Incest/Taboo The Devil's Pact

Alison shrugged. "Some cache a paranoid dictator buried during the troubles. Does it really matter, Master?"

"Sir, we're getting reports from across the globe," a seemingly young Japanese communication officer named Ami said. She was a former Air Force officer who served us since before Lucifer was defeated. "Nine of the administrative districts report they're under attack."

I swallowed, feeling cold. Nine of fourteen. "Which ones?"

She opened her mouth to answer, then paused, listening into her headset. "Sir, Washington D.C. is about to fall. Sean and Tiffany have barricaded themselves in their bedroom with the last two of their guards."

"Central America?" Mark asked, his voice tight. His mother ruled from Mexico City.

"They haven't responded," Roni, another former Air Force officer, answered. "I'm sorry, sir. Paris is reporting an armed mob attacking them, and there was a brief message from Tokyo."

"We should retreat to the bunker," I whispered, my body cold. Both of our parents were in trouble. And our sisters. Our families were in danger.

"Bunker?" Mark asked. He shook his head. I could see the anger building in them. "My mom and sister were in danger! These filthy vermin are trying to hurt my family! And you want to go to the bunker?"

"Yes, the missile silo, Mark," I answered. It was our bolt-hole in Oklahoma. We had only used it once. I was pretty sure we still had it maintained. Those SWAT officers we stationed there with their families should still be guarding it after forty years. "There's no way they can know about it, Mark. We have to regroup."

"Fuck!" Mark snarled, nodding his head.

Sam entered the room. "Sir, I've triggered the mansion's shield. I predict it will last fifteen minutes under the volume of fire."

"Fuck that! I'm going out there and fighting them," Mark barked. "I'm immortal. They can't hurt me! Even if they empty every fucking bullet they have into me, I'll keep on going!"

"You'd be swarmed under and captured," I objected, fear squeezing at my heart.

"I have the power to do it. I'll open the ground beneath their feet, summon the winds to batter them, and cook them with fire! I am Mark Glassner. I'll show them why you don't fuck with a Living God!"

I shook my head. Our families were under attack, probably about to die. I couldn't lose him. "It's too risky." My mind flailed for a reason to stop him. "We don't know enough about the situation. What they can do."

"I can crush them like the insects they are!" Molech's flames danced on his skin and Milcom's lightning crackled between his fingers. I felt the power surging through my husband, drawn from the vast reserves of energy we possessed, the power of all the greater demons we killed. "I'll send the vermin scurrying back to their holes while you evacuate the mansion."

I grabbed his arm. I had to make him understand. "We don't have enough information, Mark! What if there are more? We need to regroup and figure out what's going on!" I stared into his blue eyes, pleading with him. "Please, Mark, please. For me."

"Fuck!" He snarled. He shook his head, conflict raging across his face. Then he relaxed. He always saw reason after he calmed down. "Fine. We evacuate to the bunker and then figure out how we crush them!"

"Yes," I said, my own anger spiking through my fear. "We'll show these monks and nuns the depths of their mistake in challenging us." I cupped his face. "We will destroy them."

A vicious grin crossed Mark's face. "I'll make them realize the error of their mistake. I'll enjoy crushing them beneath my boot."

"We'll make them pay," I growled, tears brimming in my eyes. "They'll suffer for every member of our family they've hurt!"

Mark Glassner

I led our servants and the sluts outside of the mansion. The blue shield shimmered in a dome around the ground. Five gold columns reared around the grounds blazed like the sun, powering the spell. Only our most trusted servants and our family could walk through the shield. It would rebuff anyone else.

Outside, the mob beat at it, shot at it, and hurled whatever objects they could at it. Every impact sent ripples of blue spreading across it and dimmed the golden columns by a fraction, reducing the energy sustaining it. Eventually, the dome would fail, the shield would collapse, and the besiegers would pour in like water rushing through a breached dam.

I stared at the insects. Power brimmed inside of me. A part of me wanted to ignore Mary's advice and just go out there. I would vaporize them with Lucifer's light, befuddle them with Lilith's lusts, fry them with Milcom's lightning. I would summon a tsunami to drown them and rend the earth beneath their feet to swallow them.

"The maids are assembled, my Lord," Pearl stated. I turned to find her standing before the ranks of her girls. They all looked scared.

