Necessarily Evil- Apocalypse

by Shad N Freud

  Necessarily Evil: Apocalypse

  By Shad N. Freud

  Book Two of the Divine Sitcom

  Foreword

  Before I get very far into this second book, I would really like to thank Charlie Knight (@Cknightwrites on Twitter) for their tireless efforts to turn the dreck I affectionately refer to as my first novel from a sows’ ear into a silk purse. If it weren’t for their editing, my first novel would likely never have been published, and I wouldn’t have bothered finishing this little tale.

  While the previous book was a bit more light hearted and somewhat playful, I must warn you, dear reader, that this book will be a bit…different. There are certain themes and scenes that will likely be hard for some of you to stomach, and I will understand if it taints your opinion about my writing. I had to dig down deep into my own dark mind to write the horrific parts of this second novel, and I hope you will have a strong emotional reaction to what will take place. I don’t condone such actions, nor am I really a fan of torture…but evil, twisted minds enjoy such things, and as an author, I chose not to cut them out.

  Regardless, I hope you’ll still enjoy this book. It ties together the rest of the story and follows the group to the fulfillment of the Prophecy, for good or ill.

  Prologue

  Malak smiled toothily as he looked over the contract he’d drafted to send off with his emissary, an old McG Cognitive processor named Nyarlatev. The orb’s inner light shifted around like a plasma ball as it read the Abyssal script, running the translation program embedded within its higher functions as it mulled over how to sell the Warden of the Lost on the idea of parting with as many Pacification Drones as the “man” could spare. In exchange, the man would be given the location of a plane with the best chance at a cure.

  Malak legitimately hoped the man would find a cure for the pestilence infecting his plane. A functional McG would mean a well-stocked abyssal army for the first time in millennia. So, win-win if he found a cure, and ruined the plane that caused him so many headaches. And, if he failed…well, two Pacification Drones were certainly enough to ruin someone’s day.

  He gently plucked Nyarlatev out of his cradle and slotted him into a construct cobbled together from the remaining bits and pieces of McG tech left over after constructing the Spaniard’s last body in 1945. The body leaked necrid where the scraps of nanoweave didn’t quite meet, ragged sheets of Succubus Silk trying to make up the rest of the missing “skin.”

  The body began to move disjointedly as the stone within established control over the jumbled mass of internal circuits and clogged necrid pathways. The “bones” of the construct were rusty, the joints stiffened with age and corrosion. The body creaked as Nyarlatev tested his limbs, then carefully rolled up the missive for the warden.

  Malak nodded, and looked at the scrying pool in his chambers, concentrating on the home plane of the McGillicutty Corporation. The pool flickered, and he paused as a blade passed through the pool and almost buried itself in his face. It was a worn blade, the mithril-carbide lattice blade dinged and dented, but vibrating at high frequency as capably as the day it was made.

  The face attached to the person holding the blade peered into the pool from the other side.

  “Well, hell-o there,” the goggled face wrapped in bandages said in easily understood Abyssal. “How can I help you?”

  ∞∞∞

  The door to the bunker finally failed, and Ink laughed sadistically as she pointed into the bunker, a clear order for the Vesparum daemonium to flood inside. She cackled madly before screaming loudly enough for the demons erecting the barriers topside to hear, “Kill everyone but the woman and child! I want them taken unharmed and alive!”

  The fight inside the bunker was short, bloody, and horrifically violent. The Inquisitors assigned to protection detail fought valiantly in the cramped quarters, each slaying as many of the vile demons as they could, their guns only silencing to reload or because the shooter was torn apart by the wave of insectoid bodies that crushed their fellows underfoot. Vicious mandibles ripped flesh from bone as the bugs ate the dead and dying.

  But, one woman stood against the tide, hewing limbs and blasting the demons away with spells and the divine light of the celestial plane of Heaven, her crimson tresses floating in the air as she glowed with the lume that spilled out of her soul. The very light burned the demons like fire, searing their black carapaces wherever the light touched.

