“I don’t care. I’m not just going to sit back and do…”
“And do what, Jacob?”
Seated farthest away from the moonlit window and at the far end of the oval table, the suited shadow spun around. Sliding metal, muted flashes, and smoke snakes filled the air. Six shots in all. The rising squiggles of smoke traced the shadowy man’s face and showed the shock and surprise on his darkened face.
“Come now, Jacob.” Blackwell snatched the long beak of the smoking gun, its thick black metal barrel sizzling in his hand. “Let’s talk first. Hear what I have to say.” Blackwell began examining the pistol. “Hmmm. Huh. A suppressor? That was smart of you, Jacob. But shooting me? Eh, not so much.”
“Sit.” It wasn’t a request. Blackwell’s nails dug into Jacob’s shadowed shoulder and pushed him back into his chair. “I’m the devil, Jacob. And you should know better, you can’t shoot the devil. And do you know why, Jacob?”
And Jacob flinched as he felt a prick on his face, his flesh sizzling as Blackwell tapped the tip of the still-hot pistol against his cream-colored cheek.
Blackwell went back to examining the gun, half-expecting to see a pentagram carved into the handle. There wasn’t any, so he shrugged and tossed the gun on the table. “Jacob, I asked you a question.”
The dark shadows hid Jacob’s fear but did less so for the other eleven. With his hands shaking, Jacob was still determined not to stutter and he forced out the words, “N-no. Why is it a bad idea to shoot you?”
Blackwell moved behind him, disappearing in the sunset of blackness behind him until the hands resting on Jacob’s shoulders were all that showed in the moonlight. While Blackwell was clearly standing tall behind him, the whisper seemed to be right next to Jacob’s ear. “Because it doesn’t work.”
Louder, Blackwell continued, “Still, as I always liked to say, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’” He gave Jacob a friendly pat on the shoulder then walked towards the window. “Shooting the devil doesn’t work because—It’s actually quite scientific. Did you know the universe is only two-to-three percent physical matter? The rest is dark matter, dark energy, etcetera, etcetera.
“But you can’t shoot me because the energy-to-mass ratio of the bullet is too high to adequately disrupt the quantum-entangled particles, and the fact of the matter is…” Even with the shadows, Blackwell could tell that he lost them and that they most likely had “deer in the headlights” expressions. “Anyways, it just doesn’t work. Blades, exploding projectiles, things like that; they work better—more mass, less energy, more quantum disruption.”
He looked out the window. The city that never sleeps was sleeping, mostly. About a hundred stories down was Central Park, green and quiet. He wondered if the Wolf would like it. Then he wondered if Mea would. Smiling at his private thought, he pushed it back down and snorted before adjusting his suit and tie and returning to business.
“Anyways, I called you here to sign some papers. That’s all. No big deal.” With a whistle, the doors snapped open, and two men in black suits came charging in. Each cradling a stack of papers, one went left while the other went right. Looking down and carefully avoiding eye contact, they each slapped down identical stacks of papers in front of each of the seated guests before slapping down identical pens next to the stacks of paper. Then they exited the room as quickly as they had entered.
Blackwell explained little. “The papers before you require your signatures. The pertinent pages are tabbed. Please sign and date pages five, ten, twenty-five, thirty-five, and sixty-five. Also, I will need initials on pages seven and eight, on all the items on pages fifty through fifty-two and on appendix 1a, 2c, and 3b(ii), as well.”
Some tried to scan through the documents as best they could while others didn’t even bother trying to read them. But regardless if they were trying to read them or not, everyone had picked up a pen and began signing, just as they were told. Eventually someone spoke up, a small olive-skinned man with almond eyes. “What is this? Why would we relinquish control of our businesses, our corporations?”
Blackwell traced his finger along the window, smearing trails along the New York City skyline. “Well, Mr. Hashitoka. First off, it is only because of me that you have these wildly successful businesses and are not, instead, locked in a cell. And second…” Blackwell finally turned and faced him. “Because I said so.”
Less serious, he added, “Besides, have I ever cheated you?” He gently put his hand on the shoulder of the pale woman seated by the window. “Michelle, what did I tell you when we first met?”
