Death of the Gods Read online

  Magic: When Ruthless Ambition is not Enough

  H E X E

  WITCHES, WARRIORS, MAGIC & MURDER

  By Rex Baron

  V O L U M E F O U R

  DEATH OF THE GODS

  Hexe (this series of books) is a work of fiction.

  While some of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are based on real people and events, everything that happens to them are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  This book Copyright © 2019 Isobella Crowley, Rex Baron

  Cover Design by Jeff Brown

  Cover copyright © ProsperityQM LLC

  ProsperityQM LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  ProsperityQM LLC

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  First US edition, 2019

  Version 1.01.01

  Hexe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2019 by Isobella Crowley, Rex Baron

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Author’s Forward

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Author Notes

  Social Links

  Dedication

  Dedicated to the Power and Magic that lies deep within each of us.

  — Rex

  DEATH OF THE GODS

  HEXE VOLUME 6

  JIT Beta Readers

  Brian Roberts

  Kimberley Beaulieu

  Sara Keyes

  Leslie Danieri

  If I missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  Sarah Kante

  Author’s Forward

  Thank you for reading HEXE.I hope that you will find it an enjoyable and exciting experience. But it is important for the reader to be aware that although there are any number of historical personages characterized throughout, the events described surrounding them and their interactions with the fictional characters are largely imagined and presented as such, strictly for the sake of storytelling.

  There is no intention on the part of the author or publisher to demean or malign the reputation or character of any historical person represented and any reference to their sexual orientation or personal actions is simply hearsay, based on information collected from outside sources.

  A great deal of research has gone into the creation of this series, and every effort has been made to ensure historical accuracy—even to the descriptions of the recipes for spell casting, which have been researched from credible, centuries-old sources and included (in part) to enhance the story’s authenticity. This being said, HEXE is not intended as a primer on witchcraft and much of what is described that deals with Wicca and Witchcraft is left for the reader to further investigate for their own enjoyment.

  It might also be noted that because much of the storyline is set before the new millennium, when the notion of political correctness was not in place culturally, some of the language and description of characters might be judged as harsh or even inappropriate by today’s standards. But in the times when the events of the story are set, this was assuredly not the case. The manners and language of the 1920s differs greatly from that of the 1930s, and certainly from the parts of the story set in the 1980s or present times. In order to give the correct “feeling” to those times, I have made a strong effort to depict situations and people as they would have been seen and described then, with all the flavour and gusto of those unique and exciting times.

  I do hope you enjoy your journey into the fascinating world of HEXE, “the chosen”, and look forward to continuing the saga until its fateful and exciting conclusion.

  So Mote It Be REX BARON

  Fountain Hills, AZ, September 2019

  Chapter One

  The Burgs, outside Munich, Spring 1938

  The rapier blade flashed past, within a hair's breadth of Kurt's face. He leapt backward and countered with a skillful riposte, then lunged forward, slashing a bloody scratch across the stomach of his opponent. The bare chests of the two men glistened with the sweat of exertion and the excitement of the competition, as the steel weapons whirled about them with the speed of mid-summer lightning.

  Kurt had come to the Burgs, an unlikely, seemingly peaceful farm region outside the city to train men for service in the Order of the Black Guard, a secret society of warrior priests sworn to defend the mystical aspects of the Lords of the Thule to the death. He had convinced the arrogant Chancellor that others could be trained as vessels for greatness in the same way that he had been. He had told him that the spirits of the Thule could be invoked to ascend into the bodies of ordinary men and occupy them like a garrison. Their minds could be trained to create reality, not to perceive it as part of the collective unconscious as others do, but to master it and command it, to shape the world to their own will.

  Their perception of the world would become real, altering what existed in the physical world, transforming it into what they desired. If they chose to have an hour pass in an instant, reality could be altered to make it so. If they desired that the sky change from its usual blue to some other color in the spectrum… that also was within the realm of possibility. Through their training and by initiation into the Order, these elite few could rise above the level of ordinary men to be gods. They would rule over inferior beings, those who were not initiated, those Soulless ones who were genetically unworthy of inclusion in the highest ranks of the New Order.

  In exchange for this preeminence, they would surrender their own desires, the need for companionship and family, and become one with their fellow warriors in service to the Order. They would be above all civil law and would one day flourish in a separate State with laws of its own, situated in the area that is now the Burgundy region of France.

  Once again, Kurt struck out at his young opponent with the stinging blade.

  “What is the command of the Order?” he interrogated the man as he backed him toward the wall with his blade.