  “Ye’ll ne’er touch meh daughter!” the absolutely gorgeous elf raged at the demons as they kept a perimeter around the woman and her daughter. The blade kept back the tougher, corporeal demons while the corona of white fire held back the shades that chittered from the shadows angrily. All became silent as the sound of high heels clicked on the concrete floor, and a strikingly beautiful woman sidled her way forward, darkness rolling off of her like waves on an oil-slicked shore.

  The shadow met the light and began to boil, the palpable darkness stifling as the light and darkness cancelled each other. The shades to press inward, more afraid of the Demon Prince than the light.

  “Never is such a long time.” Ink smiled freely as she flicked her wrist in the woman’s direction and a pair of tiny, self-deploying syringes buried themselves in Tristanna’s neck, injecting the elf with a very small dose of tetrodotoxin. It was barely enough to render her paralyzed, staring upward with a mixture of shock and fury blazing in her eyes as the corona guttered and died.

  Sophie looked up in terror as Ink smiled down at her darkly. Ink laughed as she reached down for the child, Another syringe in hand. “Now now, little one…no need to-”

  “NO!” Sophie screamed as she shoved outward. Much to Ink’s surprise, she was launched backwards by a massive gout of Hellfire. It seared her already abused form and caused her to elicit a blood-curdling scream as she slammed into the wall ten feet behind her.

  Ink got shakily to her feet, patting out the glowing embers on her padded clothes, the glamor slipping as she coughed. The murderous gleam in her eye was unmistakable as she straightened herself up. “Just for that, you little bitch, you get to go first.”

  Another self-depressing syringe flew out of her hand, and the Hellfire guttered out instantly, the little girl insensate from the tetrodotoxin.

  “A pity…you and your mother would have been fun to keep around,” Ink sneered as she touched up her makeup.

  Chapter One

  “You know,” Ink smirked as she grabbed Tristanna’s face with a delicate hand, turning her head gently from side to side, looking at the absolutely gorgeous elf as she glowered into the eyes of the smiling succubus, “it’ll almost be a shame to kill you. Such fine features, such pretty eyes. Such pale skin…were you a model at some point?”

  She turned to look at the little girl asleep on the bed in the next room. “And after having such a pretty little girl, no less. If things were different, I’d likely have just kept you and your daughter as play things for guests to my palace. Unfortunately, you both had the poor taste to be involved with that fucking orc, Beaumont.”

  “She’s an innocent. Let her go!” Tristanna raged at the succubus as she fought against the chains binding her to her chair. Her brow furrowed as she grit her teeth, flexing her deceptively strong elven arms, trying to break the steel chains that held her get to the hidden detonator that would level the bunker. She would prefer killing herself and daughter rather than allow this bitch to have her way. As if reading her mind, Ink held up the detonator that had been secreted away in the kitchen of the bunker.

  “Amazing what you find when you’re looking for a church key.” Ink laughed as she crushed the device in her hand, and let the fragments fall in Tristanna’s lap. “Now shut up, would you? Y
ou’ll wake the baby.”

  The Bunker was still holding out the Inquisitors, Templars, Monks…the divine army outside the barrier erected by the demon’s topside. She looked over at one of her minions. “Be a dear and fetch the camera crew, would you? I plan on taking hours to do this and sending a copy of this tape to the Pope. Gift wrapped, with a nice bow on top.” Ink smiled sardonically as she pointed at a pair of metal chairs. “Put them in the fun chairs, for now. Strap them in and pull the restraints tight. I’ll kick off our entertainment once somebody brings me my tools, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to rush this.”

  Tristanna grit her teeth in impotent rage. She fought the urge to give in to despair, deciding to present a strong front to give her daughter the courage she’d need for what was to come. “Ah dinnae think ye ken,” her Scottish brogue grew thicker as she threatened the demon, “juist howfur badly this is aff tae gang fur ye, ye glaikit boot. Mah guidman is aff tae murdurr ye. Slowly. Painfully. 'n', ah will be peepin' it fae heaven, daein' mah damnedest tae pish oan yer face whin it happens.”