The pale-skinned woman spoke with a heavy Australian accent. “You said that your promises were as good as deals. And that you never ever break a deal.”
“Yes. And?”
“A deal with the devil is as good as gold,” she answered with uncertainty, as if she were half-asking a question.
Blackwell repeated Michelle, albeit with more enthusiasm. “A deal with the devil is as good as gold. Yes, thank you.” He patted her shoulder and moved around the table. “You see? There is nothing to worry about. So quit worrying.”
Blackwell’s empty words were less than comforting, and Mr. Hashitoka remained on edge, his eyes darting back-and-forth at the slab of hot metal.
The gun sitting on the table was attracting more than a few glances from the others as well, and Blackwell was beginning to realize that it was becoming quite the distraction. So, tapping his finger on the edge of the table, he decided to address the proverbial elephant in the room which, in this case, was a loaded pistol on the table. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you, I promise. These papers… They’re just for a just-in-case, worst-case-scenario, type of scenario. That’s it. That’s all.”
Not completely calmed but knowing that there wasn’t much he could do, Mr. Hashitoka resumed signing the papers. And a few minutes later and after the others, he was finished signing the papers. And as he laid his pen down on the table, he heard Blackwell whistle again.
Again the doors flew open, and this time, a different man and woman entered. The license pinned to the woman’s suit jacket indicated that she was a notary. The flop-sweat running down the man’s face indicated that he was scared shitless. Still, they did what they came to do.
Jacob was first. The woman with the license flipped through Jacob’s stack of paper and stamped and signed the bottom of each of the tabbed pages and some other ones. Then, the man covered in flop sweat flipped through the same stack of papers and signed his name below each of her signatures, next to the stamped words that labeled him as a witness. And then they did the exact same thing eleven more times.
Everyone was on edge but trying their hardest to remain still. That is, everyone except for Blackwell. He was casually leaning his back against the wall with his arms crossed folded across his chest.
The room was eerily silent except for the sounds of the woman’s notary stamp and a scribbling pen, and it was one of those times where the silence and stamping only made the room feel more ominous. But eventually the two made their way around the table, and the stamping and scribbling came to a conclusion.
“Sheila? John,” said Blackwell, saying John’s name with a heavy hint of disgust.
Sheila nodded.
John stuttered, “Sir, they are—we are, ah, finished… sir.” Then, just as a droplet rolled off his chin and splashed on the lacquered table, he wiped the flop-sweat from his brow. And as he refocused his eyes, the first thing he saw was the scowl on Blackwell’s face.
But with a glare and after a short, tense moment of silence, Blackwell smiled, hopped off the wall, and clapped his hands loudly. “Excellent. Sheila, heads up.” Sheila caught the golden coin flipping through the air and left.
As John expected, he wasn’t so blessed. Instead of a gold coin, he was there to collect something else. Clumsily, he circled the table and collected and stacked the stacks of papers into one large one. Then, lifting them up until they filled his arms, he awkwardly stumbled out of the r
oom.
“See,” Blackwell said. “Now that wasn’t so hard now, was it? And now… does anyone have any questions?”
“Yeah,” Jacob huffed then asked, “Who’s Mea Harris?”
“Mea Harris? Well, she is the sole benefactor of your estates in the event of your demise. I.E. If you die, she gets everything you own.”
Jacob steamed with anger, half-believing that he had just blindly signed away everything he owned and—at least in his mind—worked for; billions of dollars of real estate holding, stocks, bonds, little known but substantial off-shore holdings. Then, it only took two seconds for Jacob’s anger to boil over. “Damn you, Blackwell,” he yelled then instinctively and enraged, reached for the gun on the table. But mid-reach, he stopped reaching. There was nothing there. His eyes grew wide and white, and this time, the shadows weren’t enough to mask his fear.
“Looking for this?” Blackwell asked as he held up the pistol, his face as cool as steel siding. Then he began shooting. One-by-one and starting with Jacob, Blackwell began pulling the trigger. And with the sound of muted metal and muzzle flashes, he began shooting each one in the head. Going clockwise around the table, each person only required one shot. All of them ended up with red dots, but some slumped forward while others snapped back in their chairs—their heads facing upwards, as if they were staring at the ceiling. The four nearest Blackwell had made it a few steps towards the door before their turns arrived. Then, after four more muted chirps of sliding metal, and after the bullets soaked in to the backsides of their brains, only then, like dominoes, did their bodies hit the floor.
