Realm Wraith (48 page)

Rayne’s vision distorted once again, and he found himself seeing from three viewpoints. He saw the snake head before him, but he saw through its eyes, and gazed upon his own face, which still looked somewhat human, but his skin had become a deep, azure-tinted grey that darkened into the indigo of scaly necks. His pale hair moved with a life of its own. He saw his mouth, full of razor sharp teeth and four long fangs. And his eyes were black pits, just like the serpents’. He screamed, while the beast growing from his back let out an equal cry.

This had to be a dream. It couldn’t be happening right in front of him; it was impossible. The reptilian head hung there, unmoving. He reached up a hand to touch it, and touched his fingers over cold, slick scales, flinching in surprise when he felt his fingers brushing against his own skin. The serpent flinched with the exact same amount of emotion. Rayne cocked his head, focusing on the sensation of movement. And just like that, the monstrous appendage tilted its own head. Rayne pictured it, willed it even, to open its gaping maw, and watched as the snake extended its jaw, revealing rows of enormous, sharpened teeth.

“It was you all along!” Gabriel’s accusing tone made Rayne glance at him, but not with his own head. He didn’t even have to turn around; he could see Gabriel through the eyes of the snake that constricted his foe. “That monster that attacked us in the mist! Those snakes are you! That means you—you—” his eyes went very wide. “Miranda,” he breathed. “You, her—Oh my God.”

Gabriel’s blubbering confirmed what Rayne already knew. He suddenly felt sick as the truth unfolded before him. He did not want to face that truth, the monster growing from his own back. His body twitched, and he felt a third head burst free, another facet of the truth he didn’t want to face, further exploding his vision, as well as his other senses, into pieces.

“I’m the Serpent of Babylon?” he gasped, holding his head, unable to believe it even as the words poured from his lips. A sharp itching sensation crawled up his arm and he scratched it with distracted, irritated savagery, his long, clawed fingers leaving behind bloody strips.

Gabriel grabbed the opportunity to target the coils holding him and set them ablaze with his power, forcing the serpent to let him go. Rayne shrieked again, blinded by pain from an appendage that by all rights shouldn’t even be there. He whirled his other three heads, as a fourth snake wormed its way out of his back. Confused and enraged, the newest monstrous head reared up and bit down, its massive jaws tearing Gabriel’s throat out. The corpse collapsed to the ground, but Rayne wasn’t done yet. He seized Gabriel’s soul, dragging it up to eye level. It burned to the touch, skin riddled with fiery cracks, and the heat made him even angrier.

“You festering wretch!” he roared. “I’m going to rip your soul into a thousand pieces before I send you to the heart of the Abyss to writhe among the damned! I will flay you raw and red until you scream tormented lamentations like music to my ears!
Your blood is going to pour down in rivers and be food for the worms!
”

A child’s tortured shriek cut Rayne’s tirade short, and he saw Levi standing in the doorway. If he had heeded his father’s words and escaped, only to come back, or simply never left at all, Rayne didn’t know. But he stood there now, staring at the scene before him with an expression of pure, indescribable horror on his small face.

“Levi,” Rayne gasped. His serpent heads all turned and hissed, to his abhorrence. Levi screamed even louder, scrambling away from the doorway and racing down the hall. “Levi, wait!”

Rayne dropped Gabriel and tripped after his terrified son. The weight of his heads unbalanced him, and he crashed to the floor. But he did not hit the ground. The Abyss had grown impatient, and it sucked him and his quarry screaming into its madness.

“Levi!” Rayne shrieked again, trying to claw his way back. But it was too late, and the world he knew dissolved into the aether.

* * *

Together they plunged deep into the Abyss’s nightmare. Rayne tried to regain control, to direct where they went, but a crushing chill claimed his soul. They arrived in a frozen land ruled by thin fog and crackling ice. But something was different. The air didn’t bite as it once did, and the winds did not feel chilly. It felt far too warm now, and Rayne knew why as he gazed over the icy fields, and saw liquid fire trickling beneath cracked ice, turning frost to water, and eating away at everything. Frozen pillars shattered, raining down confused and frightened souls that twitched upon the ground like helpless fish.

