Brookes stripped down naked. Queen stared at him as she wiped her hands with a handkerchief.
Brookes walked into the pool and submerged himself. The tiredness drained out of his body and the life came back in. He returned to the surface.
“What—”
“Stop playing around and clean,” she snapped.
So he cleaned himself. There was soap and shampoo in the bottles next to the pool. Queen watched him with a rigorous eye. He failed her clean test three times. When he thought he was done, he’d rinsed himself off and stepped out.
“Stop! You forgot to get wash behind your ears and you didn’t clean your scrotum well enough. Back in!” she said.
He would sigh and go back in the water. After an hour of scrubbing himself to death, he stepped up to her.
“Stand still,” she said. She looked over him and used her handkerchief to lift his genitals. She examined every inch of him.
“Am I really that dirty?” Brookes asked.
“All humans are.”
She clasped her hands together. “Good, clean enough.” Her clothes fell off her body and she jumped onto him. Her tongue twisted with his and her claws dug into his back. The heat of her breath and presence seared through him.
She pulled back. “Follow me.” She grabbed his hand and led her through her palace.
The hallways were fifty feet high, intricate marble and pillars lined his path. Glassless windows filled the walls. Brookes could see out miles and miles into the blue.
She led him into a large bedroom. A bed filled half of the three-thousand square foot room, covered in silky red pillows, covers and sheets.
Queen threw Brookes onto the bed and dropped on top of him. As she ravished him, he felt the ecstasy that no human could have ever imagined. The lust of a god.
Brookes awoke hours later. Queen slept on top of him. He could still feel her energy pulsating through him. Her touch burned with the heat of a thousand suns, yet it didn’t hurt. It didn’t sting. It just felt amazing.
Brookes took in a huge breath and laid an arm around her. Her scent was amazing. He never wanted to be cold of her touch. He wanted to lay with her forever.
Brookes felt a small tremor under him and Queen’s eyes flung open. She jumped up and wrapped the sheets around her. She jumped off the bed and ran out of the room.
She tried to quickly close the door behind her but failed and left a slight crack. She was speaking to some people. Brookes guessed there were at least ten other people out there. They must be gods.
Brookes only caught a sliver of the conversation.
“We disapprove of what you’ve done, Queen. If you step out of line again, expect retribution,” a man’s voice said.
“And what would that retribution be?”
“You ignored our plans. No big moves until we were ready and you decided to massacre an entire city. If it happens again, don’t expect to rule Ifor for much longer.”
The voices stopped and there was another tremor. Brookes stood to his feet.
Queen walked back into the room, slamming the door.
“What was that about?” Brookes asked.
A red dagger appeared in Queen’s hand and she stabbed it into his balls.
“You don’t get to ask questions, human!” she proclaimed. Brookes screamed as she pulled out the blade and held his right testicle in her bloody hand. “If you ever step out of line, I will take the other one!”
Rage was in her eyes. That was the start of the most confusing and exciting relationship in Brookes’ life. From that day on, he became Queen’s pawn. To kill for her and to satisfy her needs.
* * *
On the ground below, the aftermath of the massacre was just starting to hit the world. The military left the city but abandoned the bodies where they fell. Leaving them as a reminder.
No major news broadcasted the massacre, but the news spread on the web. At this time, the World Wide Web had just been created by a human engineer. But upon seeing the potential of it, Ifor took it over and used it for spying and releasing propaganda.
Ifor leaked the story from there. Making sure people knew behind closed doors what had happened. But on the outside, the world was still under the illusion of a utopia. Keeping the blissful people ignorant and keeping the illusion that nothing ever went wrong when the gods ruled. He was in his heaven, so all must be right in the world.
Little did Brookes know that the massacre would cause little tremors throughout the world. After some time, a single news station broadcasted the aftermath of the event.
Patrick sat in a European bar, drinking a drink that couldn’t give him the feeling that he wanted anymore. On the television was a news cast showing off the city. The reporters never went into the city as people believed it was taboo, too. But in clear view were the piles of bodies, getting ravaged by the vultures.
Before this event, there was no real turmoil in the world, no extreme acts of violence. But it caused what Queen wanted to happen. A domino effect.
The act of violence against humanity turned people into rebels, naysayers, the brave, and the out spoken. People who protested Ifor, who rallied for their independence, who called for the gods to answer for their actions. And when the rallies hit their high point, the God’s Hand was sent in to end them.
All of this started because of a single event.
After the massacre, Brookes and Patrick were given the rank of lieutenant and kept their powers of the Touched. All the soldiers who survived were.
The missions got easier after the Saint Paul massacre. The riots they were sent to end, they were never sent with bean bags or tear gas. But just with bullets. They would always shut down the media before any word of what they’d done had gotten out.
Brookes never became fazed by the pleading anymore. They would always ask him, why? What had they done to deserve to die? Why was the hand of God crushing down on them? And when their eyes asked these questions, they were always answered with bullets.
