Apathetic God
Page 28
There, in a crater at least fifty feet across, was a blazing figure of fire. Lauren knew his form, knew intimately the powerful physique, but she’d never seen Weyland like this before. His dark black skin was replaced by a casing of molten orange and white, like fresh stoked coals in a forge. His eyes, tiny orbs of darkness, were the only part of him that did not radiate light and heat. The air around him sizzled audibly. The ground around him cracked and burned, concrete glowing red hot and asphalt bursting into flames. The heat was so intense that the air around him rushed upward and pierced a hole in the clouds above.
His chest heaving with anger, Weyland strode slowly forward. As he moved, great cracks split in the ground beside him, and everything near him melted away to ash and cinder.
“We have unfinished business.”
Lauren felt fear tapdance through her mind. The hairs on the back of her neck raised and she realized that the terrible destruction she had seen from Weyland up until this point was, as he had warned her, but a fraction of his wrath.
Still, she refused to let him see her fear. Lauren opened her mouth to speak but before she could utter a sound Weyland raised his hand for silence. His gesture was accompanied by another earth-shaking explosion that knocked her onto her backside. The ground around him was literally boiling like soup, concrete, steel, and glass evaporating into clouds of acrid gas.
“Do. Not. Speak. If I want to hear you I will tell you what to say.”
Lauren scooted backwards. She recognized the look on his face. The hateful hunger there sent a chill through her spine.
“Understand this, you will never make me look for you again. I have been extraordinarily lenient with you, but my patience is at an end. I already reduced your precious Chicago to ashes, and when we are finished here I’ll track down the rest of the vermin you’ve been hiding with.”
His powerful fists clenched with an audible crackle.
“You are mine. You will always be mine. Everything you are, and think, and feel, is mine to do with as I please. Moreover, you carry my child.”
Lauren’s eyes narrowed. How dare he. Her hackles raised and she clenched her fist hard enough to break through the pavement below her fingers.
Weyland seemed to sense her pending rebellion. His eyes narrowed and the air itself ignited around him, surrounding him in a halo of barely visible flame.
“You insolence is intolerable, but not incurable.”
A wave of heat unlike anything she’d ever known washed over Lauren. She felt the outer layers of her skin crumble to ash and dissipate. But her powers had grown since last she’d faced Weyland, and her abilities prevented all but the most superficial damage. Her dress sizzled and blackened against her body, hissing as the moisture of the storm was boiled out of it in an instant.
“You will acknowledge our place as Gods of this world, just as you will acknowledge your place below me as my consort and raise our child to obey my will.”
Lauren scrambled to her feet.
“I don’t want to be a God, I don’t need to be a God! And I sure as hell don’t want you.”
Weyland balked in confusion, the flames of his wrath dimming briefly.
“You don’t have a choice, Lauren-”
“I do have a choice! We all have choices! It may be the only thing we have, but we have choice. Don’t you dare try to take that from me.”
Weyland disappeared in a flash and rematerialized inches from her face. The heat pouring off of him vaporized her clothes and set her hair and feathers smoking and wilting.
“Do I truly need to remind you, again, that I will take what I want? That you are nothing before me? To do with as I please?”
Lauren lashed out with a backhand to Weyland’s face, but he caught her wrist mid-strike. The heat from his strong fingers made her flesh sizzle like bacon in a pan.
“Amazing. Your willingness to die is as stunning as your beauty. Unfortunately, your stupidity to think I would let you go so easily is even more so. You are mine, Lauren, as is the child you... “
He paused, his grip loosening as he cocked his head to the side. His eye flitted back and forth from her belly to her face several times before narrowing.
Lauren smiled, a wide, genuine, ear-to-ear grin.
“Where is it!”
His powerlessness, even at the high cost of losing her daughter, filled her with a perverted joy. He gripped her shoulders and shook her like a ragdoll, but all she could do was laugh. He lifted her with a growl and pressed his ear to her stomach, listening hard. A moment paused with nothing but the sound of her mirth, when he finally grew tired of waiting.
Lauren felt the air rush from her lungs as he threw her to the ground with enough force to create a sizeable splash in the lava below his feet. The molten stone stuck to her bare skin like hot glue, searing her flesh and generating enough pain to stop her laughter.
Lauren moved to stand but Weyland put a heavy foot on her chest, crushing her down into the mire.
“Where. Is. It.”
“She.”
Lauren could barely fill her lungs enough to get out the single word. It hit Weyland like a truck, staggering him.
“S-she? No, that can’t be right, you’re lying. I was promised a son!”
He pushed harder, until the liquid stone was lapping up Lauren’s sides and splashing onto her chest and neck. She craned her head to keep her face above the surface, fear once again setting in. She didn’t want to find out what drowning in magma might feel like.
“No matter. Girl or not, she is mine and I demand to know where you have hidden her.”
A growing glow drew Lauren’s gaze past Weyland’s shoulder and into the deep mountains of black clouds that still hovered over the town. The pulsing lightning was beating faster now, a giant, tangled knot of electricity forming in the heart of the storm.
