He and the demon continued to stare at one another.
And bigger . . .
Mulvehill’s hand began to twitch, eager to snatch the gun from the waistband of his pants.
And bigger.
Was that movement beneath the layers of cloth?
And bigger.
The Bone Master suddenly stepped back, moving sideways into a passage of shadow, and was gone.
Mulvehill turned to Squire, who raised his axe.
“Remember the Alamo,” the goblin said as shadows shifted all around them.
Mulvehill drew his own weapon without a word.
And the balloon finally burst, sounding very much like a shot from his gun.
• • •
Ashley gave the chain a solid tug to make sure it would hold.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked as Linda started to wrap the end of the chain around her waist.
“As sure as I’m going to be,” she answered, then looked toward the tree again and appeared troubled.
“It looks sicker, doesn’t it?” Ashley said, as she followed Linda’s gaze.
Marlowe whined from where he lay at the base of the tree. He gave it a sniff, his tail going between his legs.
“Yeah, it does,” Linda agreed. “Which makes what I’m about to do all the more important.” She walked to the edge of the hole and looked down.
“How far down do you think it goes?” Ashley asked.
“Hopefully no deeper than the length of this chain.” Linda checked the chain around her waist. “I guess this is it, then.”
Ashley tightened her hold on the length of chain in her hands and braced herself against a large root. “Unless we can come up with a better plan.”
“Something’s telling me this is where I’ve got to go,” Linda said.
“And something is telling me that this could turn out to be a very bad idea,” Ashley countered.
“We’ll never know unless we try,” Linda said. And then she went to Ashley, wrapping the girl in her arms in a hug.
Ashley was a bit taken aback by this sudden show of affection, but she hugged Linda back just as tightly. It was at that moment she knew Remy had made a really good choice.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Linda whispered, finally releasing her.
“Is something telling you that, too?” Ashley asked.
“Exactly.” Linda smiled.
Marlowe got up and came over to lend his support.
“You be a good boy and protect Ashley, all right?” Linda told the dog.
He barked once and wagged his tail.
“There’s a good dog,” Linda said, petting his head before returning to the hole. She turned and backed up slightly, the heels of her shoes at the very edge. “You ready?”
Ashley planted her feet and gripped the chain with both hands. “Ready,” she confirmed.
Linda slowly lowered herself over the edge. “You got me?”
“Got you,” Ashley grunted. She watched as Linda’s head disappeared over the edge, and she let out some more chain. “Are you good?”
“Good,” Linda answered.
Marlowe ran to the edge of the hole and stretched his neck to peer over the side.
Ashley let out more chain, feeling the beginnings of blisters on her fingers. “Still good?” she called out, trying to ignore the pain.
“Still good,” Linda called back.
“And signs of the bottom?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Can you see anything?” Ashley asked, struggling to plant her feet more firmly as she began to slide forward.
“No, it’s too dark,” Linda hollered. She sounded farther away now.
The blisters on Ashley’s hands were getting worse, and it was harder to hold on to the chain. Her biceps starting to burn painfully.
“Are you all right?” she called out, waiting for a response that never came.
“Linda!” Ashley cried.
The chain went suddenly slack, and Ashley tumbled backward, her head bouncing off the ground so hard that she actually saw stars.
“Oh shit,” she exclaimed, trying to shake it off. Marlowe was there at her side at once, sniffing and licking at her face. “Ohshitohshitohshit . . .”
Ashley struggled to her knees, crawling to the hole, not even thinking to be careful as she peered over the edge.
“Linda! Are you all right? Linda!”
But the only reply was an eerie silence from inky blackness below.
• • •
Simeon stared at the golden bullet on the desktop before him.
He’d been doing this for days, imagining the effects of such a projectile as it was shot into a nearly omnipotent deity. A bullet of creation, explosively entering the body of the Creator.
A smile crept across Simeon’s face as he imagined all of reality collapsing in upon itself, everything that was—everything that would be—coming to an end.
The forever man closed his eyes, imagining how peaceful and quiet it would be. . . .
