Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire (29 page)

The sense of her proximity grew stronger and more rapidly. He checked to see if he’d increased speed, then realized that he hadn’t. No, he wasn’t just coming for her. She was coming toward him. He surveyed the road ahead, checked the sides of the street. Nothing. He drove on, her presence coming ever closer. With his left hand, he grabbed hold of his swollen genitals and tried to assuage the tension. He couldn't afford to lose focus.

The car came down the road in the opposite lane. Sunlight reflected off of its slick black body, blinding him, but he knew she was in the car. He could feel her. His need for her throbbed and the coming release flashed before his eyes. First the violence, then the sex, and afterwards… Serenity: enveloping, sweet, tragically temporary.

Only through this destruction could he feel anything. It brought the closest thing to love that he could experience. He bore this burden because of the covenant he'd made. The day he fell into the underworld's dank, ashen caverns he wandered out into Hades' always decaying landscape, broken and grieving the loss of Clare. All around him, bodies writhed in various positions of pain. Rotting, skeletal hands reached for him so that he may join their damned ranks.

He met someone that day, a creature made of bone and magma, its hard body swathed in fleshy robes upon which organs hung from hooks and nails. The creature regarded him with red eyes that smoked like embers and spoke in a voice like the collective hum of a thousand wasps.

"Like everyone else here, there is something you desire," the beast said, pointing a twisted, smoldering finger at Samael. "Unlike the others, you have something that
I
desire. You have deep rage in your soul that could be very useful to me. If you do as I ask, you will see your love again. She'll be reborn of fire and her mother shall be consumed in it. This is how you will know her. All you have to do is let me make use of your talents."

Now, as the black car passed beside him he saw her, his dark angel, his slave, his lover. Another man sat in the car with her, some poor bastard that had agreed to help. Samael wondered if the fool knew exactly what he was getting into. The odds weren’t good, and neither were the odds that the poor fool would live to talk about it. At least not in this world. Samael toyed with the idea of bringing the man with him and Chloe to the other world. Chain him up and force him to gather up the pieces of Chloe after every mutilation. Perhaps that would be fitting for the infidel who dared to come near what didn’t belong to him.

As they passed, Samael stared right at them, and they drove on, not noticing. The tires of Farnsworth's red machine screeched as Samael jerked the steering wheel around and continued his pursuit.

~Todd~

The sign for Millville grew smaller in the rearview of Todd’s Cadillac. His mind and heart raced, vying for the winning spot. Their meeting with Les had been so unlike a reunion with an old friend. He still had tons of questions, but another part of him didn’t want to know. Maybe he’d had enough revelation for one day. Maybe he’d be better off after he took her home and she left his life for good.

He looked her up and down, wondered if he really meant that. Back when they were kids, he’d loved her unequivocally, would’ve done anything for her. He’d run away when shit got bad, but even then, he knew he was taking the coward’s way out. The truth was that he’d loved her too much and the possibility that he couldn’t save her had torn him to pieces. Could it be the same love now that made him want to let her go? If he saved her this time, would he truly be free of her?

He stopped at a lonesome intersection in the middle of grassy farmland, looked both ways and turned left, back toward the highway. The sun made a golden halo around Chloe. She caught his stare and granted him a smile. At first, he couldn’t understand how she could smile under their circumstances, but then its warmth melted him, made him feel a little more at ease. He relaxed his hands on the wheel and looked back at the road ahead.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed a red sports car gaining behind them. He ignored it, directed his attention back to the road. At the end of the fields on either side, walls of trees bathed the road in shadow. Todd kept his foot on the gas, driving for the black ahead. He drove without music. Only the hum of the engine kept the silence at bay. He stared into the darkness, hypnotized, letting the focus on the road ahead drown out his doubts and anxieties. The highway below seemed to carry them forward. If he couldn’t have heard the tires rolling over the asphalt so clearly, he would’ve sworn they were gliding through the air. He flexed his hands on the wheel, listened to the hum, recalled the route to Chloe’s old hometown.

A loud crash reverberated in his ears and control slipped from his hands. In less than a second, his car went from being a sanctuary to being a death trap. The steering wheel slid from between his fingers and the car swerved to the right. He vomited up a slew of curses. Chloe screamed beside him.