  “Oh, but that’s just adorable. I do so love bluster from the condemned. Don’t worry, I’m not a firm believer in age before beauty, so your baby girl will die first. But not until she watches what happens to you. And, then I’ll make you watch what we do to her. Now, I’m going to try and make this last as long as I can, so let’s try and enjoy ourselves, shall we?”

  “Yeh fuckin’ cunt! Give me a knife, and I’ll end ye! Feckin coward! Fight me!” Tristanna screamed as she struggled against her bonds, the bolts holding her chair to the floor loosening as she fought to break free.

  “While that is certainly tempting, I’m afraid that’s going to be a hard pass. I think I’ll have a few of my vespid gangrape you first, then your daughter will get a turn. Then, I’m thinking…bamboo slivers under the finger nails, and another round of in-out, in-out. After that, I think I’ll start pulling her teeth out with rusty pliers. I think you can see the pattern here. You see, I’ve had decades to plot this. I’ve studied torture just for you and your daughter. I used to let my minions do this sort of thing, you see, because I was always more on the mystical and arcane side of things. But…that husband of yours…he did this to me.”

  Ink allowed her glamor to slip, showing off the hideously deformed face she hid from the world behind illusions. Tristanna nearly vomited as she took in the view of the horrifically mutilated woman, her stomach turning in utter revulsion at the sight of the ruined succubus, her muscle tissue and bones looking like overcooked beef that spent too long in the broiler.

  “Completely unprovoked. And the damnedest part is he did it because of something I hadn’t even done yet! Isn’t that just so very twisted? I mean, I was tortured for days. Days! Tortured, burned…he ripped out my fingernails, cut me with poisoned knives, broke just about every bone in my body. Cut pieces off of me and forced me to eat them…”

  Ink’s smile fell as she remembered the ordeal, fiddling with what remained of her fingernails as her eyes went out of focus, staring straight ahead and through the woman before her, reliving the event. “And then? Then, he burned my face, my chest, and destroyed the parts of me I liked using the most.” Ink fought the urge to cry, then made eye contact with Tristanna as her ugly face twisted into a snarl.

  Ink removed her clothing, showing the horrific scars permanently burned into her flesh. Her groin was horrifically mutilated, her breasts cut off, and a brand was burned into her belly. The brand simply said “Carl Beaumont was here” in Carl’s unmistakable chicken scratch. “I just wanted you to know, in the spirit of fairness, as to why this is going to happen to you. You are not going to escape this, I am going to enjoy this, and your husband? He earned this.” She looked over at a minion. “Grab the brat.”

  Ink put her padded clothes back on as Sophie was dragged kicking and screaming into the room. Ink smiled, then walked over to Sophie and slapped her hard across the face, splitting the poor girl’s lip. “Don’t scream yet little one. I haven’t even begun to have fun with you.”

  Ink rubbed her hands in sadistic glee as the camera crew shuffled into the room while a group of succubi brought in torture tools and a number of vespids milled around the room, salivating in excitement. One of the succubi opened a tool box and withdrew a couple of small bottles and a hypodermic needle.

  “I’m going to have my people inject each of you with carefully measured doses of tetrodotoxin, to paralyze your muscles. It’s an interesting poison, I might add, because it only paralyzes the muscles but doesn’t prevent you from feeling pain. Second, they’ll inject you with a favorite of mine: Australian rockfish toxin. The pain caused by this particular toxin,” Ink booped Sophie on the nose to get her attention as the girl cried silently. One of the succubi had gagged the girl while tying her to the chair and another was struggling to do the same to Tristanna, “is so great, and so…unmitigable that people who have stepped on the fish will die of blood loss after cutting their own foot off to alleviate the pain. Too bad tetrodotoxin only impairs non-autonomic control. Such pain, and you won’t even be able to move while the toxins wreak havoc on your nervous system. You,” she pointed to a particularly lust-inspiring demon, “Bring me a scalpel, would you? Third tray, same box. I don’t think she’ll want to see all the horrible things we’re going to do to her daughter, and I think taking off her eyelids will be the best way to make sure she watches.”

