The devil's Pact - S01 E428

Story 11 hours ago

The devil's Pact - S01 E428

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 428

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Noel Heinrich

“Ignore the pain, Noel,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “Just ignore the pain. Mark Glassner must die for all the atrocities committed in his name, and his callous enslavement of the world. All humans deserve to be free, and to ensure that freedom it sometimes means spilling blood. Your enemies' blood and your own. For generations, men and women have laid down their lives at the altar of Liberty, and today it's your turn. So keep walking, Noel.”

I stumbled through the Shadows in a haze of pain, my golems lumbering along beside me. I knew my destination, picturing the church in downtown Puyallup, and let instincts guide me. That's how you moved around in the Shadows—instincts. What would be a twelve hour trip in the real world, would take me maybe thirty minutes of trudging through the never-ending mist.

I tried to shove down the pain of my broken arm. I bound it to my chest with my torn shirt. All I wore now were my pants and my bulletproof vest, my 9mm service pistol holstered at my waist, a bronze dagger tucked into my belt, and Annihilation, the sword of negation, clutched in my good hand. I held the vile thing in a death grip; the price I paid was far too high for me to lose this blade.

I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, just one more step, over and over. Righteous anger fueled me—and guilt. The innocent girl's face swam in my mind, pleading. I tightened my grip on the sword, trying to forget that memory. I never could.

The Tyrants had to die! Their tyranny could not be allowed to run unchecked. I would stop them no matter the cost to my soul! I just needed to keep putting one foot before the other. Step after pain-filled step. Time seemed to lose all meaning in the Shadows, and distance was only a thing remembered from the real world. Here everything looked the same. Gray ground, gray fog.

“Hello, Noel,” a soft voice whispered out of the mists.

She stepped out before me, blonde and beautiful, a sad smile on her lips. A terrible ache grew in my heart as I stared at the spirit, and for a moment my resolve slipped and those memories I had carefully bottled threatened to rush back; I tightened the lid, and reclaimed my resolve. Nothing was going to stop me, not after all I had done to reach this point. After I had killed—

The girl's innocent face filled my mind again. Her face was never far, frozen in that awful moment. Her eyes had bulged as her fingers had clawed ineffectually at the garrote. Guilt racked my soul; I could not let her death be in vain! Her death had to mean something! Otherwise I had murdered her for nothing, and that would mean I was nothing more than a—

I pushed the guilt away; I was a Patriot. I did what was necessary to defeat the Tyrants. I gripped Annihilation, raising the hole-in-reality up, and leveled it at the spirit before me. I had to finish this! I had to kill Mark! No matter the cost!

Even if that meant condemning Chasity to oblivion.

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Alison de la Fuente

“Pick up, pick up!” I screamed at the satphone. “Pick up you stupid...”

“Hello?”

“Candy, put Sam on right goddamn now!”

“We're in the middle of something important,” Candy said brusquely. “We've found something here at Qumran, call back...”

“Put her on right the fuck now!” I screamed. “It's life or death! We're under fucking attack!”

“Fine, Alison,” Candy sighed. “You don't need to be so melodramatic.” She paused, then asked, “Are you setting off fireworks?”

“Those are guns, you stupid cow!”

“Stupid cow?” she muttered angrily. “I should just hang up right now!”

“I'm sorry,” I said through gritted teeth. I wanted to reach through the damned satphone and wring the stupid cow's throat. A boom rocked me, the second claymore detonated, blowing the legs off a golem. It fell to the ground in a cloud of red dust, then flailed on the ground with its arms, before finding purchase, and started dragging itself up the knoll. Great. “Now put Sam on before we die you stupid fucking cow!” I snarled, so angry my words almost ran together.

Candy snorted, and she spoke to someone. There was more rustling, then Sam answered, “Hey, Alison, what's so important?”

“We're being attacked by clay men,” I told her with relief. “The Patriots created them.”

“Claymen?” Sam frowned. “I'm not sure I've heard of that.”

My stomach sank. “Really? Only heavy explosives seem to do anything to them. And we're running out of those.”

“Hmm, describe them in detail.”

“They're tall, maybe ten feet, and made of red clay. They don't feel pain or anything. They're like animated statues, and we've already killed the Warlocks who activated them, and now they're attacking us.”

“Interesting,” Sam murmured.

“It's really not! These things are practically unstoppable!”

“They sound like golems,” Sam said. “It's a Jewish legend. Supposedly they'll obey any command that their Warlock gives them. Is there anything written on the golems' foreheads?”

I peered through the auraculars at the nearest golem's forehead. There was something there: three Hebrew letters. It was hard to make out which three as the golem lumbered forward. “Yeah, a three-letter Jewish word.”

“That would be met, I believe,” Sam answered. “It means death in Hebrew. Without a Warlock to guide them, it will just kill the nearest humans until it is deactivated.”

“So how do we deactivate them? Outside of brute force?”

“Oh, destroy the word on their forehead,” Sam explained. “That's probably what actually stopped them. The blast probably disrup...”

I hung up—I didn't have time for one of Sam's long-winded explanations—and screamed, “Shoot for the forehead!”

“Yes, ma'am!” Sergeant Holland shouted back, ejecting the magazine smoothly from his weapon and jamming in the next one, and started firing.

