The Devil's Pact Pt. 41

"Shh, it's okay," she soothed. "I'm here."

I realized I was shaking. My entire body trembled.

"What if I had died? Then you'd..." My voice trailed off. When Mary had made her Pact, she'd tied her life to mine. I'd wished to live a long, healthy life, and maybe that's why I've had so many close calls. But I never specified how long I wanted to live. Just a long life. Demons were crafty bastards, and it was possible I could die tomorrow, and the Devil could just claim that he thought eleven months was a long life for a mortal.

"We're going to hell when we die, aren't we?" Mary's voice was full of fright.

"Probably," I answered. "We made our choice, and one day the bill's going to come due."

"What if there was a way to be immortals?" she asked, digging into my back. "If we never die, we never have to pay the price."

"How?"

"I had Sam look into it after Brandon's attack," she explained. Sam, a former slut and now our vizier, was in Israel researching to find a way to trap Lucifer if he escaped from prison. "The Magicks of the Witch of Endor hinted at the spell. Well, last night she called. She found the Eylowm ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls." Mary swallowed. "It involves our daughter."

"Oh." Our daughter?

"It's because you're a guy. Like how you have to use your mom for the Zimmah spell. So when she grows up..."

"I see."

"I'm sure she'll want to," she quickly added. "And since I've tied my life to yours, well, we'll both benefit."

"So nothing could kill us? That seems a little powerful."

"Well, there is one person that could," Mary admitted. "But I don't see what could make our daughter want to kill you."

"Okay," I answered. I smiled. I liked the idea. We could sidestep the whole issue entirely. We just had to survive at least another eighteen years. When our daughter came of age, I was sure she'd want to love her parents, to enjoy incestuous delights.

"What are we going to do about this new attack?" Mary asked after a moment of silence. "Should we abandon plane travel?"

"We need to speak to Sam. We have to find a way to keep those aerials off the plane."

"I'll have... Ooh."

"What's wrong, Mare?"

"Oh, nothing. I think little Chasity's excited. She's sure... Oooh..." I glanced over my shoulder, and Mary had a grimace of pain on her face. "Just some cramps."

"Do you need anything?" I asked her.

"No, no, I'm fine."

She kept massaging me, sliding down my ass as she kneaded my lower back. Mary groaned again. "Um, hun?" she said, a little excitement in her voice.

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm going into labor."

I blinked at her. "What?" I asked, my mind suddenly racing a mile a minute.

"Yeah, I'm in labor."

"Right. We need to... um... What?" My mind was completely blank. Women in labor go somewhere. I should know this.

"The hospital," Mary offered.

"Of course. Right, the hospital." Then I smiled. "We're having a baby."

* * *

Samnag "Sam" Soun - Jerusalem, Israel

I yawned, careful not to exhale on the fragile scroll fragment before me. I sat in the study room in the Shrine of the Book, the wing of the Israel Museum built to house the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was a clean room with atmospheric controls to keep the humidity, temperature, and pressure at just the right values to preserve the delicate books.

"We... the knowledge... the hidden room... behind the red rock, " is what I thought the scrap of Aramaic read. There were several holes in the parchment, leaving the text incomplete. The Aramaic word used for "hidden room" shared its roots with the Hebrew word Matmown. There had a been a number of fragmented texts pointing to a hidden vault somewhere. This was the first scrap that was intact enough to read a location.

"Candy, do you have the survey maps for Qumran?" I asked.

Candy pulled out her iPad and tapped it a few times, her garish hair, half-dyed pink and half-dyed bright blue, swayed about her youthful face. "Here it is."

I glanced at the screen, looking for anything that might be a red rock. I touched the screen at a large boulder on the survey map listed as red sandstone. "Did they ever do any ultrasounds or excavations in this quadrant?"

Candy frowned and read through the notes. "No, it's pretty far from any of the caves. About a kilometer from cave 5. Why?"

"I think we need to take some survey equipment out there," I told her. "I have a hunch that there's something there."

"I'll go make the arrangements." Candy smiled and gave me a brief kiss on the lips before turning back.

I rubbed my lower back, stretched, and pulled the next scroll fragment, and began translating the faded Aramaic.

* * *

Friday, May 2nd, 2014 - Mark Glassner - Puyallup, WA

At 12:03 AM, our daughter was born.

She was so beautiful. Seven pounds, two ounces and sixteen inches long. Mary had been in labor for seven hours. We were both so happy to finally hold our daughter, wrapped in her pink blanket. She was so light. I kept staring into her face. She was so tiny, so cute, her little hands balled up into fists.

