The Third Seal

by Sean Deville

  “Lucifer…”

  “Are you saying Damien’s father has had us watched?”

  “He’s your father, too,” Agreas insisted, which increased the pressure of the thumb digging into his neck as reward. The wrist Agreas was clutching felt like iron. There was no way the demon could escape this grasp.

  “I have no father. I was shaped and born in the trauma of the abuse inflicted upon my brother. And you haven’t answered my question.”

  “Yes,” Agreas relented. “Lucifer watches all his children.”

  “Well then he’s going to have his hands full mourning the deaths of all those he brought into the world.” There was a crack as Legion twisted his wrist slightly, the demon’s neck snapping. Legion held the body there, drawing the face close to his so he could watch the life depart. Finally satisfied, Legion let the corpse fall to the floor.

  He needed to wash his hands. Touching the demon’s flesh had left him feeling soiled and unclean. Meeting Agreas had also instilled into him a new purpose. From now on, it wouldn’t just be his brothers he would kill. Every demon he encountered from this moment forward had better hope they had chosen hosts who knew how to run.

  He was severely tempted to kill all he came across.

  15.

  Silicon Valley, USA

  To be able to write this book, Stone needed to understand the nature of Horn. But to do that, he first had to understand the nature of Satan. Satan was the dominant force in all this, Horn merely a pawn in the great game. This was no small ask, for Satan was a force that humanity had been trying to decipher for thousands of years. Was Satan a single entity, or so much more?

  Whatever it was, Satan was forced to play the role that had been predetermined for him by the being who had made it all.

  There were clues in the accumulated books, but no definitive answers. There was no way to know what Satan looked like, the various illustrations and written text attempts laughable. Satan certainly didn’t have the head of a goat, or horns. And one thing that Stone was certain of was that Satan wasn’t one of the fallen angels. His abode, Hell, was where the Fallen were flung after their unsuccessful uprising.

  He had to accept that he may never be able to understand the true nature of the Lord of Hell, just as one could never decipher what made God tick.

  I can’t believe I accept all this, thought Stone. His atheism had always given an edge to his books that his wider audience had enjoyed. If he’d been a devout believer, his words would have been compromised, the situations his characters experienced softened under a pious umbrella that would have reduced their appeal considerably. He wrote stories of men and women uncovering biblical mysteries, whilst fighting foes driven to horrific deeds. The characters he brought to life believed in the forces of good and evil, but Stone never had.

  This had all changed.

  There was always a last resort for the answers he sought. Stone could ultimately risk asking Horn or Kane, but there were two problems with those options. Firstly, they might not know the answers. And secondly, Stone’s intuition told him that this was a mystery he had to solve on his own. His attempted suicide, his realisation of the true nature of the universe, his torture and the acceptance he had developed regarding his part in all this seemed to have been necessary steps, tests for him to pass. Deciphering the mysteries of Satan was more than likely another part of that test.

  It was as if his mind was necessary to unlock something that was key to this great apocalypse unfolding. Was that why the voice that intruded his dreams kept calling him the lamb?

  From what Stone could determine, the Devil first appeared as an independent figure in Hebrew scriptures, which was what most of the Christian bible was based on. This was one of the problems Stone had found with the great religious works, they often borrowed from the religions that came before them. The deities created were rarely original, blatantly plagiarised and inherently contradictory. Stone could think of half a dozen religious saviours who were born of a virgin, and even more who died by crucifixion. That particular form of torture wasn’t invented by the Romans.

  Evil was supposed to be the Devil’s playground, but if you took the written evidence, Satan was an amateur compared to the atrocities God had been responsible for, made worse by God’s supposed loving nature. But again, which depiction of God was he supposed to believe? The bible, for example, was also contradictory. The Old Testament was filled with the acts of an angry and vengeful God, who wouldn’t think twice about levelling whole cities and drowning whole worlds. Not seemingly the same fluffy God of the New Testament.

  Stone knew the counter argument to that, had heard it countless times. Many authors on the bible agreed that God’s love and judgment were two sides of the same confusing coin. Fire can burn the sinner to a crisp, and fire can give warmth and comfort to the pious. It apparently all depended on where one stood in relation to the flame.

  More likely was the very real risk that God didn’t care. He had created the whole universe. Why on earth would such a supreme being have time to look twice at the ungrateful residents of a small blue planet spinning through one of billions of galaxies? More than likely, trillions of worlds had been created, each left to their own devices. Was there other intelligent and sentient life on those worlds, and if so, did they too have their own Hells? Was the coming apocalypse of no real concern to God?

  God was absent. All they were left with was a being of ultimate agony to run things.

  None of what had been shown to Stone over the past few days had changed his opinion that the supreme being was a callous God who treated his creations like toys. If anything, it had strengthened it. He could accept that Satan was real, which logically implied that God was real. If that was a fact, then God really was a petulant bitch. There was no irony that the depiction of Revelation put much of humanity’s coming suffering at the hands of non-Satanic forces.

  That had always filtered through into the books he’d written, and it would be a prominent theme in Horn’s new bible. Despite his own fears and reservations, Stone was here to create the book that would inspire people to take Satan as their ultimate master.

