The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic Read Free

have been frozen in place, but his mind was still sharp. He could feel the priests coming. Their ugly glaring white heat had been on his periphery before he had even seen the woman but, foolishly, he had let his hunger for her scent distract him. They closed quickly from either end of the alley. He was glad that he couldn’t turn his head to see their self-righteous faces.
    He was almost out of time. He sucked in the aroma of the world that none of these beings had the whit to appreciate to its fullest. That one breath spoke to him. It described her hopes and his fears. It told him the priests were not paragons. One drank to deal with the stress and the other was a glutton and battled daily with his lusts—and lost daily as well.
    No matter. They had their despised God. Their ultimate judge.
    A cross was pressed against Bob’s forehead and words of Latin were whispered in his face. Whisper or not, the words were a sonic boom that split his ears and his head. He tried to fight it, just as his victims had. He struggled for those last few precious breaths, those last few beats of his heart, those last few moments.

Chapter 1
    Akron, Ohio
    Jack Dreyde n
     
    Jack was bent over on his hands and knees with blood leaking down his arm; in the dark it was black as demon blood. Nearby was the knife which would later be sterilized and re-sharpened; the cut had been too shallow and Cyn had nearly paid for it.
    He was shaky and cold, his shirt drenched in sweat. As always after a tough casting, he began to shiver. It didn’t matter that it was midsummer, he still trembled. He thought that after a year and a half he’d be used to the feeling of putting his soul on the line, of letting it drain away to practically nothing. But no, he still shook.
    It had been eighteen months since he had saved the world, a feat that had been underplayed by everyone. Everyone.
    Cyn never brought it up, and when she did, she spoke of her mother, or Pastor John, or poor Detective Richards whose body had been discovered among the ruins of a Princeton hospital. Or she would speak of the heroics of Lieutenant Neilson and his platoon of Seals or the Pope or the soft spoken Father Paul.
    Cynthia Childs was his lover, his best friend, and his third cousin, and yet even she never mentioned the fact that he had practically bled to death for her and had saved the world in the process.
    She never did, and when he was straight, when his soul was intact that is, he was glad that she never did. Yes, he had saved the world, but he had also twice committed murder, stolen the blood of innocent people, and had made sacrifices to the Mother of Demons, all just to save his worthless skin. He had been a monster, and who wanted to bring that up?
    The only people who ever brought up his heroics were the constantly hovering government officials. They were the most backwards thinking people he had ever met. They acted as though he owed them something! In fact, they acted as though they owned him. For the last year and a half, Jack had lived and worked with an indictment hanging over his head. In a fit of honesty, he had foolishly admitted to two murders as well as culpability in fifteen million others. The government men never let on which they thought was worse.
    They dangled a prison sentence over Jack’s head and made him go here and there, chasing down stray demons—it was why he was in Akron where the humidity was off the charts and the people bowled for fun—hideous.
    Jack didn’t trust himself to stand up just yet. His insides were vibrating like a banjo string in a beer keg. He felt empty and shaking. What he had done was what he dubbed: Free Form Sorcery , and it wasn’t easy.
    But there was no other way to hold the demons. They were just too strong, even when they were encased in the live ones. “Back off, Father,” Jack said, his voice hoarse.
    “We…talked…about this…Jack,” Father Timmons answered between great gusts of air. By his own admission, the