After a few years of doing their deeds, Patrick broke. He and Brookes were sitting at a bar in some Asian country. He spoke to him as a brother by then, they’d been through a lot together. “I’m quitting.”
“What? Why?” Brookes asked.
“I…I can’t take this anymore. The slaughter.”
“It’s kind of late for that.”
“I’m coming up on my last month before I need to renew my term. I’m not signing the paperwork.”
Brookes looked at him. He couldn’t stop him. Once someone made the choice to leave, it was their own.
“I don’t care. I miss feeling something,” Patrick said as he stared into his empty whiskey glass. As a Touched, the alcohol did nothing anymore. “I miss the ability to drink my problems away.”
“Well…I won’t argue you out of it.” Brookes wondered why he was still in God’s Hand. He had enough money saved up from his years of service to retire for at least a few years. When you were killing people, the gods decided to pay you good. He really didn’t care for being an enemy of humanity.
Maybe it was because of Queen. He couldn’t imagine not feeling her again, touching her again, being lost in her bliss. He would kill himself if he couldn’t.
Patrick stood up. “See you later, my friend.” Patrick left the bar to go down his own dark path.
That was the last time Brookes saw Patrick before he was laid in the ground.
Brookes stared into his glass and swallowed it whole.
8
To Become Light
Ezekiel stood on top of a skyscraper, staring out at the tower of Ifor only a mile out. The day was hazy, blocking out the sunlight, painting the day gray.
“The god’s rule will fall. Tomorrow we will be the first humans to kill a god,” Ezekiel said.
The Omniscient Man walked up next to him.
Ezekiel continued, “I wonder how many gods I’ll kill before I die.”
“Don’t be so bleak, don’t count yourself out until you kill H
e himself,” the Omniscient Man said.
“Death is an inevitability for all us normal folk, Mr. Omniscient. There’s no avoiding it. It’s just a matter of how many I can take down with me,” Ezekiel said with a smile.
Brookes stared up at the ceiling fan. Watching it turn the seconds away. He sat in a chair in the main room of the building. Six members of his new team were in the room with him. They lay around just as lazily as he was.
It was bullshit. They were just regular people Queen had rounded up to help him. She promised him a team of Touched. But she backed out because she claimed that Svante was looking at her every move. She couldn’t move around her army of Touched without alerting him.
Yet, she expected him to work as efficiently as ever with a team of incompetent jobbers. He was tasked with abducting Kevan and August’s respective families and laying low enough to not capture the attention of the other gods.
So, now, he just sat staring at the ceiling fan waiting for the hours to tick away.
A mile away from the house, a guard stood in the dirt road leading up to the place, smoking a cigarette. He was texting someone. It was the only thing to do to pass the time on his shit duty.
A few hundred yards away someone stared at the guard through an iron sight. Kevan lay in the grass beside August, aiming his rifle at the man. The trees covered them.
“I don’t think you’ll hit him from here,” August whispered.
Kevan adjusted his shoulder and breathed in. The man was in his sights. Kevan remembered back to the time he and his father went hunting. He was only twelve when he took his first life.
He remembered laying down in this grass, watching, waiting. He told his father that he was bored but his father had told him that “Patience was a virtue the gods gave us. Wait and they will come to us.”
It took a few hours before a doe came into his sights. Patrick sighted it for him and Kevan aimed down his scope. Waiting for the perfect moment before he took the shot.
The guard was a doe, sitting, waiting for the perfect moment to die. A gunshot echoed and the guard fell dead.
“Point taken,” August said. They waited for a few minutes to make sure the sound didn’t alert anybody and ran to the body.
“Walkie talkie, 9mm rounds, and not anything else of use,” Kevan said as he searched the man’s body.
“Hurry up, they’re going to notice he’s missing.”
“What about the radio?”
“Take it with us.”
Kevan shoved the bullets into a bag he carried. It was filled with C4, grenades, and ammunition.
They walked beside the road, in the trees, so as not to be seen.
Kevan said, “Have you wondered if this was all pointless?”
“Kevan, I lived my entire life as if everything was pointless.”
“No, I mean what we’re about to do. We’re screwed if the soldiers are Touched.”
“Touched, huh? I heard about those guys. What was it, they were normal people touched by the hands of a god or something?”
“Yeah. We won’t be able to kill them if they are.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
“We’ll see? It’s that kind of logic that gets people killed, August.”
“Use your head. If you were able to kill that guard then I think the odds would be in our favor.”
Kevan stared at his feet as they walked. He was right. “There will be at least one Touched there. I’ll deal with him myself.” Kevan pulled a sharp stone out of his pocket and picked up a thick tree branch and clipped it to the bag he was carrying.
“I don’t feel like seeing anyone else die, Kevan. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Don’t you either.”
“Let’s go over the plan.”
They were a family of killers now. Kevan was surprised how easy it came to him.
They approached the house; it was a large place, surrounded by the trees but only one floor tall. Kevan and August watched from the trees. There were no guards on the outside, no cameras, no nothing to prevent unwanted company. The windows were boarded up but not perfectly so. If they could get close they could look inside through the cracks.
