Necessarily Evil- Apocalypse

by Shad N Freud

  A familiar honey badger stepped through the wall of bodies, bearing a pair of nullifier cuffs. Carl’s brow scrunched up in confusion as Graahl walked towards him, his expression one of pain, of anxiety, and of pity for Carl. “Graahl, mate…what’s going on here?”

  An Inquisitor at Graahl’s shoulder pushed his glasses up onto his nose. “Cardinal Beaumont, you are hereby being taken into custody. There’s been an incident, and the Pope feels it best you come with us.”

  Graahl paused as a throwing knife buried itself in the concrete at his feet. He looked over at Cenere who had stepped in front of Carl, two handfuls of flying steel ready to bite anyone that even considered pulling a trigger. The sound of a grenade being chambered drew the eye to Camilla, who was glaring at the assembled Hand members that still had their weapons trained on Carl. A reptilian snarl caused several of the Hand to take half a step back, their weapons never wavering from the target they’d been ordered to acquire.

  “Enough.” All eyes shifted to Carl, who stepped forward. He handed the bag of coins off to Longinus. “Don’t suppose I could get you to keep an eye on these kids for a bit, could I? I know it’s an imposition, but-,”

  “I’ll keep them safe. We’ll be waiting for you to join us again,” Lonnie said as he clapped a hand on Carl’s shoulder.

  Cenere stood in front of Carl. “You can’t be serious. You haven’t done anything! What the Hell is going on?” Cenere tensed as he felt a paw on his shoulder and decked the Honey Badger in the teeth, knocking out the ratel man.

  Everything stopped, and Carl’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Mate, you’d better hope you’re on the other side of the globe when he wakes up. The last person to lay him out with a sucker punch like that…well, I think his bones are still littered around Graahl’s bed. Lonnie, you’d better get them out of here.”

  Lonnie nodded and several Black Hand carefully picked up and carried the badger while the Inquisitor warily watched the group drag Cenere away as he cursed and kicked, trying to get back to his mentor. Carl held out his wrists and the cuffs went on, cutting him off from his powers and temporarily severing his connection to Hell. He fought the sense of panic that fell over him, feeling cold as the infernal warmth left him. He and Graahl were loaded into the armored transport with the Inquisitor before Carl reached into his coat and dug a cigarette out with his teeth.

  “Got a light? Thanks.” Carl said, taking a deep drag before glaring at the Inquisitor. “Now then, what the fuck is this all about?”

  The Inquisitor shook his head. “I apologize Cardinal Beaumont, but I’m not cleared to give you that information. I’m sorry. You’re to be brought before the Pope, where he will inform you as to the particulars.”

  Carl’s expression darkened as he took another drag, the acrid smoke pouring out of his nose. “Look, I came along willingly. Peacefully even. And you won’t tell me why I’m getting pinched? I’ll kick him awake and ask him myself if you won’t tell me. And believe you me, Graahl does not like getting woken up.”

  The Inquisitor stared ahead impassively. Carl growled in frustration and reached into his coat, producing his cell phone. “Fine! I’ll just call the fat fuck myself. Wait…no signal?” Carl looked down as he heard restraints lock around his legs. “Why is my signal getting blocked? What the bloody Hell happened that you don’t want me looking at the internet?” The Inquisitor continued staring ahead impassively, deliberately not looking at Carl. Carl threw his phone in anger and could feel his teeth itch. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Please, I just want to know why I’ve been arrested. Can’t you tell me anything?”

  Carl felt the Armored vehicle drive up a ramp, and his eyes narrowed in confusion. “You’re loading the transport onto a cargo plane? You don’t want me to have a chance to escape…” Carl moved his tongue around the inside of his mouth and removed a false tooth, the hidden lockpick attached to the inside face of the tooth coming free as well. He coughed and spat up the blood and lockpick into his hand, drawing the Inquisitor’s attention. He continued coughing, biting the inside of his mouth to produce more blood, and spat out a welter of gore with another cough.