He snatched the wheel and steadied the car, but the anxiety didn’t subside. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the same red car from before, this time right on his ass and coming closer.

“Oh, God, it’s him!”

Todd took her word for it. He slammed the accelerator. The engine’s hum became a groan as the speedometer needle climbed. Before he could gain a lead, the red car rammed them again. Todd held on as the car swerved back towards the side of the road. Countless tree trunks waited, hungry for a meal of flesh and metal. In the nick of time, he got back on the road, veered into the opposite lane, then back into place.

He gritted his teeth. “Fuck! Goddamn it!”

“Jesus, he’s coming up beside us!”

One look into his side mirror confirmed her warning. The car’s black grill filled the glass. He pressed the pedal to the floor, tried to push it farther. The engine growled in protest. The speedometer climbed higher, but the red car came right up beside them. The driver looked across at them, grinning like a madman. Then Todd saw the damnedest thing he’d seen all day: the man’s eyes ignited with orange red fire, turning his face into the mask of a demon. The sight of their pursuer’s true face forced Todd’s body to seize. He released the gas pedal, hoping to outmaneuver the other car. Not a second after they started to slow the red car sideswiped them, sending Todd’s Cadillac off the road towards an obstacle course of trees and rocks.

* * *

For the second time that day, Todd sat dazed behind the wheel of his car. Silver specks exploded before his eyes and adrenaline stampeded through his veins. Somehow he was still alive. The front bumper of his Cadillac had collided with a stump of a long ago fallen tree, deploying the airbags and filling the atmosphere with the screech of tearing metal. The coppery taste of blood played on his tongue as he reached across the center console and felt Chloe’s form beneath his hand. Soft and warm, she trembled with the aftershock of impact. Apparently the undead weren’t immune to trauma. He opened his eyes and turned to look at her.

“You okay?”

She regained composure and frantically jiggled the seatbelt. “We have to get out of here.”

He cast a nervous glance back towards the road, elevated from where his car sat disabled. Trees shaded the air around them, choking the sunlight. He turned the key in the ignition, got no response from the car.

“Todd, come on!” She already had her door open.

He let go of his key and grabbed the driver’s side door handle. As he maneuvered, he saw the gaunt, naked body of the red car’s driver reflected in his side view mirror.
Samael.

The pursuer moved in confident strides. A knowing smirk spread across his face, as if the man knew that he’d won, that the hunt had been too easy for him. A competitive animal awakened inside Todd, choosing fight over flight. He pushed his door open and got out of the car. He set his sights on the man, clenched his jaw and his fists, prepared to fight.

“No, Todd, don’t!”

The man, the demon, came closer. The cocky smirk grew bigger, its mockery all too clear. Todd couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a fight. It’d probably been at least before high school. He’d grown out of fighting earlier than most kids he grew up with, but now, the urge to knock the smile off the face of Chloe’s pursuer burned within him. The man seemed to be looking forward to the confrontation, curling and uncurling his fingers, hunching forward as if ready to charge. Chloe’s voice continued to plead, to protest. Todd barely heard her.

The man came forward and his eyes caught fire and reminded Todd that he was facing down something otherworldly. At the sight of those eyes, the urge to fight shrank. Todd's shoulders slumped. He backed off and turned away from the fiery eyes, unable to look at them anymore without feeling insignificant and weak. Finally hearing Chloe’s cries, he picked up his pace.

Samael maintained an arrogant speed. Above the noise in his head, and his and Chloe's frantic running, Todd heard the slow crunch of the man’s footfalls on the forest floor. It was a hopeless situation; that was the only thing of which Todd could be sure. The woods stretched for miles. They had no car. The man in pursuit was no man. A demon, maybe. Or something worse.

A voice cried out behind him. At first he thought it was the demon, but it sounded too human, too vulnerable. Todd looked over his shoulder, saw another figure standing behind the man with the fiery eyes. The figure stood at the side of the road, hunched over and gripping a shotgun. In the sunlight that lit the edge of the woods, he recognized the features of Les.

“Dad!” Chloe cried out.

The monster of a man’s smirk became a full-on grin and he turned towards Les. “So… You’re her old father.”

