by Matt Turner
“Of courssse, Gilesss,” a hundred voices whispered from every corner of the warehouse.
John recoiled in disgust as the hundreds of scraps of pulp and meat that had been spattered about by the explosion inched and wormed their way across the bloody concrete toward the other Prophet’s side. There, they began to bubble and shift in an ever-growing, constantly morphing mound of flesh that swiftly grew from the size of a cockroach to a cat, then to a man, then even bigger.
“Judas Priest!” Vera spat as a horribly familiar head burst from the mound of flesh. For a second, its sunken, weeping eyes leered at them, and then a curtain of greasy black hair descended over them, mercifully shielding them from view.
But the worst was yet to come; it was a sight so hideous and unnatural that it made John’s stomach lurch, filling his mouth with the acrid taste of bile.
A pair of arms, dripping with pale-yellow fluid and black blood, emerged from the underside of the creature’s body. Another pair joined them, then a pair of human feet, then more and more and more, as its torso became more hunchbacked and flat, until John could no longer keep track of all the limbs and the abomination before them looked more like a ten-foot-long centipede of human flesh.
But worst of all, if that were even possible, were the faces. A row of them emerged from the creature’s back, and on either side of its torso—John could even make out the occasional flash of human eyes glaring at him from the forest of limbs that supported its ponderous weight. Pale, dark, brown, male, female—every possible shade of humanity peered at him from the creature’s body. Some of the faces were calm, others weeping, still others locked in hateful snarls, but they all spoke with the same unnerving voice as the grinning central head.
“Our name isss Legion,” they whispered, screamed, wept, and laughed. “For we are many.”
8
Vera tried to ignore the sound of John vomiting, but it was damned difficult, especially considering she wanted to do the exact same thing. The hideous abomination of twisting, swirling flesh was so unnatural and monstrous, every single one of her senses recoiled from it. To look at its shifting folds of pale meat, to hear its bubbling chortle of a laugh, even to hear the beating of its hands and feet against the concrete—it was all just too much.
If I even touch that thing’s mind, I’m as good as dead, she thought in despair. She could practically feel the waves of madness and gibbering insanity locked in an endless vortex in its fractured, poorly amalgamated consciousness.
That left her with one option: the strange Prophet with locusts in his hair. She had a very bad feeling about him too, but at least he wasn’t a being of utter eldritch horror. I’ll have to trust the others to destroy the centipede-thing. It was grimly ironic: just a minute earlier, she had been about to leave the Horsemen forever; now, she was fighting for her life with them once again. She exchanged a meaningful look with Simon and Plague. John was too busy throwing up to notice.
“Well?” The dark Prophet extended both hands before him, and a small cloud of buzzing locusts began to fly forth from his sleeves. “Are Cain’s chosen truly so weak that they won’t even give us a proper fight?”
Plague grinned and gave the Prophet the same gesture Vera had given him earlier. “Nope!”
“DIE!” Simon bellowed, and, with a mighty kick, he sent a dozen massive crates hurtling at the Prophet’s head. Hundreds of spoons shot in every direction like iron shrapnel as the Prophet’s swarm rushed forward—and before the crates came even close to connecting with his face, the gnawing locusts reduced them to a loose cloud of wood and steel fragments.
The Prophet gingerly brushed off the dust that had landed on his shoulder with a bemused smirk.
“Well, that didn’t do fucking much,” Simon snarled, and then the third Prophet arrived.
Vera only had enough time to register the roar of a mighty engine, a vortex of clashing metal and rolling steel ripping through the warehouse, and Simon’s scream as a mechanical claw wrapped itself about his skull. The vehicle’s engine was as loud as a thunderclap, and the small tornado of wind that it raised with it brought blinding tears to Vera’s eyes. She did not even have enough time to raise her hands to protect her face before Simon and his captor vanished in a flash of fire and steel.
The two Prophets did not so much as blink at the sudden appearance and farewell of the speed-demon; instead, they rushed forward, Legion on all forty limbs, and the black-eyed one with a swarm of locusts buzzing in front of him.
