The bomb needed to explode. Of course, the women will never claim their part in it. They will blame it on the men, or perhaps their idea of Satan, or maybe even a punishing God, and remain the victims it’s so easy for them to be. Fuck them all.
They will never take to heart
their part in this plan.
They will never see that darkness
is a part of cosmic man.
When the bomb explodes, it will destroy everyone within a radius of three to four miles, and radiation burn out will extend up to fifty square miles. I could contain the fallout by creating a vacuum around the boundary. This way I could ensure that the wind would not carry the poison to those who did not call.
The Angels of my would-be victims, through a dream or an urge to flee the area, would have already warned those who are not a part of this summons. The moment I decided to answer the call—this was set into play. However, for those lagging behind, I’d grant them one last chance.
I reached my hand into Jez, the wheel of fate, which resides in a non-space of sorts. I turned it a click. This would create circumstances to call out those who were not yet meant to die, or if they were meant to die, but not become my prisoner.
A few Angels, like streaks of light, flew to their humans, either to guide them out of the city, or to help their spirits escape me when they died. But just as I must be called for, so must the Angels, maybe not consciously, but called nonetheless. And though some Angels were near their humans, they could not help without their human’s permission. And many would not grant it, for they had lost their faith. Not so much religious faith, but faith in life itself.
They call us the destroyers.
They blame us for their woe.
They never understand
we reap the seeds they sow.
We reap the seeds ‘they’ sow.
I was impatient. My blood surged at the thought of absorbing the energy of not only countless spirits, but a nuclear explosion.
I hovered in the sixth realm for over an hour, peering clairvoyantly into the third realm, watching a few cars drive down lonely streets, waiting for stillness once more. In all, only a few dozen people had fled. Perhaps more had fled from the nearby city, which had been largely involved in the call. The rest were mine.
Now to bring the bomb above ground. It would be challenging to teleport a thousand pound plus object over twelve feet long. I concentrated hard. I merged my mind with the bomb and envisioned it next to the storage facility. It didn’t budge.
I took a deep breath and concentrated again. Completely relaxing, I summoned the power from Dragon Worlds—from the energy of those worlds before they existed. The energy came into me, empowering my mind with the talents of the Ancient Ones.
The bomb appeared above ground: long, dark, and shiny. My eyes glowed red. My teeth burned hot. Lava lust boiled in me, mounting. I altered my particle make-up and flew into the bomb. I could experience the explosion if I merged with its exact configuration of neutrons, protons, and electrons. My heart pounded, anticipating the thrill. Fission bomb detonating, compressing, heating the core of lithium deuteride and deuterium. Striking lithium atoms. Fusion commenced. Tritium created. Helium.
I was a giant hammer bursting up from the ground with a deafening blast, smashing the military community in one fatal blow: exploding buildings, rupturing lungs, consuming flesh, vaporizing everything in an ivory mushroom cloud lined with red and black. I was power: sheer, raw power. Heat warmed me, consumed me, fed me. Ecstasy. Rapture. Heavenly hell. I was a god. The god of destruction. Destruction that lent passage to rebirth. For all my evil, I was good. And I felt good being evil.
Moments later, there was only a large crater where a military community once stood, and I was myself again, standing in the third realm crater as the dragonman. Nuclear radiation spread outward encompassing the nearby city.
In my clairvoyant mind, I saw thousands of spirits soaring out of bodies, some floating, some beginning to zoom away. They had a gold color to them because of the toxin in the air. I created a whirlpool of energy around me, suctioning the spirits, near and away, into the tornado whirl. First they came slowly, feeding the tornado’s momentum, by the hundreds, and then by the thousands. Many had abandoned their living bodies, too shocked to ever really feel alive again. They flew into the whirling mass. I, standing in the eye of my creation, inhaled a mighty magical breath, and sucked in the golden spirits like foam on beer.
