by T. S. Mann
“You swore an oath!” Matt exclaimed.
“Oh yes, and you can rest easy knowing that I’ll hold to it. You might notice that while you’re restrained, you’re not in any pain. Much less screaming in agony because I’ve ripped your arms off which is what I’d really like to do to you now. But while I may have sworn an oath, that doesn’t mean I’ll leave you free to double-cross me.”
She slid of the table and moved over to touch Mickey on his forehead. She closed her eyes and moaned in pleasure.
“Oh yes! I can feel it ... squirming around in there. Impatient. Hungry. And eager to come out and … change things.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at her captive.
“I can do it, you know. I can save your father from Itzpapalotl. But only by taking her into me, at which point she will actualize at once. Do you know what that means, Matt?”
Matt grimaced. “It means that the world will change. The basic laws of … everything will change so that human sacrifice is actually a requirement for existence.”
“Close. The world will have already changed … retroactively. This little blue orb will turn red from the blood that has flowed into the oceans for the whole of its history. When Itzpapalotl comes, it won’t mean that Earth becomes a planet where blood sacrifice will be necessary. It will become a world where blood sacrifice has failed.
“After centuries upon centuries, after millions and millions have been slaughtered, it's simply not enough anymore. This is the day your world ends, Matt. In its last hours, the peoples of the world will fall upon one another like rabid animals, killing each other in a desperate frenzy to be the last one alive. But it won’t matter. Itzpapalotl will still devour the sun and all the stars.”
And then, Lindsay grinned her mad grin towards Matt.
“But I will keep my oath, Matt. I will see to it that you, your brother, and your father will live… forever. Live forever and be trapped in eternal freezing darkness, soaked to the skin with the blood of every other member of your species. I hope your father and brother remember to thank you for the kindnesses you’ve done for them this day.”
With that, she turned back to Mickey and bent over him until their foreheads touched.
“The vessel is prepared! Enter freely and of your own will!”
Almost instantly, Lindsay fell back way from Mickey and shrieked. To Matt’s revulsion, the skin literally melted from her face to reveal the skull underneath. Her hands exploded as eagle talons ripped forth through the flesh of her fingers, and there was a terrible cracking sound as her bones stretched until she stood nearly seven feet tall, her skin and muscles ripped loose like torn fabric. Finally, as her scream reached its crescendo, enormous obsidian batwings burst forth from her back and unfurled to a twenty-foot wingspan as she stretched her arms in exultation.
“ItZPaPAlotL hAs COmE! tHE uNIverSe tREmBleS AnD iS tRANsfoRMeD!”
The monstrous creature turned its hollow eye sockets towards Matt.
“SpEAk yOuR fiNAl PrAYErs tO yOUr FaLLEn gOd, MorTAL,
beFOre BEginS tHe EndLESS NigHt!”
At that invitation and despite everything, Matt’s expression suddenly seemed victorious.
“Whoops!” he said sarcastically. “made you blink!”
The creature that had been Lindsay Forrester tilted its head in confusion and probably would have blinked if still had eyes. Then, it screamed again – not a scream of birth as before, but one of true pain – as an immense wave of destructive magical energy slammed into its back. The Itzpapalotl-thing staggered as smoke from its burning skin rose into the air. Then, the star-demon turned in both anger and surprise to face its attackers.
As the last remnants of the concealing veil fell away, a full coven of thirteen Strangers stood revealed. In the back row, there were ten people arranged into five pairs – two karmatrophians, two luminors, two necrotheurges, two numenogaphers, and two psychomancers – so that all five Axioms were represented.
Among them, Matt could see Luke and Ethan, plus four each of the Collegians and the Unity Blade paladins. Some he knew, others he didn't. In the front row, there were three more Strangers: Doc, who channeled the power offered up the College; Mother Eagle, who did the same for the Unity Blade; and Electra Dellamorte, who had been a member of both groups and who was attired in her powerful fiction cloak once more.