  The Inquisitor leaned forward to check on Carl, causing the orc to smile before he thumped the younger man on the bridge of his nose with his forehead, then used the lock pick to remove the nullifiers. He then burned a hole through the lock and kicked it open to several squads of Black Hand. The sound of twelve safeties flipping off caused Carl to pause as he saw and entire squad of Black Hand waiting for him.

  “Evening, gents!” Carl snarked at the assembled men who immediately opened fire, peppering Carl with tranquilizer darts. Carl glared at the men, giving them the finger before he dropped like a stone.

  An older enlisted Sargent gently kicked Carl in the side to make sure he was out before he called the squad forward. Carl was carefully put back into his cuffs after being stripped bare to remove his other hidden weapons. He was then bound to one of the benches in the armored vehicle, and the door was fixed before Graahl was carefully woken up and put in charge of watching his colleague by the grizzled old Sargent, who offered the bipedal ratel a hand up before going to check up on the idiot officer that had been in charge.

  The young officer was busy resetting the bones in his nose before channeling Hellfire through his hands and into his damaged olfactory organ. The Sargent chuckled as he patted the Inquisitor on the back, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “And that, sir, is why you always do a body check before you load them into a prison transport.”

  ∞∞∞

  Impious stared at Baal as the Archduke relayed his change in orders. “You’re going to Berlin? Ah, to guard the Mercedes, right?”

  Baal nodded. “That, and I’d rather not be presssent when Carl findsss out the bad newsss. He hasss enough reassson to…dissslike me. I’d rather not throw napalm on that bonfire, thank you.” Baal strolled over to the broom closet and a door formed to Hell. He paused and looked back for a moment. “Isss it true that Carl’sss protégé sssucker punched Graahl and laid him out?”

  Impious nodded with a smirk. “Never would have figured Graahl of all people would have a glass jaw.”

  “He mussst have been pisssed when he woke up. Until next time, Impiousss,” Baal said before stepping through the doorway to Hell to catch a connecting gate to Berlin.

  Impious held his head in his hands as he pondered what to do next. Carl would be landing in the Vatican any minute, and he’d have to be the one to tell him about what happened to his family. While Impious had seen some serious shit in his life, what he saw on the video he’d received giftwrapped in Tristanna’s head was enough to make him vomit after only ten minutes. He’d nearly OD’d on heroin trying to cheer himself up afterwards. Torture was one thing, but that…

  His hand started shaking uncontrollably and Trixie walked over, her usual smile gone. Trixie had watched the entire video without batting an eye and taken notes as to exactly what had occurred in the video. “’Seppe, no more today. I can’t have the leader of the Inquisition dying during one of his nods.”

  “That’s not why my hand is shaking, my dear. I’m honestly scared of what Carl might do. I want the restraints triple checked, I want men in the room with tranq darts, I want Graahl between me and Carl, I want the best rubber room at St. Magdelene’s Psychiatric Hospital reserved, and I want Bella on the first flight out here. We need to be ready for the worst. Put him on suicide watch. Do not let him go anywhere by himself.”

  Trixie nodded, leaving to go carry out her boss’ orders. Her vapid persona came back to the fore as she bounced her way out of the room, chewing and popping bubblegum with a vacuous smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her piercing, intelligent baby blue eyes. It was an affectation to make people overlook the gorgeous tiefling, to allow her to hide in plain sight. If Graahl was the shield that protected Impious from harm to his person, then Trixie was the dagger under the table, the stiletto that found the weak points in an enemy’
s armor, the knife that cut short the lives that threatened the Pope in the darkness. And she was head over heels in love with Impious, rotundity be damned.

  He had saved her from a life of exploitation when he was a Bishop and had blundered into a human trafficking case, saving dozens of other women in the process. She’d sworn her undying allegiance from that day forward and trained to be the best assassin the Inquisition had never heard of. A good assassin is whispered about in the dark. The best assassins? Ghosts. Unknown. And the only people that knew about Trixie’s inauspicious past were Impious, the Grand Inquisitors, and her victims. And the latter rarely spoke, being dead and all.

  Impious felt his phone buzzing in his pocket and answered it. “This had better be good.”

  “Carl broke free of his restraints and broke Inquisitor Jones’ nose. We tranqued him.”