Plague immediately leapt in front of Vera, his knives a blur of motion as he stabbed and slashed at the oncoming swarm. Hundreds of dead locusts fell at his feet, but thousands more emerged from the robes and mouth of the oncoming Prophet. “Death! Get in his head!” Plague bellowed over his shoulder. A locust landed on his cheek, tearing away a strip of meat and exposing the interior of his mouth. He swatted it away with an oath, but a dozen more took advantage of his distraction and dove for his legs, where they furiously chewed away the ragged cloth about his ankles. “NOW, Death!”
The buzzing of locusts and the horrible chewing sound they made nearly drowned out his words, but she understood him well enough. “I know!” she screamed back. The Mark on her ankle pulsed horribly as the mighty swarm of locusts spread in every direction. She had a brief glimpse of hundreds of them landing on John’s back, chewing his protective layer of bark to shreds as he desperately tried to fend off the swipes of Legion’s clawed, unnaturally long arms.
There was no possible way she could make physical contact with the locust-Prophet; his pets were now practically a solid wall between the two of them, a wall that was rapidly overwhelming Plague despite his best attempts. I need something new, she thought desperately. Think, damnit! Think!
But the only thing that filled her mind was the constant, unnerving, soul-crushing droning and buzzing of the mighty swarm. It was hypnotic, unending… She could feel her thoughts drifting away, even as John and Plague fell under the sheer weight of the insects. Think of the Revolution, you BITCH! a part of her mind that sounded remarkably like her father bellowed at her.
And then came another thought, just as horrible as the swarm that reached for her. The Revolution is why I’m here.
“No,” Vera whispered as a locust landed on her pale hand. Its pincers flashed, and she felt a burst of pain as blood trickled down her fingers. “No! I’m not done!” Those three words had carried her through all of Hell, but they no longer had any power for her: her mind remained unfocused and empty as ever as the swarm engulfed her.
“I’m not done!” Vera Figner screamed. “I’m not—”
Her desperate words were cut off as a locust forced its way into her open mouth and down her throat. It was quickly joined by scores of its brethren. They bored like moles through her guts, tearing open tunnels and trenches in her stomach and intestines that opened up to the outside air, allowing even more of the monsters to enter and eat her from the inside out. The last thing Vera saw before they severed her optic nerve and consumed her remaining eye was a vision of Seth sadly gazing down at her.
The Prophet grimly stripped everything from her: skin, then muscle, then bone. All that remained was the pain.
9
Simon hoped that the other Horsemen were faring better than he was, for the newly arrived Prophet was giving him more trouble than he had bargained for. Half of his body was lifted into the air by a great metal band about his head, but his legs and lower torso were being dragged along the ground at such an enormous rate that he could almost feel his skin being ripped off. His vision was obscured by the claw about his face, but the familiar mechanical roar made him realize that he was attached to one of the steel beasts the Kingdom sometimes used.
I am so fucking tired of people trying to kill me all the damn time, he raged, and with a mighty effort he reached up and tore the metal claw about his head in half. The steel monster released him, and he came to a screeching stop as he hit the side of a warehouse.
“Fucking
FUCK!” he swore as he wrenched himself out of the brick wall. Every inch of his body hurt; even dying hadn’t been this goddamn painful. His mood was not improved by a loose brick that tumbled down and split in two on the top of his head.
Fifty meters away, the war machine spun around and kicked up a cloud of rubble as it came to a stop. It was the strangest contraption he had ever seen; two massive spike-studded wheels lined next to each other with a large driver’s compartment suspended on the axle between them—but then there were another pair of wheels crisscrossing the original two, making a dizzying mirage of wheels within wheels that spun at an unbelievable rate. And yet the design appeared sleek and effortless, almost organic in its strange beauty…
I’m going to break those fucking wheels in half, Simon vowed. He wrenched a piece of rebar from the warehouse he had hit and wielded it before him like a makeshift spear. “I haven’t got all day!” he bellowed at the strange vehicle.