She stood between Doc and Mother Eagle, each of whom had a hand on one of her shoulders, and her Desert Eagles shone as bright as the sun from the magic that flowed through them.
“Here’s my answer to the Endless Night, Lindsay,” said Electra. “You said last time that I wasn’t up to killing you with my ridiculous guns.” She smiled grimly. “Ready to test that theory?”
CHAPTER 18:
APOCALYPTO 2010
Ten minutes earlier …
When Dani reentered Doc’s office, her enchanted biker jacket was back in place along with her “Electra” persona that was linked to it. Neither Mother Eagle nor her bodyguard Brother Kestrel was surprised at her reappearance. Doc’s own face was impassive, but the Mammon cultist turned and looked at her with what she considered an unusual degree of interest.
Electra never trusted Lionel Bartok nor any other member of his plutocratic religion-conspiracy, and she was not happy at his present expression. From what she knew of him, Bartok had an uncanny gift for reading people’s motivations and desires. If he perceived any part of what she was planning and saw any profit to be made from exposing her, things might get messy very quickly.
“One problem at a time,” she thought as crossed the room to pour herself a cup of coffee, an action that conveniently placed her next to Brother Kestrel but also put the paladin between herself and Mother Eagle.
“Well, Electra?” said Mother Eagle impatiently. “I had expected you to contact us after you’d found Forrester and St. Angel. What has happened?”
“Well, unfortunately, there’s been a complication,” Electra said.
The older woman’s expression darkened behind her black glasses. “What sort of complication?”
By way of an answer, Electra took sip of coffee and then tossed the half-empty cup towards Brother Kestrel. The beefy red-headed paladin instinctively batted it aside with his sword hand, but in the second he was distracted, she pulled out her pistols and pointed one at his head and the other towards Mother Eagle.
Simultaneously, the door burst open, and Bryce entered with electricity already pouring off the silver gauntlet he wore. Widget, Luke, and Ethan followed him inside.
“I’ve switched sides,” Electra said. “Again. Does that count as a complication?”
“You double-crossing bitch!” Kestrel muttered although he kept his hands where she could see them and well away from his sword.
“Triple-crossing bitch, Kestrel,” she said disdainfully. “Try to keep up.”
“Your little coup is over,” said Bryce authoritatively. “We’ve freed all the College members you’d put into stasis and reactivated our internal defenses. All your people have already been incapacitated.”
“And that lovely little pet hell-hound of yours is locked up in a heavily-warded broom closet,” Widget added cheerfully.
From her chair, Mother Eagle drew breath to cast a spell, but Doc was faster.
“I really wouldn’t, Helen,” he said calmly while pointing at her with what, despite all appearances to the contrary, was not a Ticonderoga #2 pencil that he’d produced seemingly from thin air. Lionel Bartok whistled in surprise and appreciation.
“The Exeter Pencil, eh, Ellington? I was wondering when you were bringing out the big guns. I thought you said that little death-machine had been destroyed years ago. Wherever have you been hiding it all this time?”
“Not now, Lionel,” Doc said without taking his eyes off Mother Eagle. The blind woman did not look towards the pencil, but she did tilt her head as if listening to voices meant for her alone, supernatural voices that warned her of the danger she was in. She slumped back
in her chair.
“You have doomed us all, child,” she said coldly in Electra’s general direction.
“Not if you lot can put aside your grudges long enough for us to save the day. We can end all this right now. We have the people to put together a 13-person coven, probably a perfectly distributed one, that’s strong enough to banish the chaos shard and kill Lindsay. But we need to move fast. Very fast.”
Lionel narrowed his eyes. “And the reason for this new sense of urgency?”
Electra grimaced and looked over at Luke who checked the watch he’d lifted off the unconscious Brother Falcon.
“Because in six minutes and eleven seconds, my brother is going to free Lindsay and cut a deal with her to remove the chaos stuff from Dad. And we really need to be in position to do something about it when that happens.”
Mother Eagle and Doc both shot up from their chairs in shock.
“Electra! Have you gone mad?!?” Mother Eagle shrieked.