Chasity Alberta Glassner.

Mary smiled fondly at me as she rested on the bed, watching me pace back and forth, gently rocking our daughter in the crook of my arm. I missed my other two children's birth, but she was special. She was my daughter with Mary. She had my deep-blue eyes combined with her mother's cute nose and auburn hair.

Little Chasity started crying. I froze, not sure what to do. I glanced at Mary.

"Maybe she's finally hungry?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said and gently handed my newborn to my wife.

Mary unbuttoned her gown, exposing her full breast and gently placed our daughter to her teat. A huge smile blossomed on her face. "She's sucking, Mark." There were tears glistening in her emerald eyes as she smiled down at Chasity. "I'm nursing her."

I climbed on the bed next to my wife, cuddled against her, and rested my head on her shoulder as I watched our beautiful daughter nurse. "We made her," I whispered in awe. "Our own little miracle. And we didn't have to use any dark powers to do it."

Chapter Five

Alison and Desiree stalked the world, hunting down and purging all those sorry souls who made pacts with the demons. With the might of the Theocracy, the two women executed the will of the Tyrants without mercy.

--excerpt from The History of the Tyrants' Theocracy, by Tina Allard

Wednesday, May 5th, 2014 - Noel Heinrich - Patriot Headquarters, MT

"Innocents are going to die," Wyatt pointed out as I went over my plan.

"They always do," I admitted, sadness weighing down my soul. Innocents already had. At least one. I touched the black sword resting on the table. It was never far away, not after the cost... I pushed that memory out of my mind. Dwelling on it wouldn't help. "It's our last chance to do something."

"We could try summoning demons again," Wyatt countered.

"If those demons we summoned couldn't crash his plane, what chance do they have against him on the ground?" I asked.

"None," Wyatt admitted, a frown creasing his weathered face. "We should wait for another opportunity. One where there won't be crowds."

"When?"

"I don't know. What's his schedule looking like?"

I shrugged. "This is the only public appearance scheduled for a month. Our attacks have driven him to be secretive about his movements."

"Then let's wait and see what his next appearance is like," Wyatt cautioned. "The golems are indiscriminate."

"And what happens if they find us?" I asked. Who'd have ever thought Alison and Desiree would be leading commando teams and hunting us down? Slutty, little Alison! We'd had the Patriots scatter across the country. They should be safe thanks to our Pacts to mask our auras and look like those under the control of the Tyrants instead of Warlocks. But those two had killed a dozen of us, finding us somehow.

"We retreat into the shadow if they attacked," Wyatt answered, arms folded before him, face stubborn. "They'll never find the fallback site. It's not even in this country."

"We're being hunted down like dogs. Those bitches of his keep finding us no matter how well we hide. Half the world is already part of his damned Theocracy, and I bet in a year he will have his fist around the entire planet." I slammed my hand on the table, the sword rattling against it. "We swore to do whatever it took to save America, to save the world! Do you want to back out now?"

Wyatt sighed. "Fine. God help us, we'll unleash the golems tomorrow."

I snorted, "God can't help us. He already failed to stop him."

Tomorrow, Mark Glassner's blood would water Liberty's tree.

* * *

Alison de la Fuentes

I crouched on my belly upon a low ridge overlooking a ranch in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Montana. This morning, my dowsing had led my team of commandos and me here. The next Warlock for us to capture or eliminate. And not just one. According to the dowsing, there were multiple Warlocks here. At least a dozen.

I hadn't spotted any Warlocks as I surveyed the farm. But I had seen three Thralls with the auraculars, the enchanted binoculars Sam whipped up last November before she jetted off to Israel. The clever tool mimicked the Mowdah spell, allowing me to see auras like Master and Mistress when peering through it.

You should be with Master, my subconscious whispered. I did wish I could be with Master and Mistress all the time, but this was too important. The Warlocks had to be stopped before they could hurt more people. So I ignored my subconscious like I had the last six months I'd spent hunting the bastards down.

The three thralls I spotted were all armed with heavy weapons, assault rifles or maybe fully automatic machine guns. They patrolled the collected buildings of the sheep ranch with experience. They all looked like military or law enforcement. An excited thrill danced in my stomach. I think I just hit the jackpot.

"Mi Sirenita," a beautiful voice whispered behind me.

My beautiful wife crawled up beside me dressed in scrub camos. She looked more than a little butch. I gave her a passionate kiss, loving the taste of her lips. It was a little awkward kissing her while we lay on our bellies, but I hadn't seen her since baby Chasity's birth last week. I missed my wife. Our prolonged separation had been rough, but there were just so many Warlocks who needed to be put down.

