by David Risen
“Please forgive me. I don’t want to face whatever is down there.”
Lauren watched as the Abysmal Patron stood up straight. “What’s down there is your hell, and you will stay there for a thousand years. After that, you’ll have a chance to atone for your actions. If you fail, you’ll spend another thousand years in there.”
“Please be merciful,” she screamed.
Lauren saw Rider’s smirk all the way from where she stood.
“I already have,” he growled.
Then he kicked her hands off the edge, and a pathos scream escaped her as she plummeted toward her torments.
The Abysmal Patron, his fiery aura billowing off him, turned and pointed his red eyes at Lauren.
She spun around and stumbled back for the woods.
She sprinted, tripping through the foliage back looking for shelter, until she stopped cold just before the woods – the pointed end of the Abysmal spike inches from her nose.
She peered into the face of the man who had once been her husband, and the hatred in his glowing, red eyes told her that he was not the least bit amused.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he muttered. “For one thing, I still love you. I don’t know why. You will leave here and never bother me again, and if I so much as have a bad dream that you’re coming after Aurora or any of the other Celestial Shards – as you call them – I will hunt you down like a dog. We clear?”
Lauren burst into tears.
“Alyssa is my daughter, too.”
Rider shook his head slowly. “You’re no good for her. Keep away. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
Rider dropped the Abysmal Spike and turned away from her. Then he sauntered back to the limestone clearing. As he did so, his fiery aura disappeared, and his clothes, including his black, leather waistcoat reappeared.
The fissure in the ground closed as if nothing had happened, and the glowing pentacle on the ground where the wraith witches attempted to bind him faded.
“Rider?” she cried.
Rider stopped walking and turned back to face her slowly.
“I need to ask you to forgive me. We did unleash something bad on this mountain that wasn’t supposed to be a part of your trials.”
“What?” he snapped.
Lauren Fields-Rider looked down at the ground in shame. Her hands and her knees trembled with fear and grief.
“Get out of here before I change my mind about killing you,” he said, and then he turned back toward the clearing again.
“Let me help you one more time,” she said.
Rider turned back around.
“I don’t need your help.”
She turned her palms up. “Let me atone.”
Rider smirked.
Lauren closed her eyes and summoned the spirits of the three boys, and then she cast a spell of teleportation back to her base camp a bit further down the mountain.
Rider stared after Lauren as she disappeared – dazzled.
Part of him felt horrible for uttering such foulness at someone he genuinely loved, and the other part of him felt sick satisfaction. And that’s how he knew that his marriage to Lauren was over forever.
A rhythmic tugging at the hem of his leather waistcoat snapped him out of his trance
He turned and looked down to find the seven-year-old boy with shaggy blond hair looking up at him expectantly.
“Mister, can you help us?”
Rider’s face softened. “Yeah,” he said.
Amelia stumbled through the growing shadows of the woods. The air turned frigid. A white plume of vapor steamed from her mouth as she struggled for breath.
She couldn’t sense Lucifer inside the cabin or anywhere else. His signature aura blinked out like a light.
Everything came unglued, and the greatest evil in creation pursued her.
She sprang through the shadowy trees into a clearing. Within this clearing stood a large picnic area complete with a 6-foot barbeque pit, but before it, someone erected a crude cross made of thin logs tied together, and a naked woman with long, brown hair hung from it. Her head drooped, with her face contorted in a final expression of anguish. The tip of her tongue protruded from her teeth, and she partially bit through it. Blood from it dripped from her chin and coated her neck in meandering lines.
Someone nailed through her hands and feet.
Her guts partially spilled out of her body from a jagged hole torn in her left side.
Amelia froze covering her mouth to hold in the scream.
As she did so, the woman’s head rose and her eyes glowed white.
She stared directly into Amelia’s eyes, and a gripping headache as if someone thrusted a thin knife through the opening in her left ear all the way to the right side of her head tore through her skull.
Her vision whited out, and she fell to her knees.
Burning sensations seared her entire body as her soul tore free from her body.
Then she found herself floating in daylight around the ceiling of the picnic area as a disembodied spirit.
From the tone of the sunlight through the fog and overcast, it appears to be around four in the afternoon.
Five women stand shoulder to shoulder – lined up like soldiers in formation before the six-foot, cast iron barbeque pit. They all wear various styles of hiking gear.
All of them look down at the ground with eyes that say fear and expressions that say forlorn.
Lucifer, with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his brown leather bomber jacket stands before them surveying the pack like a drill sergeant inspecting his men.
His eyes settle on a Hispanic woman with long, curly, black hair and an olive complexion. She appears to be in her mid-twenties.
Lucifer gives her a look that first says contempt and then sadness.
“Do you know why none of you can move?”
Not one of them offers a word.
“You can’t move, because you have all unwittingly become my servants. The source of your power stems from me via a number of false Gods who are noms de plume for moi.”
Lucifer paces over to the barbeque pit and strokes its rough, rusty surface.
“Were you ladies planning on having a little roast?”
