Malevolent

by David Risen

Rider leans forward and kisses her hard. The touch and smell of her causes the swelling of the electrical feeling in his arms and legs. Her body goes rigid at first but then her arms relax and slip around him as she accepts the slow and steady embrace.

  But finally, she pushes him away with shame in her eyes.

  “Rhett,” she says.

  Rider bunches his lips.

  She takes a step back away from him. “I’m still married to him as far as I know, and I really hurt him. I can’t hurt him again.”

  Rider shakes his head. “He fell off the map, you know?”

  She points her sharp eyes back at him. “What?”

  “It’s been a long time. You disappeared in 2007. Right around the same time, Schizoid broke up. A lot of bad stuff happened. People died. I know he was charged with murder, but I don’t know what came of it.”

  Her eyes bulge. “And you have no idea what happened to Rhett?”

  He shakes his head. “I know they charged him with your murder, and they suspected him of several others.”

  She shakes her head slowly. “That’s not Rhett.”

  Rider gives her a cynical glint. “The rest of the world thinks that he’s a smart-mouthed, narcissistic rock musician. The court of public opinion threw the book at him.”

  She sighs. She looks away from him with her eyes welling up. “I did this to him. I have to fix it.”

  “You were made for me and I for you,” Rider asserts.

  She stares at him blankly for a moment before a look of compassion fills her face.

  “I’ve made a promise to Rhett. I have to close the book on that before I move on to something else, and I can’t give myself to anyone.”

  Rider nods. “Figures.”

  She takes a step toward him and touches his face. “This situation is a mess,” she says. “You’re at least ten years older than me.”

  Rider shakes his head. “You’re actually older than me. You just haven’t aged in nine years.”

  She turns and paces back toward the pulpit.

  “So, what’s your plan? We just sit here and hide until the world caves in on top of us?” she says.

  Rider laughs humorlessly and sits back down at the pew. “I don’t really think about the future anymore.”

  She turns to face him again. “Though you can’t be with her, you still love Lauren Fields-Rider, and I’m completely married to Rhett Mueller.”

  “How do you know all this?” he snapped.

  She looked down at the rotten wooden floor. “I saw it in my dream.”

  Rider looks down at his hands.

  “I’ve spent my life doing things the wrong way,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt anyone like that again.”

  Rider looks up to her again turning his palms up.

  “Then what are we supposed to do? I don’t have anything to fight for.”

  She deflates. “Yes, you do. Your daughter. All the people on the planet who don’t deserve the things they have to live through – people who are compelled by rotten circumstances to make bad choices simply because they have no other option – like you.”

  Her eyes well up. “Like me.”

  He waves. “But I don’t even know how to go about doing what I’m supposed to do.”

  She turns around to face him again.

  “You have to go back to your body. You’re not here. Not any more than I am. Find where you left your body, and then find where the sisters are keeping me.”

  Rider frowns. “How? I wouldn’t even know where to look for your body. Who knows if it’s even here at all.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s here. Look for big buildings with locks.”

  Rider sighs. “I just have met you. Don’t you think all of this is a little premature?”

  She touches his forehead, and before Rider can even speak a word in protest his spirit flies free from the protection of the church and soars fast through the cold air. It rockets up from the pew like a missile.

  He looks down to find the woods shrink to the size of a model, and then he sees the city below and the road where he entered appears. Lying flat on his face in the middle of the road is the tattered and scorched form that belonged to him.

  His upward ascent slows, and suddenly, he begins to fall.

  Straight

  Toward

  His

  Sleeping

  Body.

  The pain is so sharp and continuous that Lilith can’t even stand. She squirms on the floor trying to roll out the green flames that constantly burn her to the bone. She can’t bear to watch her flesh burn away only to recompose itself and then burn away again, so she lay with her eyes clamped shut.

  “Hello, Lilith.” The musky female voice says above her.

  She opens her eyes slightly to see a flicker of Alora – once known as Aphrodite – standing above her before her eyes burn.

  “I see you and the mother of chaos had a disagreement.”

  Lilith opens her mouth to respond but only a shriek escapes her.

  “I would very much like a chance to take care of this rabble, but as it stands, you have more information than I,” Aphrodite says turning and pacing to Lilith’s right. Lilith can barely hear the woman over the roar of the flames that keep burning away her ears.

  “I can save you from your pain with a different, more bearable kind of pain, but you’re going to first tell me what you know. So mercy or no?”

  She opens her mouth. As she speaks her voice is that of sandpaper and razorblades.

  “They hid in the church. None can go there. Father Fury will find his way to his body, and then he’ll free the Matron from her physical prison before he breaks the seals on the city.”

  “Very concise. Thank you. We’ll just have to see to it that he doesn’t succeed, and now, your mercy.”

  Lilith shrinks, as Aphrodite drops down over her with murderous eyes. Then she smiles. “I shall have to remember to thank the matron for cooking you for me. I shall enjoy this meal in many ways.”

  Rider lifted his face from the pavement.

  His back ached.

  His stomach growled.

  Every inch of his skin burned. He stood and nearly fell.

