Malevolent

by David Risen

  He pats Marianne on the shoulder. “I’m going to ask you to bend over and grab your ankles, keeping your body as straight as possible. Make your face level with the ground, and you might want to open your mouth or the shaft will break your teeth.”

  Marianne bends over and grasps her ankles, looks up at the ground, and opens her mouth.

  Lucifer cocks the shaft over his shoulder and in one smooth stroke drives it all the way through her body, out of her mouth and almost a foot deep into the dirt.

  Marianne’s feet spring from the ground and writhe uncontrollably. Her body slides down the shaft planting her face in the dirt. Blood pools around her face, and for a moment she makes grunting sounds as if someone has knocked the wind out of her. Then her body goes limp.

  Lucifer nods with satisfaction at his work.

  “One would think by the ease with which I accomplished that, that I do this sort of thing all the time, but I’ll assure you, I haven’t had a body in almost twenty-thousand years.”

  He side-steps to the right bringing himself face to face with Ursula who has visibly grown pale. Lucifer extends his hand.

  “Pass me the pole, and please assume the same position as your comrade.”

  Ursula passes him the pole, pivots, and then grasps her ankles just as Marianne did moments before.

  Lucifer takes a deep breath, cocks the shaft just as before and spikes her.

  He doesn’t even wait for Ursula’s convulsing to stop before he looks up to Roxanne who still sits waiting at the picnic table.

  “This is what all of your sisters will avoid because of the atonement of Camille. Now, are you ready for your crucifixion?”

  Amelia snapped out of it.

  She found the two dark hulks that were Marianne and Ursula staked into the ground on either side of Camille’s cross and shuddered.

  You see, Mrs. Belton – Anna, if I may be so bold – I do the same things you do, Lucifer’s voice said in her head.

  Amelia shook her head, and then she threw up into the dirt.

  In a moment, she stood up, and wiped the vomit off her lips.

  You and I are nothing alike. Judgement is a balance of atonement and righteousness, and it always offers the offender the option to be better than his deeds.

  Amelia felt as though she might throw up again. She tasted bile on the back of her tongue, and the cold, night air whipped around her mercilessly.

  You sound like my Father. You’d better run, Mother Justice. I’m coming for you, and you’ll not get rid of me as easily as you sluffed off my brothers.

  Amelia knew that he wasn’t lying. She choked back her nausea, and bolted past the picnic area toward the road that led her to the mountain.

  The cabin where he left Gage and Amelia was a dark hulk hiding in the shadows. The porch looked as though no one had darkened the door of the edifice in twenty years.

  Rider reached the rotting door of the old cabin and found a note taped to the bare, wooden surface scrawled in crazy handwriting on a piece of legal pad paper.

  Rider,

  Congratulations on a job well done!

  Amelia and I have gone back to the road to await your return. We will be about a half-mile further up than where we all initially met. Please hurry, time is of the essence.

  Look forward to seeing you.

  -Gage Kinder.

  Rider ripped the note off the door, wadded it and tossed it off the porch, and then he turned and headed back east for the road.

  Amelia’s feet slid out from under her, and she fell directly on her butt on the broken pavement that was once Skitts Mountain Road.

  The horrors before her were worse than any she had ever seen.

  A white, Ford F-150 with Great Smokey Mountains Park Ranger painted in green across the door sat in the middle of the road with the driver’s side door open.

  What must have once been a man lay on his back a few feet before the door with a black bear feasting on the contents of his belly.

  To the right of the road, another former Park Ranger had been reduced to a man-kabob. Someone, presumably Lucifer, had pulled his slacks down and sat him on top of a twenty-foot, broken pine.

  The trunk of the tree had worked its way through his body until the jagged shaft of it protruded from his mouth.

  Lucifer stepped out onto the road and eyed her.

  As soon as the black bear caught sight of him, he turned and rose on his hind legs.

  Lucifer’s eyes glowed green. He grinned balefully at the giant beast.

  The bear dropped back down to all fours and charged back off into the woods.

  Lucifer looked back down the road at Amelia.

  “Hello, Anna. Have you tired yourself out yet?”

  “Why did you do this?” she half screamed.

  Lucifer looked across the road, up at the impaled Park Ranger, and nodded to himself.

  “The art of torture is kind of avant garde. I don’t expect everyone to be a fan.”

  “What the hell happened here?” a dark, booming voice said from the trees to Amelia’s left.

  Her head followed the sound, and she found Rider emerging from the woods.

  When he saw the look on her face, he stopped, and looked up the road at Lucifer.

  “What’s going on?”

  “His name is not Gage Kinder,” she blurted.

  Rider’s snapped his head back toward her.

  “It’s Lucifer.”

  Rider looked glowered back up the road at the Devil who dropped his head and sighed, with a look of sadness in his eyes. Then he smiled at Rider.

  “Father Fury, one would think that you might recognize me given the inordinate number of times I’ve ridden shotgun with you.”

  Rider peered back at Amelia. His eyes glowing green, and an electric smell filled the air. She had the sense that he was about to unleash something raw and powerful.

