Mystery's Choice (Vengeance Of The Fallen Book 1) (32 page)

“Master, I had no memory of anything, I had no inclination to the Dark Arts. The only thing I remembered on any level is that it was important to get Ryan to come to us. I didn’t even know why I was so desperate for him to be there. I did not have enough to work with.” Seth whined.

“I do not deal in excuses. You had enough to complete your rather simple mission and you failed. Now you ask this of me. Well, what if your brother refuses to give up his immortal soul for his baby brother?”  Satan grabbed Seth by the hair and forced him to look up into his face. He smiled as Seth began to shake. “What will you do then?  What price will you pay to stop the pain?  What will you do to stay out of the play room you chose?”

“I will kill him, myself, Master Satan.”  Seth threw himself prostrate at Satan’s feet. “I will kill him any way you wish, just don’t make me go back to that room, Master, please!”

“I will give you one day, 24 hours to complete the task. I either want his soul here for my pleasure or I want him dead.”  Satan lowered his voice so each syllable was a growl. “Or I will bring you back here and you shall spend eternity on one of the lower levels of my kingdom.”

“Thank you, Master!”  Seth crawled forward and kissed his master’s feet.

“Have him sent back. If he fails bring him to me. I will see to it he begs me for one of the lower levels.”  Satan turned his head away. “Take him from my sight.”

The demon guard pulled Seth to his feet and took him to the place where he had awoken. The eerie green light made Seth want to scream, but he chewed on his lip to keep himself silent. The demon guard spoke to the guardian of the rooms and explained what Seth was to do. The guardian threw Seth some clothes. Seth put the clothes on, relishing the feel of the soft cotton on his chafed skin.

Seth felt light-headed and the walls began to spin. He fell forward and continued falling, gaining speed as he went, he screamed. After falling for what seemed an eternity, Seth opened his eyes to find himself in a hotel room. His brother’s leather jacket was flung across one of the chairs and a picture of Seth and Mystery rested on the bureau. Seth crossed to it, swallowed with hatred for Mystery. She was the reason he was in a position to consider bargaining that someone would trade their soul for his. The slut had betrayed him with Ryan and after all everyone had done to keep her safe, she had betrayed those had fought to protect her and had gone to the Roodmasi. If it weren’t for that bitch he would not be facing the lower levels of Hell.

Seth stopped staring at Mystery’s picture when he heard the shower stop. He put the picture down and went to sit on the bed. “Just remember he is not even your real brother and this will be easy.” He silently reminded himself. He smiled, Ryan was singing off-key as he dried off. He stopped mid-note when he opened the bathroom door to see Seth sitting there on his bed.

“Seth?”  Ryan dropped the towel he had been using to dry his hair, and gripped the wall to steady himself.

“Hi, Ryan.”

“How is this possible?  I saw what was left in that room. You aren’t real. Cain, you bastard I won’t fall for this!  Remember I saw what your friends did to him!”  Ryan touched his hands to the cross around his neck and he began to pray. The cross began to glow.

“Ryan, wait. It is me. They offered a trade.”  Ryan took off the cross. “I stole your GI Joe when you were seven and I hid it in the dog’s house. You found it ripped to shreds, but you never told Mom.”

When he finished the prayer and looked up at his brother there were tears in his eyes.

“What did they do to you, that you would come back to kill me?” Ryan whispered.

“There are no human words to describe what it was like. They make you pick a room. They all look okay, you know, not so horrible. When you choose, you see what you will go through over and over again until the end of time, but it’s too late, you’ve made your choice.”  Seth closed his tortured gray eyes for a second as images of his room filled his mind. He looked down at his trembling hands. “If you switch places with me, they’ll let me go. They meant to get you. I guess the wrong brother was home.”  Seth smiled sadistically. “The room I chose… I am tied to a giant boulder in a desert land. There is no moisture in the air, on the ground, it is always night and it is always hot. Periodically, lightening splits the sky and clouds form and it rains urine. But you are so thirsty that you try to tip your head back enough for the urine to run into your mouth. Sometimes, you get a few drops, sometimes you don’t. Then the urine turns to acid, which slowly eats your skin and flesh away, but you never die. Whatever is left when the acid storm stops, crows come and pick from your bones. You feel them eat your eyes, pick at your brain. Then finally you die. When you open your eyes again, everything starts over.” He raised eyes full of loathing to his brother. “That is were loving that bitch you fuck got me. And then she betrayed you and went to them anyway. If you had just picked up the phone and told me not to go to the house. I would not be spending eternity feeling crows eat my brain.”

