Rise of the Fallen (Second Death Book 3) Read online

  Images flickered through his mind. Reality was blurred. His thoughts were fragmented scenes with no dialogue. Images of people from a distant past plagued his mind; emotions, long buried, tried to surface. And Frank fought against them as hard as he could, but in the end, he didn’t have the resolve—or maybe he wanted to relive it after all.

  As the bubble holding his memories burst, he remembered his father, working in the fields down from the Temple in the Hudson Highlands. Once an accountant, his father had seemed so fulfilled when hunched over in those fields of green. He wore a sunbaked straw hat that tilted forward as he stooped between the rows of corn he’d been tending. Standing, he tipped his hat back, gazing across the horizon, brushing gleaming beads of sweat from his brow. No more than eight or nine years old at the time, Frank gazed up at him and saw his father’s eyes brimming with warmth and love for his son. His father reached down and tussled his hair. They hadn’t spoken. They hadn’t needed to. They understood.

  His thoughts flickered again and the tone of his memories darkened. He recalled his father’s body—half of his body—arcing though the air, tumbling end over end, his guts flying in a wide circle. His father’s face was contorted in anguish and pain, frozen that way forever in Frank’s memories of him.

  The roar of Glak’xhohr filled his head as Frank shook in the doorway. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled another Marlboro to his lips with a shaky hand. His eyes fell to Jack, who was lying in bed, the boy’s chest rising and falling rhythmically, and he felt a deep compulsion to protect the boy—so he doesn’t get all fucked in the head like me…

  Frank’s demonized memories continued to play as he stared at the boy and settled on a memory of his brother. His brother, who had been transported…somewhere. He scratched his stubbled face before a wave of bitter determination took over him.

  Jessie, I’m going to find you and kill you. It’s you or me, bitch.

  As he lit the cigarette dangling from his lips and exhaled thick smoke into the room, Jack stirred.

  2

  DAVID

  Realm of the Second Death

  The young man crept quietly behind the older man, leaning close against the jagged black rock that hid them from the tentacled monstrosity they had been stalking. He watched the older man’s head peek around the corner, the red rays of the forever-setting sun covering his teacher in a fiery glow. The wrinkled hand shot behind him, motioning the younger man to follow.

  “Come, David,” the older man whispered.

  He followed just as he had been following his teacher’s lead for twenty years. Has it been that long? The sun never sets and the days bleed into one another here…but…it can’t be—

  He couldn’t finish the thought. They’d been trapped here for too long. They had found no way home and it seemed no one was coming to save them. There was only one way for them to save themselves, and that was why they were stalking the freakish creature a few dozen yards ahead of them.

  The creature was Mya-Tep, one of Nalsuu’s minions. He’d once, Shizu had told him, been a Watcher named Saul. Saul had crossed over to the Second Death and had been captured by the Fallen. When he was brought before Nalsuu, he’d been changed into this tentacled creature.

  Mya-Tep was special. He was able to find cracks in the prison of the Second Death and, sometimes, open them and allow the Fallen to slip through. The beast was a silent horror; it had dozens of tentacles, blackened by its exposure to the scorched earth of this place. It was the size of an elephant; a slithering, rolling mass of tendrils that scraped along the ground. It sounded like sandpaper rubbing across rough wood when it moved, and it gave David chills to hear that sound.

  As if Shizu heard his thoughts, he spun around and frowned at David. “Quiet your thoughts, David.” His frown softened to a grim smile that showed his decaying teeth. “We are survivors, my friend.”

  Shizu glanced back to the creature in front of them and David’s hand began to tremble. The shaking had been happening more frequently now. His fear had overcome his tough-mindedness, and his body now seemed to have a mind of its own sometimes. He tried to steady the tremor with his other hand, reaching deep down within himself to muster some courage. After a moment, the tremor lessened somewhat—he had found some semblance of determination somewhere in the bowels of his private hell.