But then he considered another scenario where the bullet was fired, the Almighty struck, and nothing at all happened. The end result of all of Simeon’s hard work, producing only an angry God who punished him in some new and horrible way.
Simeon scoffed at the idea that there was something more horrible than the existence he already had.
Picking up the bullet, he held it to eye level, attempting to infuse the shell with a bit of his personality and his intense desire to cause as much pain as was caused to him. He rubbed his finger along the warm metal jacket, focusing all the anger and misery he’d endured through the countless lifetimes he’d walked the planet since the Son of God dragged him back from the peace of death.
“I’d be careful with that,” said the sorcerer Malatesta.
Simeon was surprised to see the man up and about. After he’d worked his powerful magicks in creating the projectile, he’d practically collapsed into a coma.
“You’re awake.” Simeon’s eyes were still fixed on the bullet he held.
“I am,” he said, coming to stand beside the forever man.
Simeon managed to rip his eyes from the glorious object to look at the sorcerer. He looked healthier than he had, a pinkness to his complexion that hadn’t been there before. “Rested?”
“I am,” Malatesta said. “You shouldn’t be playing with that.” He gestured toward the bullet, looking increasingly nervous.
Simeon smiled and gently set it down on the desk. “I don’t think I have anything to worry about. . . .”
The blast of magickal force struck him square in the chest, lifting him from his chair and sending him soaring across the room. Simeon struck the stone wall with such force that he felt his spine snap. The pain was excruciating, but it helped to keep him focused.
“Rested enough to wrest control away from the demon that has made me an accomplice to this heinous act,” Malatesta declared as he carefully took the bullet from the desk. “Actually, I should probably thank you. The act of creating this atrocity weakened the demonic parasite enough for me to overpower it.”
He slipped the bullet into the front pocket of his shirt. “I can’t allow you to carry out your plan. It goes against everything I believe in.”
The sorcerer held out his hands and began to utter an ancient incantation. An eerie glow began to form at the tips of his fingers.
“Demons, come to me!” Simeon managed to cry as he turned the ring of Solomon on his left hand.
Malatesta doubled over as if struck in the stomach. “No,” he gasped. The magick was leaking from his hands, and he attempted to aim the blast at the forever man, but it went awry, instead striking the floor in front of the sorcerer in an explosion of rock.
The door to the sanctuary flew open, and Simeon’s two demon servants spilled into the room.
“Stop him,” Simeon shrieked, his spine having mended enough that he was able to push himself up painfully.
The demon Robert was the first to reach the magick user, pouncing upon Malatesta, wrapping his arm about his throat, and trying to pull him to the floor.
“Been wanting to take you down since you first showed up,” the demon hissed. One of his hands morphed into a claw, which he raked across the magick user’s side.
Malatesta reacted with a grunt of pain and drove an elbow into Robert’s monstrous mouth, causing a rainfall of teeth upon the floor. Before the demon recovered, the sorcerer hurled a spell that launched the demon upward, pinning him to the ceiling.
Beleeze then dove to cut the sorcerer from groin to chest with a nasty blade clutched in his hand.
Was that a moment of hesitation?
Simeon wondered as he watched Malatesta and Beleeze struggle. He’d had his concerns about the demon since returning from Vietnam.
Beleeze slashed with his blade, driving the sorcerer back but also giving the magick user time to recite an incantation and . . .
Simeon’s suspicions were verified as Beleeze briefly locked eyes with him before lowering his blade and facing the sorcerer.
“I’m ready to leave now,” Simeon heard the demon say as Malatesta unleashed a blast of pure magickal force that disintegrated Beleeze’s torso to little more than a fine mist.
Simeon had feeling in his legs again, and, with the help of the stone wall, pulled himself up to his feet. The demon Robert took the moment of distraction to rip himself down, leaving a large portion of his flesh still dangling and dripping from the ceiling above like bloody party streamers.
