Cynthia knew that her mother had her own path to walk, and she knew that if the woman allowed God into her heart, then she would find her way back to her family again.
God had always singled out the Arrow family for special attention; her father had told her that from a young age. They were emissaries on earth for his word, and it was their duty to spread his love and his wisdom but also his righteous anger when necessary.
Her father called it the Angel Blade. To the ordinary eye, it looked like a simple serrated army style knife, a six-inch silver blade kept razor sharp and gleaming. This was a holy weapon sent from the heavens to be wielded only by a chosen warrior of God, and the Arrows were truly chosen.
They travelled from town to town, village to village, a father and daughter bringing the word to the lost, to the hopeless, to the chosen. Her father started every morning with his nose sniffing the air, waiting to be led to that day’s port of call.
Of course, the pathway to salvation was never an easy one; the road to heaven was paved with obstructions. The devil sent out his minions to try and stop them. Her father called them The Legion, an army of soulless monsters spawned from hell itself and sent to Earth to masquerade as human while they waited for their dark overlord to emerge.
She had watched many times as a child when her father had spotted one. Her father had told her that God himself had imbued him with the gift to see the monsters, no matter how carefully they hid their true faces. He had the ability to see them and the Angel Blade to strike them down.
Needless to say, she had never had the gift of sight that her father possessed, and it took his passing before she finally saw the dark shadow cloud that emanated from their aura, the sign that this perfectly normal-looking person in front of her was actually one of the devil’s soldiers.
Her father had finally been called home to God’s side, but the mission had continued for her. She travelled the country preaching the word as she went. Sometimes she was welcomed, other times she was shunned, but it was all part of God’s plan and she was merely an instrument of his will.
She had dispatched six of The Legion so far. Six soulless monsters sent to destroy her, but they didn’t know that she could see them and they also didn’t know that she had the Angel Blade and the will to use it.
Her life had been one of quiet solitude interspersed with the occasional sermon and exorcism. She owned no material goods, and she was registered on no official documents. As far as the authorities were concerned, she didn’t even exist. But her life had changed when he arrived. When the devil had finally decided that Cynthia Arrow was holding back his forces, he sent his monster to destroy the world.
At first, she had felt the swell of fear from the people and she prepared herself for the coming war, but then the strangest thing happened: too many people, way too many people, opened their arms to the creature – a fact that she still found hard to believe every time she looked at his shudder-inducing visage.
She had first laid eyes on him through an electrical store window being battered by a thunderstorm as the thing sat being interviewed by a whore of Satan himself. The wind and rain had lashed down as a gaggle of people gathered, watching transfixed across a wide array of television sets all playing the same grotesque scene. She had felt the fury of God himself as the thunder and lightning had crashed overhead.
“CAN’T YOU SEE HIM?” she had screamed at the slowly backing away crowd. “CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT HE IS? HE’LL KILL US ALL! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?”
Eventually, one of the blue-uniformed men had dragged her away as people had appeared to be more scared of her than the devil himself. Satan had indeed cast his spell and transfixed the masses, blinding them to their own extermination. Even as she had been dragged away screaming, she could see the creature’s aura on the multitudes of talking boxes and it was the blackest she had ever seen.
She had spent that night locked away in a hospital, the kind where the doctors talk in low soft voices and the patients all have glassy eyes. She had known that night that she was the chosen one; she alone was God’s warrior, and her true enemy had finally made himself known. This would be the great war that her father had always spoken about, the war for humanity’s soul, and she would not fail.
“Why do they not heed your words, sister?” Number Seven asked her as the people rushed by, their eyes diverted to the ground to avoid the truth.
She had given all of her disciples numbers, baptising them in the blood of a fallen Legion soldier and making them reborn, devoid of their previous lives and sins. Now they were hers, and she belonged to God; she was building her holy army.
“They have been blinded, my son,” she said to the man, who was clearly at least ten years older than her. “They cannot see the word. That is why we are here. That is why I was born, to bring them into the light and to save their souls,” she said kindly, placing a gentle hand on her disciple’s shoulder.
She turned back to the passing crowd – working men and women of varying ages and incomes. When she spoke now, it was with a lesson learnt by her previous attempts at reaching them. Gone was the hysterical woman who would always be dismissed, regardless of the veracity of her preaching. Now, she was a calming and charismatic influence, just as God saw fit to bless her.
It was such magnetic rhetoric that had brought some of the committed residents of Blackwater Heights into her fold. The hospital had been her enforced home for almost five months, but she had used her time wisely.
Her Angel Blade had, not surprisingly, been taken from her, but during the long, often scream-filled, nights at the asylum, she could still hear it calling out to her through the thick stone walls. Her holy instrument was still there and hibernating patiently.
She quickly found that God had placed her here for a reason, that his loyal subjects had been waiting for her arrival – eager minds willing to serve in his name; they just required a leader.