“I love you. But I won’t give up my immortal soul for you. You made your choice you abandoned your faith. I can’t and I won’t pay for it. If I do give up, who will save Jeremiah, Seth?  Or have you even forgotten your son?”  Ryan went and put on a pair of jeans from his open suitcase. He looked at his brother sitting there calmly on the bed, asking Ryan to save him, asking Ryan protect him. As usual he wasn’t even thinking of anyone but himself. And Ryan felt his heart harden toward his brother.

Seth stood and turned to face his brother. The light gleamed off the long, thin knife he held in his hands. He looked at Ryan and there was no emotion in his face as he stalked toward his brother. “I won’t go back there. First you stole Mystery from me. Then you swear you will protect me from these people. And now when you have a chance to do just that, you won’t help me. So, I will kill you and help myself.”

Ryan backed up. “Seth don’t make me do this, please.”  Seth kept walking toward his brother. He swung out with the knife, barely missing Ryan’s face. Ryan pushed past his brother and went for the other side of the room. Seth turned around mechanically and shuffled after him.

Ryan imagined Seth turning into a statue of ice and he watched horrified as Seth stopped moving and screamed as his limbs started to freeze. Ryan began crying again as Seth’s screams abruptly stopped as his head froze.

“May God have mercy on your soul, baby brother. I love you, goodbye.”  Ryan swung around and kicked Seth; the statue broke into a million tiny fragments.

Ryan sat down on the bed and buried his face in his hands and wept.

21

Ryan lay in bed that night trying not to let his fear and his pain turn into hatred of Mystery. He knew she wasn’t aware of what was going on out here they blocked her from feeling those who cared about her. God! He wished she were here right now to soothe him and to tell him it was going to be alright. He wished he had her soft, perfect body beneath him to lose his sorrows in. He started to doze.

Ryan’s eyes sprung open, as his jeans were unbuttoned. Focusing, he saw Mystery straddling him, her eyes glowing in the darkness. He tried to sit up and she pushed him back down. Ryan moaned as her hands closed around his manhood. They were cold and lifeless. He gagged and tried to pull away, but she tightened her hold.

“Come on, Ryan.”  She laughed, the musical sound made his heart hurt. “You know you want me.”  She replaced her hands with her mouth.

Ryan’s hips rose off the mattress all by themselves. He sank slowly into the world of pleasure she was providing and reached for her breasts. When he cried out, she moved up his body to kiss him. Resignedly, he removed his jeans and rolled her under him.

After they had made love a couple of times, they lay there cuddling in each other's arms. Neither spoke, both were afraid of what the other one was going to say. Ryan finally decided he had to tell her Seth was dead. He moved her around so he was looking down into her face.

“Mystery,” he played with a wayward strand of her hair. “Seth is dead.”

“NO! He promised me! No!” she fought and Ryan let her up. She pulled her knees up to her chest and sat there rocking back and forth.

“They killed him the night you went to them. He came here this morning to ask me to take his place in Hell and when I wouldn’t he attacked me. I had to kill him again. I was able to use my powers on him, so he was damned, he was already lost to us.”  Ryan reached for her; she pulled away and got out of the bed.

“They will come for you. You aren’t safe as long as they know you matter to me.” She rubbed her arms and began to cry. “I should go.”

“Why did you come?”

“I felt your pain. It made it through whatever shield they have put around me. I’ve thought of you several times, but I couldn’t gather the wherewithal to come or to contact you. Time is different at the aerie, I don’t know how to explain it. But today I felt your pain and your loneliness and I had to come.”  She sat on the edge of the bed.

“Are you Roodmasi, Mystery?”  Ryan whispered.

“No. I am Jeremiah’s mother and your woman, and my mother’s daughter, but I am not Roodmasi.”  She looked at him defiantly. “I am not evil.”  Mystery touched Ryan’s head and he looked at her. “I know I have to stay there to be ready for the final battle. It is the only way I can learn enough. But, I swear to you, Ryan, I am not evil, I do not follow Cain.”

