Dark Gate Angels Complete Series Omnibus

by Ramy Vance

  Abby flew over Cerberus, peppering him with fire as the creature flailed, still launching fireballs. She gracefully dodged the attacks but still hadn’t managed to put a dent in the hellhound. “Nothing we’re doing is working!”

  A wave of water hit Cerberus in the side, tossing him like a rag doll. “That’s because we’re not thinking with our heads.”

  Anabelle had finally joined the fight. She waved her hands, drawing an elaborate shape in the air, and water gushed from her fingertips. “We’re obviously fighting at half-strength, so we need to use our heads. For one, this whole fighting on top of fire thing is going to end.” She raised her hands as she floated a few inches off the ground. In one sweeping move, she conjured water out of thin air and a gentle rain began to fall, extinguishing the fires beneath the DGA.

  The water seemed to be affecting Cerberus as well. The hellhound sneezed and whimpered as the rain caused steam to rise from his body.

  Terra, who wasn’t far from Cerberus, looked at Abby. “This is our shot. Let’s take him out while we can. I’ll keep him still.” She took off after the dog, leapt a few feet, and snatched up one of Cerberus’ hanging necks as she landed, wrestling it to the grate.

  Abby leapt over them, firing a concentrated beam of plasma that seared through the neck.

  Before Terra could move away, another of the necks sideswiped her, knocking her into the wall.

  Abby dove, grabbed another neck, and pinned it to the grate with a nanorod she fired from her wrist.

  The cloaked man surged forward, daggers drawn, and slashed through it, leaving only one more head to be taken care of.

  Anabelle clapped her hands, her fingers filling with lightning, and dashed toward Cerberus. She avoided the fireballs belched by the hellhound as Abby and the cloaked man moved out of the way to give the elf room.

  She hit Cerberus hard, severing the dog’s head. It landed next to her feet. Blood dripped through the grate.

  Anabelle wiped the dog’s blood off her face. “That shouldn’t have taken nearly that long. Maybe we need to start running training simulations when we get back. That was like watching Blackwell and Naota.”

  Abby landed next to Anabelle. “That’s mean. Those two are pretty good together.”

  “They look like bumbling idiots when they fight together.”

  Terra sauntered over to her fellow agents. “No lie. They do look like clowns.” She turned her attention to the cloaked man, who was hunched over Cerberus’ corpse. “Thanks for the help!” Terra called. “Care to introduce yourself?”

  The cloaked man walked over, sheathing his daggers, and extended his hand. “Maurice the Third. It is my pleasure to meet you.”

  The DGA agents each gave an introduction. Once they were done, Maurice looked back at the monster’s body. “That creature has killed me many times. I didn’t think I would ever be able to get past this room.”

  Anabelle jerked her hand toward the exit. “You coming with us? This dungeon shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  The cloaked man shook his head. “No, my task is to wait and help. This dungeon…it is hard to explain. Hopefully, you won’t find out.” He headed back out the way he came in.

  Abby crossed her arms and smiled. “Mysterious and cryptic. I like it. Come on, let’s finish this shit.”

  Anabelle gave the girl a disapproving look. “We’ve talked about your language before, young lady.”

  “Ugh. We can save the world and experiment with reckless tech, but we can’t curse?”

  The elf and Terra were already walking toward the door. “We don’t make the rules about being a kid,” Terra called back as Abby ran to catch up with them.

  Terra pushed the door open, and the three of them walked down a long hallway lit by blue-flamed candles in sconces on the walls.

  At the end of the hall was another door, but it was different from the other doors Terra and the rest had seen. A long, sad face was carved into this plain wooden door. When the DGA agents got close enough, the door opened its eyes and yawned widely.

  Abby yelped and jumped back, her cannon raised and ready to fire. “What the hell is that?”

  Anabelle, who looked nonplussed, stepped closer to the door. “Never seen a talking door before?”

  Terra and Anabelle exchanged dubious looks. “Can’t say I have,” Terra replied.

  The elf waved at the door. “Hiya! Are you the end of the dungeon?”