He didn’t kill all of them. He left the two nearest the window—Michelle, the thin pale-skinned woman and the large, dark-skinned man seated next to her—alive. While the others had scrambled, those two had remained seated. And earlier, while the others reeked of fear and anxiety, those two were oddly calm. Their faces seeming to say: “We’ve made out beds, and now, we will accept our fate.” And Blackwell admired the courage it took for them to accept their fates; and, as well enough, he admired their insight to realize the inevitable. Knowing inside, he himself was less accepting of his own inevitable fate.
“Huh.” Blackwell looked at the smoking gun. Empty. The barrel was cocked back and locked in the open position, empty and ready to be reloaded. He said, “Looks like you lucked out,” then tossed the pistol aside. “But…” A devious look came across his face. “Of course…” He flicked his wrist and a large blade appeared in his hand. “I could just use this.” Then, he saw the fear on their faces, the fear that was missing earlier.
He looked at the blade and pretended to think about it for a while, glancing at them momentarily. “I’m kidding. It’s only a joke. I apologize, but I couldn’t resist.” He flicked his hand, and the blade disappeared in a puff of black smoke. “Michelle, Timbon,” he said, his voice suddenly lighthearted. “I like you guys. Why would I ever kill you?”
Timbon licked his quivering lips and tried to speak. “Mr. Blackwell,” he said, speaking English, but not without a heavy African accent— Nairobian, to be precise. “Thank you, Mr. Blackwell. Thank you for your mercy. But… but, for them, you had a deal with them as well as us, but you… you still killed them.”
“Yes, Timbon and… well, you got me there.” Blackwell shrugged.
“But… Why?” asked Michelle.
“Desperate times?” Blackwell shrugged again. “But you two… you two are alright. You two get the golden ticket.” Two golden coins came flipping through the air and towards them. Their eyes grew wide, and, as Patterson had done before, they became hypnotized. They stood and leaned forward and extended their arms and opened their hands to catch the golden coins.
And they almost had them. But their hands kept moving forward, and further forward, then towards the golden coins before tumbling through the air and passing right by them. And they were no longer attached to their wrists.
They didn’t have time to feel it. With blank, frozen looks on their faces, they looked paralyzed. Their necks began steaming with thin stalks of white smoke before they began to lean their heads forward—as if they were nodding. Then, their heads tipped forward and slipped off their shoulders and onto the table.
Blackwell huffed, and his voice became flat and bored. “Oh, it’s you.”
CH 18: Somebody That I Used to Know
“I know,” said Raven, back on the rooftop of Mea’s apartment complex. “My wife, you. I’ve always known.” Then he smiled at the not-so-secret secret.
Even if her other senses were still inflamed and her thoughts jumbled, the ringing in Mea’s ears had dulled, and her hearing was starting to return. “Why… why didn’t you say anything?”
“That you look like my wife? my ex-wife, my dead ex-(wife)… she was my wife, in a past life. A different world.” His eyes turned sadder than usual. “That much, I remember.”
Mea grew flustered. She thought that all his memories had been erased. “How… Why… why didn’t you say anything?”
He forced a smile and shrugged. “Why didn’t you? I don’t remember much about her, but I know I loved her and… The first time we met, you were a blonde. Your eyes were icy-blue. And you had a white dress on. It was at the hospital.”
Mea stumbled and grabbed a seat. “Yes. But why did she give me her… look, her appearance. Why did I accept it?”
“Don’t know. You’d have to ask her, if she remembers.” Raven was still smiling, now more real than forced.
Mea thought, I should remember. She was a god, but her memories were gone, most were forgotten.
“They say imitation is the best form of flattery. Maybe you saw something in her. Maybe she saw something in you.”
Raven remembered his conversation with Blackwell. He was a demon, turning into a demon. And he still had to go kill the Wolf. Change the subject, he thought, but he still had things he wanted to get off his chest, before it was too late. “Mea, I…”
The way she looked at him forced him to pause. “Yeah?” she asked.
