Evil - Chapter 32
I tried. I really tried. I tried to make her see the light, but she was right. I didn’t really know her at all.
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.
I risked all of this, my life, Kimberly’s life, heck, even my mother’s soul, on a person I barely knew. Maybe she was right, maybe I did take pity on her because she was in a wheelchair. Or maybe I liked her because she took pity on me. She was the first person who showed real kindness to me when I got to Missouri, and that alone made me think we were friends.
Either way, later that night, we loaded up several vans and made our way to the drop location that the king gave us, where we would meet Prince Yimnit and exchange their prisoners for Margaret. Maybe she was a prisoner, after all. What else would you call somebody that you held against her will?
I wasn’t feeling up to travel, but the king insisted I be there for the exchange, along with Director Frente and Commander Bivnol, and so the four of us made our way to the drop site with another van for the hostages, where Kimberly waited just in case.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I said to Margaret as we pulled through a pair of metal gates. We were within the walls of a hulking cathedral to Juno and Jupiter. A golden fountain spewed water from a naked satyr in the center of the great marble square. “I was just trying to protect you.”
“You did save my life at the start of all this,” Margaret said. “I still hate you, but I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. Since I hope this is the last time I ever see you, I can at least thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
The van came to a stop, and Commander Bivnol opened the back seat, flipped open Margaret’s chair, and helped her into it. I decided not to take the chair offered to me, even though I stood on wobbly legs.
I leaned against Margaret’s wheelchair as I pushed it around the fountain to the entrance of the grand cathedral. All around us, stained glass windows shone down with reliefs of the gods mosaiced into them. They looked strikingly similar to the gods I knew. At the other side of the courtyard, a stone steeple rose high into the air, with a bell tower at the top of it, and capped with the image of an eclipse.
“We didn’t think you would have the courage to show,” a man said. Prince Yimnit. I recognized him from pictures. He had short black hair and dark skin and wore a thick fur cape. He was a thin but tall man who stood even taller with his perfect posture. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. Back on my Earth, he would be in college. Maybe in another world, he could be my friend, but here, the corruption consumed him.
“My father didn’t think you were dumb enough. I knew you would be.”
“We have Margaret,” Director Frente said. “Where are our men?”
Prince Yimnit snapped his fingers, and the doors to the cathedral swung open. Six Jackboots stormed outside, each pushing one of the hostages with the tip of an automatic rifle, like they had once done to me.
“We are men of our word, which is more than I can say for the likes of you.”
“Tell your men to put their weapons down,” Commander Bivnol said, going for her service revolver.
“Or what? You’ll kill an unarmed girl? Please, even you are not that heartless.”
“Heartless!” I shouted. “You’re the heartless one!”
Prince Yimnit scoffed. “And you must be the wandering girl. The traveler that they have brainwashed to believe their cause is a righteous one. You should come with us, too. You will be showered with riches beyond imagination and lauded with adulation like you were a god. You will want for nothing, and every day until your last will be filled with joy. It is the greatest thing to actually being immortal.” He stepped closer. “We know your part in this was coerced, and we will make that case to the people if you join with us now. However, if you choose to remain our enemy, you will be treated as such.”
It was a tempting offer, hearing it in person, and I could see why it was so appealing to Margaret. There was nothing appealing about the life I had to go back to, but it was my life—the life I’d built, and I wasn’t done with it.
“Your words are sweet, prince,” I said. “If your riches weren’t tainted with the blood of others, I might even take you up on it, but I could never live with myself knowing what you have done, knowing that all of your gains have been ill-gotten.”
“I’m sorry to hear you say that.” He closed his fist. “I think we’re done here.”
His hand dropped, and each man fired a bullet into the head of a captive, and they all dropped to the ground, dead. Before the echoes ceased in the courtyard, a dozen soldiers revealed themselves on the roofs above us.
As they did, Commander Bivnol played her only card left. She pulled out her gun and aimed it at Margaret. “I’ll kill her.”
“Go ahead.”
“Brother!” Margaret shouted. “Please!”
He stepped closer. “I have no affection for you, sister.” He sneered. “Look at you, a cripple. Father could never love you. He could never show you in public without shame on his face.” He took another step forward. “Any value you have to us is far surpassed by your deformity.”
“Then why do you want me back so bad?”
“You have but one purpose. To die at the right time. However, if you must die now, that is a risk we are willing to take.”
He took one more step, and I drew my gun. Just like Commander Bivnol showed me, I aimed it at the prince’s heart. I pushed my legs apart and closed one eye to aim down the barrel. “Say one more word or take one more step, and I will kill you.”