My sons and daughters, and their children, huddled nearby. Silas had Delilah and Andrea clinging to him while Marcelo and Calypso hugged their daughter Liza. The sluts stood in a nervous clump, Violet hugging Cindy, Jessica trying to stay calm as Korina trembled in Lillian's arms. The sixty-four bodyguards formed a circle around us, watching the shield. 51 nodded to me, then gave a worried glance at her husband, assembled with other servants, groundskeepers, mechanics, and laborers. Even she trembled, her ebony face ashen. She had survived Brandon, the Patriots, and been through the worst of the Demon Wars.

Alison strode out of the mansion. "Master, the mansion's been evacuated. I've destroyed the computers."

Anger burned inside me; I would crush those fucking nuns and monks. I'd spike their heads as a warning to future generations. The power coursed through me, begging to be unleashed on the insects attacking us.

"Then let's go!" I snarled, hating myself for running. Gods should never run. I drew a bronze dagger, prepared to cut a hole in the air and create a portal to the Shadows so we could escape.

Light flashed down from above, pure white, blinding. For a heartbeat, it connected earth and sky. Then it flashed back up into the heavens. Where the light had fallen on the lawn now stood a person.

Chase.

I heard Mary gasp, a sharp intake of breath. The bronze dagger tumbled out of my hand. It was Chase, my beautiful daughter. Her blue eyes fixed on me, a sad smile on her freckled face. Her auburn hair fell loosely about her shoulders, swaying in the gentle breeze. I drank in the sight of her. Hope, happiness, joy, filled me up.

My beautiful daughter had come home.

I didn't remember crossing the distance between us. One moment, I was staring in amazement at her. The next, she was just before me. I must have run to cross the distance so fast. I threw my arms around her, crushing her against my chest. She was wonderful, real, alive, beautiful. So warm and vital in my arms. I smelled her hair and--

I didn't see the ugly dagger clutched in her hand.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she whispered.

The pain flared sharply as it sliced my thigh.

I stumbled back as the small cut, hardly more than a scratch, burned with venomous agony. The fire spread through my veins, every beat of my heart spreading the poison through my body. Dizziness swept through me. My legs wobbled.

I stared at my daughter in astonishment; her blue eyes brimmed with pleading sorrow.

"Chase?" I asked, confused. My legs buckled. I collapsed onto my back.

"Mark!" Mary screamed

The blue sky stretched out above me--a perfect, beautiful sky. I had seen its like once before, so long ago.

Mary knelt beside me. Her crying face hovered above me, an even more beautiful sight. Her hand grasped mine. She brought my numbing hand to her lips. She gently kissed my knuckles before her mouth moved.

Red light engulfed me.

I felt the heat of her love flow into me. The healing spell rippled through my body. It attacked the venom and...

Failed to defeat it. The pain still burned through me; her healing spell failed.

The world grew darker; my vision grew fuzzy as the agony came closer and closer to my heart. With every moment, my death came closer and closer. I had felt this same poison once, coursing through Mary.

Only, Lilith wasn't going to save us this time.

"Mispach!" Candy shouted. "She has the Mispach. Hurry, we need to kill her and spill her blood on him before he dies!"

My eyes fell on the ugly dagger gripped in my daughter's hand. Cain's dagger. The only way to save me was for Chase to die. If her life blood didn't spill over me, I would perish. And along with me would die my beautiful Mary. I had once condemned the world to darkness to save my wife. I would do anything to protect her, to save her. I thought I could kill anyone to keep my wife alive.

I was wrong.

"No," I croaked. "No."

Mary nodded, tears glistening in her eyes.

"Do not touch our daughter!" my wife commanded with steel in her voice.

"We all die when he does!" Candy objected. "If none of you will kill the bitch, then I'll--"

"You will do nothing!" 51 roared. I could hear a scuffle, a woman screaming in pain. A gun barked. A body thudded on the ground. Sam cried out in anguish.

Chase knelt on the other side of me, her blue eyes swimming with tears. "I'm so sorry, Daddy," she cried, taking my other hand. "It had to be done. Your tyranny had to be stopped. You wouldn't listen to me. Power corrupted you."

I looked from my wife to my daughter as agony pumped through my veins. Chase was as beautiful as her mother. She reached across me, taking her mother's hand. All three of us held each other. Both their hands felt warm and soft. I struggled to speak; there was something very important I had to tell my daughter.

"I... forgive... you."

Turned out it wasn't hard to do at all. It was the easiest thing to do in the entire universe.

Chase Glassner

Life fled Father's blue eyes.

Mother slumped limply forward across his chest. Around me, my siblings, the sluts, the maids, and the bodyguards all fell dead. I killed them all. Tears ran hot down my cheeks. My entire body shook. Hundreds dead from a single knife stroke.