  Tristanna struggled despite the toxins taking hold in her system, her last act before the tetrodotoxin robbed her of the ability to fight being to spit in Ink’s eye. Ink wiped the spit off her face and licked it off her hand. “Oh, I am so going to enjoy this.”

  ∞∞∞

  Zeke was floating in lotus scented waters when he awoke, utterly confused by what he saw. All around him were people that likewise floated in the water as they flowed downstream, some washing up on nearby shores, being helped out of the water by long dead relatives, while others were pulled down under the water at random, their forms changing as they reincarnated. Zeke’s progress down the river of rebirth was arrested as a translucent blue hand grabbed his ankle and pulled him out of the water, flinging him at a peach tree on a far shore. Under the tree sat a kindly old man who looked like he’d gone to seed, eating peaches out of a basket to his left.

  Zeke landed on the dirt at the old man’s feet and pushed himself up. He paused and looked at his restored body in shock, running his hands over what had been badly burned flesh. His left eye was no longer a charred lump of useless nerve tissue. He stared intently at his hands, remembering that his arms had been amputated at the elbows by nuclear fire.

  That’s when it dawned on him as to where he was. “I…I died, didn’t I?”

  “Afraid so, sonny,” the old man said as he grabbed a peach out of the basket. “But you won’t be staying long. You’ve got a life to get back to after those marvelous nanites your friend Sachi injected you with get done fixing you up, good as new.”

  Zeke was lost in thought as the old man took a large bite out of the fresh, juicy peach, the juiced dribbling down his chin. His friends had done everything they could to save him, and he’d died anyways. Despite that fact…he was going back? He looked up in confusion as the old man held out a peach to the barbarous monk.

  “I do love peaches. Care for one?”

  Zeke shook his head. “Sorry sir, I don’t mean to offend, but I don’t eat sweet stuff. I could utterly destroy a goat right now, though. Never thought being dead would make me hungry, of all things.”

  The old man shook his head, smiling as he placed the peach in Zeke’s large scaly hand. “Trust me, Sonny, it’ll be worth it.”

  Zeke stared at the peach, quirking a ridged brow upward as he stared at the revolting piece of fruit. He put the peach in his mouth and bit down, feeling the vile, sickly sweet juices burst out of the flesh fruit and swallowing the mangled fruit whole. His pupils dilated as the fruit took its effect, the lizard man having mainlined life directly into his
soul.

  He stared fearfully at his hands as they began to glow, the energy suffusing his body making him feel like he’d grabbed a bare superconducting cable. He looked down at the old man and realized he was floating. The old man raised his right hand, palm outward as Zeke continued floating upward.

  Zeke was being returned to life. The exhilaration of knowing he wasn’t going to stay dead caused him to roar in triumph as he rocketed upward, and out of sight.

  “Good luck, young man,” Buddha said with a smile as Zeke disappeared, his soul being thrown back to his body.

  ∞∞∞

  “Excellent work. I see that the body is intact. I can activate the open command for the body from here. Once I do, place me in the cranial cavity and the others wherever you choose.”

  Incidius was vibrating in excitement. Sure, this body wouldn’t have the multiple redundant weapon systems, nor would it have the triple redundant shield generators they used to…or the ability to stomp all over a major city, which was as much a guilty pleasure for himself as it was for “Greggory.” But it would give him mobility. It would give them a chance to resume their original mission, after ridding themselves of the biologics they were forced to rely upon, and…

  Carl popped the stone out of the cradle and grabbed the box out of Sachi’s hands. “You know, I get this crazy feeling that if I put you into the head section, it’ll put you in the master slot while the others are enslaved to your will. Not a fan of that term, enslaved. Granted, I know that in computing hardware, it simply means that the ‘master’ is the controller. So, I’m going to put the most trustworthy one in control.”

  Carl popped Krang out of the box and shuddered as he popped him into the cranial shell. The shell snapped shut and the eyes came on line.

  “I…ahem.” The stone shifted the vocal harmonics and lost the sinister, oily quality the stones voices shared. “I thank you, Carl. Hand me the box, please, and I’ll finish this.”