Heaven Sent

Chapter Forty

                                           Elijah

Bones crunch beneath my heels, faces burying into the sand. The yellow sea has turned red, then black, clouded by the veil of the moonlit night. The stars gleam brightly this far from civilization, a spotlight to the massacre occurring below. 

There is no such thing as mercy here. No such thing as comradery.

I carry out a necessary evil against not necessarily evil creatures.

A dying human begging for a chance to breathe again, to right his wrongs, to make something of a short life, can feel forsaken. With death comes vulnerability. An inescapable helplessness that cannot be righted. A young man or woman offered the chance to rectify themselves, to take back time itself, would turn to hope in that desperation. For many here, the pledge they made to darkness wasn't because they longed to serve evil, or carry out heinous acts.

They just wanted to live, by any means necessary.

We had no recollection of who we were selling our souls to. Samael didn't materialize to encourage us to his side. No, at our lowest, many of us didn't care about our souls. We just wanted the pain to end, or to see our families again. To love, to laugh, to right our wrongs.

In that desperation, the soul became an afterthought.

As the bodies fall around me, as frightened creatures take their own lives with blind pleas for mercy, I am able to convince myself that while the death might be brutal and unexpected, what comes after will relieve them.

This way, they've won. They've won time, and they've their souls.

To fight as I must, my mind stays occupied. I will it so. My arms have minds of their own. When I'm harmed, stabbed, beaten, bloodied, I carry on, driven by the fullness within my chest, a fullness I've possibly fooled myself into believing is Cassandra.

The sand sinks in some areas, seeking to swallow the ones who flee. It's my job to chase them, to haul them from the depths, and to quell the fight. The desert works with me, an ally that can only be the glorified being that desires my victory. My eyes, every so often, out of increasing concern once the screams begin to die down, and the chaos begins to evaporate, search for Damien and Paris.

I know, any minute, any second, I will endure agony.

And I'm terrified. For a brief moment, I allow myself to be terrified. To freeze amongst the dead, and desperately search for these creatures that have so long been part of me. They were reborn by my blood, and raised from the dead, greeted by a creator that wished to care for them.

If anything, even facing this misery, I hope I did right by them in that sense.

There is hardly time for idleness. We have been toiling all night, trapped in an encasement built for slaughter. I feel relief as my eyes take in the fallen, but then disgust follows, as I knew it would. I have vampires hanging from my limbs when I sense an unrest in myself, and feel the shadow of Hell stretch forth across the terrain. I sense him.

A brief moment where my actions multiply in speed as I anticipate the worst.

No.

I've barely thought the word before I'm down, pummeled by the undead who seek to defeat me.

Paris. No.

My sorrow blasts from my lips, landing across the land in echoes. The explosion, not just in my fragile chest, but in the strength of my arms, which tear at the vampires, possessed by nothing more than fury. Something in me changes, realizing the evil around this inhibited oasis. I flee, charging through the sand, like so many others here. I leap over dismembered limbs, slamming into bodies, abandoning the entire reason I've done all of this, in order to get to my boys.