“You don’t have the resolve to pull that trigger, girl.” He was right. When he stepped closer, I hesitated. “Taking down targets in a shooting gallery is one thing. Doing it in person, with a live being, knowing you will take the life from them, is something different.” He took another step.
A puff of smoke appeared in front of us, and Kimberly drove a dagger into Prince Yimnit’s shoulder. “Maybe she can’t kill you, but I don’t have any of her reservations.”
Prince Yimnit stumbled backward and fell to the ground. “What are you waiting for? Kill them!”
Kimberly turned and grabbed each of us into a tight circle. “Time to go.”
She didn’t need my help to find the rebellion base this time. She vanished of her own accord, and when we rematerialized back at the base, there was little reaction. It was old hat to see Kimberly phase in and out. In fact, it was her plan to help us if she needed to, and she executed it flawlessly. Well, not flawlessly; we did end up with six dead men.
Commander Bivnol tapped her chest. “We live as one.”
“We die as one,” the director said in chorus, pounding her chest.
When the dust settled, I turned to Margaret, who was weeping. I leaned down to hug her. “I’m so so sorry.”
She couldn’t do anything but wrap her arms around mine and sob.
***
Prince Yimnit put out his propaganda across the airwaves: We ambushed them, and they had no choice but to kill the hostages; we were the villains. We knew that wasn’t true. We just had to make sure that other people knew it, too.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked, hobbling into Margaret’s room with a cane.
She was dressed in a blue dress with a red scarf and white buttons, and she smiled when she saw me. “Not at all. This is completely crazy.”
We made our way to the elevator. I had proven myself loyal enough to get a key to the elevator. They were still on the fence about Margaret and Kimberly, but I expressed to the director and commander that we weren’t in the business of keeping people prisoner, and they agreed to release them from their bonds…eventually, with lots of goading and convincing. They got there in the end and provided all three of us with our own rooms on the upper floors.
When we arrived in the basement, Madam Fantasmo took Margaret and brought her down a newly constructed metal ramp to the floor of the facility. She was dressed in a big, pink, sequin dress with thick make-up and a teased, blonde wig that easily doubled her head size.
“Do you have it memorized?” she asked the both of us.
I nodded. “I do, but mostly I’m just going to be standing behind Margaret and smiling, right?”
“No smiling,” she replied. “This is deadly serious, and smiling is a sign of weakness in some animals. We don’t want anyone to think we’re weak.”
We entered a TV studio, complete with three cameras, massive lights, and a stage with a picture of the city as the backdrop. Madam Fantasmo wheeled Margaret onto the stage and spent a minute futzing with her clothing until it was “perfect.”
Then she turned to me, smiled, and nodded. “You’ll do great.”
She scooted down the stairs and out the door, closing it behind her. I looked around at the dozens of people in the room staring up at us and found Sindra in the crowd. She was counting down from ten with her hands. When she went to three, a red light popped up on the cameras, and then, at one, I opened my mouth and started.
“My name is Anjelica. This is Margaret. One week ago, we arrived on your planet. Since then, we have been threatened, convicted of crimes we didn’t commit, assaulted, and had our lives threatened in innumerable ways.”
“Then,” Margaret said after I finished. “After all of this, we were slandered. The king lied to you, his people. What happened in the courtyard of that cathedral wasn’t an attack by the rebellion, it was a coordinated ambush by the prince. He tried to take my life, and the life of my friend, to end a rebellion before it had a chance to get started.”
Margaret swallowed loudly. “But it has started, and I am here to tell you, as the daughter of the king, that he is in the wrong. He is an evil man, and we know his secrets. We are not here to hurt you, citizens. We are here to liberate you, to bring you freedom.”
“It’s hard to even understand freedom,” I said. “True freedom, until you have felt it, but I promise you, once you have felt it, there is nothing like it. Things are about to get very bad, very quickly. We are trying to remove a cancer from this planet.”
“And when it is gone,” Margaret said. “When he is gone, you will realize how unhealthy you have been all these years and how much better freedom feels. As my mother would say, ‘I am doing this for your own good.’ I never understood those words until now.”
We both clasped our hands to our chests. “For freedom. For justice. For Onmiri. For Earth!”
I pounded my chest twice. “We live as one.”
“We die as one,” Margaret said in chorus, holding her hand to her chest.
Then, the lights went out, and my lungs tightened. We had just declared war on the king, and there was no turning back now. God, I hoped we were doing the right thing.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.