“I guess we were wrong. They weren’t expecting us,” August said.
“We could still catch them by surprise. We need to figure out where to plant the explosives. We’re going to have to get a closer look so we don’t set them off by—”
“Jack, report in.” The radio went off.
“Shit! Turn it down,” August whispered.
Kevan lowered the volume. “What are we going to do?”
“Wait, this could work in our favor.”
After a few minutes, two guards walked out of the front door. “Fucker better have remembered to charge it,” one of the guards said. They walked down the path and out of sight.
“Two less guards to worry about. That gives us about thirty minutes. Come on.” August motioned.
They ran to the side of the building and slammed against the wall. They froze. Maybe they were a little too gung ho.
August crept up to one of the windows and looked inside. It was a large room, there were about six guards in it. All lazing around.
“Six guards, they’re not alert. Plant one here.”
Kevan planted some c4 on the window. They went window to window, only planting some on the back windows. They didn’t see Luna, Sara or Kevan’s kids. But there were two windows they couldn’t see into. So, they assumed that they were in the completely boarded-up rooms and moved the explosives away from those areas.
Kevan and August cocked their guns and moved back to the front of the house. Kevan held a detonator in his hand. “Are you ready for this?”
Brookes was getting tired of staring at the ceiling. He stood up and walked to the back of the building. He walked down a long hallway and through the door at the end of it.
The door hit a light machine gun on the ground. The bullets for the thing were scattered around the room. Brookes looked at his only soldier in the room. “I thought I told you not to—”
A ding interrupted his thoughts. He looked at Sara in the corner, with her phone in her hand.
Brookes looked at her in shock. The guards didn’t take her cell phone. The stupid fucks. “What the fuck—”
An explosion shook the building and then screams rang out. Another one went off closer and Brookes ducked down.
August burst through the front door with his pistol out. Smoked and shouting filled the hall. A guard popped out of the smoke, dazed and confused. August fired and the man dropped.
The hallway turned to the right. August hugged the wall and Kevan came right after him. The smoke was starting to clear. August motioned that he was moving forward.
As soon as he turned the corner, he saw two guards running toward him. He dropped one instantly but the other raised his gun to fire and—
A shot rang out in August’s ear and the guard fell. A shell fell next to him. He looked beside him and Kevan gave him a nod.
“Thanks for the ear damage,” August said rubbing his ears.
“At least you’re not dead.”
They approached the door at the end of the hallway. If what August remembered was true, then this would open into the main room.
“This is it,” Kevan said.
They had five more guards left. August hoped they wouldn’t do anything stupid.
“On three.” The door exploded into wood shards. August and Kevan fell back.
“Come on out, Kevan. Don’t worry, I won’t shoot you.”
August looked at Kevan, who was brushing woodchips off of himself. August mouthed “don’t do it” to him.
Kevan saw an overturned stone table, behind that was the hole in the wall they created, with scattered body parts. “Take out his weapon. He’s the Touched.” Kevan clipped a grenade onto his back belt loop.
August nodded.
Kevan ran and leapt for the table. Bullets whirled past him as he
slammed onto the ground and slide behind the table. At the same time, August ran into the room and turned toward Brookes and unloaded his clip at Brookes.
He kept firing until he heard a click. August stood staring at Brookes who turned his gun on him. “You didn’t think that would work, did you?” He tried to cock his gun. “The hell?”
He shook it and there was rattling. A bullet was lodged in the release. “Well played,” Brookes said and dropped the gun. August reloaded his pistol and pointed at him.
“August, go find Sara, Luna and my kids,” Kevan said standing up. “He’s mine.”
“You sure? Is this the Touched you were talking about? I could—”
“Go.”
August stared at Brookes. There was a door next to him. The only other door there was besides the one behind Brookes. August went through it.
Kevan stared at Brookes. “I thought you said you wouldn’t shoot me.”
“All is fair in love and war. How about a one-on-one, no tricks this time. I promise. I still have a bone to pick with you and it’d be easier to beat the rage out than it would be to unleash it in bullets.”
Kevan dropped his bag and his rifle and put up his fists. This was the only way to defeat him. “Bring it.”
August ran down the hall. It was empty; there should’ve been more guards. In front of him was a turn in the hall to the left. If he remembered correctly, the far wall was the end of the building. Something went off in the back of his head. He was about to approach the turn. This wasn’t right. He looked on the ground and saw a bullet round. He picked it up and threw it at the far wall.
Hundreds of bullets ripped into the spot where it landed. He didn’t have any grenades on him.
Shit.
Kevan approached Brookes. Brookes charged him and Kevan jumped out of the way. Kevan swung at Brookes as he recovered.
Brookes moved fast and weaved past his punches. He hopped back laughing. “Come on, Kevan. I killed your mother.”
Kevan took the bait and jumped for his legs. He grabbed them and lifted Brookes up and Brookes elbowed him hard in the back and Kevan dropped him.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 211