by Poppet
Collapsing back I plant three swift bullets into Alpha’s chest.
It’s the green light to my men. Action and mayhem explodes around me, bullets flying through the night, the report of gunfire shattering the opulent quietude of the fiscally endowed.
•
Jude:
Hell and damnation! He told me he was gonna do this and I thought no way would it work, it was a suicide mission, and yet I’m bellowing orders into my comms, “Shoot to kill, leave no man alive!”
A stream of wrath is flowing out of the doors to the palace, they’re taking to the roof, enemy fire raining down upon us, and we’re returning it, shells flying like glitter all around us, but we’re outmanned and outgunned!
Their artillery is far superior, and I have to drop my jamming assault rifle to snatch up the next option to hand, the Browning M2 machine gun. I’m shooting so fast I can smell the heat, it’s blistering my eyeballs, I’m swathed in sweat, but my god I’ve never felt more alive than this second. The tone of gunfire changes around me and I know the others have followed suit, shotguns and handguns no longer pierce the night with their marching music, all I hear is the chorus of machine guns sewing through the nighttime silence.
I have no choice left, this is the final battle, this is our Armageddon, it’s our Ragnarök, and they cannot prevail! The gunfire is too intense. Shouting to be heard over the diabolical hellfire of guerrilla warfare, I yell, “Fall back! MPADs, RPGs, now. NOW NOW NOW!”
There’s only one way to salvage our lives. Shouldering the rocket launcher I take aim, unleashing a motherfucking bomb into Satan’s kingdom.
We have three models of grenade launcher and with creepy synchronicity I hear the hollow thooop of them launching, every man abandoning his assault rifle for machine guns and rocket launchers, we’re all artillery blazing now. The air sings and singes, my muscles throb, and I’m running for the next angle, unable to hear a goddamn thing.
I can’t hear my comms!
I don’t know who’s alive and who’s dead!
The front columns explode, the building crumbles and collapses at the front while Victor stands at the main gate silhouetted by the raging inferno, serenaded with the shrieks of twisting metal and the crackle of famished flame, safe because no one dares cap him if he’s the next Alpha, their boss, their income, their fucking sure thing.
Christ I’m so amped right now!
Victor blows his cover by spitting on Alpha. Cursing his father.
He leans over him, kissing him full on the mouth, both arms flared wide like he’s on a crucifix, a gun in each hand, raining bullets in every direction to have this moment with his father.
Plumes of fire writhe all around them, Victor looks like the Destroyer standing in his comfort zone, in the centre of hell, in the epicentre of the chaos, a black silhouette, an effigy of humanity, cremated to coal black, but so regal. He is my lord. He is my liege! I will follow him anywhere.
The good son finally gets to say goodbye. He’s finally free.
Our comms are live, my ears unblocking, and I want to smack myself for forgetting my muffs.
We all hear it loud and Omega fucking clear.
Victor hisses, “Lucifer is the light. He’s the one who knows the truth. I’m here to expose you! And I’m framing Niel for what happened here tonight. You killed your son tonight, my twin brother. The news headlines will show a man trying to take down his tyrannical father and you killed each other in the process. Victor Ward dies tonight, his body will be found dead next to yours.”
•
Victor:
Leaning closer, I growl, “You named me Destroyer, the angel of Vengeance. Did you really think you could escape it? Your redemption failed.” Jabbing the muzzle of my Glock into his forehead I eject the magazine, reach into my windbreaker to snatch the next one and slam it home.
I pull the trigger. Not one, not two, but three bullets.
One for the mother, one for the brother, and one for the son. Evelyn. Seth. Me.
My father’s eyes glass over and I plant my gun into his hand, wrapping his fingerprints around the firearm that shot into Niel Adam Ward not half an hour ago. Fuck trading a life for a life. No more teeth and eyes. Merely justice, end of.
I know the armed forces are on their way, we’ve opened the gates and the fury of the forgotten gods is scorching this land. Again I’m running against the clock where I’m always left to do so much with the final grain of sand.