  The door harrumphed as it stretched its jaw and blinked. “Why, yes. I am the final door,” it replied in a heavy British accent. “I’m assuming you aim to get through, aye?”

  “That is the plan. What do we need to do to open you?”

  The door grinned mischievously. “A riddle, perchance.”

  Anabelle groaned as she ran her hands through her hair. “Are you serious? A riddle door. Damn the gods.”

  Terra clapped the elf on the back. “What’s the big deal? We just have to answer a riddle.”

  “I’m terrible at riddles. I hate them. The most basic form of wit, and the whole time, you have to watch some smug asshole smirking while you try to figure out the answer. Lording it over you because they’re so smart.”

  Abby laughed as she admired the door’s smirk. “Could you have a bigger chip on your shoulder?”

  Anabelle shot her a glare as cold as ice before turning back to the door. “Okay. So, what is it?”

  The door smiled widely. “Oh, no, you have to ask me a riddle. If I can’t answer it, then you may enter.”

  The members of the DGA looked from one to the other. “Uh, you guys know any good riddles?” Anabelle asked.

  Abby grimaced as she thought. “We know one. Should we try?”

  “Unless Terra’s got a brainbuster on her.”

  Terra shook her head as she shoved her hands in her pockets. “Do I look like someone who sits around doing crossword puzzles? I’m not a grandma.”

  “Okay, Abby, you’re up.”

  Abby stepped to the door and cleared her throat. “What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three at night.”

  Without missing a beat, the door said, “Too easy. A mortal. Goodbye.”

  There was a bright flash of light, and the three Dark Gate Angels started screaming as everything turned to darkness.

  Chapter Four

  In the middle of the room made of god flesh, Rasputina found herself standing before a table covered with various fresh body parts. Blood dripped from the table, pooling around its legs.

  The lich stood dully, drool dripping from her mouth as she mindlessly tongued the rotting hole in her cheek. Her eyes were white, glazed over with death. The little bit of color in her skin reminded her on a primal level that she was not among the living, which was why she stood naked, her decomposing flesh riddled with holes, bones sticking out at bizarre angles.

  The dead had no need for clothes.

  As she looked around, she realized she was not much different from the flesh hanging from the walls. Not that she hadn’t already known that, but there were times when it became more evident—a truth that could not be escaped.

  But truth had never been Rasputina’s concern. There was only knowledge.

  The door opened, and a diminutive human corpse crept into the room. Most of his skin had rotted off, but he still wore an English butler’s uniform. He walked with a limp, and green pus trickled out of his ears. He held a silver platter with a collection of hearts, some from humans and others from elves.

  Groaning as he moved, he shuffled toward the table and placed the hearts on it. “Mistress,” he said, quite formal in his unfortunate predicament.

  Rasputina snapped back to the world around her and looked at Bennington with deep confusion as if she were beholding him for the first time. “What is it?” she snapped.

  “I’ve brought you dinner. You have been in your study for a while now, and your screams sound much more like the screams of the living than usual.”

  Rasputina grabbed o
ne of the elf hearts and bit into it. “You are testing me, Bennington.”

  He bowed low. “If I do not torment you, my mistress, who will?”

  Rasputina collapsed to the floor, holding the elf heart to her own. “They don’t beat, Benny. None of them. They just sit here, quiet. All quiet. How am I supposed to enjoy this?”

  The butler took a seat next to Rasputina. “My mistress, that is because they are not fresh. You haven’t killed anything in nearly two weeks. It’s most unlike you. Is something wrong?”

  Rasputina curled into the fetal position as she started to sob. “I don’t want to be here, Benny. I want to go home. I just want to go home.” Her eyes glazed as she stared into the distance, mindlessly gnawing on the heart.

  Bennington patted Rasputina’s balding head. “Something is wrong. You aren’t yourself. Would you like to torture me?”

  Rasputina’s eyes focused on Bennington. “No. No, my heart isn’t in it.”

  Bennington stood. He knocked over everything on the table and jumped onto it, opening his shirt to reveal a chest that was covered in scars and open wounds. “My mistress, my body is ready.”

