Prey (27 page)

As soon as Drake touches down, Alex is right there to pick him back up. He picks Drake up and shoves him against the rusted tractor. Alex then delivers an organ-shifting punch to Drake’s stomach.

“WHERE IS SHE?!” Alex demanded.

Coughing from the devastating blow, Drake isn’t able to respond to the question quick enough for Alex, so he throws another jarring punch to Drake’s abdomen. Alex then levels his fist with Drake’s head.

“WHERE?!” Alex repeated with a maniacal glare.

When Drake fails to respond in a timely manner again, Alex thrusts his fist forward. Drake somehow manages to gather himself enough to pull away from Alex and avoid the blow. Alex’s punch misses Drake by a hair and rams into the tractor, putting a noticeable dent in its solid steel body and nudging the ten ton vehicle over the loose dirt by several inches.

Alex takes hold of Drake again and shoves him back against the tractor. He readies his fist for another shot, and this time he has no intention of missing. Seeing Alex’s absurd power firsthand, Drake doesn’t want to find himself on the wrong end of a punch like that.

“OKAY, OKAY, OKAY!” Drake shouted, holding his hands out in front of himself, signifying his surrender. “YOU WIN, ALRIGHT?! YOU WIN! I’LL TELL YOU WHERE SHE IS!”

Alex releases his hold of Drake’s shirt, while simultaneously lowering his fist. The fire in his pupils dissipates and redness of his eyes goes away.

Staring intently at Drake, Alex says, “Tell me.”

“I’ll do you one even better. I’ll take you there. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but there’s something inside of you dying to get out. I wanna be there when it breaks out.”

“Where is she?” Alex asked plainly.

Still feeling the ache from the earlier body shot, Drake cradles his stomach as he bends forward to ease his pain. “She’s being held in an old factory in St. Louis.” He pauses for a minute to cough. “I think you broke my ribs…Damn it! I never had broken ribs before. It’s very uncomfortable.”

“What’s the name of the factory, Drake?”

“I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know what color the building is. All I know is that’s where they are. The closer I get to Zandor, the more precise I’ll be of his whereabouts.”

“Then why are we wasting time? Let’s go.”

Drake stands up straight. “You know he’ll be ready for us. He’ll pick up our scent way before we hit Missouri. He’ll have plenty of time to set a trap for us. Not that he’d need to, though.”

“My only concern is getting Jade away from that place, alive and safe. That’s it.”

“Okay,” Drake said apathetically. “This ought to make for one hell of a show.”

Drake takes off running and Alex takes off right behind him. Both blur out of sight as they dash through the crop fields. They’ll continue running until they reach the industrial zone of St. Louis, Missouri. Alex is unaware of it now, but waiting for him in the rundown and abandoned factory is a revelation that will drastically change him for the rest of his earthly-life, which may turn out to be a lot shorter than he realizes.

CHAPTER 32

Underneath the cloudy skies of St. Louis, Missouri, inside of a condemned factory, Jade sitting on the rotting floor, cradling her knees. She’s rocking back and forth as strands of tears stream from her eyes, down her cheeks.

Leaning against a steel post that’s only a few feet away from where Jade is seated stands Zandor. As he waits for the gateway to Hell to open, Zandor takes to desecrating his arm, slicing at it with a single sharp-edged fingernail. He first punctures the skin of his forearm and then glides his fingernail across his supernatural flesh, creating a split in the skin that heals before it has a chance to bleed. Zandor is impervious to the self-inflicted pain. He takes a break from his disturbing pastime to address Jade.

“Don’t fret, child. You should take pride in knowing your soul will empower a realm that has been the underdog since the beginning of its creation. You’ll be the martyr of Hell. Because of you, our reign will stretch from the fires below to the clouds above. Everything will be ours for the taking.”

The last thing Jade would ever want is to be responsible for the collapsing of the barriers that separate Heaven from Hell and Hell from Earth. She doesn’t want to be held accountable for the countless deaths of angels and humans. She scrambles her mind, searching for any possible way to avert the catastrophic scenario. That’s when her focus is diverted to the many broken windows of the factory. It’s hard for her to gauge just how high up from the ground they are because Zandor entered the factory way too fast for her to keep up. She’s fairly sure that before they came to settle in their current spot, Zandor made a vertical ascension up at least three or four flights of stairs. While she can’t be sure of the height, Jade feels safe in trusting that a fall from one of the windows will be sufficient enough to end her life and eliminate any chances the Devil has of freeing the primordial demons.

Jade anxiously sits in anticipation, waiting for just the right moment to make her move. She notices that Zandor has gone back to his nauseating form of self-amusement and has begun to slice away at his flesh again. Jade waits until he’s completely absorbed with his sickening pastime before she sets her plan into action.

She discreetly gets up and looks through the badly stained glass of a nearby, broken window. Zandor looks over at Jade, but when he sees she’s only staring out the window he focuses back on his arm. Making it through the initial test, Jade looks around the room and soon discovers a window not too far away from her, where the glass has been broken out entirely. She takes a deep breath, musters up every ounce of courage she can, and only after a slight hesitation, she bolts toward it. By the time Zandor looks back up, Jade’s already near the broken window.

Upset, Zandor growls to vent. The growling sound grows so loud that for a split-second Jade actually thinks Zandor is right behind her, but she doesn’t let that dissuade her. She knows that she’s too close to give up now. As soon as she’s close enough, she leaps through the window and begins her high-speed plunge to the jagged ground below.

