by Hunter Blain
“WHERE IS SHE!?” I bellowed, locking my gaze on Silver. The tables rumbled from the power in my voice. The warlock didn’t even seem fazed by it.
“She’s waiting for you, ready to die again and again unless you give me what I want,” Silver said without a trace of the joy I was accustomed to when dealing with bad guys’ demands. This was a man who would do anything to have his revenge, even if he knew it was despicable.
“Bastard!” I barked, clenching my fists. I was vaguely aware my hand had healed. I shifted stances, preparing to lunge.
“Please, don’t make me send you to Hell permanently,” Silver threatened, gesturing toward his staff. “What you experienced was perhaps one full second.”
“What?” I asked, standing more upright. “I was there for at least an hour!”
“Time is relative.”
Shit. He was right. My mind drifted to the time dilation from Faerie, and knew that Hell must operate on its own time schedule.
“Will you give me the wolf in exchange for your life?” Silver asked, almost pleadingly.
My mother’s white eyes drifted across my thoughts.
That wasn’t her. That wasn’t her. That wasn’t HER, I mentally repeated to myself. She was in Heaven, with my father. I would see them again someday.
At this, my strength resolved and I squared my shoulders to face my attacker. Squinting my eyes, I slightly lifted my chin in answer.
Grand Master Silver shook his head in genuine disappointment and said, “Death for you both, then.”
“Gotta catch me first, bitch,” I belted out before blurring out the front, splintering the swinging doors before spilling into the street.
I skidded to a halt, wearing down the soles of my steel-toed boots. Silver stood in front of me, eyes glowing with swirling shades of green and purple.
“Ah, shit. Ya caught me,” I lamented, willing Mjolnir into my right hand with a scowl as I shifted from flight to fight.
I focused on the clouds, which condensed and roiled overhead, threatening to form a tornado. Black ink spilled over the white clouds as they built upon each other, blocking more of the moonlight with each passing second.
Silver waited patiently for me to attack, knowing he could easily withstand anything I threw at him. There was a look of annoyance across his features rather than anger. His confidence infuriated me.
“Eat this,” I whispered as I brought the hammer up, focused my will, and then slammed it downward.
An arc of lightning lanced from the bottom of the clouds toward the warlock, who responded by raising his staff to the sky. The electricity absorbed into the tip, with some of the energy forking out to slash at the ground around where he stood.
As the last of the attack was inhaled by the staff, Silver nodded his head as if accepting the situation as it was. Stepping forward, the Grand Master Warlock pointed the spear tip toward me and almost seemed to sigh.
“Shi—” I started as green-and-purple lightning smashed into my chest and sent me careening down the street like a cannonball. Every nerve was alight as the burning energy snaked up and down my body, searching for an escape but still content to bounce back and forth for a while.
I crashed into a parked car, sending the electricity into the metal of the vehicle. All of the windows exploded before the power met the rubber of the tires and dissipated.
A cold breeze whipped through the warm air, tugging at my loose hair.
“Ow,” I breathed as I pushed myself out of the car’s frame. Heavy rain had begun to fall from the accumulated clouds overhead. As the drops hit my chest, I was aware of a sizzling sound and looked down to see my silver crosses glowing white-hot.
I absentmindedly patted one appreciatively, scalding my fingers as I did. My hand recoiled back and I chuckled to myself at my lack of judgment.
Getting up to my feet, I noticed smoke wafting off of me.
This fight was for blood and bone. What concerned me was that the warlock’s heart hadn’t been in the attack—wishing I had accepted his proposal rather than fight—and it had still hurt!
“There’s no use in delaying the inevitable, Vampir. Asmodeus will be upon us shortly.”
“Not if I kill you first,” I said to myself, trying to think of a way to beat him. Lilith, how had I beat Locke before? Ah, right, I had had Depweg’s help. Oh, and I had died finishing my foe.