The spinning wheels momentarily slowed, allowing him a glimpse of the Prophet operating the machine. “Strange,” the Prophet called out in a feminine, yet oddly forced, voice. “Any other man would be nothing but pulp after hitting a brick wall like that.”
Simon secretly suspected that being pulp would hurt less, but he was not in the mood to discuss his pain. “I’m not like most men,” he snarled. “Come over here and let me show you.”
The Prophet shook her head. To Simon’s surprise, he could see that she wore a strange suit of armor—all that was visible of her was the single hateful eye that glared at him from the tarnished steel mask she wore. “All humans are the same,” she announced. “You will break like the others.” Her hands ran over the controls, and the machine slowly began to trundle forward.
Simon quickly took notice of the flamethrowers and machine guns deployed from its sides.
I need cover. His eyes flickered to the brick warehouse that he had collided with. Its walls were pockmarked with age and bullet holes, and it was several stories tall. An idiotic idea came over him. I need her closer. It was fortunate that he had been married; he had a great deal of experience with provoking women.
“Your mask is lovely, dear,” he mockingly called out to the Prophet. “I love the way that it brings out your hair.”
Her eye narrowed. “You dare to mock ELIE, little worm?” A massive spike suddenly extended from the driving compartment, pointed directly at him.
She wants to impale me. Good.
“I wonder, what sort of woman wears a mask in Hell?” Simon called out. He furrowed his brow in mock concentration. “I’ve seen bloated women, ugly women, tortured women, women without bodies—but never a woman with a mask!”
“Do not call me that,” the Prophet hissed in a voice so low he could barely hear her. Still, she came closer, closer…
“So what’s under that mask, then?” Simon laughed. “Did sister call you ugly and now you’re ashamed? Did Daddy hit you one too many times and now your face doesn’t work?” He tensed his arm, ready to attack. Any second now… “Or are you just another run-of-the-mill, pig-faced, gap-toothed, pox-riddled, husband-losing, unibrowed woman?”
“DO NOT CALL ME THAT,” she bellowed, and the war machine charged forward, the massive metal spike gleaming. Gone were the flamethrowers and machine guns; she wanted him to suffer first.
Fool.
As hard as he could, Simon slammed his shoulder into the side of the warehouse. Brick and rebar crumbled before him as he charged forward, bashing through the wall. He could feel the crumbling structure give way under his relentless assault, and at the last second, he turned and pushed with all his might at the war machine hurtling toward him.
It was a small miracle that his ploy worked, but it somehow did. The wall—and half of the building with it—sloughed downward in a mighty avalanche of brick and rubble, completely burying everything in front of the warehouse. The Prophet let out a strange yelp as she jerked her machine to the side, desperately trying to avoid the onslaught—but it was far too late, and her momentum carried her directly into it. In seconds, any trace that she or her machine had existed was utterly gone.
Simon coughed out a lungful of smoke and dust. “Heh.” He chuckled to himself. Didn’t think that would actually work. He began to climb onto the massive pile of rubble, hoping to get a vantage point to see where the Prophet had dragged him. “Damned woman,” he muttered to himself as the pain from his skinned legs flared up. “Fucking—”
A metal spike shot up from the ground directly beneath him, neatly catching him in the stomach and piercing through his back. He let out a howl, more of surprise at his hanging guts than of pain, as the rubble shifted and toppled back, revealing the Prophet and her machine. The spike dug even deeper into his body, neatly impaling him, and now it did hurt, oh yes it did. Simon’s lungs swiftly began to drown in his own blood, and all he could do was weakly cough and vomit.
The spike retracted, bringing him face-to-face with the mysterious Prophet. “I am no woman,” she told him, her single red eye blazing beneath the scratched iron mask. “I am ELIE. You are nothing. You are less than nothing. You are meat.”
A nozzle twisted up from the main compartment of the vehicle. Simon stared down into it, and with a pang of horror, saw a glowing yellow light within the depths of the weapon.
“And now,” ELIE said, “you are cooked.”
The flamethrower roasted him like a duck on a spit.