“But your mother is evil.”

“She was brought up to believe the side she fights on is the side of right. But she has a good heart. She made sure Jeremiah would remember me; she plays with him every day. She has been more of a mother to me in these few short weeks, than Sarah was in twenty years. She loves me. She is the one who warned us Cain would soon know where I was. She tried to get me to use the powers I didn’t even know I had by sending the winged things for me to fight. She has sworn to help us, to help her people when the time comes.”

“I hope you are right.”  He went and sat beside her and pulled her into his arms. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. I will find a way for this to be right in the end, I promise.”

When Ryan woke the next morning he was alone. It was as if she had never been there at all. He picked up a pillow and smelled it to see if her scent lingered. Nothing remained. Ryan got out of bed and went to face the day.

Seth opened his eyes and found himself in front of the throne room doors. Tears sparkled in them and he began to tremble. They slowly slid open. And the deep, rumbling voice of his Master bade him to enter.

Seth stumbled as he made his way through the doors. He lowered his head and walked towards the throne. His fear was such that the hellhounds came to sniff him, finding the scent mouth-watering. One licked his hand and he screamed.

“Return!” Came Satan’s command. The dogs returned to his side immediately.

Seth threw back his head and shrieked as all of the skin on his body was ripped from his being. The shrieking stopped when his tongue shriveled to a hard mass in his throat, then fell with a dry thud to the floor.

His skinless arms flew up and out over his head and were bound with ropes he could not see, making his eyes widen with pain. His feet bones grated through the flesh of his skinless feet as they were dragged across the stone floor and were bound. Satan rose from the throne, his footsteps making a heavy sound on the ground as he approached what was once Seth.

“I told you if you failed you would beg me to release you to the lower levels of my kingdom, did I not?” He chuckled. “Of course, you have no tongue now, so I do not expect an answer.” He leaned in close to Seth, mocking his rolling eyeballs as they slid round and round the dry sockets in terror. “You can still scream though, you have lungs and a voice box. I do so enjoy the screams of those stupid enough to anger me.” He finished conversationally. “Now, make sure to scream nice and loud for me. I might stop an hour or two early for today.” He extended his hand and a cat-o-nine tails appeared in it. The tails each had barbed steel balls up and down their length. His blue eyes twinkled as he pulled back for the first lash. Satan sighed deep in his throat as the tails whistled through the air and closed his eyes in pleasure when the wet squishing of barbed steel being pulled out of naked flesh filled the room. Seth did not disappoint his Master in this; his screams were loud and long.

Peter tried to figure out why he had sounded like a loony tune when confronted with the cops’ disbelief. He wasn’t sure what he wanted them to believe in or how it would save their lives. It was as if he had been momentarily possessed by an angry church lady. He couldn’t get the lady cop off his mind and other key body parts. Boy, she was hot! 

Restless, he got up from his computer and went to stare mindlessly out the window. He knew his mother was probably right about staying out of this whole mess, and with a crazy story like his they would most likely figure he was the one who had killed her and the others. He knew that was crazy, he couldn’t even stand the sight of blood, and he didn’t have a clue how you gutted someone, but the cops didn’t know him and they were getting desperate to provide the parents of all the teenage girls of this town with the maniac responsible for all the terror. When he thought about how Shauna had died it made him angry, no one should die like that, not even a stuck up cheerleader who wouldn’t give him the time of day. The cops wouldn’t believe him and that made him angry, too. You’d figure if you were working on an unsolvable case and you got even a tiny shred of a lead you would follow it, no matter how crazy it sounded. They could at least look for the truck or the redhead. They could ask the Clarksons if they remembered hearing a truck that night. They were screwing up by not checking out his story at all.

He shook his head in disgust at himself, when the gorgeous lady cop from that afternoon floated through his mind; it was rough being a walking, talking hormone. He went to lie down on his bed maybe he could sleep finally. He stretched out his long limbs and tried to shut his mind off, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the cop. It was all he could think about. He shifted his shorts as his body responded to the images going through his head. They were so real it was like she was actually in the bed with him, stroking his body and nibbling on his ear. He jumped out of bed and turned on the light, he was alone and he was not dreaming. He tried to open the door to go to the bathroom, but it wouldn’t open.