Hoofing it to the truck I reach in, shouldering my brother, and run like I’m in bootcamp with a log on my shoulders, sprinting back to my father. The scene has to be set before News choppers get here.
Dropping my twin strategically, I position him, my mind calculating angles from him to dad. Jude needs time to sort the details of this mission,
I gave him directives, but I doubt he’s had an ounce of time to do any of them.
Rushing I zoot to dad, on the ground next to him, and empty three more bullets into Niel. I cover my crimes from earlier, and now dad will take the rap for it.
Fuckers!
You thought I’d die for you? Are you completely delusional?
Niel sports a bullet wound to the groin, the knee, and the brain. Boohoo. For good measure I extract my hunting knife and slash into Niel’s femoral artery, ensuring there will be no saving this arsewipe. The brother I never knew, but the perfect patsy.
I have the man’s keys, his car, his clothes, his wallet, his face, soon his fingerprints, and Jude will simply transfer his identity to me.
Emptying my pockets so that the brotherhood think this clone is Victor, I plant my identity on my twin brother.
Siren’s are coming. The air verily warbles with it.
“ABORT!” I shout into my comms, running like hell to get to the truck – and gone.
The one thing I still don’t get is how not one person has come out to investigate what’s going on next door. Do they not hear it? Or is this just normal for hunting season?
Sprinting with every fibre of muscle burning I run after the artillery truck, getting a hand up and in from Bradley. It takes me seconds to adjust to the dim interior, counting men. “Status?” I ask Jude, my lungs scalding with smoke and triumph.
“And the good lord said, not a hair will be harmed on the heads of the righteous.” That news makes me weak and I am catapulted forward, toward Jude, when the truck bundu bashes through wild territory to escape detection.
I hug Jude, I’m here now anyhow. I squeeze him so tight.
I didn’t need a fucking Niel in my life.
This, this a brother.
~ Chapter 29 ~
Where there is no law, no account is kept of sins.
~ Romans 5:13
Victor:
LEAVING BEHIND WAILING sirens and anarchy we make our way to our civilian vehicles. Jude made a call, mobilising some of his trusted allies to provide getaway cars for us so if there are any roadblocks out of here we can pass for civilians in transit.
Somehow I’m in a car with Bradley, the artillery truck already burning in the backyard of another lord and lady of privilege, all of us having changed into civvy clothing.
I ditched the windbreaker in the bonfire of what was left of our mission, but to be credible I have to be Niel now so have kept the clothes he was wearing to don again on my return.
To get back to the homestead in Kimbolton I’m wearing blood-free clothes, and the story is we were down the pub to watch the footie.
And yet despite us splitting up and taking different routes home, we’re not stopped. Not once.
The good news about Dad’s neighbourhood is that the estates are so huge that no neighbour can see what happened. There are no witnesses. No security cameras. The only ones that there were are ash, scattered to the four winds, destroyed.
I’m going to get away with this. I’m going to pull it off. Not long now and we’ll be living the rest of our lives free and finally able to relax and enjoy what’s left of our heartbeats.<
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We’re the last to arrive home and it’s with great jubilation that we rumble into the kitchen, grabbing the whisky presented to us on entering the kitchen door, and I stop for a moment to revel in the exhilaration of knowing there is no more Alpha to ruin my life. In my cunning I’ve even managed to take care of the Interpol problem. Both the men they’re hunting are lying dead in a drive in Cambridgeshire.
Raising my glass, I say over the ruckus, “For it is written, Vengeance is Mine.” Romans 12:19
Glasses and voices rise in unison. “To Vengeance!”
I have time to party, to find Polina, to catch an intimate moment with her possibly, hopefully, because in an hour I will arrive at Ridley Manor in my brother’s car, as the grieving son. I will live Niel’s life from this day forward because Victor died tonight. And his crimes died with him.