Jade’s young life is flashing before her very eyes. The images that appear the most are ones of her and Alex. Jade is just about to land head-first into the pavement when something suddenly snags her, bringing her fall to a hasty end. Her hair dangles over her face as she hangs upside down—her head suspended only inches over the concrete. Jade angles her head up to see what has snagged her foot. She’s appalled by what she sees. Holding her by the ankle with a single hand is Zandor, staring down at her with a horrifying grin.

“You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you, Jade?” Zandor releases Jade’s ankle, allowing her to fall the remainder of the distance.

“God, please, help me. Please.” Jade cried to herself.

Zandor squats near Jade. “God can’t do a thing for you, child. He hasn’t dirtied his hands in a very long time. Between me and you, I think he’s lost his nerve. Either that or he just doesn’t care about the human race as much as he use to. It’s kind of like having a new puppy. Yeah, you love the damn thing unconditionally in the beginning, but when the bitch keeps crapping all over your house and you’re the only one cleaning it all up, you tend to lose some of that love you once had and develop a sense of regret in its place.”

Tired of crying, Jade lashes out, “You’re the ones God regretted. You’re the ones He cast out of Heaven. You’re the ones that were so jealous of his love towards us that it made you revolt. God doesn’t regret or hate the human race…It’s your kind that he’s embarrassed of.”

“I see another human’s been brainwashed by that fictional book you call The Bible. An overstuffed book that was written by man—for man, recounting stories of God speaking to ordinary men and telling them the dos and don’ts of the world. Whenever one of you humans are in trouble you turn to your precious bible like it’s the cure for all ailments. You never ask yourselves the most obvious question…If God spoke to man so frequently way back then, why doesn’t He speak to your kind now-a-days? To me, it seems these days the human race needs His words of wisdom now more than ever.”

“Like I would ever believe anything you say. You’re a liar by nature, and a bad one at that. If the bible is a fake, then how did it know Heaven and a Hell really existed? What, was it a lucky guess?”

”You humans aren’t total fools. You know that God created you…Well, at least most of you do. Your great, great ancestors knew that and they made sure that knowledge was passed down through the generations. But as they generations went on, the human mind grew more and more diabolical. They began placing monetary values on material things, worshipping the all mighty dollar more than they did their All Mighty God. People weren’t growing foods or making clothes to provide for their own families anymore. They began doing it for profit. The sins began to snowball after that. Greed led to lust, lust led to vanity, vanity led to envy, so on and so forth.

“Truth of the matter is man wanted order in a growing world of chaos. So the deceitful juices of the human brain began to flow and eventually came up with a perfect notion. What better way to get order than to make a book of rules and mythical tales and tell everyone that these are the words of God’s Will—taken into notation by men he specially selected, who would later be called prophets
.
Quite the ingenious plan, I must admit
.”

“I still don’t believe you,” said Jade. “You’d say anything to corrupt my faith. That’s exactly what your kind does.”

“I could care less if you believe me, child. Your soul already belongs to Hell, so there’s really no need for me to lie to you. I just wanted you to know the truth about your deceptive world and the lies you’ve been taught.” Zandor leans in close to Jade, staring her straight in the eyes. “God doesn’t speak to man, Jade. He never has, and He never will. Everything you’ve ever read or heard someone talking about that deals with God having a one-on-one conversation with a human being is a lie. God turned his back on the human race just like he turned his back on us. That’s why he hasn’t sent anyone to save you. And that’s why you’re going to spend the next seven months in a well-heated dungeon…”

Zandor’s train of thought is suddenly interrupted when he catches wind of something he doesn’t like. He releases a frightening growl, exposing his carnivorous teeth.

Zandor turns to Jade, his red eyes illuminating brightly in the darkness of night. “We have visitors.”

CHAPTER 33

Drake blurs into vision, coming to an abrupt stop a short number of miles away from the abandoned factory. No more than a second later, Alex comes into view just as swiftly and stops right beside Drake.

“We close?” Alex asked.

Drake points straight ahead to the St. Louis’ industrial zone. Alex follows the direction of Drake’s finger with his determined hazel eyes.

Alex asks Drake, “Do you know which building they’re in yet?”

“Yeah, I know where they are.”

“Good. So why’ve we stopped?”

Drake answers, “Zandor knows we’re here. He’s there now waiting for us.”

Alex narrows his eyes on the shadowy factory. “Then let’s not keep him waiting.”

“As you wish.”

Drake takes off running and once again, Alex follows closely behind. Blazing through the dimness of the oncoming night, Drake and Alex zip through the one mile of terrain in a matter seconds. At the end of their journey they find themselves being cut off by a large security gate that protected the private property from trespassers. The rusted gate was about ten feet tall, barbwire lined across its top.

Staring past the fence and looking at the factory behind it, Drake says, “This is the place. They’re on the other side.”

“I know. I can feel him now.”

“You ready to turn back?”

Alex stares at Drake with a solemn gap. Alex proceeds to jump over the steel fencing and Drake reluctantly does the same. They both clear the top of the gate with ease. Once they land on the other side they get back to running. Another seconds or so passes by before Drakes comes to another stop.

Following Drake’s lead, Alex stops beside him. “What is it now?” Alex questioned.

“You don’t smell that?”