Bullets began peppering the golems' faces. The damned things were so close, so I drew my Colt .45, and aimed the pistol at the nearest one's face. My hand shook with adrenaline as I unloaded the clip; I missed with every shot.

“Shit,” I muttered.

I ejected the clip, fumbling with the replacement magazine. The first golem collapsed in a heap of red rubble from the soldiers' fire, then a second and third. It was working! We could do this! I slammed the magazine into my pistol, released the slide, took a deep breath, aimed carefully. “You can do this, Alison,” I whispered, then fired, emptying my entire clip in two heartbeats.

And missed with every goddamn shot! I didn't even hit the fucking golem's giant torso! Dammit! The damned thing was almost as big as the side of a barn! And I did so well on the practice range. I ejected the magazine, my hands shaking violently. I tried to calm them down, breathing deeply. How were all these soldiers so calm? How could they face down unfeeling and unliving mounds of clay walking towards us like it was just another day at the office.

“We need to retreat!” Holland shouted. Half of the golems were destroyed, but the other ten were so close, about to summit the knoll.

“Fall back!” Desiree ordered. I didn't need to be told a second time.

Two of the soldiers, Millner and Vasquez, kept shooting, providing cover for our retreat, as the rest raced down the slope of the knoll. It was two miles to where we parked the vehicles. Two miles across broken ground and scrub bushes; we'd never outrun the golems. That didn't stop us from trying!

Fear spurred me as I ran down the hill, heedless to how dangerous it was. I didn't care that I might trip and fall and break my neck, I just knew that if those things caught me a broken neck would be the least of my problems. The hill was dotted with olive-green brush that ripped at my arms as I raced by, leaving stinging cuts I barely felt. I reached the bottom of the knoll, thrilled that I somehow didn't fall, and I put all my effort into running as fast as I possibly could. I wasn't going to die here, killed by some fucking golem!

I stepped in a jackrabbit's hole.

The damned thing was practically invisible, dug into a tuft of yellow grass. My ankle twisted; pain shot through me, white-hot. I fell forward with a loud gasp, landing hard on my hands and knees. I couldn't lie here, those things would tear me apart. I pushed back up, struggling to stand. I put weight on my hurt ankle; it folded up like a cheap chair. I cried out, clutching it, and collapsing onto my face again.

“Alison!” Desiree shouted, kneeling down next to me.

“I think I messed up,” I said, trying to grin through the pain—I failed.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing my arm.

Desiree put her arm under my shoulder, helping me up. She supported me, my arm wrapped around her shoulder. We struggled forward—I was reduced to hopping on my one good ankle. Behind us, I could hear thudding footsteps. I glanced back and saw six golems striding down the knoll after us, Millner's ruined body clutched in one of the golem's fists like a bloody, torn doll. Vasquez raced ahead of the advancing golems, running like the Devil himself was licking at his heels.

“Let's go!” Vasquez shouted, grabbing my other arm and, together, he and Desiree half-carried and half-dragged me away from the golems.

We didn't go fast. There wasn't much that I could do. I opened my mouth, prepared to tell my wife to leave me, but she shot me a warning glance that said everything: “I love you, and I am not leaving you behind to be torn apart.” So I struggled to use my one good foot, trying to push us forward as they carried me. The other soldiers quickly outdistanced us, and the golems kept advancing like a force of nature, uncaring, unfeeling, unmerciful.

Holland and the other soldiers reached a line of scrub, and turned to provide us covering fire. Another golem collapsed behind us, but those thudding footsteps grew closer and closer. Two more collapsed. A grenade sailed over our head, exploded, and I screamed in pain as something hot seared into my ass.

“Faster!” I urged, glancing behind me to see a golem only ten feet away, his arms outstretched. Christ, his hand was bigger than my head!

The gunfire was dwindling; the soldiers were running out of ammo. They drew their sidearms, carefully aiming, and opened fire at the golems. I could hear the bullets whistling as they flew right over our heads. I scrunched down, trying to hunker my head out of the soldiers' line of fire, and squeezed my eyes shut. I didn't want to see what killed me. Whether it was the golem's grasping hand or my own men's bullets, I didn't want to know.

See what your stupidity has done! my subconscious railed. You never should have left his side!

“I'm sorry, Masters,” I whispered; I didn't want to die. I wanted to be at Master's and Mistress's side forever with Desiree. “I'll wait for you with Chasity and the others. Yours forever.”

There was a groaning noise and a loud thud as something heavy crashed into the ground behind me. The gunfire stopped; the soldiers cheered, whopping and hollering with unabashed joy. I forced myself to open my eyes and look back. Strewn across the ground behind us were six piles of red clay, one just feet away, a small line of clay leading from that mass to just inches from me. The thing must have been just heartbeats from wrapping its strong hands about my neck and squeezing the life out of me.

Whoops of joy went up from the soldiers. I started shaking as Vasquez and Desiree set me down. We were alive. Energy surged through me, and I grabbed my wife and kissed her thoroughly on the lips. We were alive! She held me tight, trembling in my arms. We lived! We defeated the Patriots, stopped their attack, and survived! Desiree thrust her tongue into my mouth; my fingers stroked her neck and cheek, savoring her warmth, her life.

I was so happy! I didn't even feel the pain in my broken ankle.

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