Niel will go down in history as the death of Victor Ward, the maniac who killed his father when the crimes he committed grew too much to bear.
Looking around, I realise that the face I’m searching for is absent. “Where’s Jude?”
“I dunno,” answers from behind the fridge.
Jude is missing! M.I.A!
Fuck! He can’t be captured, he knows everything and more.
“We have to go back!” I insist, rejecting my drink, fumbling for my cellphone to call him, only to recall that I don’t have it. We destroyed it so no one would find my contacts. Victor Ward’s phone is burning in the back of a truck.
Andy says, “No Vic, we can’t. That place will be swarming with badges now. One suicide mission a night is more than ample.”
I can’t argue, knowing that for the plan to work I have to follow it through to the bitter end.
Inspiration gongs my numbskull and I charge through the house to Jude’s computer, waiting impatiently while the app loads. Is it an app? I call them apps but it’s probably software Alpha wrote himself.
Taking it with me back to the kitchen I grab my alcoholic fortification again, sitting at the table, my eyes on the screen to the expense of all else. I’m looking for Jude’s tracking chip.
Jude doesn’t know about our server which tracks every disciple, only me and Alpha knew about this. The chip is so small, the kind used in veterinary practices. It’s just strong enough to find the person without them ever knowing they have an ID tracking device. It’s injected under the skin during their circumcision procedure.
“Who did Jude travel with?” I ask.
“Brendan and Kyle.”
I glance to Stephen, so impressed that he’s always on top of our whereabouts. He was born for this, he excels when he’s in charge of black ops.
When the dot belonging to Jude is live on the screen, blipping not far from here, I sag back, relief engulfing me.
I am Victor the victorious! It was too easy really. Way too fucking easy.
Standing up from the kitchen table, slugging my whisky, I notice her leaning in the doorway watching us, soft and sweet like a visitation from another world.
She is from another world.
She’s nothing like the hellfire and damnation we were just scything through, she is the very antithesis of the evil I have witnessed, done, and endured.
Dressed in a white summer dress, her feet unshod, her long blonde hair cascading over a rack I could solidly violate, she looks like the only redemption in a kitchen crammed with fallen angels. We’re the abominations.
She sees me zeroing in on her, for she was watching only me. In a room full of men high on testosterone and cortisol, pumped and fresh from the fight, she sees none of them. I feel like a god, she does that. I’ve never been wilfully given devotion before, but this little lady oozes adoration with her stare on my skin, on my throat, rising higher the closer I get to her until she’s looking into my eyes.
I crack a smile, alien emotions brewing inside me. I have an hour, less now, but I can make that time count for something life changing.
She’s 5’9, and yet she has to tilt her head right back to look up at me. She makes me feel so tall, so mighty, so worshipped.
“Did you kick his head in? Did you spit on him for Polina? Did you make his heart still?”
Now I’m smiling like in my back pocket is a ticket to paradise.
Moving her out of the doorway, guiding her around the corner and into the dining room, I hem her against the wall, leaning over her, bracing my arm on the wall above her head. “I did.” I keep my tone deep, low, intimate.
She smells like freshly squeezed apples and vanilla. It makes my mouth water. I can’t even remember the last time I ate.
She reaches up, gingerly cupping my face, searching my eyes for secrets. “The suffer is gone.”
I cup her face in return, dipping lower, my breath bathing her mouth. “Good, I was so worried I’d hurt you.”
“You no hurt Polina. Victor can never hurt Polina. I speak of your suffer, not Po – my … mine.”
“You think I was suffering?” I ask.
She nods, licking her lips, raising onto tiptoes to breach the gap I’m maintaining. “Da. You no can lie to me. I see you, Victor. I see inside to real you.”
Polina closes in, pressing her warm lips to mine, and the surge within to devour her scorches out every other thought I was entertaining.