I stepped forward and splashed a puddle, which gave me an idea.
I let go of Mjolnir, brought my hands out in a wide arc while stepping forward, and slammed them together. The resulting shock wave picked up the sheet of water on the street and sent it flying in a tidal wave toward Silver. I had learned from my previous experience with shock waves and had begun to move the millisecond my hands had touched in an attempt to not get thrown backward.
As the warlock prepared his counterspell, I blurred ahead of the blast and down the side of the street before coming up behind the man.
I willed my blood to form a baseball bat into my hands and aimed for the back of his knees. My attack hit, and Silver dropped his counterspell as he went down. We were both hit by the tidal wave, but I crouched down and put my shoulder into the water while Silver was hit dead center, his arms flailing widely.
If belly flops hurt, then I imagined my attack must have been excruciating for the man. I could hear the air being knocked from his lungs as he tumbled in the waves, letting his staff drop. I saw it and dove into the back of the water attack, reaching for it. My fingers wrapped around it and an explosion of pent-up energy sent me catapulting into the sky, my wrist spurting blood from where my hand used to be. As I flew upward, the rain smacked against my face with respectable force before slowing and then stopping completely. I looked around and saw I was at the height of my impromptu flight and was starting to get reacquainted with gravity, flying downward with the rain. I swear, a couple drops did double-takes as they saw me falling with them.
I landed on my back on top of the roof of a nearby commercial building and moaned as I grabbed the tender, spurting stump. My eyes landed on the sleeve of my coat, and I was beyond impressed that it hadn’t even been singed in the attack.
“Thanks, Da,” I said, feeling the cool rain splashing my face. I briefly wondered if any of the confused waterdrops had ended their existence upon my face.
I willed my hand to regrow and got to my feet, where I carefully walked to the edge of the building, regaining my equilibrium. Whatever had caused me to go sailing had been powerful.
Predatory eyes searched the road and found nothing.
Something caught the attention of my ears over the sound of the falling rain, and I followed it to look up and see Silver hovering atop a flaming horse a hundred feet up. The rain ceased all at once as the clouds started to glow a bright red. Silver aggressively lowered his hand, like a judge banging his gavel, and large gobs of hellfire the size of basketballs began falling from the clouds. The sheer number of them suffused the area around me with a trio of colors in green, red, and orange. It was like looking at a room illuminated by a lava lamp, with shadows shifting and contorting as the contents danced their smooth ballet.
“Holy shit,” I breathed in awe, realizing that a portion of Houston would be bathed in the flames of Hell itself. Tens of thousands would die if I couldn’t stop it.
Valenta’s Saloon, the church, and even the cemetery I called home would be swallowed by flames. I was confident the shipping containers would be safe, unless the flames liquefied on impact and raced down the steps to flood my friends.
“NO!” I bellowed, vibrating the very air around me with the volume of my shout. An idea came to me and I oriented on Silver, who was focused on chanting his spell.
I brought my lower lip into my teeth, creating a pocket of air at the gumline, and inhaled like a drowning man, forcing air over my bottom lip. The volume from my whistle hurt even my own ears, which were anticipating the attack. Car alarms rang from the street below as the sound of glass shattering was muffled b
y my auditory attack.
Silver’s hands shot up and he began to scream as he covered his ears, losing focus on both the hellfire spell and the ability that gave him flight. His horse blinked from existence, and he began to fall through the air as blood seeped through his fingers.
The fire was still raining, and I willed Mjolnir back into my hand. I focused on the flames, hoping hellfire would somehow fall into the category of elemental magic—which, of course, it did not. But, I was able to grab a portion of each drop and will them to coalesce into one giant orb in the sky. Luckily, the portion of the flames I was able to control dragged the hell magic with it, like a magnet able to hold onto a screwdriver with a plastic handle because the metal brought the plastic portion with it, forcing its compliance.
What had been the equivalent of beads of flames coalesced into a singular orb that continued to grow in size as the last of the fire was inhaled.