  “Didn’t do a body search, did he?” Impious smirked smugly as the man on the other end explained what had happened. Much as he might not like Carl, he deeply respected the toe-rag. The man always got results, even if the property damage might have made some of his victories seem somewhat pyrrhic. He was also one of the most persistent bulldogs he could set on a case. And woe betide the fool that harmed a child; Carl had a special place in his heart for children, even before Sophie was born.

  Impious rubbed his temple as he grabbed the bottle of scotch sitting at his hip and drank a third of the bottle, coughing as the cheap liquor burned his throat. He decided to go bathe before Carl arrived. This was going to be a terrible day.

  ∞∞∞

  Impious had been right. Despite his restraints, the tranquilizers…and the nullifiers…Carl had broken loose, put Graahl through a wall, knocking the honey badger out for the second time in as many decades, and nearly killed everyone in the room during his rage before Trixie sucker punched him with a stiletto through the spinal cord. After he’d been properly restrained again, she’d removed the knife, and Graahl healed him.

  Carl became catatonic without the aid of drugs and they carted him off to St. Magdalene’s, where he spent time oscillating between stark raving madness and frightening lucidity. Guards were placed on round the clock watch to keep watch on the man. The only thing he’d been allowed to keep was a small picture from his wallet.

  Carl sat in his padded cell, staring at the picture. He had no tears left to cry and his eyes were red and puffy. He’d been in this cell for days, hadn’t eaten or slept…just sat and stared at the picture. It was a small photo of Tristanna and Sophie, just a baby in his arms. He hadn’t seen what they looked like after Ink was finished with them, but it didn’t matter. That…

  Words failed him. No word was strong enough to describe his hatred for the bitch that killed his child, his daughter…and the love of his life. Nothing could describe the depths of his agony, his pain. His beautiful wife and the best thing he’d ever done, the purest thing he’d ever created, destroyed by that filthy bitch. All because of something he hadn’t even done yet. Or, had already done. He bashed the back of his head against the padded wall and wailed in sorrow. As if things weren’t bad enough, he had a time paradox hanging over his head. A memory came unbidden to his mind’s eye, of Sophie’s eighth birthday.

  ∞∞∞

  “Papa! You made it!” The adorable eight-year-old ran up to Carl, wrapping her arms around his leg. He picked up his much smaller daughter and carried her back to her birthday party, a stack of presents in his other arm. Tristanna sighed in relief as her husband walked into the back yard where thirty screaming children had nearly driven the parents mad. Sophie smiled as she hugged her father and looked at the stack of presents. “Ooh! Who are those from?”

  Carl smiled as he sat his daughter down and put the stack of presents on a nearby table. “Your uncles Jiro and Graahl and aunties Caitlynn and Bella bought you these.” With the money they lost at poker, Carl neglected to mention as he let her tear open the packaging. He looked over at Tryst and saw the slight glare she was directing at him. They had talked about Carl’s habit of overcompensating when it came to presents for their daughter. He did it to try and make up for his being gone all the time, and Tryst was sick of it. She pointed to the living room, and Carl hung his head as he made his way into the house. She closed the sliding glass door, then cast a sound cancelling spell on the wall.

  “Carl, we talked about this. She needs a father, not an ATM. Ye cannae keep tryin to buy her love. She just wants to see her father.”

  ∞∞∞

  Father.

  Carl screamed in rage, his straight jacket shredding as the Thorazine wore off and he began pounding on everything: the floor, the walls, himself. He thrashed everything in the room until he tired himself out and fell to the floor, crying again. That night, like the nights before, Carl cried himself to sleep.

  Only after he was asleep did a small army of orderlies enter the room and replace his straight jacket. The head orderly sighed as they cleaned up the mess. The man had been in their care for three days and had destroyed his room more than most patients did in three years. He just hoped Belladonna would arrive soon. They were running out of beds.

  Chapter Four

  “Ah wish Carl was 'ere.” Camilla said as the group made their way through the deadly corridors of Ghallorican’s maze. “Right about now, he would have made some joke about balls o' string, or he’d light up another o' his shitty fags, or threaten ye wi' training…”

  “Hell, I miss the training,” Cenere admitted as he kept watch around them, twirling a throwing knife as he kept his eyes out for traps. “What happened to him is just horrible. I hope they let him out soon. We need him. By the by, I can’t see any trip wires or other forms of tech-based traps. You smelling anything, Shrimp?”