I kiss her so hard and deep that I worry she’ll swell up again. But I need this, I need the way it inflates me with invincibility, with power, with dreamy bondage. There are no words to explain how instant fusion to another spirit feels, the completeness, the wholeness, the unity without restriction or judgment, without condition. It’s everything at once, it’s hopeless and wonderful, it’s everything I denied myself, it’s everything I’ve always wanted.
She sags back to her heels, her bare feet moving to perch on my boots for the inches of reach they afford her, and she whispers softly into my mouth, her eye contact never once breaking. Not through the kiss, not even now. “You teach me,” she croons.
“Teach you what?”
“To break head.”
She makes the most dire request sound like a great idea, she makes it sound sweet and reasonable. “Sure thing.”
“You swear on the promise that you spit on him?”
“I did, right before I killed him. He paid for your pain, Polina. I am the Destroyer and I am your avenging angel. I told you that and I don’t utter words I don’t mean.”
“You come away with me?” she whispers, still staring up at me, not once breaking her attention, never looking away. In her world I am the galaxy, I am the happiest dream, I am the elysian fields.
Fuck, how does a woman do this? She makes me feel safe and it’s so foreign that I’m tempted to curse her for breaching my defences. But it’s true. I know I could tell her anything, I could tell her about the woman I murdered before ending Shauna just because the itch to cleanse a filthy sinner became too much for me. I’m an addict, it was my life, and it’s so hard to break the addition to correcting sin.
I’m a murderer and I know it’s wrong, and yet I enjoy it. It takes skill, it takes patience, and it’s an art I have perfected. Yet this babe would simply accept that in me, in her eyes I am flawless. She’s known hell and she sees me as the outcast angel lost in a world of devils. I don’t belong in hell, because I’m not like those sinners, I’m exceptional.
And she looks at me, touching me, in such a way that I know it. She makes sure I know it. She has put me on a pedestal I am wholly unworthy of, and yet once on the elevated platform I can’t imagine giving it up. Why the hell should I?
“I really want to fuck you.” I do. I want inside her. If this is how magnetised stares feel, how spiritual nirvana feels, how amazing will it be inside her?
“I wait too long for Victor to say that,” she says, her intensity vanishing in another logic withering smile. This chick makes me stupid. And yet look at this, she can surprise me. Not three feet away is a room of men and she’s up on the dining table, her skirt up and over her knees, balanced on the edge
, open to me. Not a shred of underwear in sight. Shameless. And fucking perfect.
I count bruises, feeling remorse for the bike accident. I was being reckless and she paid the price.
Closing in on Polina, opening her legs wide, unzipping my pants, I enter her next to a crowded room of jubilant men.
Dipping my head to her ear, I whisper words of affection, “You’re such a dirty little angel, it’s precious.”
She scratches me, biting into my shoulder to stay quiet, riding me, meeting me inch for inch, and I’m embalmed. My blood is replaced with formaldehyde because I’m instantly immortal. Inside her is a home I never found, and never knew. It moves me emotionally despite the feral shenanigans.
Leaning closer, nuzzling her ear, I murmur, “Scratch the shit out of me.”
I’m laughing when she indulges me, because my story is a motorbike tried to run me off the road. And when I got out of the Lamborghini the man in the helmet tried to beat me to a pulp. Her mauling helps solidify the cover story.
The front door slams and Jude saunters in, breathless and sweaty. “You lot. Fuck you! You fuckers just left me there!”
He’s already walked our way, catching our hallowed moment.
“Forgive me for ending this now,” I tell her, giving her one last fat kiss. I came when I reached home, I simply stayed inside her because it was more than that, it felt incredible, and I was getting hard again.
Zipping up, I face my friend. “That’s what you get for breaking protocol. And?”
I help Polina off the table, seeing beyond her to the crew converging on us to get the goods from Jude.
“And,” Jude grins. “I gave Niel your tattoo, the omega, it’ll last just long enough to have him dead and cremated. No one will know he’s not you. And I wiped their security recordings, and hijacked everything you need to be Niel.”