The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE by David Moody (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📕

Nearby, the body of Gray—now no more than meat for the scavengers—twitched in evil spasms as the mutating quality of the Bleed waged war still.

“Heh,” Sebastian laughed. “A small victory.”

Half measures will not be tolerated any more than will half bloods, the voice of the Bleed echoed in his mind. Its clarion bell struck down the pain that wracked his body, and gave him clarity.

“This world is yours,” Sebastian reasoned. “You’ve won.”

A footstep not taken is not a victory in the war that consumes us, tool. This world, this reality shed refugees, and they must be hunted down and assimilated. The moons and other worlds, even the blazing star above must be brought to heel.

“I am broken. My use to you is passed.”

Broken, complete, dead, alive—it does not matter. I am not finished with you. You will be my hound. I will dispatch you on their trail. You will bring us to other places and set us free to feast and bring ruin. And the girl…the girl can still be yours.

Sebastian’s corrupted heart fluttered with a dismayed joy. The words of the thing inside him frightened him, but the power, the power it gave to him was too intoxicating to resist.

“What must I do?”

They think the Bleed is like water; that we consume along the path of least resistance, but they are only partially correct. They protect their precious realities with wards and blockades, and we flow around those places, seeping into the layers that aren’t protected, forcing them to hide behind their defenses. We sense these strongholds, like a stone inside one’s sandal, Sebastian, we feel them, and we know where they are. They think they are hiding from us, but instead…they are gathering into fewer and fewer bastions of false safety.

“Fish in a barrel,” Sebastian whispered.

And you will be our shark. Arise, servant, and be made whole anew.

Sebastian imagined for a flash that he’d be lifted off the floor in an ascension, where he’d be mended and made whole to do battle once more, but that wasn’t the way of the Bleed.

He exploded into a geyser of flesh, bone, and blood, floating in the center of the clockwork room in a storm of gore and miasma. Then one mutated, evil cell at a time, the entity that sought to ruin all creation put him back together again as something wholly different.

26

LONDON

“So, I’m from a Moon Colony…but in this future. Okay. Time travel, why not. Makes as much sense as any other thing that’s happened recently,” Derrick said. “And Arridon here is from a flat world in an alternate reality that’s already succumbed to the Bleed. Oh, and the Bleed is a pan-dimensional entity that might actually be the source of all evil?”

“Born from the gods,” Phil elaborated.

“How?” Arridon asked.

“They won’t say,” the old man said, turning his palms upright. He puffed on his pipe and added a shrug. “It’s their greatest shame. They were the seed that almost every sentient life sprouted from, and conversely, it would appear that they are also the root of the decay that will remove everything from existence.”

“Balance?” Derrick offered. “Maybe they’re like, a cosmic symbol of balance.”

“I suppose that’s possible. Before my wife…left us, she told me a story about where the Bleed came from. She was vague, but I believe she was telling the truth.”

“Spill it old man,” Arridon said.

“Don’t get uppity,” Phil retorted. “She said that the gods originated in one reality, on one Garden of Eden style world. Earth-like, I think. Things were perfect; their society was kind and just, but something really bad happened. A cataclysm. A meteor, perhaps. Something astral and mundane.”

“They didn’t all die, did they?” Derrick asked.

“Of course not. Remember; the gods were the progenitors of science and magic both. What happened after, she was even vaguer about. Her words were…half said. The gods fractured and became polarized. There was incredible strife, a war, even. Then, suddenly, one group of the gods left. They took all the toys they could carry with them, and they used their technology and magic to simply…leave.”

“One group?” Derrick said. “How many groups are there? Or, I mean, were there?”

“Two-ish. Those that left, and those that remained. What we know of the gods comes from the society they rebuilt among other realities.”

“And let me guess; what we know of the Bleed came from those that remained,” Arridon asked.

“That’s what I’m led to believe.”

“They created the Bleed to get revenge on the gods that left them behind?” Derrick asked.

“Cheeky, isn’t it? Although, that’s not quite accurate. From what I’ve learned, and heard, well, and know, those that remained became the Bleed. They didn’t make it, per se.”

“They became pure evil? That’s bullshit,” Arridon said.

“I’ve never seen a cow,” Derrick said. “We don’t have cattle on the moon. Protein pastes and even some 3d printed foods, but no real cows.”

Phil and Arridon waited for the kid to finish.

“I wouldn’t make this up,” Phil said. “If I were to spin a tale, I’d make it a lot more colorful than this.”

“Why don’t the gods fight the Bleed?” Derrick asked.

“Some do.”

“Can we get them to help? Will they help us find our sisters?” Arridon asked. His stomach grumbled. The soup Phil made smelled amazing.

“I don’t speak for them, or even to them,” Phil said. “I can’t take you to them; I’m not god-blooded enough to operate the technology in the clockwork room.”

“But you think we are?” Derrick posed, shifting in his seat.

“I know you are. Now, whether or not you can operate the machinery correctly is another hurdle to jump.”

Derrick and Arridon turned to each other. Two young men, faced with facts that defied their life experiences almost entirely, placed in a situation where they were being forced into action, but had zero control.

“I’ll go if you go,” Derrick said. “I want to find my sister.”

“I’m a fisherman,” Arridon shrugged. “Not even a good one.”

“I’m still in school.”

“You’re from a moon?”

“The Moon—the