If you just stopped hunting Warlocks and went back to Master, you'd see her all the time. I was really tempted to listen to my subconscious, but our work was necessary.

"What is so important?" Desiree asked. "I was close to a Warlock in Portland." There was a hard edge in her voice. Desiree positively hated Warlocks.

I wished Brandon could die over and over.

"I think I found the Patriot's headquarters." I couldn't contain the excitement in my voice. "I've taken out enough Patriots to recognize their phony Thrall auras. I've seen three on guard. Plus, I have a predator drone orbiting overhead. Infrared shows another ten or so people milling around in the house."

Desiree peered at the ranch with her auraculars. "Hmm, maybe. What's up with all the statues?"

One of the fenced pens that used to hold sheep was filled with what looked like over a hundred statues. They were roughly human-shaped, but built like tanks, and looked to stand nearly ten feet tall. They were made of the same red clay that was underneath all the grass in the area. I'd spotted a large pit in a field that had been dug out. I had no idea why they'd build them. Cover for their base? Some sort of terracotta statue business?

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "But if this is the Patriots, we have the chance to obliterate them!"

"So a joint operation?" Desiree asked.

"Yeah," I smiled. "Sounds fun."

"Hmm, it sure does."

* * *

Thursday, May 6th, 2014 - Mark Glassner - The Mansion, WA

"Are you ready, Chase?" I asked my week-old daughter. I was using that high-pitched voice everyone seemed to use when talking to infants. I just couldn't help myself; she was so cute and beautiful. Chase, as we'd started calling her, cooed and stared up at me with her blue eyes. "I wonder what Mommy is doing. Huh, do you want to go see?"

Chase gurgled.

"That's what I thought, kiddo." I kissed her forehead and then strolled into Mary's dressing room. My wife sat naked before her table and mirror, applying her make-up. Her auburn hair fell in a full, curly mass about her shoulders. "Looks like Mommy isn't ready yet, even though we have to leave in fifteen minutes."

Mary glared at me over her shoulder, her expression softening when she saw Chase. "Mommy needs to look like a Goddess," she said in that high-pitched, sing-song voice. "Daddy just needs to not look like a slob."

I feasted on my wife's body. You could hardly tell Mary had even been pregnant. Between her Gift and her Pact, her body had quickly returned to its youthful, flawless beauty. Though her breasts were still a cup size larger, heavy with her sweet milk.

In fact, that was the first thing my daughter and I had in common--we both loved Mary's milk.

I admired my wife as she pulled dark black, thigh-high stockings up her pale legs. Then she stepped into her deep-blue dress and pulled it up her body. It was strapless, and would leave the majority of her freckled breasts bare.

"Can you zip me?" she asked.

I handed Chase to her. Mary cooed at our daughter as I zipped up her dress. Chase was a happy baby during the day. At night, however, she was the opposite. I yawned. I spent an hour last night walking up and down the halls with our fussy daughter before she fell back to sleep. I could have had a maid do it, but I wanted to be her father, and that meant getting little sleep so I could take care of my beautiful daughter.

"Today is your special day," Mary said, still speaking in that baby tone to our daughter. "You're going to meet your worshipers, and they are going to just love you. Yes, they are."

The Cunningham twins were building the main Church of the Living Gods in downtown Puyallup, but for the moment, they had repurposed a nearby Christian megachurch. Our worshipers gathered there to witness their new goddess.

Many Christian churches were being transformed into Living Churches as the number of Christians in America plummeted. With so many new converts over the last five months, many of our original worshipers had founded their own congregations across the country, our Missionaries.

As we walked through the hallways of the mansion, maids would pause from their cleaning to curtsy. I let my eyes admire their fine bosoms on display in their transparent blouses, and maybe reach under a ruffled skirt to give a bare ass a squeeze. Outside, our limo awaited in the middle of a convoy made up of black SUVs carrying several squads of bodyguards. More bodyguards would already be down at the church, making sure everything was secure.

"There's my Granddaughter," Sean, my father-in-law, cooed, taking Chase from my wife.

Both of our families were coming to the ceremony. Sean stood at the heart of his family: his very pregnant wife, Tiffany; his two daughters, Missy and Shannon; their boyfriends, Damien and George; and the family's sex slaves. Dawn belonged to Missy, Starla to George and Shannon, Mrs. Corra to Damien, and Felicity to Sean and Tiffany. It was still surprising to see Felicity. Nearly a year ago, Mary had given the eighteen-year-old girl to her father, and then Sean had freed her after the nun's attack. I never thought to see her again, but a month ago she showed up, begging to be Sean's slave again.

