Heaven's Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

pain of God’s judgement nearly fifty years ago, when Julia had died. Those years under her thrall were still only fleeting images in his memory but robbed of her unholy vitality, he had soon found they took a terrible toll on him. In the space of a single afternoon his youth had been torn from him and only the scent of new blood, ripe with unholy corruption had saved him from inevitable death and judgement .
     
    Samuel had been raised religious, even if his mistress had led him from that path; he knew all too well what death represented to the damned. Even if his soul might have shaken off the stain of his sins before he began his existence as hunter, hope had been lost forever when he had been forced to sustain himself on the sluggish blood of the Strigoi. Blake knew what death meant to the damned and the first monster he had wolfed down in frenzied desperation had marked him as one of their number. He no longer had tears enough to wash himself clean and he doubted the strength his own contrition. That poisoned chalice had offered him escape from his own mortality, a temporary reprieve from judgement but robbed him of mortal hope and set him on his long journey.
     
    While there was life there was hope of redemption, he had to believe that. A Gate of silver fire had been little more than a whisper in the mind of his first desperate kill, an echo from one of the beast’s earlier victims, but it had planted a seed that had grown in to an all consuming obsession. For years now, the vision had grown clearer, a secret held by the oldest of the damned, a Gateway of fire that reached to Heaven itself and each kill brought him closer to this salvation each drop of blood staved off a judgement he could not appeal, while he sought another way into Heaven.
     
    The thick cough of the cartman brings him back from his introspection. The elation of the kill is often followed by such fruitless self-examination, as his reason reasserts itself. Samuel seals his mind against the dark thoughts and self-loathing and instead mechanically goes to retrieve his weapon. He is damned just as surely now as he had been before the killing. One more mark on a stained soul makes no difference, God does not see in greys and nor can he. There is nothing for Samuel to do but live with it.
     
    The blade scrapes on the sand and the dry wood of the burning building crackles in the heat. No doubt the lesser vampires were in hiding now but he would find them without Rydal to hide them, to reawake the ghosts of this abandoned town. Guiltily he wonders how the town had been destroyed, he hoped it was vampires rather than the Inquisition, the sword in his hand was an officer’s and he was not innocent of the zealotry that had fired that particular cause; it had taken him some years to realize that their actions were more motivated by the interests of great men than God’s will on earth.
     
    “Help me.” Bob Tenant’s voice barely rises above the crackle of flames.
    “I will, brother.” The Pilgrim says, raising his sabre and advancing.
    “No.” Bob begs as he discerns the Pilgrim’s intention
    “There is no help for it.” The man says, firmly, staring through him with cold hard eyes.
    “You would not wish to wake to the damnation they would drag you into. I will pray with you, you will have salvation.”
    “What do you mean? Just bind my wounds and get me up on the cart.”
    “You have lost too much blood and they have filled you with their poison, even now you are becoming one of them. I am sorry but it is for your soul’s sake.”
    “No! Please!” Bob begs.
    “I will not leave here until every bloodsucker is destroyed, at least you may find redemption now.” The Pilgrim’s reply brooks no argument.
    “I don’t care about that! I don’t care about your damned Crusade! Just get me out of here and I’ll make you rich. Give the money to a priest if it makes you happy but I want to live.”
    “It is too late for that.” The man says