Malatesta threw up his hand, a ball of hissing energy, hurtling toward Robert. The demon managed to evade being hit by the sphere of power, but it struck a nearby wall, the force of the blast catching Robert off guard as he prepared to charge his foe. Robert struck a table, crashing to the floor in a heap of broken wood and office supplies. Malatesta took full advantage, launching another sphere that picked up the demon, the office supplies, and the broken pieces of table and spun them around in such a way that the flesh that remained upon the demon’s body was ripped away and tossed around the room. Little more than a bloody skeleton was finally released when it was all through, splintering as it struck, the ground pelted by pieces of shattered furniture and paper clips.
Simeon watched as a blood-spattered Malatesta turned toward him. What a sight he was, and how powerful he must have felt to have come this far. A true feat of strength and perseverance.
Sadly, it would all be for naught.
Malatesta tensed, ready to lord his vast magickal talents over Simeon, when the forever man decided that he’d had just about enough.
The magick that Simeon wielded was incredibly old and lethal, radiating outward from his body with a spell that he needed only to think of.
Malatesta attempted to raise a shield of protection, but the Vatican magick user was just not strong enough to deal with magick of this nature.
Simeon’s ancient magick hit him like a wave, washing over his flesh, unmaking what had already been made, and then reassembling, inside out.
Malatesta’s scream was horrific to hear as he dropped to exposed knees of bone, muscle tendon, and sinew, internal workings jarred by the fall tearing loose of their connective tissue to spatter upon the floor.
It was amazing that the sorcerer was even still alive.
Simeon approached the man who had now fallen to his side, writhing on the stone floor in a puddle of blood and other foul liquids better served on the inside of a body.
“Did you seriously believe that you could best me?” Simeon asked, looking down at the Vatican sorcerer as he struggled to die. “That your pathetic magicks could somehow match mine? Magicks that I’ve had thousands of years to collect and practice? I’m surprised at you, Constantin.”
Simeon squatted down, careful not to get any of the bodily fluids that had been splashed about on his slacks. He studied Malatesta’s chest area, seeing flesh, and the clothing that had adorned it before the spell, now crammed inside the exposed rib cage. Aiming for the shirt pocket, Simeon reached between the bones, digging with his fingers into the muscle, fat, and skin until he felt the dampened cloth of the sorcerer’s shirt and at last found his prize.
“There you are,” Simeon said with a grin, extracting the bullet through the body of the still-living magick user.
Malatesta shuddered in the throes of death. Simeon was surprised that he was still holding on, imagining that it had something to do with the Larva demon that still possessed him.
Pocketing the bullet, Simeon searched for something to wipe his hand on. Finding nothing at hand, he resorted to wiping the foul fluids on the leg of his slacks, feeling his ire rise with the fact that now he’d be forced to change his clothes.
For a moment he actually considered being merciful and assisting Malatesta with the act of dying, but now . . .
Simeon watched the sorcerer twitch and writhe, imagining the excruciating pain. There were sounds that might have been speech coming from the man. He could actually see the vocal cords trembling as they attempted to convey some sort of audible message.
The angel Satquiel’s sudden appearance actually startled Simeon. The angel soldier stood before the bloody remains of the Vatican magick user, a look of sympathy upon his statuesque features.
“What are you doing here?” Simeon asked, righting his overturned chair and sitting down.
“You told me to come when I’d learned something new . . . something about Unification.”
The angel knelt down and stroked the exposed bloody skull of the dying sorcerer. “This creature’s suffering is great.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Simeon agreed. “What do you have for me?”
“Preparations are being made,” the angel said. “Michael has already been dispatched.”
“Where?” Simeon asked. There was gore beneath his fingernails, and he was using a paper clip that he’d found on the floor to clean them.
“This man’s suffering,” the angel said instead. “May I?”
Simeon stopped digging and looked up. “If you must.”
Satquiel extended his hand and a dagger of fire appeared. He pierced the man’s skull, ending his life, as well as that of the demonic parasite possessing him.
“Are we through yet?” Simeon asked impatiently.
Satquiel disposed of his blade and stood.
“Where?” Simeon asked again.
The angel reached inside the pocket of his suit jacket and produced a piece of branch, holding it out to the forever man.