The Day of Legion (27 page)

David looked hard, then lowered the gun. He could see Elizabeth’s love in his heart, something no angel of the darkness could fake. He saw the light in the man, hidden on purpose, emerging from within a battle-scarred soul.

“I...I don’t understand,” David said, lowering the gun completely.

“You’re not meant to,” the man replied. “Elizabeth and Albert planned it so that if you were killed, I could take your place. I’m surprised you’re alive, but also glad. It’s going to take us both to defeat Legion; they’re stronger than anyone imagined.

“You knew my father?” David asked.

“Yes. Is there somewhere we can sit down? There is a lot to say, and only a short time.”

David showed the man into the cabin. They sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee.

“I’m sorry, this is all we have left,” David told him, as he offered a can of tuna in spring water.

The man nearly inhaled the food, obviously starving. He then cleared his throat.

“My name is Luke. I was born years before you. My father is Albert. I... “

“Wait!” David interrupted. “We’re brothers?”

“No,” Luke replied. “Only half-brothers. Albert is my father, but my mother is not yours.”

David shook his head. “My father would have told me about you.”

Luke smiled. “Let me finish and then judge. You will see why I was kept a secret.”

David nodded slowly.

“There was a time when our father was seduced by a foul wench named Clara. They had an affair that was intense but short-lived. Clara got pregnant by our father, but she killed her child–or thought she had.”

“You’re Clara’s son?” David asked.

Luke nodded. “Yes, and Albert’s. She gave birth to me, alone in a seedy hotel room, and threw me in the dumpster outside. It was winter; she assumed I would die quickly. When she left the next morning, she didn’t even bother to look in the dumpster. If she had looked she would have realized that I was no longer there. Elizabeth rescued me as soon as my mother threw me away. She raised me, provided for me.”

“Why did I never see you here?” David asked. “We were all kept here in the sanctuary.”

“Although you were in the safety of the sanctuary, you were being watched by the darkness. They knew all about you and planned things which included you. They studied their enemy. I remained unknown to them and never included in their plans.”

“My father knew about you?” David asked.

“Yes. He knew our plans and kept them secret.”

“How have you hidden from the darkness all this time?” David asked. “I would have thought they’d find you, given you’re Clara’s child.”

Luke smiled painfully. “I lived in all of the places of darkness, so they never saw me. I inhabited sleazy strip clubs, places where drug deals took place, dirty bars, illicit casinos and dingy houses inhabited by dingy people. I stayed out of sight of the darkness under its nose, knowing I would be needed some day.”

“Must have been hard,” David said, instantly regretting his understatement.

Luke smiled.

“You say you’re needed,” David said. “What is going on? All I know is a woman named Patricia and I were fleeing from Legion, and we crashed. I woke up in a hospital, and the soul of an old man told me to get here and ...”

Luke held up his hand. “Do you know what happened to Patricia?”

David shook his head.

“She died at the scene of the crash. She is being held by the darkness until her baby—your baby—is strong enough.”

“My baby!?” David shouted. “She was pregnant with my baby?”

Luke nodded. “Yes, she was. When you two were together, she conceived a baby boy. The darkness knows this, has known it for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They have manipulated fate to get you two together. When her spirit left her body at the crash, they took her. She is still carrying your child’s life force, and it is powerful. They want to corrupt it. No light-bearer has ever been this strong and they want him on their side. They know it will tip the balance, making them strong enough to wipe the light from mankind’s lives forever.”

David started weeping as he realized what it meant. “My God!” he whispered.

“Yes,” Luke replied. “They aim to put your son on the thirteenth chair, in all of his corrupted glory, and rule man. Men will be as oblivious to the battle as they are now. Over a period of years, violence will increase; more men and women will become evil; morals will collapse; churches, mosques and temples will be deserted and ‘conscience’ will be a thing of the past. Anarchy will ensue as man’s sense of right and wrong disappears. Slowly and certainly, the darkness will slaughter those who attempt to retain their humanity. And then the darkness will be complete.”

David didn’t say anything as the magnitude of it hit him. All of the twists and turns of hundreds of years, to reach the point where he and Patricia would conceive, was beyond his ability to comprehend.

Luke stood up. “Now, take me to my mother.”

David looked surprised.

“You know she’s here?”

Luke nodded. “Yes. I know everything about her from conception to the present.”

As they walked through the ruins toward the trapdoor, Luke looked at the beauty surrounding him. Huge pine trees reached toward the sky, deep green foliage extending to brilliant, cloudless blue, for as far as he could see.

“It’s hard to imagine,” he said so quietly that he may have been speaking to himself.

“What?” David asked.

“If Legion succeeds in their plans, a hundred thousand angry demons will take flight from the bowels of hell within minutes and start corrupting the world.”

David shivered.

As they got to the entrance, Luke asked David to call out to Clara.

“She can’t cross the threshold unless I go into her dimension and push her through. It’s a failsafe the light-bearers made when they created this place.”

Luke just smiled. “Please call her.”

David called out Clara’s name. Within seconds, she was at the entrance. She saw Luke standing there. She had no idea who he was, but could sense incredible power in him. He was righteous and that intimidated her.

“Who’s this piece of shit?” she asked.

Luke chuckled quietly. “Well, well, Clara. Funny to think we are of the same flesh. Then again, it gave me the unique ability to hide among the dark all this time.”

Clara stared at him, then at David.

“Two idiots,” she replied. “I know you from somewhere.”