Once she had her disciples, she had led them out of their chains, storming the hospital’s gates in the middle of the night, after retrieving her Angel Blade from its confines in the basement and then putting it to good use as she struck down those Legion soldiers who had sought to keep her imprisoned.
Once free, she kept her people safe. A lifetime of living outside of society had prepared her to lead them. She had used her blade to shave them of all head and facial hair and then to carve a number into each of their chests. She had her twelve.
She began to preach to those who needed her salvation even if they didn’t realise it or perhaps even deserve it.
“Brothers and sisters, the devil rides among us. Such is man’s waning faith that our demise does not even come disguised in human form. Such is our fall from the Lord’s grace that the devil feels no need to hide his face.”
A businessman threw down a sandwich wrapper near her feet, ignoring her very presence.
“Look to your hearts, my children. Look inside and see what God has placed there. Seek out the truth. Seek out his love and bathe in its radiance. Seek out his forgiveness, and then rise up. Rise up and join the fight. The great war is no longer coming… it is already here.”
“Piss off, ya psycho!” a spotty youth called out as he threw a half-full drink can towards her feet, the remaining contents splashing onto the bottom of her white trousers.
She felt her disciples’ rage build at the insult, but she held an instantly quieting hand and they settled.
“You, child,” she said, addressing the youth. “Have you no fear over your immortal soul? Do you not wish to fight for your god? Do you not wish to serve in his army?”
“Lady, you’re nuts.” The youth laughed.
“He is here. Regardless of your lack of faith, the devil rides among us now in plain sight.”
“The devil? What the hell are you talking about?”
“He comes not red-skinned and horned, but instead green with a serpent’s tongue.”
“You’re talking about the alien? You mean Cosmic Jones?”
/> “The devil wears many faces, my child.”
“But he’s an alien, for Christ’s sake!”
Cynthia flinched at the youth’s blasphemous words as though she’d been struck.
“He is here and we are all doomed unless we rise up and fight back the tide of darkness,” she said as she moved smoothly to the youth and placed her hands on his shoulders. Several more people had now stopped to watch the unfolding scene, a handful drawn by her words, but most hoping just to see some kind of spectacle to break up their own monotony.
“I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death…,” she preached to the gathered. “…Hades was following. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”
She held the youth firmly. Despite him being significantly larger than she was, he seemed unable to break away.
“Satan walks among us now, my children. He is here to end God’s light and to take all of our souls. He shall cast us down into the eternal darkness unless we make a stand together and we stand now!”
There were a handful of murmurs that ran through the gathering.
“This… creature is not one of us. God made man in his own image. I ask you, if this monstrosity is not made by God, then what is he? We are human; we are imbued with a soul. It is what makes us unique under the glory of God.”
“But he’s a good guy…, isn’t he?” a woman called out from the back. “I mean, he hasn’t done us any harm, has he?”
“But can we trust him?” another voice came from the gathering.
“Oh, look. This is just yet another example of fearing what’s different. It’s prejudice, pure and simple,” a third, calm voice called out.
“But why has he been hidden away from us?” the second voice asked as Cynthia let the mounting variety of crowd voices talk.
“He’s not exactly hidden.”
“No, I’ve seen him on TV. I’ve seen those video diary things.”
“Oh, yeah. Far be it for a government to put out any kind of propaganda. How do we know what’s really going on behind closed doors?”
“Oh, that’s just paranoid!”
“Is it? I mean, I don’t know. We have no idea about this… thing, do we? What if he is…, you know… bad?”
“The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour. MY SAVIOR!” Cynthia announced to the gathering.
“Ah, that’s just religious bollocks,” someone yelled out.
The crowd started to disperse, and Cynthia watched them leave. A few people hung back, and she could feel their interest. She sent out her disciples amongst the flock, their carefully honed senses trained to seek out and recruit.
The youth that she had held was by now released, and he started to wander away, seemingly in a daze. Cynthia watched and waited until she was sure that she could follow him unobserved. While she didn’t recognise the authority of man over that of God, after her enforced stay at Blackwater, she respected it.
She quickly caught up with the boy and led him into an alley. He didn’t object, his movements still in a drugged-like state.
“I can feel that you have potential,” she whispered in his ear when they were completely alone. “You have youth, you have strength; you could have a bright future in his service… in mine.”
The boy looked up at her with dazed eyes. “I… I want to…,” he mumbled.
“Yes, my child; you could be of great use to our cause. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and there are great rewards to be earned.”
“I want…”
The knife slit his throat before he could even recognise its movement, and Cynthia slowly lowered him to the ground.
“But you took the Lord’s name in vain, child. For that, there is never any forgiveness. There cannot be.”
She felt rather than heard the movement from behind and turned to greet it.