“Fucking now what, dumb head?” I asked myself as I strained to keep the ball in the air. It was the size of the island of Manhattan and was evaporating the clouds, as almost a third of its mass was jutting through. Where the flames ate into the cover, waves formed like ripples from a rock thrown into a glassy lake.
A feeling came over me, just below the surface of conscious thought, and a scene broke through my head of my outstretched hands covered with celestial armor while absorbing a fission explosion.
With a lack of options and time not on my side, I said, “Here goes something.” I willed Mjolnir to reverse the flow of energy. “I-I mean nothing. Here goes nothing,” I corrected.
The orb of churning flames shuddered as a swirling tendril extended from the base, winding in the air to latch onto Mjolnir.
I briefly smiled at the thought that I must look like a small child holding a comically sized balloon.
My smile faded as raw power coursed through my hand, making it tingle with alarming warmth before going completely numb. I gritted my teeth as the volatile power climbed up my wrist and into my forearm. I had to focus on not dropping my grip, hoping my hand was receiving the signal as I wasn’t sure what would happen if the fire tornado was released. I was willing to bet, um, not very good things. A scene played out in my head of me standing at a bookie’s counter with cash in hand and saying, “Can I get ten dollars on number sixty-nine, NotVeryGoodThings? I bet that horse will come through.”
I had to squint my eyes as my numbed, exposed skin began to glow like the surface of the sun.
“Eeeeerrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaahhhhhh!” I bellowed, fighting to mentally grab the energy and do something with it before it conflagrated my essence.
Focusing on where the head of the energy snake was slithering up my arm, I grabbed it with my will and guided it to the metaphorical well of power at my core.
Shit, I cursed, seeing my well already near capacity. Damn Locke and his tasty, enchanted blood bags. Desperate for a solution, I mentally attempted to construct higher walls, allowing for more of the energy to be contained, but was unable to do so. Only stupid time would provide a stupid increase in stupid capacity. Damn it!
Returning to the control room of my mind, I wracked my brain trying to figure out what to do while my forearm tingled, going numb.
A random scene from Dragon Ball Z came to mind with the hero, Goku, sending plumes of pure energy in an aura all around him.
“Can’t believe I’m going to try this,” I said as I looked around for witnesses, embarrassed at stealing the idea from a children’s anime show.
I took the head of the energy snake and directed it over my aura, instructing it to burn off around me rather than on or in my body. For some reason, the latter two options just weren’t that appealing.
Flames ignited all around me a few inches off of my skin. I struggled with the immense heat, feeling the hair on my skin sizzle and burn away. Even my long black hair, reddish beard, and not too big, not too small eyebrows incinerated.
I sent a layer of pure energy from my well of power to cover my body in an insulating layer. Doubt as to my decision to absorb the energy rather than let a portion of Houston burn crept into my mind as the layer of protective energy was evaporated in an instant, like drops of water on a red-hot sheet of metal fresh from the furnace.
With vein-bulging focus, I forced the flames to burn off the top of my body higher and higher, expending as much of the energy as I could.
I squinted open an eye, attempting to peer through the flames, and saw that my plan was working and the giant ball was diminishing with each passing second, but so was the energy that I was using to protect my skin.
A green skull made of hellfire smashed into my energy aura, denting it like a falling boulder in a raging river, the flames of my John-candle returning to their full girth a mere second later.
My eyes shot to see Silver flying on his horse again with a hand outstretched toward me, a look of confusion on his face. His attack had epically failed.
“You fucker!” I growled, feeling helpless and unable to do anything but concentrate as the ball continued to burn around me.
An idea came to me, and I lifted my free hand to point my index finger at the warlock. Remembering what I had done to Lolth and the fission bomb, I cocked my thumb back like a gun, and said, “Bang,” sending an enormous torrent of flames out like the world’s biggest firehose.