  And as he peered at the old Standard Oil station and its four gas pumps as tall as he adorned with red crowns, he realized how alone he felt.

  He looked back down at the broken pavement beneath his feet. The real abysmal spike lay on the ground by the rifle given to him by Lucifer.

  He reached down and took the ancient sword from the ground, unbuckled his belt and slid the scabbard through his belt buckle. Then he took the rifle from the ground and draped the strap around his shoulder – still tender from carrying the same a few days before up and down the mountain.

  For a moment, he thought of Amelia and wondered what became of her. A passing desire for a swig of Vodka cycled through his mind, and then he dismissed it.

  He looked about for buildings with locks on them, and his eyes found the dark hulk at the end of the road that was once the R.F. Whitaker and Company refinery. He remembered the rusty padlock on the gate when Cassandra led him past it on the way to her stronghold.

  He bunched his lips and started slowly toward it.

  Hades approaches the church wearily with his Warhammer drawn.

  “Oh, Mother Dearest,” he calls. “If you think I can’t get to you beyond a holy barrier, you have another thing coming. I’m an archangel.”

  He peers back at the rotting building and hears nothing within. The woods around him remains ominously silent as if waiting for what might come next.

  The subject of his scrutiny is an old, wooden church building with most of the white paint that once covered it gone exposing the gray, water damaged planks beneath. It stands inside a wooden fence. The right door of the old double-door entrance is missing, and he sees nothing but shadows beyond.

  Hades’ red beard curves in a smug smile.

  “I understand your unwillingness to let go. For one, I’
m certain that what I have in mind hurts terribly. But, I ask you, is it worth continuing? Do you wish to drown the lives of all you’ve known in fear and suffering before they are all finally swallowed by an apocalypse of your making?”

  He paces back and forth twirling his Warhammer like a baton.

  “Let’s think of your most recent – love, if you would call it that. You took a very good man and burned his life down around him just by being you. So, I ask you, should you really be you anymore?”

  He squares himself before the building turning the palm of his left hand up.

  “Let’s consider this for a moment. Every single person you’ve ever drawn into intimacy has suffered utter desolation. You know it, and everyone else can see it.”

  He turns and paces again twirling his Warhammer.

  “Your pain as I swallow you whole will be momentary, and you’ll immediately find yourself in a much better situation. Inside Hades, you’ll be exalted. The sentries within will not be able to challenge you, and they’ll leave you alone. If you see them mistreating a soul, you’ll easily overcome them.”

  He turns to face the church again. “And I vow to use your power judiciously to restore the balance to mankind – with me as a supreme king, of course.”

  He stops pacing, eyes the open mouth of the church for any signs of movement, and sighs hard when he sees nothing.

  “Men don’t know what they want. They need someone to tower over them and forbid them to hurt themselves, so I will be that for them. And when they die, they’ll all go where they did in ancient times. Warriors who die in war will go to Elysium also known as Aphrodite, and everyone else will go to Hades. This was the order before, and it worked quite nicely.”

  “Hades,” The Mother of Chaos roars behind him.

  He spins around to find the woman he first knew as Raven standing behind him wearing a choir uniform. Her eyes glow red and a red aura of flames encircle her hands.

  “Payback time.”

  Hades cocks his head sideways as if he doesn’t understand her. “But you simply do not have the power, my dear.”

  Rider lifted the rusty chain clasped by the padlock on the rickety chain link fence separating him from the building where coal was once refined and later lumber was shaped.

  The lock was heavy in his hands, but over eighty years of rust rendered it weak.

  Rider stood up straight and removed the rifle from his shoulder. He cocked it over his head with the butt of the weapon aimed at the rusted chain and then launched it down. The old fence rattled and the rusty chain protested with a raspy clinking but the blow only managed to knock a bit of the rust from the surface of the lock.

  Rider raised the rifle again, and aimed more carefully, and just as he was about to drop the butt on the clasp, someone behind him cleared her throat.

  Rider spun around gasping with the butt of the rifle clumsily finding its way to his shoulder.

  A tall woman with a mane of perfect blond hair stood behind him with her hands propped on her hips. She looked like a sassy supermodel preparing for a shoot with every hair in place, her perfect skin that makeup would only cheapen, and the colors purple and black popping on her brand-new outfit.

  Her mane of blond hair peppered with baby’s breath and lilies drooped in loose curls all the way down to her back. Her wide, expressive eyes glowed piercing blue peppered with just enough violet to make them like nothing Rider had ever seen.

  The plumpness and fullness of her peach lips reminded Rider of a very kissable Latina.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a musical and youthful voice, “Could you please direct me to the local library? I need to borrow a cookbook with a good recipe for skewered archangel.”

  Rider fired his rifle. He didn’t realize he was going to fire until the trigger was already halfway pressed, and the explosion from the powerful assault rifle frightened him.

  The projectile struck the woman in the right shoulder twisting her sideways and knocking her right arm from her hip.

  She turned back to face him with an elaborate and disingenuous frown.

  “Ouch! That was rude! Is this how you always respond to love?”