“Isn’t it glorious?” Gabriel taunted Rayne as an orange glow spread beneath their feet. “My god told me a lot of things. About how Nen’kai’s little pet has chained himself to this land, driving back the fire so Azaznir couldn’t make it his own. But now, Azaznir’s stepped up his efforts.”

Rayne’s stomach churned. “Why? Why now? Why here?”

“What do you care, freak?” Flames erupted from Gabriel’s body, melting the ice further.

Screaming, Rayne lunged at him, knocking him back. Gabriel slugged him in retaliation. His fist burned, and Rayne staggered. Four snake heads drew back behind his head, each one glaring. Rayne’s shoulders twitched, and two more snakes grew forth, adding to the number. With his human head, he now had seven, all attached to one body. His vision distorted again and again, like watching the world through a faceted lens. He didn’t understand what had happened to him, or why. But what he did know was Gabriel was the enemy, and still very much a threat. Here in Hell, they were on even footing, no longer restrained by mortal skin.

They clashed on the ice fields, fiery geysers erupting around them. It was a testament to the ancient ice, that it didn’t melt instantly in the oppressive fire. But it was only a matter of time now; the heat grew stronger, and more and more of Azaznir’s power gained a foothold in this world. The land broke apart, giving way to plasma rivers spewing flame far into the air, as if a sun had formed beneath the ice. Individual chunks of land separated from each other like floating glaciers; the smaller pieces were quickly consumed, and the large ones shrank away bit by bit. The skies cracked apart, raining fire upon the land like blinding tears, each waterfall pulverizing the ice with a great explosion of steam. Rayne had to keep careful balance so he wouldn’t fall to a painful death. Gabriel fought more carelessly. He seemed to believe if he fell into the flames, his god’s power would save him.

Rayne took advantage of the careless attitude when Gabriel’s right hook left him wide open, and one of Rayne’s serpent heads smashed into his torso, knocking him back. Rayne was on him instantly, pinning him against a broken ice shelf, eye level with his foe.

“Why give up your soul?” he hissed. “Why become a tool to a monster that cares nothing about you?”

Gabriel laughed at him. “Don’t you get it? We’re damned! We’re fucked no matter what! At least this way, I have power! At least I’m not a hypocrite!”

“What’s that now?”

“Don’t bullshit me! Look at you! This isn’t deterioration! Who did you sell your soul to? It must have been before you even met me, right? We both know that snake that attacked us from the mists was you. Those heads only showed up when you got pissed off. They never were a threat to you, were they?”

“No! That wasn’t me! That—” Rayne shook his head back and forth. “I didn’t sell my soul to anybody!”

“You’re a god-awful liar. How did it feel, devouring that woman? You sick fuck. Were you planning to do that to the rest of us when we passed on?”

“
No!
” Rayne’s hands started to shake as they kept Gabriel pinned down. “That wasn’t me!”

“It’s good that your son saw you for what you really were. Now he knows that he should run screaming if he ever sees you again.”

“
Shut it!
” Rayne screamed, blood filling his vision. His serpents lunged at Gabriel, whose smirk said more than enough. He braced his back and kicked Rayne in the gut. Emotionally compromised, Rayne lost his grip and fell back. He tried to regain his composure, but his body still wasn’t used to the extra weight growing from his back, his thin legs too frail to support his upper body, and he smashed backwards into the ground, serpent heads snapping vainly at the air.

Gabriel didn’t waste a second, leaping on top of Rayne, and grabbing the nearest head, his hand full of fire. His fingers gripped the scaly neck, burning through flesh, then bone, and he tore the screaming snake from Rayne’s body, leaving a burned, cauterized stump that went limp when Gabriel released it. Agony coursed through Rayne’s spirit as he felt the sudden loss of a head that by all rights shouldn’t even be there, and his other heads shared his pain.

“Not so powerful now, are you?” Gabriel taunted him, kicking Rayne in the ribs, sending his body skittering across the ice, towards the melting edge above the fiery chasm. Rayne’s roars were lost in the crashing thunder, as cold winds and rain vainly fought back against the encroaching heat. Gabriel followed him closely, hitting Rayne with fire every time he tried to stand up again, one by one burning away his other heads, each time bringing the most crushing pain to Rayne’s soul, as pieces of him disintegrated, pieces he’d only had for a short while, yet they were so deeply connected, their loss tore his mind apart.