Was I as bad as my parents? Were my murders as justified as theirs?

I didn't know.

Hundreds dead so that billions could be free. That math had to add up, right?

Silver glinted on my father's chest. The sun was warm on my face; it was too lovely a day for such tragedy. The silver was a locket, shaped like a heart with a single, pink rose sculpted on the front. It must have spilled out from beneath Mother's armor as she fell forward, landing upon Father. I opened the locket; my parents smiled up at me. With shaking hands, I unclasped it from my mother's neck, and draped it around my own.

I realized I wasn't alone. A horde stood around me.

The shield had failed when my father died. The freed thralls who were attacking the compound had gathered in a circle to stare down at the false gods. The Tyrants. My parents. Around the world, the elements of my parents' oppression, those bureaucrats and priests not bound directly to my parents, were being captured or killed.

The Theocracy erased. Hopefully, a better government would rise from the ashes.

I stumbled away in tearful silence, the crowd parting before me. I could have ridden on the Light, flashing to wherever I wanted to go. Wherever that was. I needed to walk, to think, to wonder why I didn't die with all my family, with my parents. I was bound to them. I shouldn't have lived.

I wasn't supposed to live.

Now I had to live with the question: Could I have talked my parents into giving it all up? To free mankind from their bondage? I doubt it, but maybe... I just couldn't take the risk that they would say no. I had this one opportunity to end it. To liberate the world. I had to take it.

Now all I could do was walk, cursed like the shoemaker to wander on and on forever, guilt tearing apart my heart.

Hopefully, the world was worth it.

Mark Glassner

I was falling, falling, falling.

Into darkness.

Then darkness gave way to heat, to fire.

I opened my eyes. Oppressive heat buffeted my body. Blood-red rocks crunched beneath my feet. Anguished wails echoed through the air--the chorus of the damned. I stood on a barren hill overlooking a hellish plain. In the distance, a city of brass rose, wavering like heat in a broiling furnace. Trees made of twisted bone dotted the plain, growing next to rifts that smoked with sulfurous fumes.

Mary appeared at my side. I wrapped my arms around my wife. She stared up at me and said, her voice thick with emotion, "Together forever."

A collar bound my neck, made of rusting iron, leading off into the distance--my Pact with Lucifer. The iron looked weak, pitted. It snapped easily. I had far more power than the Devil ever had. I had stolen the power of every demon--Lucifer, Lilith, Molech, Dagon, and more--I had slain, the energy split between Mary and myself.

Mary snapped her chain with ease, the iron flaking away into rust on the searing wind.

More souls appeared around us. Chasity and Noel knelt before me, joined by 51, while the bodyguards knelt in ranks behind them. "We've awaited you for a while, Master," Chasity said, smiling, her blue eyes twinkling with joy. "It's wonderful to see you."

Karen threw her arms around me, kissing my cheek. Then April, glasses reflecting the hellish landscape, melted against me. And lastly, Xiu sauntered up, naked. I pulled her to me by her nipple piercing. "I missed you all," I told the three of them. "You were never forgotten."

"Thank you, Master," Xiu smiled, tears shining in her eyes. "We swore to serve you forever."

The other sluts joined us: Lillian, Korina, Violet, Jessica, Alison, and Desiree. Korina reunited with Xiu, hugging her with such joy. Alison and Desiree gazed into each other's eyes with love. Our families were next: my mom and her wife, Tiffany and Sean, Missy and Damien, Shannon and George, Antsy and Via. Their children and ours. Pearl and her maids, our other servants, the Cunningham twins and their Bishops, and our friends who helped us rule the Theocracy. Around us, reunions happened as those who'd passed on before us were reunited with friends, family, and lovers.

The only one missing was Chase. I concentrated and sensed my daughter walking away from the mansion, somehow alive. Guilt crushed her.

Anger flashed through me. But not at her. At myself. I failed her. I hadn't been a good enough father to her. I was too concerned with escaping Hell, of making sure that there were no threats that could harm my loved ones or me. Mary and I shackled the entire world out of selfishness.

Chase was a better person than I ever was. I hoped one day I could tell her that. Then, maybe, we could be a family again.

We will be, Mary's voice whispered in my mind. She just needs time. And we have all the time in the universe now.

"What are your commands, Master?" Violet asked, her arm around Cindy.

"We're ready to kick some ass!" shouted an eager Alison. Somehow, she had conjured a machine gun, red flames flickering across the weapon's black metal.