"Don't hog her," my mom said to Sean, a big smile on her face as he handed our daughter off to her. "She's just so beautiful, isn't she, Betty?"

My mom's Black girlfriend nodded in agreement, her arm wrapped around my mom's waist. Then Antsy insisted on her turn holding my daughter. She tenderly held her niece while her girlfriend Via cooed in joy. Missy demanded to be next, then Shannon, and last the very pregnant Tiffany had her turn, tears glinting in her eyes as she held her granddaughter.

"We have to get going," I finally said, taking my daughter from my mother-in-law. "You can hold her later."

The limo pulled away from the mansion. Something almost like fear flashed across Mary's face as she gazed at our daughter in her car seat between us.

"What?" I asked her, reaching across the car seat and taking her hand.

Mary worried her lips, still staring at our daughter. "What if the Patriots...?"

"They won't," I lied. Fear nagged the back of my mind too. What if they did try something? I kept coming up with rationalizations for why they wouldn't. "It's too public. They're not going to risk all those innocent people's lives."

"Maybe this is a mistake, Mark."

"We can't keep her in a bubble all her life. We have our guards, she has her amulet, and we'll be there to protect her."

"Yeah, sis," Missy giggled. "Your husband's a bad-ass warrior. There's nothing to worry about. He'll just summon that wicked sword of his and..." She made a swishing noise and sliced her arm through the air. "That's that."

Antsy laughed. "That's my big brother. Attack the problem head-on with a big, phallic-shaped object."

"Maybe I should attack you with a phallic-shaped object," I grinned at my sister.

"Promise?" she asked, fluttering her eyes.

"You can count on it, sis."

"So, Mark," Shannon said, shifting in her seat between George and Missy, "I've always wondered something. It's been eating at me for ages."

"Yeah?"

"You got your Gift from Mom, but how would you pass yours on? Hypothetically speaking, how did one Monk give his powers to another? Would you have to ass-fuck the guy? I mean, that's basically how nuns do it, right?"

"Yep," Tiffany nodded, a naughty twinkle in her eyes. "We ass-fuck each other."

Laughter exploded through the limo.

"So, how do you pass it on?" Shannon asked after catching her breath.

"I'd have to die," I answered.

"What?" Mary exclaimed, giving me a shocked look. "Is that a joke, Mark?"

"Nope," I said, trying to sound blasé about it. I tried not to think about it. "Monks pass on their gift to the person who kills them."

"Why?" Mary asked. "I figured they just fucked someone. Like nuns do it."

"It's an act of forgiveness," I explained. "I never told you this, Mare?"

She shook her head.

"That sounds weird," Antsy said. "Why would they do it like that?"

"Well, the way Azazel"--she was the angel who trained humans who had both the Gift and made a Pact with a demon--"explained it was to help the person who killed you become a better human being. That's why there are no other Monks. If they were slain by a demon, or if they thought the man who killed them would abuse the power, they wouldn't pass on their Gift. Then it's just... gone."

Mary raised her eyebrow. "How can you forgive the person that killed you?"

I shrugged. It seemed impossibly hard. "Fuck if I know."

"Well, I guess you won't be giving up your powers any time soon, big bro."

"Yeah," I grinned at my little sister. "Little attached to my life."

"So am I," my wife smiled. She leaned over our daughter's car seat to kiss me on the lips.

"Get a room!" Antsy yelled while Missy wolf-whistled.

"If we got a room, then you couldn't watch," Mary smiled at our sisters.

"That's a fair point," Missy said to my sister. "Plus, we couldn't join in. So where's the fun in that?"

"Excellent point, pipsqueak," Antsy agreed.

"Pipsqueak?" shrieked Missy.

"Um, how about a cute, beautiful, vivacious pipsqueak?"

"Better," Missy smiled and gave my sister a kiss on the lips, which brought a wolf whistle from Damien.

We heard the crowds before we saw them. A growing rumble of jubilation that swelled as we rounded the corner and they witnessed us. They cheered with such ecstatic joy, pressing to reach the limo as we pulled up to the church, but were held back by a line of bodyguards. Many of the faithful had flocked to the church to see their new Goddess. There were more women than men, a sad reality in the aftermath of the Wormwood plague. I admired more than a few pairs of exposed breasts as our limo crept slowly forward.