  “But what does Satan want?” He often spoke out loud to himself. It helped him answer the many questions that needed purging from his mind. Often, he found the answer would jump out at him, and this time was no exception.

  To end his own suffering. But that didn’t make sense when based on the holy texts. By siring the Antichrist, and bringing forth the Apocalypse, Satan might indeed hold dominion over the Earth for a while. But then he was to be cast back into Hell, but no longer as ruler. There he was supposed to suffer along with the sinners and the Fallen for all eternity. So, either Satan was doing this because he had no choice, or there was something else afoot. What if all the texts were wrong?

  Or what if the waiting Satan had endured was the worst suffering of all?

  Satan had supposedly been put in the Pit as punishment, the Pit becoming a home for the fallen angels that had rebelled against the word of God. And from everything Stone had ever read, the Devil would ultimately rise up and take the Earth, only to be defeated. Satan, the embodiment of evil, the whisperer in men’s ears, the corrupter of humanity. But ultimately, a Satan that had been created by the same God he now supposedly fought, all for a pitiful spinning sphere, one of billions in the Milky Way alone.

  And there it was, the angle he knew he needed to play. Satan the downtrodden. Satan the victim, who sent his one and only son to free humanity from the oppression of God’s curse.

  Free will.

  Free will wasn’t a gift, it was pain and torture, disappointment and resentment. It was everything that held humanity back. To survive, to release ourselves from the prison without bars, mankind had to finally relinquish that free will and give themselves to a power that knew the secrets humanity could never understand. There was nothing free about it, just chains to tie ourselves to egos that screamed madness in our ears.

  Satan would release u
s from all that. Satan and his son were here to set us free. That would be his book’s message. That would be the propaganda Stone would write, full of half-truths and misinformation. Despite that, despite everything that had been done to him, Stone knew that if he was given an honest choice free from coercion and threats, he would likely choose the reality offered by Satan. Rather that, than follow a God who didn’t care.

  16.

  New York City, USA

  This was the part of the job that Brian Fox loved more than anything. Although he would never admit it to anyone, he had a secret glee whenever he saw the desperation in the eyes of those who had decided to come to his country illegally. This was his home and he would do everything in his power to keep the illegal invaders out of it.

  They had brought nuclear fire to his land. If he had the power, he would deport everyone who wasn’t born here, and he would include those who were born on US soil to illegals. Fortunately for millions of people, Fox didn’t have that power, but he was in a place to enforce any rules that were passed down from on high.

  Some would call him a racist and a xenophobe, but Fox would simply laugh with disdain at such accusations.

  The emergency immigration raids that were occurring across New York and other cities would have to suffice for now. They were a direct result of the nuclear attack, the Federal government flexing its muscles so it could be seen to be responding to the deaths of thousands.

  There would be protesting voices against the raids, but as far as Fox was concerned, the rounding up of thousands of illegal immigrants was long overdue. Although being a sanctuary city, the Mayor of New York and the state governor had both dropped any resistance to ICE doing what they were paid for. That pleased Fox immensely, and he insisted on being at the point of the spear.

  It was his suggestion that ICE agents raid the community space where Farrokh’s girlfriend had spilled the beans on her boyfriend and the dangerous man from another land. He knew there would be easy and rich picking there.

  “How can you do this?” the pleading woman begged, the wife of the informant who had started this whole thing rolling. When Fox had last been here to find and question Dorri, he had made a promise to himself that he would return. And here he was, half a dozen ICE agents detaining anyone they found without the proper papers.

  “I thought you would have gotten the message from my last visit.” The woman who ran the Muslim woman’s resource centre could not hide her desperation. “I’m going to need all your records and your phone please, ma’am.”

  “My phone? You can’t have my phone.”

  “You see that officer over there?” Fox said, pointing to a New York City police officer who was helping oversee the operation. “Do you want me to ask him to arrest you for impeding an operation?”

  “How am I impeding?”

  “You are harbouring and aiding illegal aliens. One of them had information of an impending terrorist attack that you didn’t report. Do you want me to go on?”

  “How could I know the man Dorri saw was a terrorist?” She was crying now, but the waterworks wouldn’t work on Fox. If a few people had to be threatened and inconvenienced to make his country safe, that was a price he was willing to pay.

  “Ma’am, her boyfriend is a terrorist too. I’m taking dangerous people off the streets.”

  “These women aren’t dangerous. I told you, these are good people.” The woman’s voice was filled with fury now.

  “And I told you that didn’t make them legal. If the women you are helping are here legally, they don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “So, you are going to lock them in a cage until you are happy their papers are in order. You sound like a fascist.” Fox thought for a moment she was going to spit on him, but she resisted the temptation.

  Wise move.

  “Just doing my job. But I still need your phone because I’m guessing you are in regular contact with dozens of other people who come here.”

  “This meeting place is a confidential space.”

  “Well, I’ve got a judge who thinks otherwise,” Fox said, waving paperwork in her face. Prior to the bomb going off, such an operation would have met with serious local resistance. The city and those who ran it now seemed to have realised there was a danger they had overlooked.

