some kind within the black smoldering miasma. A dinosaur, but not like any dinosaur either of them had ever read about. This one had six heads.
“Faster! Drive faster!”
In the rearview mirror, the cabbie’s thick eyebrows rose high on his forehead. The taxi lurched as the accelerator went to the floor.
“We’ve got to find a church! If that thing is Satan then maybe he won’t be able to enter.” Samuel looked down at his hand. His fist was covered in blood as he continued to squeeze the crucifix in his palm. He opened his fingers and studied the tiny effigy of the crucified Christ. Instead of the rapturous expression he normally wore, Jesus, saturated in Samuel’s blood, writhed in agony.
“There’s a church about four blocks away! The-the big one! St. Christopher’s!” the cabbie stammered.
Samson’s body was a riot of activity. The souls within him seemed to be struggling to break free, to flee his flesh before whatever evil Samson had brought to earth could claim them. His body stretched and morphed as more than a dozen souls fought their way to the surface, their hands and faces pressing against his skin, clawing and biting in their effort to escape. Samuel watched in mute horror, wondering if the beast outside was the only thing he had to worry about.
Sparks flew from the taxi’s rear fender as it rounded the corner on two wheels. A surge of heat blasted the cab and the windows exploded, showering them all in bits of tempered safety glass.
“It’s getting closer!” Samuel yelled.
“I’m doing eighty! I can’t go any faster with all of these turns. I’ll flip the car and kill all of us. Where did that thing come from and why the hell is it chasing us?” The cab driver was having a harder time dealing with everything that was going on than the two brothers. His panic actually relaxed them. Samuel grew dizzy, his chest burned with each breath.
“There’s the church! We’re going to be okay, Samuel!” Samson tried to sound positive even as his face contorted in agony while perspiration issued from him as he fought to contain the restless, panic-stricken spirits within him.
The cabbie turned the wheel sharply and jumped the curb, driving the taxi right up the steps of the church and bashing open the church doors with his front bumper. Samson grabbed his brother and hauled him out of the car, pulling him into the church. Samuel’s legs dragged behind him, his body limp in Samson’s arms.
“Come on little brother, you’ve got to fight. You cannot die on me now!” Samuel was still sweating profusely, wheezing as if he were having an asthma attack. His eyes rolled, focused on nothing. “Don’t die, Samuel. Stay with me little brother. Stay with me.”
The cab driver slammed the church doors shut and bolted them. He scurried about to barricade them as best he could. Samson set his brother down on the floor then joined the cabbie in snatching up pews and piling them in front of the door.
“I don’t think it could fit through those doors anyway.” Samuel whispered in between his labored breaths.
“He’s right. If that thing wants in here it’s going to come right through the wall.”
All three of them turned to look at the wall as if expecting it to implode at any moment. Returning his attention to Samson, the cabbie backed away, wild eyes staring at Samson’s undulating flesh. The souls inside of him bubbled his skin, preparing to mutiny. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You possessed or something? You’re what brought that thing here, aren’t you? What the fuck are you?”
“He’s my brother,” Samuel whispered.
The cabbie glared at Samuel, his eyes falling on the white collar barely hidden beneath his jacket, and began to relax again.
“Well, what the hell is wrong with him, Father?”
“It’s that thing out there. It’s doing something to him.”
“It damn sure is! It’s tearing him apart from the inside out!”
Something struck the church, shaking it to its foundations.
“Shit! It’s trying to get in here.” The cab driver lowered his voice. “What does it want? Why is it here?”
Both Samuel and the cabdriver faced Samson now.
“It wants what I promised it,” Samson said. “It wants these souls.”
“Fuck, then give them to him!” the cab driver shouted.
“It isn’t that simple.” A stranger’s voice that came out of Samson—a high-pitched, near-feminine voice exaggerated like that of a drag queen. Even Samson’s face had changed.
“Samson?”
“No, this is Jacque Willet. At least, that’s what I called myself when I was still human, before I sold my soul to a demon and became one myself. Before your brother here decided to try and take my soul back from Asmodeus.”
“Asmodeus? Is that what’s out there?”
“No. That’s who’s in here, what your brother invited in when he took my soul. What’s out there is far worse. That’s who you apes once named Mastema. Hostility. The Adversary. The Satan, if you will. He is the deceiver of man and the leader of fallen angels. He has come in the form of Leviathan to take what is his.”
“Bullshit! This is all bullshit! There’s no such thing as demons!” The cabbie spit out the words with as much venom as he could muster. He twitched, his face convulsing with ticks as if he were imitating the chaos in Samson’s flesh.
“Then what the hell is it then? What do you call that thing out there?” Samuel’s strength was slowly returning.
“It has to be some kind of genetic experiment. Something escaped from a science lab like
The cabbie’s eyes widened, staring in bewilderment at Samson and Samuel. He held himself like a frightened child.
“A dinosaur that talks, huh?” Samuel shook his head and he rose from the floor. Dusting himself off, he reached for the Bible in his breast pocket. He knew he was the only one who could put an end to this madness.
The stained glass windows shattered as the beast exhaled; smoke billowed into the church. Candles melted, dripping wax onto the floors. Tapestries caught fire and burned to ash in an instant. Even the pews smoldered. The walls of the church cracked as if wounded, belching dust into the already polluted air. The floors quaked.
Samson, or whatever demonic presence now controlled him, stood gibbering madly in front of the church doors, his flesh still undulating as the souls clustered within him sought exodus before the coming holocaust. Samson turned and peered at Samuel, grinning wide like a lunatic, ropes of saliva drooling from his mouth, eyes burning like funeral pyres.
“He’ll rip the souls right out of your brother’s flesh. All of them!” The cabbie sucked in a quick breath and clutched his chest as if having a cardiac arrest, drawing Samson’s attention. “Then he’ll take yours as well.” Finally, he pointed at Samuel, “You, he’ll let live. He’ll let you live with the memory of your brother’s death, of his immortal essence being torn apart and consumed, then shat out into the inferno. Then, when you pass away in your bed, drink yourself to death, or succumb to your disease, he’ll come for your soul too.”
Samuel knew that his faith alone would not be strong enough to defeat the hellish abomination tearing through the church walls.
“What was your bargain? What bargain did you strike with my brother?”
“I can’t let you take these innocent souls. I can’t. You can’t take my brother!”
Leviathan’s laughter drove Samuel to his knees.
“I can’t let you take my brother!” The strength in his voice surprised him. The cabdriver stared at Samuel