  “Believe, Obey and Die,” the young man answered without hesitation.

  “And what is the motto of the Order?” Kurt asked without pause.

  “The tragedy of greatness is to trample on corpses,” the young man answered.

  Before the boy had finished the quotation, Kurt had succeeded in opening another small wound at the base of the young man's throat.

  “What is your name, soldier?” Kurt demanded.

  “Kessler,” the boy answered.

  Kurt parried an advance cleverly offered by the soldier, but deflected its force, throwing the boy off guard.

  “So tell me Kessler… how wide is the English Channel at the point between Dover and Ca
lais?”

  “Thirty-four kilometers at the Straits of Dover, Sir,” Kessler managed to answer through his exhaustion.

  Blood poured in rhythmic spurts from the open wound at his throat.

  “That is incorrect,” Kurt shouted, coming in close with the handle of the rapier, bringing it up sharply under the boy's chin.

  Kessler flew backward and sprawled helplessly on the polished floor. All present halted their individual contests to watch in silence as Kurt held the sharp edge of his blade against the throat of the breathless young soldier.

  Kessler had, in fact, given the correct answer, but not the answer that the training in the Order demanded. The minds of the men had been given over to the suggestion that the Channel was some twenty kilometers narrower than it was in reality, so that by consciously repeating this fact in their thoughts and dwelling on this point while in a meditative state, they would collectively be able to mentally shift the dimensions of physical form, thereby creating a new reality. If an invasion of England were on the secret agenda, it would be invaluable to be able to control such factors, making access to the enemy a matter of mere mental concentration.

  “Fourteen kilometers across,” the helpless soldier corrected himself.

  A dark smile played over Kurt's features. He hesitated for a long moment as the young man stared resolutely into his eyes. The boy lay there calmly, covered in his own blood, resigned that at this instant, like any other true soldier, he might be called upon to give up his life for the Order.

  With a quick, graceful movement, Kurt whipped the point of the blade away from its target.

  The boy's chest heaved with relief as the life-giving air filled his lungs. Kurt stepped away, and clicking his heels together in a show of respect, bowed to his defeated opponent. He extended his hand and helped the young man to his feet.

  “Tonight you shall undergo the rites of initiation into the Order of the Black Guard. We shall meet again at midnight. Let us hope that you are more successful at staying on your feet.”

  The boy nodded with as much solemnity as he could muster and bowed slightly to his fencing master before retiring to dress his wounds.

  Kurt absent-mindedly traced a swastika on the floor with the tip of his rapier. He drew it first with the little tails pushing left to right, as if it were a little water wheel turning clockwise like the hands of a clock. Then, he traced the symbol backwards with the tails propelling it counterclockwise, against the course of nature. This had been the way the New Order had taken the symbol and reversed it to represent the ideals of the new Reich. What had once been a timeless symbol of order and the cyclical celebration of ceremonial magic, used in symbiosis with the seasons to bring the human consciousness into natural harmony, had now been inverted to represent a shattering power of chaos and mass hysteria. The symbol itself had an esoteric meaning and was linked to the color purple. It had the amethyst as its stone and the rapier as the weapon most in keeping with its ceremonial vibration.

  Fantastic, he thought, that a few lines traced in the wax of the gymnasium floor could be charged with such meaning and command such power in the mind. Perhaps only the cross of ancient Christianity held an equal charge of unavoidable authority. Esoterically, the cross was associated with its own color, blue, the sapphire, and the art of wrestling as its agent of coercion. He could not help but be reminded of the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord.

  He had learned of these things in Tibet, while studying with the monks of the high regions. The Nationalist Socialist Party had sent its officers there as early as 1923 for training in the centuries-old mystery schools. They had learned the ancient practices of mind control and ceremonial magic. The ritual of initiation that his young recruits would undergo was distilled from the practices of these ageless ideals.

  Kurt had come to look upon those ten years spent in the mountains as the time between first meeting Helen and the time, at the rally, when he rediscovered her. She had become a focal point of his thoughts and was, as he was now well aware, a security risk to his position and perhaps the safety of the Order itself. He had told her of the Thule. He had explained to her the secret of the unseen world and the army designed to inhabit it. More importantly, he knew that she was one of them, both in her ambition and in her understanding of the powers at their disposal. He had seen into her mind and knew that she was capable of murder and every other conceivable treachery.

