Post by thefangedrose on Sept 1, 2024 22:16:31 GMT -8
Disclaimer
This series contains elements of a supernatural nature and will play a parody of the Judao-Christian faith. It is not meant to be mocking or subversive but simply done for a creative outlet.
You. Were. Warned.
There are also supernatural elements to this story now. Be warned of that in advance. The supernatural elements of this storyline were only hinted at before but asked by those who wanted this series for it to be added.
“The Pact” is a concept that kept Jesse’s original “Walk the Line” idea alive while honoring that none of them had these “abilities” five years ago to keep the original writer's concept alive.
A second disclaimer is needed for these episodes. The character being introduced here is a very bad man. He has bad ideas. He has bad outlooks and he has bad thoughts. His beliefs, thoughts and actions do not reflect the thoughts, actions and opinions of the writer or those of those involved.
I hope you enjoy it.
I give you Chapter 28!
Mood Setter: “Stand by me” By Lil Durk Feat Morgan Wallen
Civil War 2
Chapter 28
Seeing ghosts
Location: The Bronx
Time: As Chapter 27 ended
The big southern man in the black suit and cowboy hat watched the group head back to the house and made a mental note of which one was which. After they disappeared inside he turned and began walking back up the block.
The kids that approached on their way through the neighborhood gave the man a wide berth. The scowl on his face was enough to make most people avoid him. He couldn’t believe Amanda.
To leave him like the quitting coward she was was one thing. But to do it in favor of….these…types of people was disgusting. It was vile behavior and wasn’t something that Clayton could tolerate.
The insult wasn’t one he would forgive.
Finding a motel in a neighborhood like this wasn’t difficult, but finding one up to Nix’s standards? That was a whole different matter entirely. He was nearly completely out of The Bronx before he found something that he considered acceptable.
The checking in process wasn’t overly tedious and he had possession of a room key within fifteen minutes of stepping foot on the property. Once he had his bags moved from the bed of the large truck and into the room he closed the door behind him and blew out a deep breath through his nose.
Clayton pulled the hat from his head and ran his fingers through his short black hair before tossing it onto the little table beside the door. Shrugging off his coat his hand moved to the buttons of his but his hand froze at the top button and his head slowly came up.
It was like a cold chill running down his spine. As if suddenly he knew he wasn’t alone here.
His eyes moved to the little area near the bathroom door and that's when he saw it. The faintest hints of red and green. Narrowing his gaze he took a step closer and the red and green grew brighter as someone stepped toward in a matching step. Their face was painted in various colors.
“The hell?” Clayton whispered.
A hand reached up and hit the light switch on the wall. The three lights in the room all flashed on in an instant and standing in front of the closet was a tiny woman with bright pink hair. She was wearing a baby doll dress with little ringlet curls hanging down over her face. She couldn’t have been a day over twenty with pale milky white skin and a mischievous.
But there was no strange red and green.
“The fuck…”
Clayton said again and flipped the light off and then quickly on again. The red and green came back the instant the light turned off. An evil painted face staring at him from the darkness. When the light came on again the pink haired girl was gone. Instead in her place was an extremely busty blue haired woman in her late twenties. She was wearing tight hip hugging jeans and a shirt that ended at the top of her abdomen showing off dozens of tattoos.
“....What?!” Clayton whispered, amazed.
Again he flipped the light off and the white painted face returned with the streaks of red and green. The woman in the darkness giggled at the apparent little game the man was playing. When he flipped the light on again what stood there was by far the most normal. Brown hair hanging down on a pair of bare shoulders. A spaghetti strap top hanging down to the waist and a pair of tight blue jeans.
This woman he recognized.
“You.” Clayton gasped. “You’re the woman that told me where Amanda is.”
The woman’s lips curled into an evil sinister smirk but she said nothing.
“You’ll have to forgive her.” A voice suddenly said from Clayton’s right.
He spun around and found a man sitting cross legged in the chair. His hair was black and was smoothed back along his scalp. He wore a beautiful black suit and had his hands folded in his lap. Clayton noted the tattoos on the side of the man’s neck and the back of his hands. Degenerate, he thought to himself.
The man’s expression at that moment darkened. It was as if he had heard the thought, but that wasn’t possible. The strange man’s expression then softened and he raised his folded hands motioning to the woman on the other side of the room.
“She enjoys playing games.” The man explained. “It has been awhile since I have allowed her to play so you’ll have to forgive her eagerness.”
Clayton looked between the two as if they had both lost their minds.
“And who in the hell are you?!”
The woman standing near the bathroom door suddenly let out the strangest snarl Nix had ever heard. It was subtle and quiet but it sent that same chill down his spine. The man sitting in the chair however lifted a dismissive hand.
“Quiet Asmodeus.”