I could see the lesser demons and the shades of the dead hovering at the edges of our group, watching us warily. Beyond them lay the city of brass. Dis. I glanced at my wife, gave her shoulder a squeeze, then looked at our family and followers. For a moment, black chains flashed around all their necks, connecting them to Mary and myself.

I grinned, "Well, I've heard it said that it's better to rule in Hell."

Epilogue

Despair filled my heart. The Living Gods were dead. All I could do was stare blankly at the wall, my mind full of ash. They had reshaped the world, and now They were gone. What were we to do? Who would look after us and protect us? Already heretics had arisen, decrying Them as false, and putting to torch Their churches and temples. And then They appeared in my dreams. "Have faith," He spoke, His voice booming like a thousand trumpets. "We are not gone. It was time for us to leave this world, departing for a better one. But We still watch you, We still love you, and all you have to do is call upon Us and We shall answer." I made my Pact with Them that very night.

-The Epistle of Isabel to the Faithful 1:1-3

A Thousand Years Later...

I stood trembling at the crossroads, waiting.

Ever since I found a forbidden copy of the Glassnerian Gospels in my grandpa's chest and read the Epistle of Isabel, I'd been filled with a foolish desire to summon the Tyrants. The Epistle claimed it was easy. Take a box, place a lock of your hair, a lavender flower, and the foot of a white rabbit in it, then bury the box at the center of a crossroads at midnight. Supposedly, the Tyrants of Hell, the Living Gods, would appear, and they would grant three wishes in exchange for your soul.

Despite the Church Reborn's efforts, copies of the Glassnerian Bible still floated about. And I couldn't resist reading the copy I found when sorting through my grandfather's house. Who knew the old coot was a heretic? The account of the Tyrants differed so much from the Histories. They weren't brutal dictators who enslaved mankind, but loving gods who valiantly fought against the demons and tried to create a utopia before being murdered by Saint Chasity.

I shivered as I waited for midnight. It was spring, but the nights were still cold. A chill seeped into my body as doubts crept into my mind; nothing was going to happen. This wasn't going to work. The Tyrants were just a myth. Nothing more than history distorted by a thousand years of embellishment by storytellers and priests, or by mothers trying to frighten their children into behaving.

I knew all the stories, relishing them as a child: the Tyrants, Mark and Mary, who could enslave you with a single word, and who commanded the forces of nature itself; silver-tongued Alison and her demonic wife Desiree, who could suck out your soul with her kiss; April, with her eyes made of glass, who would freeze a man solid if he ever caught her deadly gaze; Violet, who strangled men with the two serpents that grew out of her hair; siren Korina, whose doll-faced innocence lured men to their deaths; and their demonic Guard, a horde of vicious women led by the icy Chasity. If I wasn't so desperate for a better life, for someone to pay attention to me, I would never have even tried this foolishness.

If I wasn't so desperate for Elisbetta.

Feeling foolish, I turned to leave. Nothing would happen; it was just a myth that you could sell your soul to the Tyrants for three wishes.

The moonlight dimmed.

I glanced up, expecting to see a dark cloud pass across its silver, pockmarked face. It was a clear sky, but the moon looked wan. I shook my head, remembering other legends that claimed men had walked across the moon, crossing the dark void. What complete--

"Hello, Ysaak," a man said.

I gasped in startlement and whipped around, heart pounding. Two figures stood in the center of the crossroads. I hadn't heard anyone approach, no footsteps crunching on the gravel or the rustle of brush. The road had been empty a moment ago.

I swallowed and studied them. One was a tall man with dark brown hair, blue eyes shining in the moonlight. His arm was wrapped around a woman who clung to his muscular frame. My breath caught--she was gorgeous--dark-red hair framed a heart-shaped, freckled face. Green eyes twinkled with mirth. A low-cut dress revealed an immodest swath of creamy bosom.

Sweat broke across my entire body. The Tyrants of Hell stood before me, and they seemed so... normal. Wme fire and the brimstone? There wasn't even a chorus of the damned. I was almost disappointed... Except... there was something in their eyes. An ancient, powerful, and inhuman presence that battered against my soul. These beings were as beyond me as I was beyond an ant.

I swallowed, taking a step back.

"You don't have to be scared," the woman purred. "You summoned us, after all."

"I want to sell my soul for three wishes," I said, trying not to let my voice crack. My heart thudded like a woodpecker against a tree.

The man smiled at the woman. "Of course. My wife and I are more than happy to make a Pact with you."
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The End​