Evil - Chapter 28
Margaret had been released from the hospital earlier that day and was now recovering from her injuries.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
It's not easy being the Antichrist.
Anjelica’s mother never told her that she was a demon. Now, all she wants is her old life back, but that’s not possible for her. Not after what she’s seen.
Anjelica used to be a popular cheerleader with an awesome life, but that was before an evil cult of demons tried to use her blood to open a portal to Hell and start the Apocalypse.
She was rescued from that fate, barely, and because of the imminent threat to her life, her saviors ripped her from Los Angeles and brought her to a safe house in the middle of nowhere.
They said it was for her own good, but she would rather be dead than stuck in boring, old Bronard, Missouri. She was from the big city, so a sleepy, rural life wasn’t for her.
She longed for excitement.
So, when she met a young witch with a mysterious past who promised to show her everything she knew about opening portals and traveling between distant lands, they bonded immediately
I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, right?
It’s not like they would open an intergalactic gateway to another planet and get thrown into a brand, new world with no way to get back to Earth, right?
Join Anjelica in her own solo adventure and find out what happened to her immediately after the events in Magic.
The manor where she was staying was an hour outside the city, on a ten-acre estate surrounded by a high stone wall with electrified barbed wire on top of it. Security cameras monitored every entrance, and more cameras were positioned as lookouts.
“That’s the biggest weakness of King Ulthar’s people,” Director Frente said as she explained the plan to me. “They are over-reliant on technology and have a nearly godlike reverence for it. We’ve been inside their back end for months now, and they have no idea. We’ll have two teams.” A picture of the castle was projected onto a screen in the conference room we’d moved into. She slammed a pointer into the northern corner of the wall. “One will infiltrate here and make their way across the grounds on foot to provide tactical support. Their job will be to take control of this building.” She indicated a small house offset from the main building by a hundred yards. “This is the guard house, which manages the security of the house and surrounding facilities. If we control that building, they won’t be able to call for help while we infiltrate.”
She gestured to a bespectacled man controlling the projector, and he flipped to a picture of a delivery truck. “Every afternoon at three pm, a food truck enters the facility to stock it with enough supplies to feed a small army. Tomorrow, that food truck will have an unfortunate accident and will be replaced by one of ours. A small team will enter the facility, make their way through the house, and recover the asset.”
“And where do I fit into this?” I asked. “I’m not a soldier.”
“That’s true,” she said. “However, we need the asset to come willingly. It’s essential that you are there to show the asset we’re not kidnapping it; we’re liberating it.”
“Can we call her Margaret, please? She has a name.”
Director Frente stared at me coldly. Then, her gaze softened. “Of course. You’re right. I know this seems like a lot of tactical mumbo jumbo, Anjelica, but it’s important that we’re all on the same page. We only get one shot at this. If we don’t get her out, they’ll move her into a more fortified facility, and we’ll lose our chance.”
“Can’t we wait until she’s better recovered, though? I mean, she just left the hospital this morning.”
“Again, no. She’s only in this manor house to recover. Once she’s at full strength, she’ll be moved to the palace, and we’ll lose our shot to get her. This is a small window, but we know what we’re doing.” She closed the pointer. “I’m asking you to trust us. Can you do that?”
I nodded. “I think so, but I don’t have much choice in the matter, do I?”
“We always have choices, Anjelica. They just might not be good ones.”
“If I don’t go along with it, are you still going to move ahead with your plan anyway?”
Director Frente looked around the room, then nodded. “Yes, we believe it’s our only option and that Margaret is a valuable enough asset that we will risk a whole heck of a lot to recover her.”
“Then I’m in if only to make sure you don’t hurt her.”
“We’re not the monsters here, Anjelica,” the director said. “We’re the good guys.”
“I know,” I said, then blinked when someone flicked on the lights. Or at least I know you say that.
The director clapped her hands. “All right, we have one day to finish preparing and get in position.” She pointed at the bearded man I’d seen in her office before. “Jasper, you organize your best people for this; we can’t afford any muck-ups.”
“Of course, ma’am,” he said with a nod and walked out of the room briskly.
The meeting was disbursed, and soon it was just Madam Fantasmo and I sitting across from each other. She smiled at me, but I could not return the sentiment. “You should be happy, Anjelica. This time tomorrow, you’ll have your friend back, and we have the best doctors in the city to look after her. I promise you that.”
“I believe you,” I replied with a sigh. “There’s just something that feels off about all of this. I mean, you’re talking about starting a war with the king.”
“We’ve been at war with the king for some time. We’re just making it public.”
“And after this…that’s when I make my statement?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, once we have Margaret, then we’ll issue a statement, and you’ll deliver your remarks. We’ll have them for you in an hour so you can practice.”
I pumped my fingers into my palm, trying to prevent them from shaking. “I’ve never been good at public speaking, and this is about the most public speech you can give, ay?”
“Think of it this way…with any luck, we’ll find a way to get you home soon, and you can get back to your life.”
“Yeah, but your lives will never be the same.”
She placed her hand on mine. “That’s exactly what we want. We don’t want things to be the same, Anjelica.”
I stood up. “This is just a lot to take in. Like, a few weeks ago I was a cheerleader in Los Angeles, and now, well, every time I think things can’t get more intense, they do. First, I was kidnapped, then I was forced to move to a small town, then I fell through a portal, and now I’m being asked to be the face of a rebellion.” I swallowed. “On top of that, I’m supposed to join a group of people who are assaulting a military compound. This is absolutely banana sauce, and I’m not doing okay when I try to process it.”