“....Yes Sire.” The woman whispered and resumed her demure posture.
Clayton looked back at the man with a curious lifted brow.
“That was impressive.” Nix observed. “Quiet a obedient bitch isn’t she….mister….?”
“Naturally.” The man said and unwound himself from the chair to rise to his feet. If Clayton was expecting a man to man handshake he was left disappointed as the man simply smoothed his suit and answered. “I’ve had many names over the years. You may call me…Lucifer.”
“Lucifer?” Clayton asked with a mocking laugh.
“Yes.” Lucifer said simply and folded his hands behind the small of his back. “And we have a problem in common Mr. Nix.”
The fact that this strange man knew his name took Clayton aback and it showed. Before he could stammer out a question Lucifer continued.
“Your…” Lucifer turned his attention to the woman near the bathroom. “...Mare wasn’t it?”
“Yes Sire.”
“Ah. Quite.” Lucifer then looked back at Clayton. “You’re Mare? The company she keeps are helping people who are keeping things from me.”
“Fucking disgusting.” Nix snarled. “To take up with those types of people.”
Lucifer raised a brow very slowly but said nothing. Truth be told he found people like Nix as repugnant as everyone else did but the man had a use.
“You, reclaiming your lost…property…and in the course of that we can retrieve ours.”
“And what is this property?” Nix asked.
“That isn’t any of your concern.” Lucifer told him. “I will leave Asmodeus with you. She doesn’t bite.”
“I might nibble.” Asmodeus purred with a little grin.
Lucifer didn’t react. He simply continues.
“Another will be joining you before long. Make use of them both.” He turned his attention to Asmodeus and his eyes hardened. “I don’t have to express that you are not to get caught on camera do I?”
“Take that up with Sariel.” Asmodeus answered. “That was her fuck up.”
“See it isn’t repeated.”
Clayton looked to the brunette woman expecting a reply but none came. When he looked back however he found that the room behind him was empty. Blinking he looked toward the closed door. He never heard it open.
“...Man’s quiet.”
“...It’s a talent we all have.” Asmodeus assured him.
She crossed the room and noticed immediately the way that Nix looked at her. Though, she was used to that being the Demoness of Temptation. She plucked the large bag from the chair and shouldered it like it was nothing.
“Am I going somewhere?”
“They are going to be looking for you.” Asmodeus explained. “First step? Making it impossible to find you.”
“And step two?”
“Screaming.” She said with a little giggle. “Lots of blood and screaming.”
**
Location: The Bronx
Time: A few days later
Life in the 5 story brownstone apartment had all but returned to normal. The Hit Squad ran their block while Michael and his group laid low. A warning and two full attacks in the last 10 days meant they couldn’t risk revealing where they moved the Sarcophagus and Michael knew that.
The Titans, their ladies and most of the others had begun to use the first floor lounge as a kind of hang out. Most of them were there as Ashley came down from visiting with Danielle. Bayne had been recovering steadily, quickly even by their standards.
Yet another of those strange things about her.
When Hyperion walked in from the stairs leading up from outside Atlas was playing dominoes with Cronos, Crius, Dean and surprisingly….silk. Atlas looked up from the table as the smallest member of the crew approached.
“Find his little ass?”
“No luck Cuzz.” Hyperion answered. “No one on the block saw where his bitch ass went.”
“He’s a six foot two white boy in a cowboys hat and spurs.” Atlas grunted slamming one of the domino’s down. “How hard can the little bitch be to find, Ya Heard?
As the pair spoke of Hyperion’s search for Clayton the door leading upstairs opened and three figures came down on them. Amanda dressed in a pair of blue jeans that hugged her hips and a white top that showed off the faintest bit of her stomach. On the far opposite side came Riley in a pair of jean shorts and a half top of her own wearing a pair of pristine jordans. Between them was Katie in a pair of short workout shorts and a little tank top. Her blonde hair was damp from what appeared to be a post workout shower.
The Titans all looked up and both Atlas and Cronos offered smiles to their respective ladies, but Crius’s eyes nearly bugged out. He leaned back in his chair as the girls passed, nearly close enough to touch Katie as she walked by.
“God damn girl.” Crius called.
“Touch me and they’ll have to surgically pull your balls out of your abdomen.” Katie said without even looking down at him, as if Amanda and Riley had warned her.
The boys all around the table laughed with Dean throwing his head back and laughing the hardest.
“Better luck next time big boy.” Dean said with a laugh.
Crius glowered across the table while the other two Titans with them laughed. He plucked a chip up off the table and threw it at the bearded tattooed man across from him.
“Like you got a shot.” Crius snapped a little humiliated. “She’d have laughed yo ass right out the club.”
Katie had crossed the room and grabbed the bag Silk and Shadow had grabbed for her. She turned and began across the room again to go and change when she heard Crius’s retort. She stopped behind Crius and looked Dean up and down.
