead entity. In the enclosed space the noise was deafening. Vanus pivoted around and lashed out with a kick that sent the burning heap tumbling over the railing to the ground below.

Too late. Already more of the undead were dropping from above their heads. One, two. Now three. Too many to fight.

“Up the stairs!” he shouted. “Up the stairs now!”

He raced up the stairs half blind. Coats of sweat ran down his forehead from his scalp, stinging his eyes. He was on the third flight of stairs now, the fourth. He didn't stop to see who was behind him. I just want to get out of this death trap, he thought.

He burst through the doors of the psych ward at a run. He threw a glance over his shoulder. Bazzelthorpe and company had fallen behind. Nepharites swarmed them from every direction. The rapid blast of Bazzelthorpe's shotgun lit up the corridor with blinding white flashes of fire.

"Kaufman GOOO!" the Astorathian roared. Vanus watched him knock one of the undead back with a swing of his shotgun.

Vanus allowed the thought of leaving his partner behind to tear at his heart for only a moment. His priority - his job - was to stop Anderson and Leonidas. He turned and lunged down the corridor, ready to end this nightmare once and for all if he could.

                   …

Death was everywhere he looked. In the empty, lifeless faces that stared back at him with empty eyes. In the empty rooms where patients had escaped their rooms during the massacre; in the handprints and streaks of blood that marked the walls and floor like nightmare graffiti.

For as long as he could remember, he'd felt it had always been his purpose to tread into the dark places where so few could. Now without morals or protocol or sheaths of paperwork to get in the way, Vanus Kaufman dove in headfirst.

Straight into Anderson and Leonidas.

He caught a glimpse of them as Anderson was half carrying half dragging Leonidas through the door of another stairwell. Anderson had one of Leonidas' arms slung over his shoulder. All Vanus could see was the back of Leonidas' head and his flimsy nightgown.

"Anderson!" Vanus shouted. Fury twisted and seethed in his veins like black oil.

Anderson stopped long enough to look at the death magician. Long enough for Vanus to see what Chagidiel's transformation was doing to him. Tendrils of blackened flesh, like charred paint, traced up the back of his arms and the side of his face. Demonic eyes fastened on him with a knowing intent.

"Stay back, Kaufman," Anderson told him in a voice that was not his own; it had grown more deep, more rough since their last encounter. "Let us go. This is the last chance I'm going to give you. Next time I'll kill you."

Putting all his rage he had into it, Vanus powered his staff. Gray light filled the dark corridor. His eyes promised retribution. "You know I can't let you go…so I guess you'll have to kill me."

With a grunt of effort the death magician unleashed his lance of mana. It streaked down the corridor like a missile. Anderson tugged Leonidas through the door and kicked it shut a second before the missile hit its mark. The door flew off its hinges in a squeal of twisted metal.

"Fuck!" Vanus burst into a sprint, ready to chase them to the ends of the earth if that's what it took. He made it halfway down the corridor when a tall, lithe figure stepped out of an open doorway to his right. For the fraction of a second he gaped at the twisted, desiccated face of a nepharites and then he was flying backwards.

His back slammed into the ground. An elephant landed on his chest on impact, knocking the air out of his lungs. No, no, don't you dare get knocked out like a damsel in distress!

Already he sensed movement. Already the nepharim was stalking towards him to finish the job. He rolled onto his side. Every bone in his body cried out in pain. Keep going. Push through the pain. You’ve been worse, this is what you do.

He crawled backwards a few inches, then jumped to his feet, snatching his staff off the ground. Another blur of movement. Another flash of silver. He danced backwards, narrowly avoiding the blade of a butcher knife. “C’mon, you dead son of a bitch!” he growled through gritted teeth. He didn’t have the time to waste fighting this creature. Already he’d been separated from Bazzelthorpe and the rest of his team; with each second he wasted here, Anderson and Leonidas got further and further away.

He spun around so that his back was to the stairway and backed the creature away with a series of blows. He managed to disarm the nepharim, sweeping the creature’s legs out from underneath it.

It was time to go!

He didn’t wait to see if the creature stayed down. He ran for the stairs, leaping down them three at a time. The world spun around him in dizzying circles. His breath came out in harsh rasping gasps.

A taunting, wheezy laugh sounded from the bottom of the stairs.

Though this was the first time he’d heard the voice, somehow Vanus knew it was Leonidas. After thirty years of being in a coma the man was very much alive; it seemed he was already on the way to a speedy recovery.

“Always running behind, Kaufman. Always falling just a little short…”

Vanus gripped the railing so tightly his knuckles turned white. He barely dared to breathe. His lungs screamed for relief but he had no relief to give.

“...aren’t you tired of being duped? Aren’t you tired of being the fool everyone laughs at?”

Vanus tiptoed down to the second floor landing. “That’s rich coming from the guy who has spent the last thirty years in a coma.”

He whirled around the corner. There was Leonidas and Anderson at another door. They wouldn’t be getting through this one; they weren’t going to get away from him this time. Anderson’s arm shot in the air, palm upraised. Blistering flames shot from his fingers, shooting straight for Vanus. Vanus was ready for it. With a spin of his arms and a burst of will, he absorbed the impact.

Vanus wasn’t done. Up until now he’d played by the rules. Where had that gotten him? Just more dead bodies everywhere he looked. He leapt through the steam, lashing out with a kick that sent Leonidas flying back against the wall. Teeth gritted, he whirled around and slammed the tip of his staff into Anderson’s stomach.

Before he could something heavy landed on his back. Wiry arms like steel bands wrapped around his throat, squeezing tight as a hank of rope knotted around a pipe. Mouth gaping open, eyes widening, he could feel Leonida’s cold breath against his flesh. “Dieeee,” the man whispered in his ear.

More out of reflex than intent, Vanus planted his foot against the wall on the left side of the corridor. He kicked back as hard as he could until Leonidas slammed into the opposite wall. The man cried out. He dropped to the floor in a heap of knobby limbs and cheap hospital material.

He turned to face Anderson, ready to end this nightmare however he needed to. He wouldn’t feel sorry. He wouldn’t feel guilty. I won’t lose any sleep over this, he thought. Would he?

A fist crashed into his face.

He veered to get away but it was too late. Another fist crashed into his face. Then a third and a fourth. He couldn’t keep up with the blows, couldn’t keep away. Another blow to the stomach knocked him back on the ground and doubled him over.

“I told you not to come after us,” Anderson boomed above him. “I’ve liked you. I’ve always liked you from the moment I saw you on TV. But now you’re just being a pain in the ass.”

Another blow.

“Now…”

Another.

“...this truly is…”

A kick to the ribs.

“...your last warning.”

Three more blows rained down on him like the wrath of a vengeful god. Anderson raised his fist for a fourth. Vanus closed his eyes, praying it would be the last.

"We don't want to bang him up too badly," Leonidas wheezed. "Chagidiel wants him, but now is not the time. This fight isn't over. You'll be seeing us soon enough, Kaufman, just you wait."

Then they were gone. Vanus watched them go, unable to get his frozen limbs moving, watched them go with the hope that yes, they would see each other again.