Silver gasped as he brought the staff he had recovered to bear and began twirling it in his hands. The flames smashed into his defensive counter and rushed in all directions around him, like a broken pipe spilling vast amounts of water onto a concrete floor.
The attack rocketed me back, causing me to lose focus on Mjolnir for just a nanosecond, which was long enough for the flames to swarm and eat into my flesh. My skin bubbled and popped in a flash from the moisture underneath being instantaneously boiled. The orbs of my eyes exploded while a skeleton that was being birthed from liquid skin shrieked with melting vocal cords.
The feeling of weightlessness lasted much longer than I thought possible. I didn’t know if this was because I had guessed wrong on how far I had been thrown and was soaring for what had to be miles through the air, or because I was dead.
I felt a light nudge, as if someone had walked up from behind and patted me on the back a little too hard.
All I saw was black, and all I heard was utter silence, and I wasn’t sure if I was floating in the after-verse or was simply just blind and deaf.
I could feel rather than see a deeper expanse of nothingness close in on what would have been my vision as unconsciousness—or maybe death—enveloped my body like a warm blanket on a cold morning, promising everything would be okay if I just let it embrace me.
N-no, I thought as the quicksand of the Big Sleep continued to suck me under with a timeless proficiency honed by billions of souls collected before me. As quickly as I could, I sent an urgent message to the diminishing well of power to continue coating my skin on autopilot, with an emphasis on healing. Please work, was my last thought as my mind flatlined, and everything went still.
11
I floated in an expanse of nothingness, not knowing if I had fully died or had simply held my breath and plunged under the waves of eternity with the intent of breaking the surface again. You would think I would have it all figured out by now as this wasn’t my first foray into the after-verse, but you’d be wrong.
A light appeared before me, and I felt a familiar tug. I didn’t let my hopes get up for two reasons, the first being that if I was dead, I wasn’t safe and neither were the other souls above or below.
An armored hand was placed on my chest, gentler than before.
“And here’s reason number two,” I sighed as the guardian blocked the light to Heaven, effectively cutting off the pull of forever. “Hell, then?” I asked, craning my neck to look behind me. There was no light comprised of hellfire playing tug-of-war with yours truly. “Huh?” I asked, attempting to turn more of my upper body to look all around behind me.
“There is no Hell f
or you, John,” the guardian said.
Jerking my head around to regard him, I did a double take and asked in a terrible French accent, “Pardon muah?” while putting a hand up to my ear as if trying to hear better.
“You have sacrificed yourself to save the children of God. In so doing, John Cook, you have gained access to the Kingdom of Heaven. Peace be with you,” the guardian said as he faded and vanished before my eyes, letting the light of Heaven wrap around me and pull my soul.
“Wait!” I cried out, attempting to fight the pull for fear of what it would lead to. “I can’t die! Not yet!”
I blinked and stood before a massive gold fence that seemed to reach into the sky forever. It was awesome in every literal sense of the word. My mouth hung open as I looked up, not seeing the top. Looking along its length left and right revealed no further insight on the fence’s end. I heard the unmistakable sound of heavy doors opening and turned my gaze to see that in the middle were two gates that were opening slightly. A single figure walked out and toward me. I squinted to see the silouette in the magnificence of the golden light, and recognized the man.
“Figured the pearly gates would be more…pearly,” I jested awkwardly as the Archangel Gabriel came out to greet me. I extended my hand, feeling both peace and worry sloshing over one another in my chest like a yin-yang tumbling down a hill. I glanced behind my friend and felt the warm light of Heaven caress my skin, creating a sensation of joy that made me want to smile without a reason as to why. Only my stubborn mind kept me from relenting and accepting the gift of eternal bliss.
“It’s good to see you, John. I’m proud you’ve made it this far,” Gabriel said, gesturing around. “I dare say you are the first supernatural entity that has redeemed himself enough to make it to Heaven. Kudos.”
