Read Online Last God Standing by Michael Boatman - Free Book Online Page B

findings will be when these matters are resolved through the ongoing investigation which even now is… ongoing.”
    “But, your Holiness…”
    “Or would you rather go on record as having questioned God’s representative on Earth, and the judgment of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, thereby flouting the wisdom of the good people of Rome, every Catholic constituency in the free world and several hundred million of your own viewers?”
    The chubby reporter looked away in shame.
    “Good,” Hannibal snapped. “Now that that’s settled.”
    He uncurled the blood-drenched cat-o’-nine tails from where it lay curled in his lap. Its steel tipped claws clicked as they banged lightly against the quarter mastodon’s knees.
    “Bring him to me: I have papist pork to carve.”
    “I didn’t hear that,” the Pope sang. “Nope. Nothing supernatural happening here.”
    The Nubian warriors dragged the old man toward Hannibal.
    I stepped forward. An undead legend beheading the sitting Pope before an international audience while Rome burned in the background might leave an indelible scar on the psychic flesh of human racial memory. Even a dimensional Reset might not be enough to heal the damage. Still, I had to try. I reached for the power…
    But I was struck by a wave of nausea so intense that I nearly fainted. It felt as if a thin membrane had been drawn between my mind and the dimension the power occupied; the psychic interface hazy as a distant star glimpsed through brackish water.
    “Swear your allegiance to your new master, false Pope. Swear allegiance to me, and perhaps I’ll allow you to serve the men as my comfort wench.”
    “What’s that?” the Pope said. “Is that someone speaking?”
    Hannibal slid off the back of his mount and landed lightly as a gymnast. He sheathed his cat-o’-nine tails, drew a long-bladed knife from a scabbard on his hip and rammed it through the Pope’s right shoulder.
    “Can you hear me now?”
    “An illusion!” the Pope gibbered, trying to staunch his gushing shoulder. “Some kind of psychosomatic stigmata brought on by atheist anti-Life, Jewish-Islamic extremists!”
    Hannibal pulled his broadsword and raised it over the Pope’s head. “Wrong answer.”
    The blade fell, whistling through the air, toward the Pope’s defiant face.
    “Gabriel!”
    The Carthaginian’s blade froze in midswing. Everything stopped as Gabriel appeared in front of me and the temporal anomaly that accompanied every angelic visitation dragged local spacetime to a halt.
    “Yes, Mighty One?”
    Everything would remain Stopped only for as long as Gabriel remained at my side. But the momentum of reality is so powerful that any substantive disruption of the spacetime continuum creates new problems: babies born before they were conceived; eggs hatched centuries after their descendants fertilized them... But how could I defeat Hannibal when I couldn’t access my own divinity?
    As I was considering the extremely limited list of responses, Hannibal’s sword… moved.
    “He’s resisting.”
    “Resisting thy unassailable will, Lord?” Gabriel chuckled. “You’re testing me again, aren’t you? Or perhaps you’re assaying the infidelity of the big Mexican with the meat cleaver.”
    “He’s not Mexican. He’s Carthaginian.”
    I could sense Hannibal marshalling energies destructive enough to undermine temporal forces he couldn’t possibly have mastered. He was immobilized in time, but time was running out.
    “I need Pluto.”
    “The planet?”
    “No, you idiot. Pluto, the Roman God of the Dead.”
    “But, Lord, no pagan Death God has been active since–”
    “Since they all agreed not to intervene in human affairs, yes I know. You have to go get him. Burbank. California. Check the Deadly Delights Horrorshop. He owns the place.”
    At least I hoped he still did. Pluto was notoriously anti-social. For all I knew he might have sold his specialty bookshop and relocated to Miami Beach. But his absence