New life packed into my volcanic quintessence of rage, violence, and destruction. The flood of spirits rejuvenated my undernourished anima and activated old pale corners of my subconscious that had been failing from lack of use. I had an abundance of energy to feed on and servants to do my bidding. They now lived in my hell. And I was their master, until dissolution do us part. Might was mine. Just like old times. I threw my arms in the air and roared my victory.
The world would think thrice now about the nuclear weapons they harbored. Tazmarks stir trouble. When the conflict is healed, we cause more. People learn and grow from our mischief, but do we get credit?
I flew to the outermost realm of the blast in the nearby city where I might yet find some corpses. I landed in the third realm and took dragonman form. I walked past burning buildings and smoky streets peppered with carnage and blown out store windows. There was no one alive to view me, so secrecy was unnecessary. I was unaffected by the fallout, and turned on by the ruin. I stopped by a corpse on the street, not too far from a burning car, an Avtovaz, I think. I squatted to the charred body, clawed into its chest, and pulled out its pumper, stuffing it in my mouth.
Hmm. Sanguine fluid flooded over my lips and snout, down my throat as I chewed. I became aroused. I wanted Jen. I wanted to make love to her. No. I wanted raw sex.
“Bravo,” I heard behind me, hands clapping.
I turned around with warm wet blood on my snout.
There in the haze of black smoke stood a distinguished looking man wearing a black, velvet matador suit edged with gold brocade. His short, slicked back, onyx hair bordered a Spanish face, his hypnotic orange eyes . . . whirling, whirling. His aura was bright red-orange. He was sinister. He was Tazmark.
His voice imparted dignity. “It takes a well-developed mind to do what you just did.”
I envisioned a hurricane in him. He lost his breath, but only for a moment before his suave demeanor returned.
He stepped closer, out of the smoke. “Juan, Juan. I am older than Aruka and more powerful than you and she combined.”
That, I didn’t believe. My eyes whirled red. “No one is more powerful than I.”
He laughed, “I am power level ten. You are but an eight.”
A ten? I raised a scaly brow. “If you are a ten, why do you remain on earth? Why do you not fly with the Dragons?”
“I do.”
“You exit earth? You can break gravity?”
He nodded.
I felt my human form returning as curiosity replaced bloodlust. “If you were a level ten, I would be aware of your feats, and there are none greater than mine.”
A huge cockroach blasted past his boot. He smashed it and inhaled its life force. I was a little surprised he could do that in human form. I couldn’t.
He smiled and sighed. “Thrill of the kill.”
“Waste not, want not,” I said derisively.
“Every morsel lends me power. You young ones squander so much.”
“You old take what you can get.”
“I have taken the best,” he said. “Before you were born, I possessed the Persian King Darius, Julius Caesar, Nero, and Emperor Justinian. I instigated the Peloponnesian War, the Punic Wars, and the Battle of Hastings. Since then I’ve been waiting for you to reach full power, and you would have by now, had you not regressed.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You, a Tazmark, could not survive this long without nourishment.”
“I get my nourishment elsewhere,” he looked up, insinuating the worlds in outer space.
The car fire crackled loud and a door fell off. The strong smell of burning plastic charged me. “You lie, and you are no ten. You are however a fool to challenge me, the Prince of Darkness, to do battle with you—you, who cannot prove your claims.”
“I claim you.”
There was something in the way he said claim, with a hint of mischief, not challenge. I stepped closer to him. “Who are you?”
“I am Diego,” his eyes deepened, “your father.”
Ma and Pa in one day. Okay. All right. I hardened my face and thickened my Black Light Shield. “I searched for you once,” I said coolly.
“I know. You found me, but I hid.”
“You knew I would defeat you.”
Diego smiled. “You were only a hundred years old, hardly ripe enough for a Tazmark of my aptitude. No Juan. I never feared you.”
“You should.”
“On earth, you are the Prince of Darkness, but I,” he smiled, “I am King. I’ve been allowing you to rule.”
I looked into him the best one can with Black Light Shields in the way. I couldn’t see much. Could his claim be true? Had he more power than me?