  She was one of them, and he cared for her. He had avoided her company for the past three days in preparation for this night’s ceremony. He had made excuses of work, unable to confide in her that the strictest observance of celibacy was a prerequisite cleansing for the ritual. Each man must be purified in his thoughts as well as his physical body, in order to be worthy to approach the initiation into the brotherhood. Scrupulously, Kurt strained to remove any trace of Helen from his thoughts. He would allow himself that luxury, that reward, after the forces of reckoning had been put to rest.

  • • •

  By the stroke of midnight the soldiers had begun to assemble in the great hall of the old abandoned monastery just outside Munich. The exterior rows of archways and porticos, crumbling with age and disuse, had been left to their progressing state of decay. The old orchard and vineyards, which stretched for miles around the network of buildings had also purposely been left to their own devices, creating a web of tangled vines and tall grass that defied the curious local trespassers and appeared to the foreign passerby to be nothing more than a rundown farm.

  Inside the dirt-caked walls of the abandoned brotherhood of Christianity, a new brotherhood had taken root. Stainless steel walls and floors the color of blood, inlaid with massive black swastikas made of onyx and outlined in the purest gold, reflected their purposeful alignment with all that technology had to offer. The windows had been bricked over and the walls lined with lead to prevent light or the smallest sound from within betraying the ceremony and training of the chosen brothers to the outside world.

  Kurt pulled off his high black boots and peeled away the layers of his heavy woolen uniform. The others present silently did the same as they made the ablutions necessary for the ritual to commence. They bathed themselves without speaking a word, each man concentrating, focusing his mind on the purpose before them. They were creating a new rank of the Black Guard, initiating thirteen men who had been tried and trained to aspire to their godhood. They had been questioned and physically honed to be stronger, more beautiful and more detached from emotion than ordinary, inferior men.

  Kurt glanced over them as they dried their naked bodies and took on the white garment of the ritual. As his eyes passed over them, appraising the physical results of his labors, he was aware of Kessler watching back, a faint smile of recognition on his lips.

  Every single man fastened a linen cloth about his waist, covering his nakedness, but remained bare chested. A garland of flowers was placed around the neck of each new man by one of his older brothers, who then bowed down and placed slippers made from the skin of a goat on the feet of his charge.

  The hour of cleansing was nearly over, and the initiation time of 0100 hours was drawing near. The mystical number, thirteen, was equal to that of Christ and his twelve disciples, melding the hour of completion, twelve, with the beginning of the first hour of a new day. It was a number thought unlucky by the common masses, its significance and association with the massacre of the Knights Templar in the fourteenth century faded from the collective memory, leaving only a superstitious, subliminal fear like that associated with black cats and the undead.

  At the appointed time, Kurt held up his hand demanding attention, and the men fell into two files, their heads bowed in reverence like postulants adorned in flowers, ready to take their vows. Kurt led the men down a narrow stairway to a chamber deep under the monastery ruin.

  It was an octagonal chapel, its vaulted ceiling twinkling with the luster of ten thousand semi-precious stones, set like stars in an indigo field of painted night
sky. Some walls were adorned with scenes of Inca sacrificial rites and others with flagellation and the ecstasy of martial punishment, reproduced from the ancient Pompeian Villa of Mysteries, painted by the Romans long before the fall.

  In the center of the space, on a raised dais, stood an altar, a table of carved stone. On it lay a gleaming broadsword, the symbolic weapon of the conqueror, the scepter of power by which the rewards of the Grail knights had been bestowed.

  Each of the thirteen candidates had come from a noble family. Each had been asked to abandon his personal shield, engraved with the coat of arms that had been carried into battle by at least four generations of ancestors. Each would relinquish the vanity of individual glory, forsaking his own family crest and taking up in its place the crooked cross of the new order of demigods.

  The soldiers formed themselves into a circle around the stone table, and Kurt took his place at its center. A bank of a hundred burning candles illuminated the scene, making the tan, oiled flesh of the young men glow like a sultan's harem of dark skinned beauties. The ceremony itself had come to be called l'Air Epais, or the “ritual of the stifling air,” because it was said the atmosphere of the chapel became so charged with the presence of the holy of holies, the Lords of the Thule, that the initiates would become unable to breathe. Gasping for air, they would fall down in a trance-like stupor and speak the words of the ancients through their own mouths.

  Kurt raised his hands above his head, invoking the forces to recognize his summoning. He called out in a thundering voice:

  “The single living Being that exists is the Cosmos, the universe. All other beings, including men, are mere out-picturings of its living consciousness. We, as men, are not alive until we have cognizance of this Being, which surrounds us, encloses us and uses our brains to create new forms. We, here present, recognize that Being as the divine Master of Masters.”