  “Yeah, a whole lot of fake. Fake silver, fake gold, fake magic items. Fake, fake, FAKE. That said, there’s something good down the corridor to the left. It’s…a blade. Not the gun, that’s still a ways off. Don’t go to the right, it’s a red room. The one after that, black. The room to the left is blue. So, that means…we’ll be in for some company in the room after it, another red room.”

  Longinus rolled his eyes as he looked at the others. “As I can’t die, I’m going to go for a stroll to the right. Every time we’ve done this dance, the red rooms have good stuff, right? I don’t care about money and every room we clear gets you kiddies a better bonus at the end. So, I’ll go clear the red, give the finger to the black room, and see if I can’t find a short cut to the gun so we can get the hell out of this damned place.”

  Sachi nodded sadly. She missed Carl as well. What happened to him was a travesty. He’d been nabbed as soon as they’d appeared on the docks and had a set of suppression cuffs thrown on him before he could even say, “bugger all”. Graahl himself had been the one to put them on Carl, and he whined sadly as he did so.

  Cenere had initially refused to let them take the big green man, going so far as to threaten violence against the scariest man in the Inquisition before sucker punching him, and laying him out. Carl had gone along quietly after that, leaving the group in Lonnie’s hands for the time being. After Carl had been carted off, one of the more senior Inquisitors had instructed them as to their next orders, to go procure the gun.

  They left by way of airship, and three days later found themselves outside a shack next to an odd temple.

  ∞∞∞

  -two weeks prior-

  “Welcome to the Trial of Will, youngins! Now, through that door lies a maze of wondrous delights! Somewhere, near the back right corner, is a gun. A hell of a gun. A gun with thirteen bullets in the case, and sadly, no way to make more. Now, that rifle and it’s thirteen bullets, are able to…how did that Prophecy go again? Oh, right: kill a God. That rifle is capable of killing almost anything in just a single shot. .45/70 bullets. Dragons? Croaked. Sorry little guy.”

  Jin responded intelligently by giving Ghallorican the finger. Ghallorican shrugged.

  “Anywho, once you pass those doors, all of your po
ssessions will be removed, except for that spear of yours, Lonnie boy. You will all find yourself in a pair of color-coded coveralls, proper footwear, and you’ll each be given a non-magical set of your usual weapons. The rules here are simple. If you die, you reappear at the entrance and will be unable to leave until your group finishes dying, one of you retrieves the weapon, or unless you’ve got one of the statuettes in the black rooms. Consider those as “one-ups” while in the temple. Once you get the gun, or all of you end up outside, you’ll be free to go.

  “That said, if the entire group agrees to go back in to get the gun, you’ll be given a second chance. Should you acquire anything of value while in the temple, it shall be yours to keep unless you die, at which point, you shall have to start over. From the beginning, with nothing. Die twice, however, and you will never enter again. Clear?

  “Crystal.” Cenere ground out through his teeth. “What gives? The rifle we need to avert the Prophecy is in your special little temple and you’re making us play a game show to get it?”

  “First of all, pretty boy, you need to prove your worth to gain access to the gun. Secondly, I do it because it’s fun. I like watching you ineffectual insects scurry about, trying to build the biggest anthill, to see who ‘wins.’ I win, little man. The house always wins; I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard that particular saying, have you not?

  “Well, that saying was old when your pathetic little mudball formed, when the detritus of your universe coalesced into a planet capable of sustaining life. I was working high stakes deals with the ancient gods of numerous universes before the first set of amino acids smacked into each other and formed the first protobacterial lifeforms on this dungheap of a planet. I was an Elder God before your precious Lucifer was more than a glimmer in Law’s sweet eye. And I will, sure as Cthulhu’s left nut is rubbery, never give a baboon’s red ass what you think is a waste of your insignificant time, nor will I care about your petty wants and desires unless you have something I want.