He stared at my neck. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“Oh,” I touched Jen’s crucifix, “that. Ah, never mind.”
Diego cocked his head ever so slightly. “Hmm. Since you have obviously stooped so low as to take a Shen, a religious one at that, under your wing, I want you to include her in the battle your mother is planning. Bring her to full power. Unless you want me to do it.”
I was more than a little suspicious why everyone wanted my Shen in full power. Anyway, he mustn’t speak of her, for he could draw her spirit through me, the way I drew her spirit to me through her best friend Randa in order to meet her. Distraction was critical.
I said, “I will do as I please.”
“I think not.”
“Then I will fight you now.”
“You’ll lose.”
“I never lose.”
Diego grasped the inside edges of his gold-lined brocaded jacket with both hands as if he were the finest matador in all the world. “I suggest you wait until you’ve empowered the Shen.”
“I need no Shen to save me.”
“You do.”
He was trying to unnerve me, the oldest trick in the Tazmark book of ploys. And I was falling for it. “Fuck you,” I said, because I’d rather die than be intimidated.
“No,” he smiled, “Fuck you.”
Something hit me hard bowling me clean up into the sky of the sixth realm. Tubular streaks of energy blasted me, creating stinging holes in my essence. Out of those holes, my newly captured spirits were leaving, sucked into a whirlwind that led to Diego’s mouth. He was plundering my spoils!
His laughter permeated my ears, souring my senses.
The tubular streaks surrounded me like biting ants devouring my sixth-realm body.
“What is this!” I howled
“Gankors,” he replied telepathically, “spirits that I have stored and starved in the corpus chamber of my being. And when I release them in a horde, they attack like piranha.”
My body began to decompose. I intensified my Black Light Shield, sealing off points of entry. I thickened the shield with my captured spirits, plastering them over the holes like coagulated blood.
The attack stopped. I felt relief. I focused on shooting back the biting Gankors to attack my father. But he and the Gankors were gone.
I transferred half the spirits I still had left to the corpus chamber of my being, to starve instead of digest. I’d thought that area to be a dead vacuum and never bothered to explore it. I should have. Now, I too would create Gankors. I’d use them one day, perhaps against father.
My skin felt torn and the pain I so seldom experienced, ate at me. I tried to fly home but I was immobilized in the sixth realm, in a black dense energy that held me like a soundproof, light proof coffin. I could see only black, and I could hear nothing.
I tried all my spells and counter spells from my expansive repertoire of magic to regain my freedom. Nothing worked.
I thought of Jen locked in the hotel room, and how her main concern was to pay the hotel bill. Life was much bigger than that. She perpetually hid in the simple. Be nice to everything and everyone. Case closed. Except the case wasn’t closed, and it never would be for her, not until she accepted the dark side of life that would assault her again and again, until she became dark enough to stop it.
I tried to unlock the hotel door with my mind. I didn’t exactly want her starving to death. I had placed an off limits spell on the room, deadening the phone and her voice if she tried to use it to escape, so her chance of being rescued from impending starvation was none.
I couldn’t unlock the door. I tried sending her a vision of me. I couldn’t reach her. I tried manifesting food on the table. Nothing. My powers could not extend beyond this Black Box.
I had made her a prisoner. Now I was a prisoner too. I’d never been a prisoner before. I began to realize what Jen must have felt the many times I’d made her one. If only I’d educated her more about her power, she could free herself, and she might have even been able to free me. But no, I had kept her in the darkness that was now my own.
Chapter Five
I’d always been free, which made being trapped in this Black Box all the more excruciating. There seemed no quick solution to this problem. I’d have to burn away the layers of compressed energy that held me motionless, bit by bit. I shot out red laser light which could bore a hole in almost anything, and red lightning veins that could take down almost any shield. I generated various forms of electrical power, fire, vapor, and nuclear heat. The hum of my collective energy crackled against the barriers, but I felt no give. My efforts had rendered my box unbearably hot. At last, I finally knew what heat felt like. And that experience may well be the last of me. With no outlet for the energy I had generated, I might well fry myself.