“I never said I was powerful,” Rayne gasped. “You think I wanted any of this? I did what I had to, to survive!”

“So did I,” Gabriel sneered. He gave Rayne one last kick, and Rayne slipped right to the edge of the ice floe. His hands fumbled across the cold surface, nails scratching deep, struggling for some way to stop himself. He slowed down right at the precipice, his burned legs hanging over the surging flames. Six broken stubs writhed on his back, blackened where Gabriel’s fire had torn them away. Yet Rayne could still hear their screams inside his mind, as if only their physical form had vanished, their essence still within him.

“It’s better this way,” Gabriel said as he cracked his knuckles. “With you dead, you won’t have to see what happens to that kid of yours. You know, once everybody on Earth is damned? Of course, I could save him. All he has to do is give his soul to Azaznir, like I did.”

Rayne’s nails dug deeper into the ice, and he felt an unholy cold in his eyes. He whipped out a hand, gesturing at the ice around Gabriel’s feet. The frost stirred, and a frozen creep worked its way up over Gabriel’s feet, then his ankles, stopping at his shins. Gabriel forgot Rayne momentarily as he bent over, trying to burn the ice keeping his feet imprisoned. Rayne clenched his fists and dragged his lower body back onto solid ground.

A strange electrical tingle overcame him, and as he moved, his legs melded together, stretching longer and longer, the bones within shattering into vertebrae surrounded by muscle. Dark scales covered the growing appendage, and Rayne rose up on a serpent tail longer than the height of four men. Frosty mist escaped his lips as he stared down Gabriel, still struggling in the ice. Rayne no longer saw him as an enemy. Now, he was prey.

Gabriel looked up when he heard the menacing hiss from Rayne’s throat, and his eyes went wide as his mind tried to comprehend what he was seeing. Rayne didn’t even give him time for that, looming over him on his new tail. The broken limbs growing from his back still weighed him down, but his broader lower body counterbalanced that weight, allowing him to move with more quick grace than he ever thought possible. He lowered down, and whipped his tail right into Gabriel, shattering the ice around his ankles as the force sent him flying. He crashed against a frozen pillar that stood like a beacon in the midst of the fiery chaos. Rayne recognized this pillar, the very same one he’d seen so many months ago, with an empty space just waiting for a soul to fill it. Rayne intended to give it that soul. He grabbed Gabriel before he could recover from the blow, and thrust him into the waiting crevice.

“Let go of me you freak!” Gabriel roared, trying to burn his captor. His flames singed Rayne’s flesh, but he did not let go, his hands steadier than stone. Ice began to fill the hollow, creeping up Gabriel’s legs, imprisoning him in the pillar. “You think this can hold me? I’ll just melt it all!”

“Not this time,” Rayne growled. “You’re already weakening. Your borrowed power is going back to its master. You no longer need it,
mortal.
”

His words sunk in, and as Gabriel grasped his situation, he started to shake, giving in to his fear. He desperately called upon his fire, summoning heated bursts that melted the ice, but it only delayed the inevitable, as the ice crept up his torso, pinning his arms, and made its way up his neck. He stopped struggling, and began to scream when mindless fear claimed him. The light in his eye dimmed, the last of his awareness slipping away the more the ice sealed him inside his prison. Rayne reached up and closed Gabriel’s mouth as the ice crept over his face. When he pulled his hands free, the ice completely filled the empty space, sealing Gabriel inside his eternal resting place, frozen fear forever etched upon his face.

Everything around Rayne went silent and still as he gazed upon his handiwork, dusting crystal shards from his hands, the icy cold dancing across his flesh. The growing firelight cast itself upon the smoky ice, and for an instant, Rayne saw his own face overlaid upon Gabriel’s horrific expression, his own features distorted and cruel, as if he took sadistic glee in his enemy’s suffering. The awful sight snapped Rayne back to his senses, and he backed away in horror, tripping over his own tail.

“Not again—” He collapsed onto the ground, staring at the ice pillar and the growing fire beyond with a haunted gaze. “What the hell’s happening to me?”