  When he glanced up, Shizu was gone. A small pang of panic fluttered through him as he slinked around the corner on wobbly knees, only to catch a flash of Shizu’s tattered clothes as he slid beneath the cover of another crop of rock across the clearing.

  Wait for me, damn it! Don’t leave me! You better not fucking leave me!

  Shizu met his eyes with a frown again. He motioned David to follow with his head. David’s brief pondering anger turned to fear again as he realized he’d have to cross a large open space with no cover. He closed his eyes before taking a breath and holding it, and then he darted from his hiding place to Shizu’s position.

  David was trembling and panting when he reached Shizu.

  Shizu placed his hand on David’s shoulder. “Easy, David,” Shizu whispered. “You’re okay.”

  David frowned, his eyes widening madly. “I am not fucking okay,” he said, his voice higher than usual. “I’m not okay… Nothing is okay.”

  Shizu arched his eyebrows and shifted his hand on David. His hand glowed, covering David’s skin with shimmering light. David felt energy begin to flow into him. His heart rate slowed, and a calming sensation came over him.

  “Better?” Shizu asked.

  David shook Shizu’s hand from his shoulder and raised a shaky finger at his teacher and friend. “Better will be when we get out of here. I can’t take it anymore. “

  “David,” Shizu said, his voice clipped. “Enough of this talk. We will get out of this place and defeat the Fallen. It has been written. Have faith.”

  David could not contain himself.

  “Faith?” he said, his voice rising. “Faith in what? In some fucking prophet from six thousand years ago? I lost faith long ago, teacher,” he told the older man, his fear turning quickly to rage. “This is your fault. You brought me here and—”

  Shizu grabbed him by the shoulders and his eyes lit into David’s. “Quiet!” he whispered forcefully. “You’ll get us killed.”

  “It is you who have killed us! Get your damn hands off of me!”

  Shizu’s face flashed anger, but then quickly faded. He pursed his lips. “It was the only way to defeat Glak’xhohr. You know this, David. If I had to do it all over again, I would. Our sacrifice saved many lives, including those of your brother and mother. My only regret is that you were pulled in here with me when I teleported us.”

  “Well, your regret is mine too, isn’t it?” David said bitterly. He turned away from Shizu, not able to look him in the eyes.

  “Believe, David,” his teacher said quietly. “We will get home. If you cannot have faith, then I will have faith for both of us. With the rise of the Fallen, so too shall the One rise to defeat the Fallen. The prophecy—remember the prophecy of Razmus.”

  David barely heard the old man’s words as his eyes fell to his feet. His blackened, scabbed feet that had outgrown the sneakers he had come into the Second Death with when Shizu had teleported them here. He was a man now, and his feet had outgrown those sneakers almost two decades ago. Two decades. Twenty years gone. He flashed his teeth and tore into Shizu.

  “I don’t want to hear about the prophecy, you old fool. You think I give a fuck about your prophecy? You think I believe some almighty One is going to send us help and save us? Every time you mention that bullshit I want to smash you in the face!” he hissed. His fists were clenched so tightly it felt as though his nails were drawing blood from his blackened palms, and they began to glow with energy. “Look at me! Look at what you have done to me! I wear the skins of the beasts we kill. We eat these…these fucking monsters! We eat their flesh and wear their fur. Like animals. You did this to me. You—”

  David raised his hands, the energy ready to explode from his palms at Shizu. In a blur, Shizu pinned David against the rock.

  “Your anger will kill us both,” Shizu said flatly. “We are where we are, and we will escape this place. I am not your enemy, David. The enemy is there.” Shizu motioned around the rock. His hand touched David’s shoulders and David felt the soothing energy of his teacher—his friend—penetrate the coarseness of his anger. He began to relax again. Slowly his muscles loosened, his jaw unclenched, and the anger and hatred he felt receded. His breathing slowed and as the anger left his mind, he realized the danger he had put them in, and the folly of his words and actions.

  “I…I’m sorry, Shizu…I…”

  “There is nothing to explain,” Shizu replied, his tone flat. “Come. Let us follow Mya-Tep a while longer. Perhaps it will attempt to cross soon,” Shizu said.