My skin stung with an icy burn that impeded my capacity to breathe. This box that imprisoned me must be a thing from the Dragon World, for it seemed impervious to heat. The sixth realm sun was rising. I felt most unpleasant, stuck in the daylight, suffocating in my own hotness. The human part of me was undergoing a marasmic death. If that happened, I’d be forced to go to the Dragon World without Jen. She would assume I’d abandoned her, and she’d not be long for the world herself.
I went into stasis, a kind of hibernation, to preserve what was left of me. I pushed myself back into my subconscious, next to the holding pen where I was storing spirits for a Gankor attack. I felt their Angels all around, but they knew as well as I that I could not have taken their human unless that human had called to be taken.
It’s odd, but the Angels knew I wasn’t bad. They knew I merely played my part, just as they played theirs. Be quiet, I scolded myself, quiet. I became . . . very . . . still.
It seemed days had passed, maybe three third realm days. I’d only lasted this long because I was feeding off the spirits I’d captured. But I was dying. I could no longer digest. I felt weak, but not defeated. I’d never relinquish to death. Humans who did, died moments after. I’d not make that mistake.
“Yoo hoo,” I heard a sweet voice chime. “Hey there.”
“Hi there,” said another.
“Ho there,” said one more.
I came out of stasis. In front of me inside the Black Box were Jen’s Angels Three, not embodied Angels, and not the stereotypical, long flowing robes and hair with a golden halo, kind of Angels. They were more like winged fairy energy forms, not so incorporeal that they couldn’t be touched, but less corporal than humans. They had faint feminine features, about a foot tall, each one a color of the sunset. Jen had met her Angels Three a few months back in the Montana battle. She called them Orange, Pink, and Yellow. Pretty corny names, and pretty corny Angels, but Jen’s vibration attracted fairyland stuff. I sure as hell didn’t.
“What are you doing here?” I inquired.
&nb
sp; “Would you like help?” asked Orange.
“You must ask,” said Pink.
“You must,” said Yellow.
Damn. The day when a Tazmark had to ask Angels for help was a sad day indeed.
“How did you get in here?” I asked.
Orange said, “Oh, this Black Box only imprisons the iniquitous.”
Pink said, “It cannot hold us in.”
Yellow said, “Or keep us out.”
“Prince, oh Prince of the darkest dark,” said Orange, in a sing song voice. “Jenséa needs you.”
“Needs you,” said Pink.
“Needs you,” said Yellow.
Fuck. This was humiliating. Humiliation, another new emotion.
“Well?” asked Orange.
“Do you love her?” asked Pink.
“Do you want our help? asked Yellow.
What they wanted me to do was no different than praying. Tazmarks don’t pray. Tazmarks don’t need prayer. We are gods. I stared diabolically at them.
“Shall we leave?” asked Orange.
“Shall we?” asked Pink.
“You are her savior,” said Yellow. “You are the only one who can save her. And she is the only one you can save.”
“Just as you are called for, so are we,” said Orange.
“We can’t help unless you call,” said Pink.
“Call Prince, call,” said Yellow.
I grumbled, tight jawed. I sighed hard, one of those sighs you would rather not anyone hear. My eyes slid shut in one of those ways you would rather not anyone see. Diego would pay me with his fire breathing lungs for this.
“Help me,” I whispered almost inaudibly, mostly because not much air could pass through the clench of my teeth.
“Could you speak a little louder?” asked Orange.
“Help me,” I said lowly, opening my teeth a crack.
“What?” asked Pink.
“Fucking help me!” I barked.
“All right,” said Yellow, matter-of-factly.
They disappeared and suddenly the Black Box was thinning. I could see white sparks coming through the blackness. They had been flying in circles around the box. I could see them now and their whirling band of white light. The box dissolved. Divine Light could burn anything Tazmarkian. I felt the last, oppressive particle of energy fall away, leaving me with a buoyant, clear sensation. The Angels disappeared. I was free.
An Angel's Touch Page 6
