protections!
“I taste your doubt!” Urgency had crept into the voice, a hint of passion.
The Prime turned his back on the blackness. He had to prove his power. It seemed that something was changing. And the thing had said that his time was running out! But that could be taken many ways. He had too long relied on the prescience of the Infernal and the Divine to distrust it now, and yet, it could be an attempt to unhinge him-they were all capable of lying. It was a vain attempt to win advantage over him. A lie! It had to be punished. If he no longer controlled it, he was about to find out.
“You doubt, Prime,” the voice said.
“Doubt this!” The Prime lifted his hands as he spoke the words. With one he stroked an invisible symbol on the left side of the door, with his right, he touched a mark opposite it. “I command you to obey, by the Power of the Lake of Fire!”
A tortured scream answered from in the black-a terrible sound that started low like breaking rocks, then swept upward toward a screech of pain that threatened to shatter the acrylic-then nothing.
“Now!” The Prime stood so close to the wall that his belly touched it. Glancing to his right he saw that the Operative was shaken. “You will obey my commands and speak only when I allow it.” His voice turned to acid. “Do you hear me?”
The darkness was broken by the gray suggestion of a weary man’s shoulders-then the voice. Weak now, it whimpered, “I hear.”
“You hear-what?” The Prime felt pride swell his body and stiffen his cocks.
“I hear, Master.” The voice was beaten, its passion muted. “I shall hear your command and comply.”
“This Operative must be given the power of spiritual silence. No one among your kind or among your enemies must be able to read his thoughts.” The Prime pushed his face, livid with unborn curses, against the plastic. “Now!”
“I comply, and yet, it is imperfect, for there is no perfection,” it hissed quickly, as though its abjection had driven it to loathe the sound of its own voice.
The Prime hesitated, his hands unconsciously rising toward the symbols of pain that were etched invisibly on the wall around the door. How he enjoyed overpowering this creature. He had tested its endurance before. On more than one night, the Prime had dropped the many floors to approach the thing in its cage and test it. It was a servant-a slave. The Prime had been impressed by its ability to take punishment. At night he dreamt of fucking it.
“It is done,” the creature whispered past the plastic.
The Operative spoke, “I feel a strange sensation, Sir-light-headed.”
“Do not be concerned.” The Prime turned away from the Operative, looked into the darkness again. “You have kept your bargain, and I will bring you no more pain.” He stepped back. And that’s all I’m bringing you. The Prime continued grimly, “Your information about the First-mother was correct. We have her,” he glared. “What of her guardian?”
The voice said: “Unknown. His power is great.”
“His appearance?” the Prime growled back his doubts.
“Like all men,” the voice breathed wearily. “And his mind is closed.”
“Well open your mind to his,” the Prime ordered quietly. “Do what you have to do and tell me when you know.”
“I will search,” the voice said. The gray shadow shape behind the plastic faded.
The Prime cursed his luck. If only there were another way to keep the thing. He would love to watch its face as the door closed. The Prime shrugged his shoulders and spoke to the Operative, “Follow me as before.” A different flex of his arm, and the door closed.
“You have been given a great power,” the Prime told the Operative, and then a quick reprimand. “But you must never step away from one of them.”
“Where should I begin?” the Operative’s voice held a note of self-recrimination.
“You have the file.” The Prime began to pick his way across the hall. He paused to be sure the Operative was following. “Investigate it as you would any murder.”
As they walked toward the elevator, the Prime thought to ask his ally if there was any progress on the God- wife. He still wasn’t sure who he was fated to know exactly, but by all accounts he’d soon have a world all his own to repopulate.
33 – The Burning Bags
“I am here!” the voice said from the darkness. It seemed to come from all sides and inside. It echoed in the mind, at once clear, at once garbled with throbbing power. “Rise and Behold!”
The words held and hugged him, stifled and liberated. He could not breathe. The absent hammer of his heart reverberated in his skull. The once perfect darkness swirled about him a moment longer-tried to drag him back into it; but the voice overpowered the whirlpool of welcome black.
“I am here! Arise!” The words pulled him up. An electric charge of energy flashed through his body. He convulsed around a ragged breath of air, and another. His chest rose and fell, yet he did not feel the coolness of the air, he tasted no revivifying moisture in it. He tried again, and was answered with a wet crackle and a hiss of escaping gas. He was lying in an awkward position-perhaps that was it. His eyes began to see again-the images that struck him were blurry.
He struggled upward with slippery hands covered in purple blood. They snatched and scrabbled numbly over the slick skins of garbage bags. A heat pressed against his face threatening to push him back, but he grabbed a large handful of cardboard and electrical wire-pulled himself forward.
Once standing he saw that corroded iron walls hemmed him in at all sides. His shoes were buried in the greasy remains of rotting garbage bags and refuse. With cold fingers he grabbed the side of the Dumpster and hauled himself up and over-again he heard the crackle and hiss. As he swung himself over he struggled, lost his hold. His feet could not find purchase and he fell. He landed with a sickening thud-a heavy clatter of bones and cartilage. Again there was the crackle and hiss.
“I am here!” The voice came from behind him. He turned. A pile of garbage bags twenty feet tall was heaped against the red brick of an ancient building. Its green and black plastic patchwork was on fire. White, orange and yellow flames burned its edges, but it was not consumed.
“I am here!”
He got to his hands and knees, incredulous, and then raised his head.
“Forgive me!” he said, voice crackling like cellophane.
“Your trials are before you!” the burning garbage said. “And you will pass again into night before it is over.”
“Forgive me, I am unworthy.” The man watched rivulets of purple and brown fluid trickle slowly out of his shirt cuffs. “I failed.”
“I shall judge.” The flames leapt up.
“We were to save him and we did not.” The man rested his head on the pavement. Dizziness pulled his forehead toward the ground, plucked at his consciousness.
“You were betrayed. I was betrayed.” The fire burned white hot now. “Vengeance is Mine!”
“Command me!” His mind reeled against the revelation.
“I command thee. You have lost a friend, and so you must redeem her.” The fire licked at the air overhead. He could feel the heat of the flames like a pulse. “And the road before you is winding.”
“Command me!” He fought the dizziness now, getting one shaky foot under him, rising.
“I command thee to find a man named Updike. He is one of the worthy. As with the building of the Tower, so will this labor be hard. He commands an army, and with this army shall you strike at the heart of Evil. Only then shall you find salvation for yourself, salvation for your friend.” The fire burned upward like a pillar flying to Heaven. “Go now to the place of flight and deliver a message that will be known to you then. I have spoken.” With two great roars of power and flame, the pulsing gout of fire blasted skywards, and was gone.