  Rasputina sighed as she climbed to her feet. “You just want to be able to sleep tonight. Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you stay dead for the whole night.”

  Bennington sat up, aghast. “My mistress, how dare you? There is something wrong, and I wish to help you make it better.” He grabbed a dagger off the table and handed it to Rasputina.

  She waved it away. “No, no, Benny. I don’t—”

  “Mistress, I insist. But you don’t have to use the dagger. Whatever you’d like. Perhaps a bone?”

  A glimmer of a smile twinkled in Rasputina’s eyes. “Fine, fine. If you insist.” She accepted the dagger and cut open her stomach, dragging out her intestines, which she looped around her hand once as she walked around the table so she could lean over and look Bennington in the eyes. She wrapped her intestines around his neck and pulled them tight.

  Bennington jerked as he clawed at Rasputina’s intestines, trying to pull them off. His eyes bulged, and the little color in his skin started to fade.

  The lich looked down at his face, his mouth flapping as he begged her to kill him and end it all. She couldn’t help but laugh and strangle him harder. Then she climbed up on top of him and drove the dagger deep into Bennington’s chest, cracking the sternum. She dropped her intestines and dug deep into his body as she cackled with the laughter one usually only hears from children.

  When her butler finally stopped twitching, Rasputina pulled a strip of flesh from his chest and swallowed it. She leapt off the table and crawled underneath, where she retrieved the elf heart and continued to gnaw on it.

  Above her, Bennington’s wounds began to heal. Once his chest sealed up, he jerked back up, screaming for a second as he felt where his wounds used to be.

  “Thanks, Benny,” Rasputina muttered from under the table.

  He climbed off the table and buttoned his shirt, somehow retaining the dignity he had walked into the room with. “Do you feel better?”

  The lich nodded, looking oddly infantile and feral. “That right there is the problem, Benny-boy. Seems like I’m feeling too much. Far too much.”

  Bennington crawled under the table next to Rasputina. “Excuse me for my forwardness, Mistress, but you cannot feel anything, or at least, very few things.”

  She pressed her finger to her chest. “No, no. Something is happening in here. I don’t like it.”

  “When was the last time you had a real feeling? Other than—”

  “Hunger? Hatred? Boredom? Gods, I don’t know. There was an inkling of something when I was released. Teeny-tiny. But this… Gods, this is horrible. Something about the Dark One…I think.”

  Rasputina turned to Bennington and grabbed his face. “What do people do when they feel things? Benny, what do you do?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t felt anything but fear recently, Mistress, and even that hasn’t been for a long time.”

  Rasputina scoffed. “Are you saying you don’t fear me anymore, Benny? I can crank the torture up, and we’ll do all those spinal things you hate.”

  Benny shook his head. “You removed my spine yesterday, Mistress.”

  “Oh…”

  He reached up, grabbed another heart from the tray, and handed it to the lich. “That’s what I’m talking about, Mistress. You don’t even remember our tortures anymore.”

  Rasputina shrieked and the table above her exploded, sending the body parts on it flying. “I don’t know what’s going on! I feel…ugh, I feel. That’s enough.”

  Bennington took out a handkerchief and dabbed away the blood on his skeletal face. “Perhaps you need some alone time. You have been pacing the halls lately. It must be hard to think with the dead god’s dreams around you all the time.”

  Rasputina snapped her fingers. “Me-time. You’re right!”

  She got up and waved her hands, conjuring a cauldron and a book made of human flesh, inked with blood. “Let’s see, what do I need… Benny could you run and grab me an orc cock, and uh, a virgin’s heart. No, two male virgins’ hearts, and a cup of salt.”

  “Are the virgins’ hearts labeled, Mistress?”

  Rasputina whipped around and grabbed Bennington by the throat. “They are if you labeled them like I told you to last millennium.”

  Bennington choked out, “Actually, Mistress, you said that would make a fun hobby for you.”