“Take care of this, Number Six,” she ordered, and the short stocky man nodded obediently before grabbing the boy’s ankles and dragging him deeper into the shadows.
Another of her disciples walked into the alley.
“We have a couple of promising candidates this week,” Number Four offered, “but…”
“But?” Cynthia asked as she folded her hands behind her back.
“But is it enough? The great war is upon us and our numbers are so few.”
“God provides, my child. Have faith and our sign will come.” Cynthia smiled. “He will show us the way, and we shall take it and ride it all the way to glory.”
“But when?”
The answer came quicker than even Cynthia expected as Number Seven came running around the corner.
“It’s all over the news!” he panted excitedly. “Satan’s explosion! The attack has begun!”
“Calm down,” Cynthia soothed him. “Explain yourself.”
“They’re calling it an accident. An accident!” Number Seven laughed bitterly.
“Where?”
“Some government building at a place called Boulder Ridge. They were messing around with some of the creature’s blasphemous technology, and it exploded!”
“Fatalities?”
“No official announcement yet, but then again, we don’t expect them to be honest about it, do we?”
Cynthia smiled and nodded, for this was the sign she had been waiting for. This was her path, her opportunity; this was the day.
PRESENT DAY
The underground car park was an exclusive perk of the high-rise apartment block that towered above it, an added feature to make the residents feel safe against the rising tide of undesirables that loitered outside.
A woman sat inside her luxury car listening to the last knocking of the radio show as callers phoned in expressing their outrage at the story that was gathering pace about the Queen’s Guard and the prime minster from the past decade, Rosemary Williams.
The woman couldn’t help but note that by the second hour of the show, the callers had stopped using any of the rare facts to be found and were by now merely espousing conspiracy theories. She also noted that the radio show host had long since stopped trying to separate fact from theory.
A few of the callers were in support of the government’s extraordinary measures to circumvent the country’s laws by suspending the general election in order to fight the war. But the balance in the past few days amongst the public seemed to be now tipping in favour of those angered by the notion that they had been lied to, that the government had perhaps exaggerated the threat of SOUL for their own political purposes. Now, the general consensus seemed to be in favour of a full and detailed investigation into the matter.
The woman exited her plush Mercedes convertible and stretched her back, feeling the knots crunch and pop as she tried to crack the stresses of the long day from her spine.
She was in her late twenties, and the way that her expensive suit clung to her frame, it was immediately obvious that her appearance mattered a great deal to her and she took pride in it.
Her hair was long and blonde with a natural curl to it that added to her almost permanent softening smile. Part of her job was to be warm and charming, and she was damn good at her job.
The garage was deathly silent, yet the woman’s ears suddenly pricked up like an animal in the wild catching the sudden scent of a predator.
Her whole body became electrified in that instant, preparing itself for a fight-or-flight option.
The shadows were long and there was no visual sign of a potential assailant, yet she could instinctively feel that there were eyes on her from the darkness.
With a deft slow movement, she slipped off the tall heels that she wore for work, knowing that they would encumber any physical confrontation. She was weaponless but a long way from helpless as she pulled the short business suit skirt up onto her thighs for greater freedom of movement.
/>
Still there was no official sign that anyone else was even here, but a lifetime of training told her that she was not alone.
The attack came from behind. It was fast and sure, and even though she felt it before she heard it, and was already turning to face it, she was struck on the side and forced to the ground under the impact.
She kicked out hard and rolled further away upon hearing a satisfying grunt of pain.
She was just about up on her feet when the shadow rushed low at her middle. She dipped an arm down low and used her attacker’s momentum against it, using the kinetic force to spin it out of control and away from her.
The shadow slammed into a large concrete pillar, and the woman rushed forwards, not allowing her assailant to recover. She slammed her elbow up under its throat, painfully twisting its head to one side and into the light.
“You changed your perfume,” the woman said as she looked into the face of an older woman.
“You’re getting slow, Number One,” Cynthia Arrow replied.
“Slow?” Number One enquired as she twisted her elbow into the SOUL leader’s throat.
“Slow,” Cynthia confirmed as a small knife slipped from her sleeve and now pressed its point sharply into Number One’s stomach.
“Touché,” the younger woman agreed, with a small smile. “I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer to get the drop on you, Mother.”
They released each other and stepped apart with a respectful nod. Number One retrieved her shoes and slipped them on, immediately making her taller than her mother.
“Jimmy Choo. Expensive.” Cynthia stated.
“A present; he likes to treat me.”
“Good. I hope that you’re keeping him keen?”
“Of course. I was just listening to the radio. The public is starting to ask questions – the sort of questions that you wanted.”
Her mother nodded. “It is beginning; it will not be long now. Just keep the pressure on and keep him doing the job that we want.”
“He loves me, Mother.”
“But you haven’t accepted his proposal.”
“How did you…?”
“I know everything, child, or have you forgotten that?”
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