Les kept his eyes on the man, showing none of the fear Todd felt. The man took two steps, then Les leveled the shotgun and fired. The shot tore through the air like the voice of an angered god. The exit wound exploded out of the man’s back, showering red chunks of flesh onto the forest floor. The man fell clutching at the air, then at the wound in his chest, and then lay still. Apparently even demons couldn't stand up to a twelve gauge.

Chloe took Todd’s hand and pulled him towards the road. His leg muscles tightened in protest as he started to run again. Samael's empty eyes stared up at a ceiling of branches and leaves. Blood soaked the ground beneath his body. Demon or not, he was clearly dead.

Regardless of that seemingly obvious fact, Todd made an effort to move farther away as he passed the body. Chloe seemed to have the same idea and made no move to resist his pull. Les held his position at the edge of the road, his lips curled into a sneer, his eyes filled with a focus that made him look much more vital than he had back at the apartment. He kept the shotgun aimed, ready for anything.

They reached the side of the road, and Todd squeezed Les’s shoulder.

“Thanks for the assist, old man.”

“Anytime, young shithead.” Something Les used to playfully call Todd back when they were friends. Les looked at his daughter and gestured with his shotgun. “He’s not dead, is he?”

Chloe shook her head. Todd looked at where the man lay in a bloody heap, found it hard to believe, but remembered this was a different world with different rules than the one he knew.

Les cocked the shotgun.

“My car’s still running. You two get in it, and get the hell out of here.”

Todd put his hand back on Les’s shoulder. “No way, you’re coming with us.”

“Dad…”

“Not this time, kids.”

She stepped in front of the shotgun barrel, spreading her palms. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Yeah, it does. You and Todd get out of here, and let me handle this flaming pile of hellshit.”

“I won’t let you.”

Behind her, the dead man stirred. The dried leaves crinkled under him as blasphemous life returned to his body. He raised one hand and closed his fist around the air.

“Come on, Dad, he’s coming back.”

“Move out of the way, Chloe.”

The dead man raised another hand, clenched another fist.

“Dad…”

“Todd, take her out of here.”

Todd froze, the correct choice unclear. Each end would have tragic consequences. He didn’t relish the idea of letting Les sacrifice himself. They had history, and if it hadn’t been for Les he wouldn’t have even met Chloe. On the other hand, if he and Chloe didn’t leave now, he’d surely be killed and Chloe would be taken back to the underworld. He could try to persuade Les to come with them, but time was running out and Les appeared to be set on standing his ground.

Samael sat up, the wound in his chest now almost entirely healed, the muscles and scarred flesh restored.

“I’m not going with you,” Les said. “This is your only chance. Now you go before he gets up.”

Todd took Chloe by the elbow, hating the fear that filled him, hating that Les had to die to make their escape easier. He tugged at Chloe’s arm and at first she remained glued to her spot in front of the shotgun barrel. The man rose to a crouch. Todd pulled on her again, this time more roughly. She cast a look at her pursuer, almost at a full stance, and she complied, giving her father one last look, and running towards the idling car on the shoulder of the road.

~Les~

Les stared into the demon’s eyes and saw the madness that burned within them. The bullet hole had been reduced to one of many white scars that dotted and crisscrossed the demon’s torso. He no longer moved like someone who’d been shot. Instead he moved with raw anger, hooking his hands into claws, tightening his muscles so that they popped out on his arms and neck. His mouth was frozen in an animalistic snarl. His irises burned like twin match heads held up in the shade of the forest.

Les heard Todd and Chloe drive away behind him. Knowing they were safe brought some relief. He aimed the shotgun between the beast's flame-filled eyes, just above the bridge of the nose. As he squeezed the trigger, the demon ducked and charged.

Before Les could react, the gun was pulled from his hands and fingers closed around his throat. His perspective shifted within a matter of seconds as he was lifted off his feet and into the air. The demon threw the shotgun into the forest. Les's air passage closed off and wooziness set in, making the woods behind the demon appear hazy. He tried to kick free, driving his toes toward his assailant’s abdomen, but he was held out too far and couldn’t reach. He squirmed. He tried to pry the fingers from his throat. The iron grip wouldn’t unclamp. Les coughed as the hand choked him out. Unconsciousness closed in, a swallowing cloud of inky blackness that would suffocate his life force.
Fine, let it. I’ve done all that I can
…