“....100% would have gotten my number.”
Katie grinned at the table, feeling a bit more at ease with everyone. On the other side of the room Michael chuckled and Ashley full on belly laughed as Dean leaned back on the rear legs of the chair and spread his arms in triumph.
Peyton however wasn’t at all thrilled to hear this. She had been sitting near the window and immediately looked over at the group. She pushed herself from the chair, tossing the nail fial she had been using aside.
“Good thing he’ll never ask for it.” Peyton snapped.
She eased herself down into Dean’s lap, nearly toppling him in the process. His arms waved a bit trying to balance as she did and the girls standing behind Atlas and Cronos laughed.
“If only her ego was as small as her chest.” Amanda said savagely.
Riley looked down at her own small chest and then back up at Amanda.
“HEY!”
And once again the boys laughed. Katie rolled her eyes at the little blonde woman and simply headed upstairs to change. As she did one of the kids who hung out on the stairs walked in and spoke quietly to Hyperion. Hyperion listened and motioned the kid to let someone in.
The door opened again and a voice called out.
“Some’von told me you could help me find some friends in ze area.”
The accent was a dead give away. Ashley, Hana, and Michael all looked sharply in the direction of the door as it opened.
The man who walked in appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties with short sandy brown hair, sapphire eyes, and a toned, slender build. The jade green suit he donned complimented his figure. His cheeks were covered in stubble.
“Fuck.” Ashley groaned.
“You told me you handled it.” Michael snapped quietly and quickly pushed himself up using his cane.
“Fuck you, Rivers.” Ashley whispered. “You expected me to be prepared for this?!”
The brunette, however, was staring at the Domino table. More aptly, he wasn’t staring at the game or the Titans…but the man sitting with the blonde woman seated comfortably in his lap with her head on his shoulder and her finger idly playing on the chest of his shirt. His hand rested on her hip as if it belonged there.
He was staring at Dean.
Dean and Peyton.
There was a mixture of emotions on his face all at once. Happiness. Relief. Pain. Anger. And then his eyes fell on Peyton, sitting the way she was like it was hers.
“Fótze…” The man said in perfect German.
The tapping of the cane off the floor didn’t even pull him from his focused outrage… Until his vision was blocked by the frame of Michael Rivers.
And then there was a new look in his eyes.
Betrayal.
“Outside.”
“Verpiss dich.” The man snapped. “You let us believe…”
“OUTSIDE!” Michael snapped and took the man by the arm, trying to force march him toward the door. To his surprise the man actually allowed himself to be pulled in that direction.
As he was, the brunette looked up at the table again, and the large tattooed man was looking over at him and the two locked eyes. The tattoos were new, as was the scar that cut into the left side of his beard on the cheek. A scar that the gentleman could clearly tell had been caused by a bullet ripping into his face.
There was a strange recognition in the icy blue eyes of the man at the table. In them he could see…a strange affection. A longing even, but it was hidden behind a strange barrier. Like it was locked away across the recesses of his mind. The bearded man lifted his head in a “Hello” head lift and then placed his hand on the back of Peyton’s head. He began to gently stroke her beautiful blonde hair.
And then the scene was gone. The table and the man at it. He found himself standing outside on the steps as the door closed. He turned to face Michael and the words began to come out in German.
“Was zur Hölle…” The man took a deep breath and looked up into Michael’s eyes. “Explain. Now.”
“You weren’t supposed to see that.” Rivers told him sadly. He actually reached up and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Zach, it’s good to see y…”
Zachary Sears threw his arm off and pointed around him to the closed door.
“How?” He demanded. “Vhy didn’t you tell me? Do you have any idea vhat my sister went through?”
Michael took in a deep and steadying breath.
“I don’t know why Jasmine kept it a secret.” He told Zach. “That is something only she knows. When he found...”
No, he needed to go back further than that and he knew it.
“You remember how we all used to laugh about it being a good thing none of it was ‘real’?” He used the word real with finger quotes. “Lucifer? The Demons? All that? How bad it could have gotten for us?”
Zach nodded gently, remembering clearly some of the talks they had all had once upon a time.
“Well….” Michael sighed softly. “...It is now. Whatever constraints had been placed on it? They are gone now. The rules? Don’t exist anymore. Lucifer…the kinds of things he can do now are incredible. Actual Demons, Zach… Demons you can’t kill…you shoot them and they just keep coming. Hell Hounds…dogs as big as deer that can’t die. I don’t know what his new purpose is…but we’re fighting our hardest to keep him in check.”
All of this seemed too much for the young Talent Director of Trenton Modeling Industries. All the very worst fears made real and from what he had seen on the news? They may actually be true.
“Vhat does zhis have to do with mein Bruder?”