He steps back before them, sighs and shakes his head like a disappointed parent.
“The Sisters of Divinity no longer have the power to eject me from a corporeal binding. You have the power to bind, because I gave it to you, but to un-bind, you have to have a certain amount of virtue, which you have lost.”
Lucifer gives them a sad smile.
“It’s sad. The sissies were once such a good group of people, and now you’re all laden with iniquity.
“The best way we can know one another is by confessing our worst unforgiven sins, so who wants to go first?”
Lucifer scans the women, and none of them look at him. They stand with their eyes trained down at the dirt.
He nods. “Well, I guess I’ll do the honors.”
He eyes the Hispanic woman standing to the far left.
“Sister Yamile Cortez is the Arch Sorceress of Colombia and a well-respected mother superior in a Catholic country. She runs an orphanage that dabbles in human trafficking, and she’s also connected to the gills with drug cartels.”
Yamile scowls at him. “You no understand Colombia!”
Lucifer smirks. “Don’t kid a kidder.”
He scans the other women. “Sister Cortez was about to suggest that she is afraid of a few local bullies. I’m Lucifer. I know all about you.”
Lucifer stares after her for a moment longer, and then he points his intense eyes at the next woman to the left.
She’s a short woman – no more than five feet tall. Her skin is pale to the point that she almost looks sickly, and she has a shoulder-length mane of died-black hair with a silver stud in the left side of her nose. She wears a black Nirvana tee shirt with a studded black leather jacket and black jeans.
“Marianne Weathers also known as Sister Mar
y Constance, First Counselor to the Arch Sorceress of the United States.”
He wags his index finger at her.
“You’ve been with the order since you were ten – after the murder suicide of your mother and father landed you in a girl’s home run by the Sisterhood.”
She sighs.
Lucifer sneers. “Any of you women aware that Mrs. Weathers has had three abortions?”
He laughs, turns left, and stares off into the trees. “Matter of fact, she has premarital sex so often that one wonders when she finds the time to actually put clothes on. All of this and she has one of my favorite problems in mortality – drugs.”
He eyes the sister standing in the middle. Her hair is naturally the color of black coffee, but she has piercing blue eyes and a noble face.
Lucifer squints.
“And then there’s Ursula Krasnoperov from the Ukraine. She’s the only one of you who is not actually a nun. Funny thing is that she’s the most virtuous among you.”
Ursula seems to exhale with relief.
Lucifer holds up his index finger. “Sure, she’s a dike, but the rules for that sort of thing are a lot different than most religious texts say. The only real problem with her is the old ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness, thing.”
She gasps.
Lucifer nods. “Unforgiven sin that destroyed someone’s life, remember? The father of your child died in a Russian prison because you accused him of a crime he didn’t commit. Matter-of-fact, other inmates beat him to death. That’s serious, Ursula, and you’ve never atoned for it – not with man and not with God.”
Ursula looks down and with her lips moving ever so slightly as if in prayer.
Lucifer bunches his lips. “Prayer? Not a bad idea, accept that forgiveness doesn’t come that easily. First, you must be sorry for what you’ve done – contrite. That takes a lot more time than you have.”
Lucifer allows his words to hang in the air for a moment as he stares into the horrified face of the woman, and then he turns his head abruptly and looks at the next woman down. She’s tall for a woman and a little too slim. With her hooked nose and long arms, she looks a bit like a scarecrow. Lucifer grins.
“And that brings us to Sister Joan Maria of the good old island of Great Britain – one of the two worst people among you.”
Sister Joan Maria scowls at him through her thick glasses.
“I know what my transgressions are.”
Lucifer gives her a smug smile. “Yes, but your sisters don’t, and I’m one of the greatest educators of mortal men ever conceived.”
She snarls. “You have no dominion over me. I’m a Christian!”
Lucifer laughs. “Are you really? You haven’t followed Christ since fifteen minutes after your baptism. You don’t even know anything about the guy.”
She huffs. “I know that Jesus of Nazareth, who was actually the Son of God, died on the cross 2,017 years ago in atonement for all the bad things we’ve done so that anyone who believes in him can have the gift of eternal life.”
Lucifer’s eyes narrow shrewdly. “Yes, because that’s precisely what that piece of propaganda that you call the Bible tells you, but the men that wrote that document ruined it before they ever committed it to parchment.”
She rolls her eyes. “And you are Satan, the father of lies and the architect of sorrow on earth.”
Lucifer sighs. “I’m not dumb enough to believe my own press. Though I do lie, I’m not the father of lies. I can do nothing my father didn’t teach me. As for the rest of that stupid proclamation, I’m not responsible for most of the bad shit that happens. You assholes manage to fuck that up all by yourselves.”
“Jesus will save us all.”
Lucifer held out his hands. “Maybe if you knew the guy, but you haven’t even heard of him.
“First, the man’s name was actually Yeshua. Secondly, he is not a special spirit more than anyone else is. He is just older, and by extension, more powerful, and he’s favored by the father because he’s the good and virtuous son. Third, the power of Yeshua’s atonement does not apply to you if you do not follow his path. The fact that you cannot move in my presence speaks volumes.”