  “He’s real?” Rider said.

  Lucifer chuckled and Rider followed the sound.

  “You know, certain old Southern Baptists Preachers once taught that the greatest lie the devil tells is that he doesn’t exist. In this case, they’re right. If you don’t believe in me, then you probably don’t believe the rest of it either.”

  “What do you want?” Rider growled.

  Lucifer sighed. “You know, the Sissies made a fundamental mistake when they bound me to a mortal coil. They assumed that since I have the dubious honor of bearing the title ‘Satan’ or ‘The Devil’ that I would go against all aspects of Father’s plan indiscriminately. They don’t understand the underlying history here.”

  Rider snarled. “I don’t give a fuck about your history.”

  Lucifer shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid you can’t. You’re not at full strength yet, and it would take every ounce of power you can muster to best me.”

  Rider glanced at Amelia.

  “What did you do to her?”

  Lucifer gave him an innocent look. “I wouldn’t dream of harming a pretty, little hair on her pretty, little head. To do so would prolong my suffering, and I’ve suffered quite long enough.”

  Rider furled his brow.

  “What do you want?”

  Lucifer turned his palms up. “Finally, a question that I can answer with complete honesty. I’m just tired of being the bad guy.”

  Rider cleared his throat and rubbed the left side of his face. “And where do Amelia and I fit into all of that?”

  Lucifer held up his finger.

  “You want to go into the city?”

  He extended his right hand behind him.

  “There it is. Go get ‘em, tiger. Just see to it that I’m not the bad guy next time around. The errand I sent you on may have seemed like a wild goose chase, but you’ve weakened the barrier around the city enough to pass.”

  Rider’s face straightened. “Just like that, you’re gonna let us go?”

  Lucifer’s hands dropped to his sides. “Have you not been paying attention? I never attacked you. In fact, I ga
ve you the recipe for weakening that barricade of souls the sisters put up around the old town.”

  Lucifer pointed at the park rangers. “These fine gentlemen here would have brought our festivities to a screeching halt before they even began, so I redistributed them to a plane where they’ll be much more comfortable.”

  Lucifer pointed his green irises at Amelia. “And those sisters you saw me...discipline? That was just a bonus.”

  “You want me to go in there?”

  Lucifer wagged his head. “What can I say? We share common goals.”

  Rider looked back down at Amelia who couldn’t believe her ears.

  “Let’s go,” he growled.

  “Not so fast,” Lucifer said.

  Amelia looked at him to find him holding up his finger again.

  “I sent you to perform the tasks necessary to weaken the wall of spirits on purpose. What lies inside that city is for you and only you. Her fated task here was merely to help you get here, and now the rest of her fate lies along a different path.”

  Rider’s face darkened.

  Amelia had a sinking feeling in her chest – the certain knowledge that this was the end of the line for everything she knew.

  “I’m not going without her.”

  Lucifer nodded and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his brown, leather bomber jacket. “Oh, yes you will. Even if I must pick your big ass up and throw you in there, you’re going in.”

  Amelia realized, at once, that Lucifer would not allow her to enter the city and that he meant her harm, but on another level, she realized that it didn’t matter if Rider accomplished what they set out to achieve.

  She sprang to her feet and shoved Rider hard off the road.

  At once, Lucifer formed a translucent barrier of bronze light around them.

  Rider started back after him but found the dome surrounding them as solid as a concrete wall.

  “Amelia,” he cried.

  A tear dripped from her right eye.

  “So long, Rider. Go in there and take as many photographs as you can, and expose those women for what they really are.”

  Lucifer laughed at her.

  “Sure, take as many pictures as you like, but I’m sure you’re about to find out that what you see on the other side of that curtain of sorrow has very little to do with The Sisters of Divinity. It will be the strangest and most dangerous thing you’ve ever seen.”

  “I’ll kill you fucker,” Rider screamed.

  Lucifer shook his head. “Go on. I’m not going to hurt her. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

  Rider looked back at Amelia.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Rider squinted. “I love you.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, and then he turned and jogged up the road, and Amelia was terrified that she’d never cast eyes on him again.

  Something was wrong with the woods ahead.

  Rider stopped and looked about the trees, but he saw nothing.

  Leaves completely covered the broken remnants of the road ahead. The trees on either side stood as still as statues.

  No wind.

  Not so much as the sound of a stray leaf scraping across the ground.

  Rider’s face buzzed from the radiation emanating from the dome of souls ahead. His skin burned as if hazardous chemicals filled the air.

  His chest pounded with warning, and he felt the sensation of eyes burning through him.

  A sinking in the pit of his stomach.

  The now familiar sensation of power surging through him coursed through his body along with the burning and tingling from the radiation of the dome, and his vision changed so that he no longer saw light but looked at the world through infrared.

  Forty feet down the road, hiding in the foliage, the red heat signatures of four men lay in their bellies pointing cold objects his way.

  The road between them glowed with circular red pits. He didn’t know what the blotches meant, but he assumed he was seeing land mines.