  Rasputina dropped her butler, who calmly got to his feet and smoothed his shirt. “I will go check,” he said, and with that, he disappeared in a puff of green smoke.

  The lich went to the walls, selecting digits, organs, and whatever else she felt was necessary from the corpses hanging on the wall. Then to the cabinets, which housed an assortment of unsavory ingredients not much different from those harvested from the tortured on the wall but from animals instead.

  As Rasputina began dumping the ingredients into the cauldron, Bennington appeared at her side. “You did label the hearts, Mistress.” He handed her the virgins’ hearts and the orc cock. “Is there anything else?”

  Rasputina dumped the human body parts into the cauldron. “No, Benny, that’s all. Wait…actually, if you could bring me a soul for after I’m done.”

  Bennington nodded and bowed before leaving the room.

  Rasputina peered into the cauldron before taking a deep breath. Then she grabbed her dagger, hung her head into the cauldron, and slit her throat.

  Blood poured in as she convulsed, and she felt whatever constituted her life fading.

  The blood in the cauldron turned a sickly green and began to bubble, consuming everything in the cauldron and melting it. That included the side of Rasputina’s face, which was down to the bone before her body returned to running itself.

  Rasputina pulled her head out of the cauldron, flinging acid everywhere as she gasped for breath. The rotting skin on her face started to grow back as she picked up her spellbook. She cleared her throat and began chanting, using the old language of the dead gods—a guttural language, producing sounds almost like a death rattle. Then she dropped the book and watched.

  Out of the cauldron rose a skeleton, muscle and tissue growing over the bone until a face was evident.

  The lich stared into the eyes of a younger version of herself, the one that existed before she became a lich. A living, breathing person.

  The girl looked around fearfully. “Where…where am I?” When she saw the lich, she screeched in horror. “Gods, is that—”

  “You?” Rasputina asked, bored. “Yes, I am. Everything you were going to become. That’s not important. I need you to answer something for me.”

  The younger Rasputina trembled with fear. “How did this happen to me?”

  “That’s not important. Answer my questions.”

  Rasputina was disturbed by the younger version of herself. Both were nude, but there was something disgusting to her about the girl. Her skin
was so vibrant, so full of blood, and her chest kept rising. “I’m feeling things. Why?”

  The younger Rasputina didn’t answer. She merely stood there, looking as frightened as a rabbit before a wolf. “How could this happen to me?”

  Rasputina slapped her younger version. “How did it happen? You wanted knowledge. That’s how it happened.”

  She crawled away from the lich. “Not at this cost. You’re…you’re a monster! What did you do to me?”

  The lich stood silent for a moment, green drool trickling down her chin. “I am not a monster. I am…I am…”

  The girl waved her hand, pushing the lich back with her mana. “My magic was meant to help people! How could you do this to me?”

  The magic from the younger Rasputina caused the lich’s skin to catch fire, though it went out quickly. Holy magic. The lich had forgotten she had known holy magic. What else had she forgotten? “What did you do to me?” the girl shouted.

  The lich grabbed her and lifted her by her throat. “I did nothing! He killed them. All I did was what I could. What I had to do!”

  The younger Rasputina stared down at the lich, choking, her eyes full of tears. “What did you do?”

  The lich tossed her to the ground as she started to cry. Too much was rushing back. There were too many voices, too much noise in her head. “He killed them all!” she shouted. “He killed all of them! All I could do was try to find a way to stop him, but I didn’t! There was nothing I could do.”

  It all came back. Brief flashes of her childhood. And her home. Her village.

  People were screaming and begging for mercy from the Dark One. The plague that spread over them killed everyone but Rasputina, leaving her alone, a scared child clutching a small toy, hoping her parents would return. A weak thing without anyone to protect her.

  The lich froze, overwhelmed by her memories. This was why she felt. The Dark One had released her.

  The younger Rasputina stood. “You did this to yourself to stop him? You sold your soul—”

  The lich screeched, “I sold nothing! I only learned…” She crumpled to the floor, holding her knees tightly together. “I had to learn to stop him, and…I forgot. I forgot about all of this…about my life. About living.”