Thunder claps behind Sister Joan Maria’s eyes.
“Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offense unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”
Lucifer laughs again and claps his hands together. “And scripture only holds power if the words are true. What the real man Yeshua said to his student Simon was ‘My dear friend, you’re reacting to your emotional love for me, and I’m honored.
“‘What you don’t realize is that you’re not coming from a place of love for all mankind and God but a place of cynicism and resentment for all those persecuting us.
“‘You’re reacting to the sense of loss you will feel when I am gone, and you’re taking heed to the whisperings of my brother Lucifer who has no interest in the noble and virtuous mandate of our father.
“‘He would cheat all mankind into an eternity of sorrow by selling us selfishness and hatred for one another.
“‘Ours is not an easy path, but my suffering will be finite and death will not prevail. Our journey is about mercy for all of those who would simply follow the path that our Father suggested.’”
Sister Joan Maria gave him a look of disgust.
“You are Satan, the father of lies. We cannot believe a single word you utter.”
Lucifer shrugged. “And you are Gloria Willoughby from Suffolk who smothered your own twin sister when you were eight.
“When you were twelve and in charge of your seven-year old brother, your parents came home to find you about to emasculate him with a pair of kitchen scissors. They hospitalized you, and that’s when you learned that you were a psychopath.
“At sixteen, on a dare, you propositioned the scrawniest, runt of a sophomore in your school, and you proceeded to torture him in your parents’ attic for three hours before your mother discovered him. During that time, you cut off his left nipple, beat him to a bloody pulp, and violated him repeatedly with a broom handle and slowly graduated to a kitchen knife.
“The young man recovered only to commit suicide in his mid-twenties.
“The authorities prosecuted you, and you spent three years in a home, at which point you were placed in a halfway house run by the sisters. Your conduct since, has been a bit more discreet but no better.
“I ask all of you, is this the path Yeshua lay before you?”
He shakes his head in answer to his own question.
“And that brings us to sweet, little Roxanne.”
Lucifer points his head at the last woman in the group – a short, young woman with brown hair, and a pretty face. She cries immediately.
“You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”
Lucifer seems to sink inside himself, and he smiles sadly.
“Because you have not followed the path, you will die. This is the design of our Father.”
She shakes her head and peers back at him with reddened hazel eyes. “I’ve been bad, and I know it. I’ve followed the order even when I knew that what we were doing was wrong, and when I was younger, I ran away from home and became a prostitute. I wish I could change it, but I can’t do anything about the past.”
Lucifer’s eyes narrow. “Ah, confession. Humility. Not bad, but too little too late. If you’d done what you should have, you would be able to run away from me now, but since you cannot....”
“Just take me,” she blurts. “I’ll bare the burdens of everything they’ve done.”
Lucifer’s eyes flicker with a look that almost resembles pity.
“Someone here did read that crap that passes for scripture with understanding.”
He extends his hand. “This lady here knows her stuff. Humility, honesty, charity, and loyalty. That’s the real thing, girls.”
He drops his hand, looks at her, and shakes his head. “Unfortunately, she’s never acted on these v
irtues before.”
His face darkens. “You will die for all that you have done. And you will suffer the same pain as your precious Yeshua. For your sacrifice, I will kill no other of your kind – that is after I finish with these other women who are repulsive to me.”
The women sobbed.
Lucifer smiled with baleful satisfaction.
“Yamile and Gloria will go gather firewood – as much of it as you can find. When you are finished, you will return here, and build a fire in our little barbeque pit. While it warms, you will take off all your clothes.
“Marianna and Ursula will go fetch two posts about six feet long, and when they return, they shall sharpen the tips of them to thin points. Then you shall both disrobe as well.”
“Roxanne – who is really Camille – will go fetch two thick shafts of wood from tree trunks. She will drag them back here, and then she will fashion them into a cross.”
The women stand in place all begging simultaneously.
Lucifer sighs with frustration. “Go now!”
The women spring into action.
The muffled crying and begging of a woman caused the hair on the back of Rider’s neck to stand.
He left the children a few feet away from the house telling them that he wanted to see if their parents were decent before they came in.
But he already knew.
Vinny was beating Gladys.
As Rider approached the house, he clenched his hands into fists.
It was dark outside now, and he’d barely noticed the sudden season change. New greenery on the trees. Sweet smell in the air.
Rider stomped up the wooden steps to the porch and kicked the door in just in time to find Vinny dragging Gladys by the hair into the den as she clasped his wrists with both hands.
Vinny drunkenly spun around and his cruel mouth contorted in a look of anger.
“This is private, Mister. Get the hell outta my house.”
“You sure do have a short memory,” Rider growled.
Vinny’s eyes brightened with realization, and then contorted in horror. He threw his hands up before him in a defensive posture and backed toward the hallway.
“Dick.”
Vinny flung his hands through the air furiously snarling at Gladys.