  There was a scream as two female ICE agents dragged a resisting woman from the rest room. Fox noticed she was pregnant. If she was illegal, she needed to be deported before that little bundle of fun landed on American soil. He would make sure she was treated as a priority.

  “This is inhumane,” the informant’s wife insisted.

  “You’re lucky I’m a reasonable man.”

  “Reasonable. You are insane.”

  “You think so, huh?” Fox found the insult hilarious. “I’ve spotted at least three city code violations at that establishment your husband works at. Not to mention that nephew of yours.” Fox pulled a notepad out of his pocket and flipped through a few pages. “Hassan, is it?”

  “You leave that boy alone. He is a good student.”

  “I go where the intelligence leads me. We will be looking into his student visa.”

  “No,” the informant’s wife pleaded.

  “Young men can be radicalised. There’s no telling what they can get up to when they are alone, in their bedroom, on the internet. He’s from Iraq. I worry about what terrorist influence he could have fallen under.” Fox couldn’t deny he was seriously enjoying this.

  “Please.”

  “Phone.” It was an order that he knew she would comply with. She did, handing it over reluctantly. “If you have any addresses written down, I’ll be needing those too.”

  “I fled Iraq to be away from people like you,” the woman chided.

  “Yeah, well, get used to this because it may be the new normal.” He leaned forward so that he could speak to her in a lower voice. “Maybe you should have stayed in Iraq. Would have saved you all this heartache.” He made sure not to let anyone else in the room hear him say that, because it wouldn’t do to let the mask slip too much. His time was coming, but there was still a lot of left leaning liberals that could make his life difficult if they sensed a whiff of his way of doing things.

  When he had gathered the information he needed, Fox retreated back outside. Standing by his car he watched with satisfaction as two dozen or so women were loaded up onto the transport bus. They were only part of the prize catch. Many of them would have come over with families, so when you caught one illegal, you often got a whole bunch. Even if the parasitic human rights lawyers became involved, there would be a lot of people leaving the country soon.

  Fox didn’t care if families and communities were ripped apart. That wasn’t his problem. He had come to detest how weak and open the borders of the country had become recently, and found himself constantly disappointed by what he saw as the inadequate leadership that had come out of Washington DC. His vision of America didn’t seem to fit well with the more reasonable minds that held a compassionate view about what a civilisation was supposed to be about. There was a place for compassion, but not when there was a risk of whole cities getting burnt to the ground by an atomic blast.

  What he didn’t realise was how radically things were about to change. It had been an illegal alien who had slipped into the country to almost decimate New York City, a foreign-born terrorist funded by a foreign power. The bastard had come here with the additional intention of causing a massacre at the West Point Military Academy, and God only knew what else. Already the other bad actors in that operation were being rounded up, Mohammed knowing enough about the operation to keep the FBI happy.

  As the days passed, Fox would come to like the new America. The problem was, you often also came to regret the things you wished for.

  17.

  Rome, Italy

  All across the city people had begun to fall sick. Public health officials had been slow to react, the first cases scattered across the city’s hospitals, merging with the no
rmal death and disease that medical staff dealt with on a daily basis. This meant that the initial chance to spot the mass anthrax infection was missed.

  Those who had been infected with anthrax in St Peter’s Square had come from all across the city, returning to their homes with the seed of their own demise surging in their lungs and coating the clothing they wore. It took days for doctors to determine that the growing numbers of cases they were seeing were due to Bacillus Anthracis, and there was swelling panic with the realisation that there was only one real explanation for the numbers being seen.

  Terrorism.

  The effective treatment of anthrax requires timely and quick intervention with antibiotics. The longer the person goes untreated, the lower their risk of survival. As the mastermind behind the anthrax attack didn’t reveal to the world what had been done, nobody was aware they were exposed and continued to live out their lives oblivious to the nightmare that had been rained down on them.

  Despite the appearance of early cases after the initial exposure, those patients slipped through the net, being mistaken for more common causes. Some didn’t present into the medical system, choosing to stoically battle through what was surely just a chest infection or a bad flu. It was early on the eleventh of August when a particularly astute doctor in a Rome emergency ward decided to test for anthrax. From this, the first alarm bells were raised. The doctor had become concerned when he saw two patients with very similar symptoms presenting from the same family. Something from his medical training had clicked in his head, and he ordered the tests for a disease that was rarely seen in the centre of a major city.

  Then came the alarming news from New York that the FBI were holding a terrorist who had admitted to using a drone to dust an unknown powder onto the faithful. The terrorist didn’t know what he’d been told to drop, but when you added that to what the doctors were reporting, it was pretty obvious. Mohammed had shared everything he knew, but that was too little far too late.

  With these new revelations, those charged with protecting the Vatican City acted quickly, running tests on all those who lived and worked in the sacred city state. They found an alarming number of people infected, the prevailing wind having blown the dust to contaminate most of the area around St Peter’s Square. This wasn’t the only area attacked, and the distribution of the affected patients began to indicate there was more than one terrorist involved.