“For once I agree! This insanely reckless!” added Doc.
“Will both of you shut the hell up!” Electra yelled. “We have a plan for dealing with this situation. Part of that plan involves springing the details of said plan on you two at the last minute so you won’t waste time sputtering like wet hens. You’ve got less than six minutes to agree, swear a magical oath, and then work out the logistics of the coven formation, or else the whole world turns into an Aztec-themed abattoir.”
“I must say,” said Lionel amiably as he reached over Doc’s desk for a notepad and a pen to begin sketching out some Kabbalistic markings. “I’ve always liked the cut of your jib, Miss Dellamorte. Pity we could never tempt you over to our side. Anyway, while my two peers dither over their options, I’d be more than happy to work on your coven formation. The Cult of Mammon makes heavy use of mass rituals, you know.”
“Yeah, we know,” muttered Bryce, who also knew some of the less ethical effects the Cult generated with their superior numbers. Mundanes had no magical power, and their presence often disrupted the more sophisticated forms of magic. But when taught the steps of a ritual (and in properly auspicious numbers), they could still help to fuel incredibly powerful effects … provided the mundanes didn’t understand what they were really supposed to be doing. There was a reason the Mammonites willingly identified themselves as a cult, after all.
“What sort of oath?” Mother Eagle said darkly.
“That you and the Unity Blade members under your authority will freely cooperate with our plan to the best of your ability.”
She hesitated. “And that after this crisis is over, you will withdraw your judgment against St. Angel and take no steps to harm him or his sons for any past actions.”
“Hem-hem!” Ethan coughed theatrically.
Electra rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, and the same goes for the former Brother Shrike.”
Mother Eagle didn’t even spare a glance towards Ethan, but she literally hissed at the thought of withdrawing the magical sanction she’d imposed on John Sullivan.
“It’s that or, you know, the end of the world,” Electra added. Mother Eagle hesitated before grudgingly nodding her head. Electra sighed.
“It’ll be okay, Mother Eagle. Just trust me. This plan is going to work."
Seven minutes later (aka the End of the World)
“This plan is not going to work,” Electra thought to herself angrily.
The power the coven was pouring through her was astounding. At first, she wondered if this experience might grant her new Insights into strangeness that would increase her own magical power. Now, she simply wondered if she would live through the next few minutes.
True, the destructive energy that flowed from her Desert Eagles every time she pulled the trigger would be enough to slay mortals by the hundred, enough to crack mountains, enough to shatter skyscrapers if she unleashed it completely instead of focusing it all on a single target.
But none of that mattered against a being who was designed by the Great Beyond to have a total immunity to death as part of its inherent nature. And if they couldn’t kill the Lindsay-thing, they could only try to damage it into submission ... which was a rather daunting prospect since it had now fully manifested as an actual god.
As magical forces of pure destruction roared across the gym, the spell Lindsay had cast that kept Matt restrained against the wall abruptly failed, and he fell to the floor. Landing in a crouch, he moved over to the table where his father’s body rested.
As he ducked to avoid stray blasts of killing energy, Matt pulled St. Angel off onto the floor and then dragged him over to the nearby wall before pulling the table over as a crude shelter.
“Come on, Dad! Wake up!” he said as he gently slapped St. Angel’s face, but there was no effect. Mickey St. Angel remained stubbornly comatose.
But then, Matt instinctively pulled himself and his father away from the wall as it suddenly began to ripple and change. Out of the mirrored surface, strange markings emerged as if rising out of a pool of silvery water. Markings that Matt was disturbed to recognize as Meso-American hieroglyphics.
Nearby, the chaos-avatar of Itzpapalotl spread its wings and gave a shrieking victory cry like some terrible bird of prey as it seized its quarry in bloody talons. A strange heat-haze exploded from the creature in all directions, passing through the bodies of all the Strangers present.
Two of the Strangers forming the thirteen-person coven fell to their knees, overcome by the sensation of the universe changing around them, and as the coven suddenly weakened due to flawed numerology, Itzpapalotl screamed again. Matt didn’t collapse, but he was suddenly sick with dread. Dread arising from the certainty that something in the world had just gone horribly wrong.