  Even as she spoke the words, the wound on her shoulder closed leaving nothing but bare, white skin, and a bloody hole in her black blazer with purple lapels where the bullet penetrated. As her skin closed, her body spit the bullet out like a kid spitting water from his mouth.

  Rider dropped the rifle and unsheathed the abysmal spike.

  She studied it for a moment with amusement. “That sword must be ancient. It was crafted in a style that’s all too reminiscent of the last culture that worshiped me. I believe it was made by the same people who once called me Venus.”

  She pondered her own words for a moment, and then her face darkened to a look of hatred. She thrust her hands out before her pinning Rider’s back to the old chain link fence.

  “You’re weak, Father Fury. You can’t prevail over me. You haven’t been in mortality long enough. You have two choices: struggle and prolong this painful and messy affair in which you will fall anyway or submit and I will swallow you quickly.”

  Rider forgot the ache in his muscles. The sensation of electricity coursing through his body erased all his pain.

  His eyes burned.

  The soul sword snaked around his arm and met with its physical counterpart.

  Father Fury pulled away from the chain link fence and assumed a swordsman’s stance.

  “I shouldn’t have shown you mercy before,” he said.

  She laughs bitterly. “You had no choice. I’ve always been more powerful.”

  She snapped and a silver crossbow with a golden bolt appeared in her hand.

  She spread her legs shoulder width and fired.

  The gold bolt hurled toward him with dizzying speed.

  But then time slowed. Father Fury slowly cocked his head sideways examining the bolt in mid-flight before lazily swatting it away.

  Then she fired another, and he smirked at her and scratched his head, and then he swatted the bolt away like a gnat buzzing in his face.

  Then she fired the next arrow.

  Father Fury shifted the abysmal spike to his left hand, snatched the bolt out of the air and hurled it back at her.

  The velocity of the bolt was so swift as it pierced her skin that it tore all the way through her chest and knocked her ten feet backwards flat on her back.

  Father Fury reassumed the swordsman’s stance as she shrieked and grunted in pain and scurried to put her feet back under her.

  “I finished all of you but two. In what fantasy would you think that you could stop me?” Father Fury growls.

  Aphrodite glares at him and shoves herself up. “No more Mrs. Niceguy.”

  Hades swings his Warhammer, and it crashes into the side of Merissa’s face and bounces off.

  Mother Chaos laughs. “I’m older than you.”

  The look of surprise on Hades’ face dissolves into a smug grin.

  “Why certainly, Ms. Madness. Since you believe you’re so strong, give me your best shot.”

  Mother chaos furls her brow. Her flaming aura rises ten feet in the air.

  The earth shakes.

  Trees snap off their trunks and fly after Hades.

  Hades cocks the Warhammer over his shoulder and swats at the first tree – an oak – like a major league slugger.

  Upon contact the great oak shatters into splinters.

  A pine tree hurls toward him.

  Hades swings the Warhammer back the other way, and the pine tree bursts into white-hot flames and disintegrates instantly into ash.

  A boulder the size of a large house rises from deep within the earth over a mile behind him ripping up roots, and dirt, and toppling trees as it ascends.

  Hades – unaware of his peril – stands upright resting his Warhammer on his right shoulder.

  “Are we exhausted already?”

  The mother of Chaos curves her mouth in a shrewd smile as her eye
s narrow with seething hatred.

  The limestone boulder hurls toward him so quickly that the air around it turns to flames.

  “You should just surrender,” Hades says. “You’ll find that this will be much less painful.”

  As the boulder approaches, the minerals in the rock begin to melt spraying a trail of lava behind it. Trees along its path catch fire.

  A sucking of the air in the woods causes Hades to furl his brow.

  “What’s that?

  The boulder smacks into his back like an asteroid, hurls past Merissa’s right side and crashes into the side of a gully five-hundred feet behind her. All the foliage on the hill catches fire at once.

  Merissa turns to admire her work.

  She nods as she looks on the spectacle of ruination beyond her and nods.

  “I may only be thirty percent,” she growls. “But my thirty percent is a thousand percent of you.”

  Aphrodite snapped again, and a sword made of platinum blinked into existence in her hand. The guard of the sword was shaped like a golden owl with its wings spread in flight.

  She snapped the fingers of her left hand and an ornate shield two feet across and circular like a giant coin materialized in her other hand.

  The maker of this armament – presumably Hades – saw fit to emboss the image of a smiling sun in gold in the center of the buckler.

  “Do you recognize these weapons, Fury? You should. They belonged to my sister, Athena. Do you recall that fight? Nothing beats Fury like wisdom.”

  She screamed and charged.

  Rider shuffled his feet back into the swordsman’s stance.

  She sliced her sword through the air so fast that the air around it caught on fire causing the blade to burn red hot.

  Rider threw the abysmal spike up in its trajectory backpedaling.

  When the two blades connected, and explosion blew Rider backwards slamming his back into the chain link fence and bowing it inward.

  Rider shook the birds out of his head, and looked up just in time to catch sight of the blade of Athena plunging downward toward his chest.

  He rolled out of the way.

  The sword sank two feet deep into the ground.