Madam Fantasmo stood and wrapped me in a hug. “I don’t think I’m the right person to comfort you on this, and I’m sorry this came to you, but it did. The gods never give you more than you can handle.”
I pushed away from her. “That’s garbage. They always give you more than you can handle. The gods are constantly upping the ante and then upping it some more, like boiling frogs. You turn the heat up little by little, and the little buggers don’t feel they’re getting boiled alive, and then, they die.” I took a deep breath. “I feel like those frogs.”
“That’s silly, dear. You know the heat is being turned up on you. You’re nothing like those frogs.”
“We have one thing in common. We’re both being boiled alive.”
***
“I don’t think you should do it,” Volkim said as she and I flipped through bulletproof vests in the armory, trying to find one in my size. “This is suicide.”
“I agree. I shouldn’t do it.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because I don’t have a choice,” I said, pulling one of the smaller vests off the rack and throwing it over my shoulders. “I would love to have the choice, but I am the only one who can do it.” The vest wouldn’t clip in the front. “This one is too small.”
“That’s garbage, and you know it. We all want to believe that we’re the only person who stands between the world descending into chaos, but that’s just not true, not for any of us. We’re all replaceable.” She pulled another vest off the rack and handed it to me. “Try this one.”
“Easy for you to say.” This time the vest snapped together perfectly. “You’re not the one who fell into an alternate dimension, or whatever. You’re not the one who’s a dem—” I cringed and pulled back before I could say the word demon. There were some things you just don’t talk about, at all, especially with non-magical people. “There’s a lot on my head.”
“That doesn’t mean you should go jumping into a buzzsaw, though,” she said. “If I were the only one who could do what you ‘have to do,’ I would walk away.”
“Then I would never get home,” I said to her.
“Would that be so bad? How great could your life be? You already told me that you were being hunted back on your planet, so would it be so bad to stay here?”
“I don’t know how to say yes without insulting you. It’s pretty frigging amazing that you can understand as much as you do about what I say, but this isn’t my planet, and I
want to go home.” I handed her the vest back, and she placed it into a little cubby with the rest of the gear we pulled out. “Besides, I’m being hunted here, too. It’s not like I could lead a normal life here.”
“Just be careful, okay?”
“I’m literally about to go on a super dangerous mission. I don’t think careful is something I can promise you.” I smiled at her. “I promise that I want to be safe, though. I have no interest in dying out there; gods know where from home, okay?”
“I guess that’s better than nothing.” Footsteps clomped from down the hall, and a jacked woman with a square jaw and short, blonde hair walked into the armory. She was already dressed in full battle regalia like a Jackboot, dark black pants, long black shirt, bulletproof vest, and two guns holstered on her hip. She was only missing the black helmet.
“Recruit,” she said harshly, walking forward. “Which one of you is Anjelica?”
I raised my hand as Volkim slid past her out of the room. “Me.”
“I’m Commander Bivnol. Have you ever worked a gun before, soldier?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve only held one before. Once.”
She turned and beckoned me to follow her. She walked briskly with pounding steps until she pushed open a door into a shooting range. Several other officers stood in their booths, firing at targets on the far end of the room. Commander Bivnol reached into a cabinet, pulling out a pair of orange headphones and handing them to me before donning her own pair.
I wanted to protest. I had no interest in firing a gun.
As if she could read my thoughts, Commander Bivnol screamed over the earphones. “Our goal is to make it so that you don’t have to fire this weapon, but you need to know the basics.” She marched to an empty booth, pulled out one of her pistols, and handed it to me. “Hold the handle of the gun with your dominant hand. Brace it with your other hand. Feet hip-distance apart, take a breath, and fire, closing one eye to aim down the barrel when you do. Don’t close your eyes. And watch the kickback—nobody is ever prepared for the kickback their first time.”
My shaky right hand closed around the butt of the pistol, and I pointed it toward the target at the end of the gallery. The gun was heavier than I thought it would be, though I didn’t know why that surprised me. After all, it was basically pure metal I was holding in my hands that protected me against a miniature explosion. I closed one eye and leveled my sight on the target.
“Legs!” the commander screamed, and I spread my feet apart to get a stronger footing. “Good! Fire!”
I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. It was harder than I thought. The trigger did not want to give, and I wasn’t particularly interested in forcing the issue, but I knew the only way out of this situation was to fire, so I clasped my hand tighter until a huge explosion burst from the end of the barrel. My hands flung high in the air as the gun recoiled.
“First one’s the hardest!” the commander shouted. “Again!”
I pulled the trigger again, and she was right. I could pull the trigger with—well, not with ease, but without the massive fear and trepidation that filled me before.
When I was done, I placed the gun on the ledge, and Commander Bivnol pulled the target close to reveal that I had hit over half the bullets inside the main target. Where the others landed, I had no idea.
“This is good,” she said, looking over the target. “This is what we consider center mass.” She pointed to the top of her chest and bottom of her stomach. “Aim here, and do what you just did, and you should stop anything running toward you.”
“I really don’t want to do that,” I replied, watching the commander holster the gun. “Like, really, really, really.”
“Nobody wants to kill people, recruit. Okay, that’s not true, some people do. That’s not our focus. We’re moving into hostile enemy territory, so just stick with me, do as I say, and we’ll get through it, okay?”
“Okay.” My voice squeaked. I didn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth, that it would be okay. Nothing would be okay. Not until I got home again.
Getting Margaret back, though, saving her from her sadistic father, that was a good start.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.