“We can do this the pleasurable way.” A disembodied voice said from the shadows.

Peter whirled around, “Who’s there?”

“We can do this the pleasurable way or the painful way.”  He gasped as Lilith stepped out of the darkness to stand in the middle of his room. “Oh, believe me you’ll prefer the pleasurable way.”

“What’s going on?”  He stumbled away from the door and tried to make it to the window.

“Come on” Lilith sighed,  “Don’t make me hurt you, it’s not your fault you’re a horny teenage boy, who was spying on his cute neighbor, or that you saw what you shouldn’t have.” She walked to the bed and draped herself across it. “But see you did and now Cain has ordered your death.” She opened her cloak and the moonlight from his window made the naked flesh beneath glow like porcelain. “You should be thankful he didn’t send Nergal or Legion.” She patted the bed beside her. “You will die happy and it won’t hurt a bit, unless you make me chase you.”

“I won’t tell anybody else.” He took step toward the bed, she was very hard to resist, lying naked and ready on his bed, not even his best fantasies came close to her. “Please, just let me live!”

Lilith reached out and took his hand, forcing him to sit on the bed. “Cain won’t allow it, The Ascension is too close.” Her eyes shone in the moonlight and she licked her lips. “I am sorry.” She pressed him back on the bed and helped him pull off his shirt.

Peter’s hands shook as he pulled her to him for a kiss. He moaned slightly when she unsnapped his jeans and began to push them down his legs.

“Tell me what you like, sweetheart.” She kissed him lightly on the lips.

Sam tried his best to ignore the ringing phone, but it wouldn’t stop ringing so he picked up the receiver and growled into it. “What do you want?” he reached for the alarm clock on his nightstand, “It’s four flippin o’clock in the morning!”

“Sam it’s Lily.” She sniffed delicately, “Peter Hawkley’s parents found him dead in bed this morning. His mother thought she heard voices and went to check, when she opened the door he was just laying there dead.”

“Are you there?” Sam was wide-awake now. “Sorry, I’m not a morning person”

“Yeah.” He could hear the smile in her voice, “And, it’s okay. See you in a few?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way.”  Sam hung up and staggered his way into the bathroom thanking God he didn’t have a teenager, their life expectancy in this town wasn’t very good.

When Sam got to the scene he noticed the Clarkson’s were standing outside looking piteously across the street; they knew what this experience was like. He pulled up to the curb and got out, after nodding in their direction, he headed inside the house.

He wound his way upstairs and smiled at the uniformed officers leaving the bedroom. He was surprised to see the body was without apparel and it was just lying there staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He looked peaceful, there were no signs of struggle, and with the window open anyone could have come and gone without any fuss.

He walked up to Lily, she had her head down and once again he was struck by how perfect her profile was.

“Lily.” He touched her arm.

“Sam. Morning.” She motioned to the man in the corner trying to console the woman in his arms. “Those are his parents. The M.E. says if he had to guess at the cause of death he would say asphyxiation. How?  He doesn’t have a clue.”

“Great, yet another unsolvable homicide.” He rubbed his eyes, “Did they hear a struggle or just voices or what?”

“I’ll let you talk to them.”

Sam walked over to the couple. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Hawkley, I’m Detective Sergeant Jefferies.” He showed them his badge. “Can you tell me what you heard last night, Mrs. Hawkley?”

The woman raised red accusatory eyes to him. “I told him not to talk to you!  He did and now he’s dead. I told him you cops couldn’t protect anyone!” She sniffed and rubbed at her red nose. “He was upset yesterday after you left, he didn’t come out of his room for dinner, and he was just staring out the window the last time I checked on him before going to bed. About two, I heard a woman’s voice coming from his room.” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face. “I got up to tell him to get some sleep, to turn off the television. When I got up I realized I had to go to the bathroom, so, I went there first. When I came out the voices were gone, so I went to make sure he was sleeping peacefully.” She sobbed, “When I opened the door, he was there in bed, I could tell he was dead right away, I don’t remember anything after... until my husband brought me to. I guess I passed out.”  She glared at Sam. “Are you going to do more to find out who killed my son, than you did for the Clarksons?”