Awakening - The Last Science #1

Interlude II - Selling One's Soul - I

  The trees did their utmost to trip him at every terrified step. Brian Hendricks was running like a man with the devil at his heels—and for all he knew, that was precisely what chased him through the rain-slicked forest. Drops peeled off leaves from the canopy above and struck him with incessant reminders of his drenched clothes. The cold was only held at bay by the pulsing adrenaline still rushing through his blood. He felt the heavy impact of every footfall on the thick forest floor, his way forward marked by seldom-used hiking trails that he could only desperately hope would not end.

  He fled a sight no man should ever witness. Demons had appeared from within the Earth, blank-faced figures of fire and smoke. Flames writhed about them in streams, spinning the dance of the devil. Brian could still hear the screaming in his head. The two men at their feet—men who had only moments earlier declared their defiance proudly and attacked him with otherworldly powers—reduced to whimpering children in an instant. Begging could not save them from the demon who controlled these monsters. He'd simply waved his minions forward and walked away, while they screamed in agony as the flesh was seared from their bones until they were pulverized into dust.

  The man had spotted Brian, and his eyes lit up in a way that struck terror into Brian's soul. Brian didn't think twice; he bolted into the trees, and behind him the firelight followed. So had he run for what felt like hours, though the adrenaline coursing through him meant that it could have been no time at all.

  He chanced a look over his shoulder, and that was what did him in. Taking his eyes off the path ahead for only a moment, his foot caught the next root jutting out from the soil, and he was sent tumbling. He crashed through the thick underbrush, and only just had the wherewithal to tuck in and try to absorb the blow. The musty ferns engulfed him as he rolled into the bushes with a crash and an unpleasant popping sound. Mud and dirt caked his clothing as he tumbled to a halt underneath a large fir eerily reminiscent of a tree near his home, where his daughter probably sat even now waiting for a dinner that wasn't to come.

  He groaned and tried to struggle back to his feet, but a sharp pain in his ankle kept him floored. Please, God, don't be broken, Brian prayed desperately. I know I'm not the best father, and I haven't served you well, but I can't die like this. I don't deserve it, but please, God, don't let me leave Natalie all alone. He knew it was futile. God had never answered one of his prayers. Brian assumed He was much too busy to pay mind to a simple landlord out in the middle of nowhere in Washington, much less one with as broken and disillusioned a past as himself.

  He tested the foot gingerly and winced even harder. It was likely only sprained, from his unqualified opinion, but it still hurt like hell—too much for him to keep running. Brian looked around his immediate surroundings. He seemed to be safe for the moment. He'd fallen into a particularly thick patch of underbrush, and the ferns managed to provide him with enough cover. With a lump in his throat and terror in his heart, he slowly looked back to where he had tripped.

  The flicker of light on the path nearly stopped his heart.

  Brian stopped breathing. He stopped moving. For all intents and purposes, he may as well have been a stone statue left out in the forest. The only activity left in his body was his brain, frantically rushing through every possible outcome. As the light grew nearer, most of those faded into black, and only visions of his charred body left to rot in the woods remained. It was the flicker of torchlight, but as the figure emerged from the underbrush, Brian could see once again that there was no torch.

  There was only the fire, which the man held just above both hands, letting it dance across his skin like a demon of hell. He didn't look like a demon; in fact, he could have been any ordinary college student in his all-weather black overcoat, denim jeans and plain polo shirt. Yet Brian had seen what this young man could do. He knew that the devil could have a servant in ordinary garb, misleading the innocent astray. Brian had never believed in such things.