“Her na-name is Gale, and she is no more beholden to you than I am.”
Her declaration was punctuated with a massive lightning bolt from the sky. The column of energy hit Weyland in the center of his back and drove him to his knees. The moment his weight lifted from her chest, Lauren tucked her wings and rolled away. Her wings sprung back open, flinging droplets of rock in every direction as she found her footing and leapt skyward. She was a dozen feet off the ground when Weyland appeared in mid-air in front of her. She couldn't turn in time and he wrapped her in a bear hug.
She felt the familiar twisting sensation as they jumped across the globe. When they crashed to the ground it was not the melted slag-heap of her birthplace but the center of of a crowded street under a blazing desert sun.
Crowds of hijab and thawb clad women and men dispersed in chaos as the street erupted in fire and smoke. Those unfortunate souls caught too close when the pair appeared were broken and burned without any hope of escape. Lauren saw stars as her head bounced off the ancient stone street. Weylands hands were wrapped around her neck, his fingers tightening slowly and his lip curling into a callous snarl.
“Fear not, bride, you have an eternity to remember your place. Just as I have an eternity to breed a son from you.”
Lauren’s eyes burned with flash-dried tears and she felt herself draw inward as her vision blurred around the edges. She could feel his eagerness, feel his weight bearing down on her.
She could feel his sadistic excitement.
But she was not the helpless girl of a few months past.
Lauren’s eyes blazed with fury as she reached her hands up to Weyland’s wrists. She pried at his muscular forearms but to no avail, he was still too strong.
Weyland brought his face down to her, his strong hands holding her head still, and forced his searing lips on hers. She kicked and hit him. Tried to scream, to bite his lip, to pull her lips away from him. When he finally drew back She spit uselessly at him and he freed a hand from her neck to shove her face into the ground. He leaned in again and whispered in her ear.
“You belong to me.”
Rough hands grabbed her and star
ted to roll her over. She met his hands with her own, her muscles tearing with the strain of holding him back. His power was too great, she felt her joints groan and snap as he twisted her to his whims.
As her shoulder dislocated, Lauren felt herself detach further. She was aware of the hundreds of eyes watching the terrible scene unravel from a safe distance, aware of the screams of the dying and injured. She saw herself as a broken baby bird, fallen too soon from the nest and surrounded by a swarm of tiny ants. A sea of life too small to make any impact, but complicit in her destruction nonetheless.
As it had before, the monster lurking in the shadows of her soul called to her when she was most vulnerable. She relented, giving way not for Weyland but for the inky blackness within herself.
She had barely cracked open the door to her heart when the darkness, so long contained, poured in and filled her with strength. The inky pool rebounded off the walls of her soul, rushing to fill the voids and tears it found there and armoring her against the pain she felt.
A surge of strength rushed into her as she reached deep within the ground. She gave the darkness free reign and it leeched the life from the very earth around her. Weyland’s advance stalled as she absorbed the countless lives of the city. She could almost see it, a network of life invisible to the naked eye but running from every blade of grass and beetle to the hawks in the skies around them. Thin but undeniable threads ran back and forth in a vast web of connection.
She played the part of the spider, hunting down every trembling life in that web and draining it dry. Cars careened off roads, construction workers fell lifeless from scaffolding, and children slipped silently from swings in parks all over the city. Tehran bled dry in a matter of seconds. She devoured them indiscriminately - every man, woman, child, animal, even the grass and the trees.
Weyland realized too late that his victim was drawing her power from the people around them. He ripped them across the world again, leaving the city in ruins and leveling several hundred yards of rainforest where they arrived next.
But the jungle, for all it lacked in humanity was teeming with life. Lauren used the first few seconds after their transition to shove Weyland aside. She buried her fists into the dark, rich earth.
She needed more.
Weyland sought to starve her. He blazed with renewed intensity, vaporizing the forest for as far as the eye could see. Lauren stood as the web around her blinked out of existence. Weyland was breathing heavily. His fists were clenched in anger but he maintained his distance. Waiting, no doubt, to strike.
“So what then, little pet? You just want to watch the world burn now?”
Lauren looked inward, what did she want? She struggled to find the spark of humanity that had weathered every storm so far, but it’s light no longer hid within her heart. The question hung unanswered while she pondered.
Ultimately, she knew, there was only one thing she wanted from Weyland.
“All this for what? For the cockroaches you choose to love?”
He spread his hands wide, indicating the destruction around them.
“You are a higher life form Lauren. We are higher life forms.”
Lauren weighed her options, judged the distance between them and gauged the strength in her wings.
“She must be truly something, the pet of yours. Perhaps I’ll taste her myself on the days I get bored of you. I imagine she’s far less durable, not that I care particularly if I break your toy-”
Lauren lunged at him with a feral growl.
He caught her in the air, using her momentum to swing full circle and drive her into the ground again. His left hand gripped her waist and his right her throat, but her clutching, clawing fingers found his face as well. He lifted her up and slammed her into the ground over and over, but she did not relent. She tore at his eyes with all her strength, pressing her nails into the hard, unyielding flesh.
