Chapter 7
"How am I to fight without weapons, my gun's empty." Gabriel said, still dazed from the weight of a lifetime's memories falling down on him.
"Your mortal weapons are useless against the Crucifix Demon, are they not?" The Prophet held his hand out and Gabriel's gun flew from his pocket into his hand, and he checked it for ammunition as if he had used one everyday of his life. When he was satisfied he returned the weapon to Gabriel's hand. "This weapon will not even scratch the Crucifix Demon, for he exists only in this realm, but he has the ability to manifest a shadow form of himself in the mortal world, and even if you were to fight him in this realm, such a weapon as this would still be useless against him, he is much too powerful. However," he paused, "this weapon will devastate other demons, which do not have such power, also, they exist in only one realm, this one. But, if you do not stop The Beast soon, the two realms will become one, and your world will be overrun by these foul beasts. Likewise, as the corruption of your world worsens, living things left on your world will corrupt into demons. It may have begun already."
"How can I fight the Crucifix Demon then?" Gabriel asked impatiently.
"When I return you to the world of the living, you must find an antique shop called "The Golden Lizard", there you will find a weapon that will harm even the blasphemous Crucifix Demon. Either way, the time draws near for you to return, there is still one more thing you must do, find a girl named Elisa, and guard her with your life." The Prophet made a few movements and gestures with his hands, and before Gabriel could say another word, he was surrounded by light, and then blackness devoured him.
***
Cold barely described how Elisa felt as she walked down the lonely street where her neighborhood had once been. She had felt a range of emotions, but the coldness overtook them all, and not just emotionally, she was literally freezing. She needed a jacket, and she knew where to go to find one. There was a small army surplus store a few miles from her house, which was the closest place she knew of without walking all the way to the city.
She had been walking for more than an hour when she heard the first moans.
They came from an alley way a few yards in front of her and to the left. At first she thought that someone might be injured and unable to call out, so she jogged over to the entrance of the alley and called out. When an answering moan came back to her, she made her way deeper into the darkness. Every few moments, she called out and was answered by a thin wail. She grew closer and closer to the source of the sound, until it was so close that she was confused as to why she couldn't find it.
She looked all around, and called several times, and tried to pinpoint the moaner, until she was so frustrated that she considered abandoning the search and continuing on her quest for a jacket.
THUMP.
She whirled around, and found a mutilated corpse lying on the ground at her feet. She immediately began analyzing its features, and was disturbed that such brutality no longer disgusted her, and she attributed it to her being dropped suddenly into a nightmare, and figured that it was probably better in the long run to get used to such sights, if she was to survive. She bent, and ran her hand over the mutilated flesh. Still warm, She thought, must have died recently. She flipped the corpse over, and examined its front side. Much like the hanging corpse at the school, this one had been disemboweled. Its eyes were gone, and most of the flesh had been torn from its bones.
She stood and looked up, trying to find from where the body had fallen. She saw a fire escape, normal for the small apartment buildings that lined the streets in that area of town. Then her eyes caught on an open window on the second floor. There was a streak of blood on the windowsill, and she inferred that the body had fallen from there. But how, She thought, dead bodies don't just jump from open windows. She noticed a low hanging escape ladder, and reached for it. After a few tries, she caught it and pulled it down. And gripped the cold metal as she hefted herself up it.
Once she was up, she quickly ascended the fire escape and came to the window. The curtain was drawn, and she couldn't see in, so she boldly stepped through. Once inside, she smelled thick coppery smell of blood, and stood in awe, for it seemed as though hundreds of thousands of gallons of it had been spilt onto the floor of the apartment. The entire floor was awash in a sea of red, and her shoes made sick squelching noises as she walked across it. After a few moments, the initial shock wore off, and she began to hunt for who, or what, could have spilt that much blood, and thrown a mutilated body from the second story of an apartment building.
She found it much sooner than she intended.
She had walked into the bedroom, and had knocked over a small lamp. Suddenly a loud moan erupted from a partially open bathroom door across from the entrance to the bedroom. She quickly jogged over to it, and flung it open, and was immediately in the arms of a shambling, moaning demon from hell.
***
Gabriel stood, and stretched his stiff body. He immediately noticed the heavy pack on his back, and took a moment to straighten the straps that went over his shoulders. He had awoken in another alley, but in an entirely different area of town. He glanced around in all directions, and was surprised when The Prophet's voice spoke out loud, inside his skull.
"I have placed you as near to the girl as I could, the rest is up to you. You will find that I have prepared for you some ammunition for your gun." Gabriel thought of the pack, "I trust it will be enough to deal with any…obstacles you may encounter. Now go, while The Beast is unaware you are still alive." Then the voice faded and was gone.
"Back into the breach again, my friend." Gabriel said, and laughed bitterly. "I don't think you could at least point me in the right direction, could you?" he yelled, but only silence answered him. "Guess no—"
A high-pitched human scream shot through the silence close by.
Gabriel ran hard in the direction of the scream, pumping his legs as herd as he physically could. He kept running, and passed several small shops as he exited the alley into the streets. He entered another alleyway as the scream erupted again, and stopped at a fire escape, and glanced down at the corpse at the foot of the ladder down from it. The scream was coming from a second story window. In a flash, he was up the ladder, and through the window, and then he ran across a blood soaked carpet and to a door at end of a short hallway, and into a medium sized master bedroom. The scream had come from a young girl, when Gabriel saw what she had been screaming for; he immediately and instinctively pulled his gun.
She was pinned to the ground, and a demon held her down, preparing to bite her throat.
***
The demon's heavy body held Elisa tightly to the floor.
She was unable to do anything more than watch as its silvery teeth parted and it prepared to bite her throat, killing her.
BOOM.
The demon crumpled to the floor, its head nothing more than a bloody stump between its shoulders.
She sat up and began pushing herself backwards, away from the dead creature. She had come so close to dying that her mind stuttered for some semblance of calm, failed, and reverted to an instinctual state that did nothing more than find a way to remove her from danger. She continued to push herself back until an unseen obstacle stopped her from behind. She spun around, and found a man standing there, a heavy looking gun pointed at the body of the demon. She launched herself up, preparing to fight her way through this person if it turned into another demon, rotting corpse, or anything other than a human being.
When he made no attempt to move or threaten her, she was compelled to speak.
"Thank you…whoever you are." She said meekly, unable to find any other words that qualified for such a situation. The man looked at her for a moment, and then slipped the gun into a pocket on his long black overcoat.
"You're welcome, and my name's Gabriel. And if I'm not mistaken, yours is Elisa. I don't think it would be very safe for us to stay here, so unless you have any other ideas on where to go, follow me." With that he turned and exited the room, and she hurried to follow him.
"Where are we going?" she asked as he opened the door that led out of the apartment to elated to find another person to realize that she had never met this man before, and yet, he knew her name.
"An antique store, The Golden Lizard." He replied.
"I know where that is, its just a few miles from here, we could be there in an hour, two at the most." She said excitedly.
"Good, since you know the way, I'll let you lead, but be careful." He slid through the door, checked both ways, and waved for her to follow. "We have to be careful, there's this big demon bastard following me, I can't kill it though."
Elisa spoke up, "it had a face like Jesus didn't it?"
Gabriel turned, "you've seen it? You must be pretty resourceful, or very lucky."
Elisa laughed, "Very lucky is more like it. It attacked me at my house…" she grew silent, and a look of disquiet passed over her. "…I don't want to talk about it."
Gabriel nodded, and motioned for her to lead on. She ran down the hall, but froze as the elevator doors exploded outward in a hail of twisted metal, and the Crucifix Demon emerged from the dusty debris.