“...I found Dean in a skyscraper guarded by the Titans round the clock. No one knew he was there. I whispered to him what Lucifer had done… and what found me a week later wasn’t him anymore. It was what had been imprisoned inside his family. I watched him get shot, Zach. Nearly point blank in the chest…and he didn’t bleed. Just oozed this… black sludge like his blood was stagnant.”
Uncomfortably, Zachary's jaw tensed and his eyes narrowed. He allowed Michael to continue.
“...There is an object…” Michael licked his lips needing to word this right. To keep enough of this secret. “...What that object is? Doesn’t matter. It can place...a departed soul into a newly deceased body. The Sins…what was wearing your brother as a suit… brought me a local prostitute… No family… no children… and I took her life with my own hands. The Sins said it was…my penance…”
There was genuine pain in Michael’s voice as he confessed this for the first time in months. The girl whose life he had taken. Zachary, however, looked at him as if he were a live reptile. Michael had murdered a woman in cold blood.
“...I used her body…and summoned the soul of the only person who might know something about what was happening. About why Lucifer suddenly started breaking the rules. I conjured my former Harbinger… Danielle Bay… and placed her in the dead prostitute's body….”
“. . .”
Of course Zach knew of Danielle. She was Dean’s first wife, one of Jessica's greatest enemies… and greatest allies.
“Every morning, Danielle finds sunlight to stand in. Says she is…listening. One day she asked The Sins to come with her… And she says…that because his body was still moving, it was basically alive… akin to life support. All she had to do was reconnect his soul to it… and then Dean was back. “
“Mein Gott…” Zach whispered. “Vhy didn’t you tell us, Michael?”
“Your sister moved on, Zach.” Michael explained. “She was living her life… and well… He doesn’t remember her. Not really. He remembers he was married… and that she was the love of his life. Where they got married and how… how they first met… but only the vaguest hints at her features.”
“...Und zhat Hündin?!” Zachary demanded.
“...After the fight to retake Jasmine’s home…”
Zach’s eyes suddenly went wide. The explosions in Asheville and why the Collective had abandoned it for five months.
Lucifer had taken it.
“...Dean was arrested. The same cop that shot him happened to show up.” Michael continued. “Peyton’s testimony was the only thing keeping him in jail. Her testimony about what happened to Stephen Rossi. She agreed to recant it but only if she met with him first. What came out was Dean and his “wife.” She stepped into the life Jessica left and… took it over. All details claimed as hers. We don’t know why.”
“Yet despite zhis, all of you have allowed her to continue this charade…? Vhy?!” Zach clenched his fists. “Peyton is NOT Jessica! She's a two-faced manipulative BITCH who cannot be trusted! Using das Leben meiner kleinen Schwester as her own and abusing it like this…”
“...Because I need him.” Michael snapped. “The world is at stake, Zachary. Your sisters! Your niece and nephew! My daughters! Dean was nearly broken when Danielle told him Jessica had moved on. She was his whole world. Losing her would shatter his mind…and I fucking need him whole to win this war. So, I ordered everyone to play along with Peyton’s lie. Because I fuckin' need him, and if letting him believe that Peyton is the loving wife that is standing by his side gives me that? So damn be it.”
“Is that how you're going to justify zhis…?” Zachary grit his teeth. “A lie vill always beget more lies, Michael, und vhen ze time comes for the truth to emerge… because it always does?
Neither Heaven nor Hell will be able to stop the catastrophe.”
Michael listened to the raw words from the man but Zach would find that Michael was unmoved by them.
“Oh, I am fully aware that it will end that way.” Michael told him. “Once the truth comes out, it will end in tears and blood… all from him. Add to that, that he allowed this vile woman to pollute the life he built with her? It will destroy him… after… it’s done.”
Zach listened to all of this passively, until the end. Pure rage arose on his usually calm face and he lunged at Michael. His left forearm pressed into his throat as Michael hit the wall.
“Zhat’s my brother!” Zach cried. “Und you’re okay with it?!”
“....If it means Lucifer is stopped.” Michael whispered. “No price is too high.”
Zach stared at the man he had once fought alongside with and it was like looking at a whole different person. His jaw set, the muscles of it jumping at the corners, and he growled.
“Then I’m staying right here.” Zach told him without giving him a choice. “All of you are so focused on taking care of ze vorld? Of making sure he can help it? Then I vill help HIM!”
Someone needed to stand with his brother-in-law.
And Zach would do it himself.
“If tomorrow I lost it all, and everything that I had was gone. When there’s nobody else to call? Would you stand by me?
When the world tries to keep me down and there’s nobody else around. Keep it real, can you tell me now?….would you stand by me?”
When the world tries to keep me down and there’s nobody else around. Keep it real, can you tell me now?….would you stand by me?”