  “Perhaps,” David mumbled, his eyes glossing over, no longer seeing Shizu, but instead looking off somewhere in the distance. The desire for this nightmare to be over crept back up on him and he fought back against it, but it was harder with each day. He was getting weaker, and his only salvation was to be free of this place, this existence of suffering. Anything would be better than this. Even death, he thought morbidly.

  “When all hope is lost, it is faith that carries us. Do you remember that lesson, David?”

  Shizu came back into focus. “What?” David asked.

  “Faith, David. We must have faith, or we are doomed.”

  “Faith. Yes…” David no longer had the energy to laugh—or to cry.

  Shizu removed his hand from David’s shoulder and stared at him. The scraping sound of the deadly monstrosity they had been stalking started again and brought David fully back to the present.


  The Harbinger had said Mya-Tep was looking to cross over, and there was a chance they could follow it when it broke the barrier of the Second Death to enter the land of the living. It was one of two options they had to escape this place. It was something they had tried many times before and failed. Yet Shizu still had hope. But do I? David thought. He searched his feelings for some glimmer of hope, and came up empty. The small ounce of courage he had found before had already been depleted.

  A hazy image formed in his mind. He was lunging in front of Mya-Tep, and it was tearing him apart with its thick tentacles. In his daydream, he didn’t fight back. He let the creature—

  Shizu stood in front of David and met his eyes. David struggled not to look away. Compassion spread across Shizu’s face. Beneath the dirt and filth his energy glowed, still strong and vibrant.

  “Look from where you’ve come to where you are, and see how strong your faith is,” Shizu said.

  David tried to smile. “Yes… We will be okay. Come on. It’s moving again.”

  Shizu gave him a small smile of his own before turning and darting forward to another covering. David followed him, the miserable smile fading from his face.

  He would keep following his teacher. For now.

  3

  ROY

  New York City

  They glided through the air in moaning swarms, bursting through the concrete walls of buildings before swooping down to the streets and plucking pedestrians into the air. Scores of Legion wove through the maze of Manhattan like flying rivers of oil, defying the laws of physics and reality. Legion’s slick, black humanoid shapes, with no limbs or faces—only mouths and lips and teeth—terrorized the city like a biblical plague.

  They were tens of thousands strong now. How many people have we evolved, Legion? Roy thought. Hundreds? Thousands? Too many people to count, really. He gazed up at his children overhead as they eclipsed the daylight with their glossy black blanket of night. A sinister grin spread under his nose, and his pride in the family he had created swelled.

  The lucky ones had been transformed quick and early with little suffering. Others had been toyed with, giving Roy the torturous pleasure he so craved. He had wandered through mid-town Manhattan, walking in and out of posh stores, taking food or clothes as he pleased. He now wore a ridiculous men’s fur coat, a cowboy hat, and a pair of leather boots he’d found in Saks Fifth Avenue—he was playing cowboy with the unlucky survivors of his apocalypse.

  A quavering, frightened mass of people had been hiding inside 30 Rockefeller Center. Gazing up at the long columns of windows, he noticed a brave man peering over the windowsill. He made the shape of a gun with his hand, and squinted, aiming down his thumb and index finger at the man.

  “Bang—bang!”

  A horde of Legion dove from the sky, smashing through the glass a dozen floors up. From street level Roy could hear their teeth chattering, and their moaning, and their hissing screams as flesh was torn from bone. It was a symphony of madness, and Roy was the conductor. But the screams never lasted long enough to satiate Roy fully. The people were eventually absorbed by Legion, and Roy would have to move on to the next lucky soul he sought to evolve.

