The devil's Pact - S01 E402

Story 13 hours ago

The devil's Pact - S01 E402

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 402

A darkness comes, she whispered, staring at me with her gray eyes. I flinched beneath the weight of her words.

A darkness? Lucifer. I almost summoned the Devil before we were ready. I paled, my knees suddenly week, the pain of my burned flesh crashing into me, and I stumbled. Everything would have been ruined by my rage. Everything.

"Thank you," whispered and she smiled at me.

"Coral" Lana shouted; the leonine woman barreled past me before I could react, and swing my sword. She scooped up Lana in her arms, and leapt through the portal. It wavered, like a mirage, then vanished.

There was a loud groan and then crashing noise above shook the building. The warehouse was collapsing as the fire consumed it. I pulled out my knife and begin carving our escape into the air as I released the summons. Karen smiled at me before she melted into mist. I sawed faster at the Vell, struggling to open the portal before the entire building came down on our heads.

Mary Glassner

I could only watch in horror as the warehouse was consumed by flames. The fire was greedy, and quickly devoured the structure in minutes. The fire seemed to delight in the destruction it caused; an insane glee that grew and grew as more and more of the building was engulfed by its tendrils. Red and orange danced in the night, sending cackling roars and popping laughs into the night sky.

The surviving Rangers were gathered around me. Mark was still inside; my heart clutched in my throat. With a mighty groan, half the roof caved in, sending fiery sparks raining into the night air. No!

Get out, Mark! I frantically sent. Please, please! The warehouse is about to collapse!*

*Working on it, Mark sent back.

I pulled out my silver locket from beneath the stab vest, clutching the heart desperately in my fist. The building creaked ominously, a shuddering moan growing louder and louder as it was consumed by the inferno. There was one, loud snap and it all came crashing down, flames surging up into the sky and a hot wind slamming into me. I flinched before the heat, my auburn hair whipping about my head.

Oh God!

It was only rubble. Flaming, twisted rubble. No longer a building. No-one could have survived that. Tears ran down my warm cheeks. There was no way Mark could have survived the collapse. He was crushed to death, buried in fiery debris. My knees gave out, and I collapsed into a ruin on the street, sobs wracking my body.

"Oh, Mark!" I wailed.

"Yeah, Mare?" Mark croaked behind me.

I spun, there was my husband stumbling out of a portal from the Shadows, followed by eight shaken Rangers. Mark looked like hell, his face red from a terrible burn, and half his head burned clean of hair. He stumbled forward and I stood up and caught him, helping him sink to the ground. His armor disintegrated into golden motes about me

"Oh, Mark," I gasped in horror.

"She got away," he groaned bitterly.

"That's okay." I whispered, and healed him.

He grinned at me when the scarlet light faded, his face healed, and I couldn't help but giggle nervously at his missing hair. He frowned, and I ran my finger along the swath of bare scalp where his hair had burned away.

"You need a haircut," I smiled.

Laughing, he hugged me to him, pulling me onto his lap, and I kissed him. All the scared, excited energy exploding out of me as our lips mashed passionately together. I was telling Mark the truth earlier when I said it was exciting watching him fight. He was amazing as he threw himself into the battle, and my adrenaline and joy stoked my passions. Our kiss would have led to us fucking each other's brains out if a moan of pain hadn't reached my ears.

Breaking the kiss, I said, "There are still wounded that need our help."

"What?" he asked, passion still filling his eyes. "Oh, yes. Of course."

I climbed off my husband, and we set about healing the Rangers who fought and bled and died for us. We led 132 soldiers when we attacked the warehouse, an entire company. Only thirty-five were were still combat ready, sustaining no or only minor injuries. Forty- eight were seriously or critically injured, and forty-nine had died. We killed fourteen monsters most of those were killed by Mark, or with our help and another six had been driven off.

It was sobering to learn just how lethal Lilith's daughters were.

As we healed the wounded, a Stryker rolled up, and an officer he had an eagle on his epaulets, so think that made him a colonel walked over to us, followed by a group of soldiers. "My Lords," he saluted. "We captured a prisoner at the Mayor's house.

I turned, and saw strawberry-blonde Fiona glowering at me, hands bound behind her back. "Lilith will defeat you, tyrants!" she spat at us, and I flinched at the hatred in her eyes. Her aura was red, a Warlock's aura. She'd made a Pact with Lilith.

It broke my heart. I still cared for Fiona. But we deserved her hatred-we had forced her to be our whore.

Lilith

I was still shaking after my brush with death.

The memory of Mark charging me in his angelic armor, that terrible, gleaming sword held high and thirsting for my powers, filled my mind with quacking fear. I tried to shrug it off, reminding myself that I was a Goddess, and he was only a slug, a worm, a piece of filth to be scraped off my sandals after I crushed him beneath my heel. But he had a Priest's Sword, and he had come within heartbeats of slaying my vessel.

I could not afford to die! I could not afford to be cast back into the Abyss. Bereft of my powers.

I shuddered again.

Sent back with no powers like Molech had been.

I could feel Molech's power in Mark when he charged me with that damned weapon. He had the Gift, and any demons felled by his blade would be bereft of all the power they had accumulated, before their souls would be cast back into the Abyss. You'd be as weak as any newly-dead human, left to the mercy of all the lesser demons you had trodden upon.

It would be decidedly unpleasant. A grin split my lips; Molech must be learning that lesson right now. All those he tortured over the eons would be more than glad to share their affections with the former Demon Prince.

Then I froze, realizing that Mark had Molech's powers. Instead of just dissipating them, Mark had instead absorbed them. How? Is this a side-effect of him being a Shaman? Mark wasn't just a Priest, he was also a Warlock, and that always caused unanticipated effects.

"Mother, we're ready," Tir said, Interrupting my thoughts.

I glanced at my daughter, her head cocked to the side like a curious bird, her sapphire eyes wide and shining. She perched at the edge of the Cedar Creek Watershed next to her birth-mother, the dusky-skinned Thamina. She looked sick with worry for her wife. Fiona was either dead or captured, otherwise she would have rendezvoused with them. Beyond Thanina crouched another of my daughters. Vera was sickly-looking, with paper-thin skin.

"Begin" I ordered.

Tir vomited something black into the watershed, while Vera opened her wrist and thick, clumpy blood oozed out into the water. Both of my daughters could spread disease, and the pair had been working on this plague for weeks. The Cedar Creek Watershed provided the majority of the water to the city of Seattle. In just a few hours, half the city would be infected.

Mark may have driven me from my demesne, but I would reclaim it!

"How potent is it?" I asked Tir.

"Mother, we did not have time to finish it," Tir hedged. "It's highly communicable, and should kill roughly 33% of the men infected."

I smiled, staring off at the distant city of Seattle. Soft light bathed the city as the sun rose over the Cascade Mountains behind us. "That's more than enough to distract Mark."

To be continued....