This time, the power of Itzpapalotl’s cry was not confined by the walls of the gym.
Idomeni (A Greek village near the Macedonian border)
A small parish church
As Father Dimitri prepared the baptismal fount, he glanced distractedly to the anxious parishioners who filled his small church. It seemed the entire village had come, as was fitting for such an important day. He shook his head sadly. In his memories, christenings had always been joyous occasions. Or at least those had been his memories.
Even as he muttered prayers to Jesus Christ Apollo Helios, his eye twitched rapidly as a lifetime of Christian service was transformed into one of devotion to the Sun God. Devotion that, in extremis, was to be tested as never before. In the past, it was rare for more than one newborn to be christened sacrificed per year in the name of Jesus Christ Apollo Helios.
But now, the time of Endless Night was at hand, and the Sun God’s need was far greater, which was why every child in the village under the age of seven was present, clutched tightly in their parents’ arms.
Determined to tend his flock to the last, Father Dimitri welcomed his parishioners and said a brief homily. Then, he turned back to the improvised baptismal fount: a claw-foot bathtub dragged in from the priest’s quarters and filled nearly to the brim.
After all, many of the children who’d been brought for the service were far older than infancy and would not have fit into the regular font. Besides, for the larger children, the priest might need a parent’s help to hold the child down until it drowned.
As Father Dimitri steeled himself to do the Sun God’s work, he considered it a blessing that the religious devotion of Idomeni’s laity exceeded that their parental love.
The Einstein Tower
The Liebnitz Institute for Astrophysics
Potsdam, Germany
Dr. Edith Klein had been on the staff for the Liebnitz Institute for decades and had never thought of leaving. While there were other opportunities for advancement in the field of astrophysics, solar research had always been her passion. The majesty of the Sun never failed to amaze her, and while she had never been particularly religious, now on the Last Day, she finally saw herself not as a scientist but as a high priestess of a dying god.
She wept openly as
she considered the scale of the tragedy. The Sun was a G-type main sequence star. It was approximately 4.6 billion years old and was reliably expected to continue in its present state for another 5 billion, enduring long after humanity had passed into extinction.
And now, it seemed unlikely that the Sun would outlive Klein herself.
She’d taken a short break to wash up as much as she could in the ladies' restroom. As she rushed back to the main telescope, she had to tread carefully. She wished she’d worn flats today instead of heels, as it would be most undignified on such an occasion to slip on the blood that seemed to be everywhere. When it was clear that the End was upon them, most of the Institute’s staff had immediately taken their own lives. Other less devoted staff members had resolved instead to leave the Institute and go home to their loved ones to wait for the End.
Klein killed them all in short order – there was a landscaper’s shed quite near the observatory with a chainsaw she’d commandeered and put to good work. This Observatory was a temple to the Sun, and those who worked here were its priests and priestesses. It would not do for the dying god to enter whatever afterlife awaited fallen stars without its servants on hand.
As for Klein herself, she’d also found a nice sharp knife in the shed as well, one she would use slit her own wrists and join the Sun on its journey after the End. The scientist leaned forward to peer into the telescope’s eye-piece, unafraid of being blinded by the sun’s light. It had already grown too dim for that.
And as she watched despairingly through the telescope, the sun’s light grew even dimmer as the shadow of an immense black talon stretched across its surface.
Cuauhtémoc
Mexico City, Mexico
Sirens blared in the night as the police car stayed in hot pursuit of its quarry, a van carrying drug-runners who’d escaped a police sting operation. Sgt. Rafael Ortiz, the driver of the police vehicle, cursed vividly as he gripped the wheel. He hated high speed pursuits.
The streets of this part of Mexico City were too treacherous at night under the best of circumstances. Tonight, however, a strange fog seemed to have settled over the area, and the odds of hitting a civilian who’d picked the wrong time to cross the street were far too high for his liking.