10
Seth sighed as he gazed at the four mutilated bodies the Prophets laid out on the ground outside the warehouse. He knew pain and suffering more than most, but he had found their screams, particularly Vera’s, to be especially heartrending. They chose their own path, he told himself. Freely they stood, and freely they fell. Truth be told, he was genuinely amazed that they had made it so far; he had been completely convinced that the ocean of Hellfire had consumed them all.
His mission was complete; those four loose ends were tied up forever. If they were lucky, the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace would bury them alive in a lake of concrete or molten steel for the rest of time. If they weren’t…compared to some fates, even Hellfire seemed merciful. Cain would never have access to their Marks, and the Seals binding him to Judecca would remain.
But there was one remaining loose end, one that filled Seth with a sense of foreboding to the pit of his stomach. The centipede-shaped Prophet—the one the others called Legion—something about that creature just felt off. It wasn’t just the way it scurried over the rubble or the way it caressed its many hands across the cindered face of Simon de Montfort, cooing like a loving mother. Every instinct that Seth had built over his many centuries of service to Paradise told him that the abomination was a thing to be feared.
It was time for him to go; he had dawdled in Hell long enough, yet still Seth lingered. I’m missing something, he thought anxiously. Cain got his hands on Antony’s Mark, but all the new Horsemen are defeated and Longinus’s Mark is long gone in the Hellfire. Of the eight Marks in Hell from the old and new Horsemen, that left one in Cain’s possession, one in the lake of Hellfire, four in the Prophet’s hands, and two that were as good as gone. The math was irrefutable; he had nothing to worry about—the Fourth Rebellion had been nipped in the bud.
What’s wrong with me? Seth wondered angrily. He had every reason in the world to leave; what was holding him back? Unbidden, his gaze drifted back to Vera’s flayed body, and, much to his surprise, he felt a great torrent of rage threaten his heart. Could it be…for her?
The Prophet called Legion moved from Simon to Vera.
Don’t touch her, monster. Seth stood from his hiding spot on the opposite roof, ready to spring into action.
And then, to his horror, every single head on Legion’s undulating body slowly turned to directly face him. Fifty pairs of lidless, unblinking eyes bored into his.
Only a mixture of surprise and paralyzing fear kept him from jolting backward. That thing can see me? Impossible. He had not yet revealed himself. That was the
one unbreakable rule. Heaven’s agents could only be seen by those who had been chosen to see them.
Slowly, slowly, one of the Prophet’s arms stretched forward, and, slippery as an eel, wrapped around Vera’s throat. All the while, the flesh-monster’s faces stared up at him, as blank as stone. Vera let out a painful moan as the arm clenched more and more tightly, popping blood vessels and cracking vertebrae.
“Let her go,” Seth whispered through gritted teeth. “Or face Heaven’s wrath, monster.”
The Prophet released its grip on her throat, but every one of its faces broke out into a toothy grin. Without saying another word, they opened one of their mouths wide and brought it close to Vera’s bloodied head, then closed it just as they were about to consume her. The threat was obvious. I have her. The creature’s hateful eyes mocked him. Come and take her.
11
“Legion, what are you looking at?” Giles demanded.
“Nothing,” they hissed, but their faces remained locked on the deserted roof of an adjacent warehouse. “There’sss a ssstrange ssscent about.”
“How strange?” Legion’s noses had never failed the Prophets; they had saved Giles’s hide more than once. He had learned to always trust them.
With a half-dozen arms, Legion roped Vera over their back and trundled with her toward ELIE’s Hellhound. “It’sss absssolutely divine.” The Prophet chuckled over their shoulders.
Now what was that supposed to mean? Giles wondered.
Ignore the monster, Abaddon growled. One of the demon’s locusts leapt down from Giles’s hair and landed on the belt of the young redhead, where it began to nuzzle a bloodstained leather bag. This Horseman is carrying another head.
Giles knelt and emptied the bag into his hands. Just as Abaddon had predicted, a severed head fell out; this one was of a pale gray-eyed woman. Something about her defiant features reminded Giles of Marie, but he shook the thought away; that child was long dead. He seized the head by the hair and lifted it so that it was eye-level with him. “What is your name?”