  Rider spun off the road and into the trees pressing his back against a particularly large oak and stripping his rifle from his shoulder. He checked the clip and glanced back over his shoulder in time to see one of the men in the center of the pack motion for the others to fan out and surround him.

  Rider gently pulled the bolt back and then pushed it home, thrusting a bullet into the chamber, and then he rolled over onto his belly – aiming at the combatant circling around his right side.

  He took a deep breath and lined up the crosshairs of the scope with the man’s head.

  Released the breath halfway.

  Squeezed the trigger.

  The projectile exploded out of the barrel of the rifle.

  The man advancing on him clapped his hands against his ruined forehead, and he fell back motionless. His heat signature dimming.

  At once, automatic gunfire rattled all around him kicking up dirt and sending splinters of wood from the trees sizzling through the air.

  Rider scrambled for the trunk of the oak and pressed his back against it panting.

  Something heavy hit the ground beside him.

  He glanced over in time to recognize the shape of a grenade.

  Rider dove right hard landing on his stomach a few feet away just as the grenade exploded.

  The force of the blow hurled him through the cold night air, and he landed face first on the broken shards of asphalt covered with leaves that once was the access road to Skitts Mountain Tennessee.

  He looked up, dazzled with his ears ringing.

  He pushed himself to his feet and collected his rifle, and as he did so, he noticed that the skin of his right hand was unharmed, but the left sleeve and hem of his black, leather coat was ripped along with the hem of the violet shirt he wore.

  Rider furled his brow.

  “That was my favorite jacket, goddamnit.”

  The rifle found his shoulder as the men in the woods trying to surround him – only three of them now – ran in super slow motion through the trees blindly firing their weapons.

  Rider lifted his rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the closest man to his right. He squeezed the trigger, and watched with sick satisfaction as the man’s head exploded, and he fell in a lifeless heap to the ground.

  He pulled back the bolt and jammed it home again. Then he peered back through the scope and zeroed in on the next man to his right who was just about to burst out onto the road.

  He fired, and the man spun around backwards before falling to the ground writhing in final agony.

  He cocked the weapon again and pointed it in the direction of the last man to the left.

  The man now stumbled down the bank toward the road with his weapon firing wildly in Rider’s direction.

  He aimed, took in a deep breath, released it halfway, and squeezed the trigger again.

  The man flew off his feet as if someone had clotheslined him with a Louisville Slugger.

  Rider dropped the rifle and trained his eyes back up the road.

  A hill about twenty feet away abruptly cut off his vision.

  But then he heard the diesel motor roaring.

  A fully armored military Hummer flew over the hill and slammed down on the broken asphalt, throwing sparks.

  Rider gasped and ducked throwing his right arm out just as the abysmal spike formed in his hand.

  He ducked as the Hummer reached him and clenched his eyes as the grille of the military vehicle plunged directly after him.

  The horrid sounds of metal bending and shrieking. Something hot and heavy glanced off his back hard.

  He froze for a moment, once the ring in his ears from the explosion of the grenade subsided, and deafening silence returned to the woods around him, he opened his eyes.

  He found nothing but road ahead of him leading straight for the old city.

  He looked behind himself and found the Hummer lying in two pieces on either side of the road – cut so cleanly in half that it looked as though someone had split it with a l
aser.

  Both passengers still sat inside their chairs missing half their bodies. The metal on the cleanly-cut edges where the abysmal spike had sliced the vehicle in half still glowed red as if heated in a blacksmith’s oven.

  Rider shivered coldly.

  Then he turned and started up the road once again.

  Three steps toward the hill, he heard something off to his right that sounded a lot like a firecracker exploding.

  He turned his head in the direction of the sound, and saw a man sitting high up in the trees at least 500 feet away.

  A large bullet hurled toward him in super slow motion.

  Rider furled his brow and squared himself before the bullet.

  As it reached him, he plucked it out of the air with his palm and hurled it back the way it came like a baseball pitcher.

  He watched with complete amazement as the projectile hurled even faster than it came after his aggressor, and when it reached the man, his entire head exploded.

  How the fuck did I do that?

  Rider stared after his work for a long moment, and then he redirected his attention back up the steep incline heading toward the apex of the mountain.

  Slowly and steadily, he climbed the road until he reached the top of the hill, and what he saw beyond took his breath.

  A thick dome – shaped like a globe – encircled the apex of the mountain rotating on its axis like the earth. Arms of thick fog stretched out from its base and steamed down the mountain. To his left and slowly approaching his position, he saw what he had come to find.

  A small tear in the fabric of the dome at its base – just large enough for him to dive through, slowly ground toward him.

  Rider picked up his left foot to start toward it, but found that he was fastened to the ground.

  A cold breeze hissed down the road scattering the leaves covering the top of the hill, and beneath him, a spell like the one he stepped into in Darien held him in place within a sacred circle.

  At once, five women dressed in different colored hooded cloaks surrounded him – a woman in white, one in yellow, one in green, one in red, and another wearing blue.