Tim Marquitz - Armageddon Bound

Rage tunneled my vision as I wriggled the cartridge into the gun with my one good hand and slammed it home against my leg. I chambered the first round with my teeth and ran off after the angels, my. 45 leading the way. Distracted by their victory, the two batting Rahim back and forth between them like kittens, adding insult to injury, they didn’t see me coming. Big mistake.

I stepped up behind Urtel and rammed my gun hard into his back. “An eye for an eye,” I shouted as I squeezed the trigger.

The report was even more satisfying than when I’d shot the fiend. The first bullet ripped into Urtel and shattered his spine in much the same way he had Rahim’s, a fountain of golden blood springing up in its wake. The second and third rounds finished the job. He died in silence.

I felt cheated he’d died so quickly. I wanted the bastard to suffer.

Malis would have to suffer for him.

I shouldered the still-standing corpse out of my way and turned my gun on the remaining angel. There was fear in his eyes.

He had good reason to be afraid.

There are horrors so vile, so blasphemous, lurking in the depths of Hell that even Clive Barker would be hard pressed to imagine. What I intended to do to Malis made those horrors pale in comparison. But even with the best laid plans, reality has a way of intruding. Once again, in the heat of combat, I’d forgotten about the soul transfer. My hand shook as I raised my pistol, a flood of warmth dancing across my nerves. I moaned as the blood in my veins ignited, my eyes fluttering closed in response to the orgasmic rush. I heard a shuffle of feet moving toward me and sighed, knowing my involuntary hesitation had cost me my shot at retribution. Still in the throes of the transfer, I waited to get hit.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I felt the tell-tale wave of heat an instant before the blast struck. Like a tennis ball smacked by a racket, I was flung backward, my arms and legs trailing out in front of me. My eyes opened to see wisps of black smoke curling away from me as I flew through the air, the room whipping by. The only comfort I had was it didn’t hurt. The essence of Urtel’s soul was still in flux inside my system. That was a good thing because I didn’t feel the barn wall as I smashed through it or the hard ground that rushed up to meet me at the end of my flight. After the impact, I rolled end over end until I came to a stop in the knee-high grass outside, broken pieces of the red wooden wall scattered all around me. A trail of flattened greenery and scarred earth marked my passage from landing point to final destination. Once the majority of the transfer had subsided, I got to my feet, my body tingling. I was relieved to see my left arm had regained its motion, its strength returned. I was even more thrilled to find I still had my gun. I’d gotten off lucky. That wasn’t true for all of us. Reminded of Rahim and what I’d been doing before being sent on a ride, I gritted my teeth. With vengeance on my mind, I stalked back to the barn. As I neared it, I heard a scrabbling of claws on wood and looked up to see a Dread Fiend crouched in the hole where I’d smashed through the wall. He howled a gravelly challenge to me as I approached. I answered his bark with a bite, four of them, to be precise. Without hesitation I emptied what remained in the clip into the fiend’s snarling mouth.

Its challenge died on its hairy lips as the bullets blasted huge holes in the back of its head. A death rattle gurgled deep in its throat and it tumbled from its perch, falling face first into a heap at the base of the barn wall. I smiled wide as it hit. There was something satisfying about the way it laid there, its tongue lolling out of its open mouth, its ass up in the air. It was as if the lack of decency it showed in life was reflected in its death. I felt it fitting.

I pushed aside my armchair psychology and returned to the barn. I dug out another cartridge and cursed as I realized I only had one more left. I slammed it in, hoping I wouldn’t need more than that. With a snarl, I leapt through the same hole I’d exited just moments before, wondering what awaited me on the other side. I landed in a crouch, scanning the scene. I arrived just in time to see Scarlett and Katon dispatch the last of the fiends. Scarlett rode one into the ground, her tiny fists a blur of motion outlined by streams of yellowish blood and bile. The creature crumbled beneath her onslaught.

Katon danced inside of the other’s reach and drove his blade deep into its lungs, his arm wrapped tight around the fiend’s neck. I could see the fury in his eyes, his face etched with deep lines of murderous rage as he twisted the blade.

Malis lay in moist pieces across the floor like a fleshy puzzle. Not all the king’s horses or all the king’s men would be putting this Humpty Dumpty back together again. His head, separated from the rest had rolled into a corner where its eyeless sockets stared up at the ceiling. His arms and legs were scattered about, ripped viciously apart at each individual joint. His bloody, battered torso sat in the center of the room, its ribs caved in.

I wasn’t sure which of the two had done it, but

I was buying them both a beer once all this was over. They’d earned it.

I took stock of all the bodies, making sure all of Asmoday’s minions were accounted for, holstered my gun, and raced to Rahim’s side. Katon and Scarlett got there less than a second later.

To my surprise, he was still alive.

He looked up at us as we gathered around him, his eyes reflecting the pain I knew he’d never voice. At seeing him, Katon knelt down and buried his face into the old wizard’s chest. Weakly, Rahim draped his arm over Katon’s head and pulled him in tighter. He squeezed his eyes shut as a single tear slipped from the corner and ran down his cheek. A quiet sob slipped from Scarlett as she turned away from the pair, hiding her face. For all the rage and violence that festered inside her, she would forever be an agent of the Lord. Her heart would forever be vulnerable to tragedy.

Unable to help, I simply let them be. They stayed there for several minutes, neither speaking nor breaking the embrace. Unwilling to interrupt, I stood and started to back away when I noticed Rahim looking at me.

“How bad?” I asked, knowing full well I wasn’t going to like the answer. He, no doubt, hated to admit it even more.

“My spine is shattered,” he said as he took a deep, laborious breath. His face winced with the effort.

Katon pulled away to make it easier, settling in beside him. “I can’t feel anything below my chest. It’s all dead.”

My heart sank. In my mind, that was worse than death. “We need to get you back to DRAC.” I knew it was the right thing to do, but I wasn’t even sure that’d help.

While the members of DRAC had performed many miracles since their inception, healing on the scale Rahim required wasn’t one of them. Forget all the stories you’ve heard about preachers or wizards healing the crippled and bringing the dead back to life, same as they were before. They aren’t true. Outside of God and the Devil, no one has the level of power or control necessary to truly resurrect the dead or make a crippled man walk again. Magic doesn’t work that way. For all its vaunted reputation, it’s rarely useful for anything more than destruction. While somewhat flexible, conforming to the imagination of its specific wielder, its true nature is brute force. The hammer never cures the anvil.

The soul transfer, the closest thing to a miracle in today’s Godless world, would also be useless to him. As a human, Rahim had no ability to partake of a supernatural being’s soul. While his suffering could be eased by judicious magical rituals and modern medicine, Rahim’s future was in the hands of fate and the surgeons in the employ of DRAC.