  Blowing on his finger as if it were a smoking gun, Roy giggled to himself and holstered his index finger and thumb in his newly acquired two-hundred-dollar leather belt. There had been many holdouts like this guy. Fools hiding in cars, in dumpsters, in their apartments, offices, or stores—wherever there was the slightest bit of cover, thinking they could weather the hurricane of pain Roy had unleashed on the city. Thinking that Roy and his demon horde would leave had been a fatal error. They’d held on to a shred of hope for themselves even after seeing what happened to the others. They’d watched their friends and family evolving into more of Roy’s oily dark children. His demon horde covered the skies of New York City with their phantom bodies, their moaning and hissing replacing the usual bustling cacophony of New York City. These holdouts, clinging to hope that their city would be returned to them as they remembered it, brought Roy the most joy. Seeing the hope in their eyes turn when his children bit into them…it was exquisite.

  Something thudded to his left and he glanced over at it. The body of a man writhed on the ground, twisting inhumanly. For a moment, the man’s face featured a mix of agony and fright. Roy stared at his face, and then…the change began. He loved to watch them change! The man’s eyes closed and his expression went blank, the pain seeming to fade away as his human body accepted the transformation Legion was imposing. His mouth formed an O and his lips turned crimson and fishlike. His skin glossed over, giving way to an oily blackness, and within seconds his humanity was gone. Evolved.

  There was a stillness in the immediate aftermath of the evolution that fascinated Roy. A peace came over his new child; a dark peace, as the cells of flesh completed their metamorphosis and settled into their new state. The new body didn’t move immediately. It stayed completely still on the ground, as if dead. Yes. Be still, Roy thought. You cannot fight what you are meant to become.

  It was a peaceful death…in the end. Every major life change had a bit of pain that came with it. This was no different. The death of the inferior human race and the rise of the new evolved Fallen race was as natural and beautiful as the night sky. It was the form the rest of the world would take once Roy’s vision was complete.

  The peaceful bliss of the birth of a Legion child lasted only a second, but the memory of each would stay with Roy forever. With a shudder, the newest member of Legion rose, always with a moment of discombobulation, as if it needed to fully wake up to its new life. Its head twitched, and then it seemed to pick up the call of the swarm-mind—it gracefully glided into the sky, merging with its brothers in darkness, taking its place among the ranks of the chosen.

  Roy remembered a statistic he read once in the daily post. “There are between seven and ten million people in Manhattan on any given day.”

  And I will make them all Legion, he thought.

  Roy’s brow slid down and his whole face seemed to form a sinister V. “Devour the city!” Roy commanded. “Swell your ranks! We have a King and Queen to de—”

  Roy’s command was cut short as the images from a swarm circling around the spire of the Empire State Building filled his mind’s eye. He froze in place, his face morphing into the translucent eyeless mask of Legion, his mouth agape. Planes flew above them, circling the destruction Roy had created. A glimmering face appeared in one of the plane windows.

  A Watcher comes, Master. He sees us, the swarm’s hissing voice echoed in Roy’s mind.

  “Well, let’s invite him to the party then, shall we?” Roy hissed. “Bring him to me!”

  He watched as a group of Legion obeyed his command and began to flow toward the aircraft.

  The world would be his, and his ascension as its ruler would soon be complete. The Watchers will all die, he thought. And the human race will evolve, but…

  Something else was missing, he realized suddenly. While man was evolving, he was not. And he was still a man. He was still…Roy. But I am more than a man. Look at what I have created…I am a GOD!

  The swarm-mind heard his thoughts. You must evolve with us, Master.

  “Yes,” Roy said with dark reverence. “I must become one with my children.”

  The swarm that made up his personal guard began to gather around him, tightening into an oily spiral. Roy stretched his arms out and raised his head to the sky. The sleek, oily bodies of Legion touched his arms and his legs, his face and his neck. They nipped and tugged at his flesh with their teeth and mouths, bringing him pain—and pleasure. Their swirl tightened around him and muted his screams as they tore at him and pierced his skin, filling him and devouring him at the same time. Tighter and tighter, their spiral formed…until there was no Roy left to be seen.

  From around the city they dove and flooded into the massive blob that engulfed Roy, joining with their master, enwrapping him. The oily blob throbbed and began to spread over Fifth Avenue with Roy’s essence at its center. It pulsed and writhed as it spread.