He gave out a yell of his own and they appeared in the center of London. A quarter-mile section of the Thames turned to steam in an instant and dozens of structures crumbled outward in the wake of their arrival.
“This is where she lives, yes?”
Lauren didn’t answer, but Weyland wasn’t really waiting for a response regardless. The flames of his wrath raced against her own powers to extinguish the light of the city.
Tens of thousands of lives were snuffed out in the space of a few heartbeats. But where Weyland remained the same, Lauren grew more powerful with every soul she harvested. Weyland reached out to grab her, but she dodged him, maintaining her connection to the dying city.
In desperation Weyland hunched over and clenched his muscles. All the heat and fire shrank into him in an instant, causing him to glow so brightly that Lauren’s couldn't bear to look at him. A brief silence, deeper than any Lauren had ever known, was broken a split second later by an atomic fireball that left London a crater several miles wide and more than thousand feet deep.
Millions of lives gone, erased from history in the blink of an eye.
But as Weyland unclenched his fists and stood upright again he was met with Lauren’s smiling face. He took an involuntary step backward, his cocky, self-assured facade finally cracking.
“Impossible.”
Lauren was silent, walking across the glowing earth towards him.
“I-I will not be denied! You are mine by birthright! I-it is fated!”
Lauren glared at him, but still she did not speak. The gap between them shrank, twenty feet, eleven, five.
“Is this what you want? I will burn this planet to ash! You and I will be the last living creatures on a dead rock. I will boil the seas, scorch the skies, I will-”
They were face to face now. Though he had her by more than a foot it was he who trembled, not she. His blustery speech trailed off as she stared him down.
“Are you truly the God you claim to be?”
He took a deep breath and did his best to appear menacing.
“I am.”
“Can you bring back my father? My brother? My best friend?”
He paused.
“I told you, n-no one can do this, it is beyond-”
“Then you are a pathetic God!”
He flinched as she screamed in his face.
Lauren shoved him, making him stumble backwards.
“Lauren, take your place beside me. I can give you anything else-”
Lauren slapped him across the face. The thunderclap from her impact sent a cloud of dust blowing out in every direction around them. Weyland took the blow, his head jerking to the side, but he stood his ground.
“What can you possibly give me that would compare.”
She practically spit the words at him, turning away before he could even begin to speak.
He chose to answer her statement as a question.
“I built you a world of dreams before, I can build you another. You can be with your family once again. At least until the pain eases.”
Lauren froze, she hadn’t considered his other gifts. To be reunited with her loved ones, to live in peace in a world not ruled by constant pain, fear, and rejection, was a tempting price for her soul.
Weyland sensed her indecision. He reached a hand gently out and rested it on her shoulder.
“In time, you will see that this is the only way.”
His touch reignited the fire in her belly. She spun, her hand shooting up and gripping him by the wrist.
“Perhaps I want something else, some more.”
“Anything.”
His sincerity, whether rooted in fear or some perverse sense of duty, only drove her further into madness.
“I want my vengeance.”
Weyland tried to jerk his hand back, but her fingers remained locked around him. She felt the darkness within reach hungrily down her arms and sink its fangs into Weyland.
Lauren let out a shuddering, uncontrollable gasp. Her knees felt weak and her eyes half-closed in pure ecstasy. The energy she drew from Weyland was pure, raw, limitless.
“Let go of me!”
Lauren was too distracted, too high to respond.
Weyland’s energy was different from those she’d tasted before. It was richer, fuller, more complex. She’d absorbed a hundred lifetimes from him already and barely felt she’d scratched the surface.
The pair bounced around the globe together as Weyland sought to escape her with growing desperation. Lauren’s uncaged powers and Weyland raging fire left hollowed seas of death, empty skeletons of burning cities wherever they landed.
But she would not relent. She wasn’t sure if she could.
“Please, Lauren.”
She opened her eyes. It was as though she’d been blind her entire life. They were standing in a ocean of sand, with nothing but dunes for miles in every direction. Even so, the incredible vibrancy of the desert captivated her. She could just as easily perceive the colors of individual grains of quartz around them as she could pick out the feathers in a buzzard some thirty miles distant.
Weylands voice was an intricate weave of vibrations and minute temperature fluctuations in the air as much as it was words.
“Lauren….”
She snapped out of it, focusing her eyes on her prey. She could feel thousands of years of history, of memory, filling her mind and slaking her thirst. But he was an endless font of life and energy.
She noticed his skin had dulled again to the broken rock and magma appearance she’d seen before, but the black was dull and drab around the edges, and the fire within him seemed dimmer. Her own arm, by comparison, was a violent mosaic of black stone and silver fire from her fingers where they locked around his wrist up to her elbow. She did not dwell upon the change, but something about it thrilled her.
His spirit was broken, and he knelt before her with his shoulders low. His eyes, filled with pain and fear stared up at her. Lauren leaned in close to him, her face next to his and her lips beside his ear.