“Mea, I’m here because… Do you remember Hell—Irkalla? I saved you, you saved me, then you escaped?”
“Yeah, but… you died. You smeared my blood on yourself to attract them and then… I climbed the white mountain, and you stayed back and… You said you couldn’t come, but then…” She started to grow angry. She wanted him to come, but he said he couldn’t. Then, eighteen years later, he just randomly pops up. Well, she felt angry and confused.
He sat down next to her. “Yes, then there was a rock slide. I got surrounded, and I was bleeding out and… I looked up and saw… the mountain turned black. I saw them pouring after you and… I could barely see the mountain at all. They looked like ants swarming a doughnut, or something.”
Mea remembered. She was injured and scaling the colossal white mountain. A ruined tower was carved into the upper half and climbed upwards, past thick clouds and swirling downdrafts. Demons were chasing them, across the white sands and up the white mountain. They covered it like a shadow until… “The rock slide. That was the only way I made it out. There were so many. That—I was able to hold on, barely, but it knocked them off. The shaking, it knocked them all off. It was the only way that I was able to escape.”
Raven smiled and nodded. “That was the plan. When you left, after you started climbing, I found a crack in the mountain’s base, a long one. It was thin. It traced the mountain and curved up the side and into the tower until it disappear into the clouds somewhere… it was like a long black guideline etched into the side of it. And I just… used my sword and whatever strength I had left to open it up, and to dislodge it and hope that you made it out alive.”
Mea’s eyes welled up. She remembered the journey all too well. The desolate metropolis, the dark tunnel, the relentless attacks, the demons, the mountain, almost dying, Raven. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tightly. “Thank you.”
Then she remembered why she did it. Repentance. Not for herself, but for her mothe
r—to save her from the fate that awaited her after her suicide attempt, a fate soaked in bitter hopelessness. “Thank you,” she repeated as she hugged him tighter, holding his head to hers before kissing the side of it, not wanting to let go. For a moment, she felt for him the way she did for Vincent. At some level, she always had, but she was always able to contain them, the feelings. This time, she couldn’t and ended up holding onto him and nuzzling longer than she should have.
But Raven was too preoccupied with something else to really notice. The shakes were coming back, all ready. Raven’s mind was focused on steadying his trembling hand and having little luck in doing so. The bloodlust. The smallest movements of his hands caused them the rattle and almost-shift back into his reaper claws. So, he forced himself to push away from Mea and create some space.
After huffed a sigh of relief and vigorously rubbed at his hair and began pacing. It helped a little but not much. The bloodlust was a nagging thorn in his side that he could never really ignore.
Still, he still had more of the story and more words that needed to be released. “You know,” he started before letting out another frustrated huff and continuing, “You know, I died that day. For the past eighteen years, I was dead, buried beneath those chunks of white stone and rubble from the mountain until… until I finally woke up. That day you found Azazel, that day was when I woke up. The blood, your blood… it lit up. It glowed. And… like, it was like waking up from a long sleep, and I was alive again. So… I went up the mountain and escaped the same way you had and…” His words faded out and he paused like someone about to say something very important but then changing his mind. I’m doomed; I’m becoming a demon; I going off to die; I’m scared; that was what he wanted to say. Instead he said, “I just wanted to say, ‘thank you.’ And to just let you know.”
Mea was a loss for words but chased him over the rooftop. Reaching for his shoulder, she tried to calm him and pull him closer to her, and her hand sifted through his midnight hair as Raven paused his manic pacing but… The shakes were getting worse. And as he kissed her cheek and slid his hand over her shoulder towards the base of her neck, he saw it flapping around like hummingbird wings. The shakes, so embarrassing. How could he even begin to explain—to tell her that he sacrificed himself again for her; he couldn’t tell her. More so, he decided that he wouldn’t. Mea carried around enough unwarranted blame, and he wasn’t going to add on any more. So he quickly pulled away and took a deep breath of relief. Anxiously stepping towards the shadows, he muttered out, “I’m sorry, but I… I have to go.”
The Long Night of the Gods: Lilith Awakens (Forgotten Ones Book 2) Page 18