“Think back years, Clara,” Luke said. “Think back to a small motel in the middle of nowhere. It was about 11 p.m. and you had given birth to a baby boy. You ran outside and tossed him in the dumpster without even looking at him, and walked away.”

Clara frowned deeply.

“How do you know this?” she asked. “Who the hell are you?”

Clara’s eyes opened wide. She had been digging into Luke’s mind from the time she saw him there; it suddenly clicked into place. She saw Elizabeth pull her child from the dumpster, cover him and take him home. She saw him living in squalor and pain all of his life as a service to the light, gathering strength as the years turned to memories.

She screamed loudly. “You bastard! You were supposed to die that night! I did as the darkness told me. I don’t regret it. Look at you; a bearer of light. You’re an abomination!”

She turned her back and tried to run down the stairs, but Luke pointed in her direction. She stopped and was dragged back, through the door and outside, by an invisible force.

David couldn’t believe it. No one had the ability to do that. The original light-bearers had placed a spell on that door so powerful even
they
couldn’t have done what Luke just did. David realized it was from having both dark and light inside him, and was a little frightened himself. If Luke was on the side of the darkness, he would be a formidable opponent.

Clara screamed in agony as she was literally dragged through an invisible filter designed to prevent evil passing through. She was hauled to within an inch of Luke’s face.

He studied her closely. Luke’s face was expressionless. He saw the years of pain Clara had caused, the countless acts of violence, the depraved acts she enjoyed. Lastly, he looked deep into her cold, uncaring soul and examined her black, twisted energy.

She was frightened. Even she hadn’t felt such power. She tried to close her eyes, but was forced to look directly at her son. She was frozen in his invisible grasp.

“David offered you a deal. I won’t make him go back on his word, but until this is over you will not be free. You will be in our company until this ends. If we perish, then so will you.”

Clara fell to the ground at his feet, released from his grip. She crawled away like a frightened animal to the darkness and cover of the trees. David watched her and felt pity. She was vile, but he could not feel hatred.

She watched like a wild creature from under the shadows. She couldn’t take her eyes off Luke. She was petrified of him; not because he wanted revenge or because he was a light bearer, but because he came from her and would be capable of great violence to those he opposed.

“What do we do now?” David asked.

Luke turned and smiled. “We wait for Legion. There is nothing else to do but wait for our destiny to unfold. Nothing; no spells to conjure, no angels to summon and no army of the light waiting to be called upon.”

“How long do we wait?” David asked.

“We’ll know when they arrive. We’ll know.”

Chapter Thirty

Luke shook David awake; he jumped up after a fitful sleep, expecting the worst. He couldn’t see much and couldn’t hear anything. The forest was silent. They had slept in the open that night alongside an open fire. Clara had spent the night watching them from the shadows, just out of the firelight.

“What is it?” David asked.

Luke stood up and led him briskly toward the trapdoor.

“They’re coming. You can’t feel it because it’s a frequency higher than you can sense, but they’re coming!”

David ran after him, part of him wanting to run in the opposite direction. He was prepared to die, but in that brief moment he considered the ease of leaving the coming battle to others.

He shoved that thought away and followed Luke into the bunker. The temperature had dropped dramatically to below freezing. He could see his breath with every exhalation.

There was an uneasy stillness, like time itself was waiting. It felt as though all of the air was being sucked from around them. The feeling of dread fell over him, heavier than anything he ever remembered feeling, physically or emotionally.

He could sense the negative vibrations in the room around him. In all his years of experience, nothing was anything like the vibrations Legion created.

He felt the coming evil, sickness, depravity and pain of all mankind swirling around him. It soaked into his pores and pierced his eyes. He felt the coming wars, the desperation, pestilence, diseases and starvation.

He smelled the decaying flesh of those who would resist Legion, and heard the future screams of all mankind, sinking into the quagmire of depravity. He saw the burnt corpses, the weak preyed upon by the strong, the children left abandoned.

David screamed. The weight of it was too much. He had to get out, but he couldn’t move. Luke was shouting at him, but he couldn’t hear. The screams of agony filled his ears.

Luke took his shoulders and shook him. David stared into his eyes, calming down, but was still unable to convince his limbs to move. Luke pushed him into the corner of the room, and told him to stay there.

Luke lit the candles they had earlier placed around the room. There were hundreds of them, coming to shining life, reminding him of the sacramentals in churches and other holy places. They were powerful weapons against evil. He also lit large untied bundles of sage laying in censers, and purifying smoke billowed from them.

They knew that demons hated any light from sanctified candles because they signified the light, and when combined with smoke from incenses like sage, the darkness could scarcely bear it. Luke planned for Legion to remain in the center of the room, away from the light and sage smoke, until they were strong enough to resist.

David watched. Even the light of the candles could not penetrate the dark mist that hung over the center of the room. A foul stench hit his nostrils, and he choked on it. It burned his skin like acid.

A deep rumbling came from somewhere and grew louder. It sounded like a million screams and moans of agony. It grew louder, to the point he couldn’t stand it. He covered his ears, but could still hear it.

Then the noise stopped. The eerie stillness returned and saturated the room. The stench grew stronger, the room colder. Time was standing still.

A black figure appeared, standing on the center of the table. Its back was to David. All he could see was a hooded shape, dark as night. It was hunched over, and spoke quietly in a language he did not know.

The figure began to rock back and forth. Its muttering grew louder and became a shrieking. It rocked faster and faster, and shook violently.