CHAPTER 29 - KINGDOM COME

FreeLander helped the door open. Behind it, a dark city was rising from the fiery ground. There was no sun, just flames all around.

10 Crows' body dissolved into the ground, leaving the blade clean on the floor. A spark of fire and ten crows flew out from the Dark City Dis, past the river of souls, just before the doorway. The crows collided and exploded, forming Wyatt Kaleb Troy III out of the ground.

He opened his eyes, they were pure black. Before he could move or speak, the souls of his victims reached out and pulled him in. Only the deepest circle of hell was reserved for people like 10 Crows, rapists, murders, and betrayers. His soul lit on fire and was dragged into the dead river. Not even Devil FreeLander could intervene with vengeance.

Marshall picked up his buck knife and stood before the doorway of hell with Ira, Peyton, and Wild Card Cass as FreeLander walked through it. The hellish portal surrounded him and sucked him off the ground. As he levitated in the air, the heat from the flames burned his human flesh off. In the agonizing transformation, his legs stretched and inverted, his teeth grew fangs, and horns emerged from his skull. His red leathery skin returned, and his eyes changed colors. But that was not all. Out from his shoulders sprung dark scaly wings, and from his back dangled a pointed tail.

"It is time," the Devil bellowed out. His first champion of the apocalypse began to cross over realms. Marshall ran back to the tunnel and retrieved the weapons he had collected. He threw Ira his modified rifle and threw Peyton the Winchester rifle. That was when Ira saw it. Marshall already knew. He ran back over to them, fastening something concealed around his neck. Ira was too distracted by the rifle in Peyton's hands to notice.

It was the same exact rifle that he used all those years ago to win the sniper contest back in Rochester. The walls around the doorway crumbled and cracked as the portal slowly spread. That Winchester was once his father's rifle. The entire tunnel began to shake. Ira remembered the Hyperion Summit, and what Petros the Gatekeeper said to him.

"We gotta get outta here!”

"What is that?"

"Close the door!"

Wild Card looked at all three of them trying to re-lock the door, but it was too late. "CASS!" Peyton yelled out for help as they struggled to get it closed and the cracks surrounding them split further into the ground. "Its no use!" yelled Peyton again.

A massive claw grabbed a hold of the door from the other side. Its sharp nails scratched Ira and Marshall's hands. They released the door and jumped out of the way. It swung open and behind it was a beast the Devil called his champion. It looked like a mutated goat with snake eyes, the shoulders of a bison, wild wolf hair, hind legs with hooves, and an all too familiar human sensibility. Ira looked at it as they scrambled back. It reminded him of someone. One they had lost along the way. Ira gasped, "It can't be!"

"What?" Marshall wondered, "Ira, what is it?"

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Peyton shot the beast in the head and the bullet bounced right off, harmlessly. It reached over for him and picked Peyton up.

"It's the Kid, Marshall. It’s Kid Colt!"

Marshall and Wild Card turned back around and looked at the giant beast. Deep inside its sinister serpent eyes, the Kid was in there; trapped. Even though he was the martyr, his soul had been banished to hell for all the awful things he had done. His sentence was to spend eternity as an imprisoned berserker. The forces of hell warped and mutated him into an unstoppable monster. It squeezed Peyton. And Peyton could do nothing. He could not even scream. His lungs were being crushed.

Marshall threw his buck knife into one of the beast’s massive fingers, trying to wedge Peyton loose. Peyton was released from its grip and dangled from its claw. The beast flicked him off and he hit the cavern wall, crushing one of the guns in his holster. The champion of hell screamed in pain. When Peyton got back to his feet and drew his revolvers. The one that hit the wall was slightly damaged. Peyton held it by the barrel and bashed it against the rock wall. The handle of the dragoon crumbled. The beast fell over onto Marshall and Wild Card Cass. Peyton looked over at Ira who was still standing, "The dragoons!" he yelled, "Colt's dragoons!"

The beast hollered again, now aware of their plan. It jumped at Peyton. Ira shot at its feet with his modified, slipping it up. Peyton pulled Colt's other dragoon out of his holster and repeatedly smashed it against the bedrock. The beast covered its head with its bleeding claws and fell over, shrinking. Peyton picked up the shattered pieces of Kid Colt's dragoons and tossed them through the doorway. The remnants burned up in the hellfire. The demon bulk, mutated body mass and possessed eyes were all cleansed from Kid Colt like venom from a wound. The Kid fell to the floor, exactly as they remembered him. His white brim hat glowed.

"Thank you," he said to the four of them, "for releasing me of my sins. Kid Colt remains in hell, but I, Jimmy MacPherson, go on to Paradise, thanks to you."

"Kid," Peyton cried out.

Before his ascension, Jimmy turned around and addressed them one last time,

"You must run. You cannot defeat him."

"You can with the Winchester," blurted out Ira.

Peyton lifted up the rifle, but it was empty. “I’m out of ammo.”

"Here." Wild Card handed him a brandished bullet. "Use this."

"What is it?"

"Forged from the only metal on earth to have touched the blood of Christ, this bullet, like that of the Winchester were once ordinary spearheads brushed with divinity and left with an everlasting power. The power to kill a demon." Wild Card explained, "But only one of you can wield this most noble of powers."

Marshall and Ira both knew. They looked on, along with Wild Card Cass, as Peyton loaded the single bullet into the Winchester rifle and cocked the gun back. It was always Peyton, the angel of death and the guardian angel of man, all wrapped up into one.

Devil FreeLander levitated out of the doorway in gruesome form. His skin had boiled and scarred in a written code all over his body, repeating the same three numbers, "666". His tongue was forked, and his horns now had curved in, more than doubling in size. The black in his irises spread over to his pupils. He was getting more powerful by the second.

Marshall looked back at the door, smoking and cracking, ready to collapse. He moved past Wild Card and Ira unnoticed and stepped through the doorway. Peyton held the rifle up to his eye and exhaled. He pulled the trigger and the bullet sailed through the altar room, carving a hole straight through the Devil's head. He fell back into hell. His corpse turned and spoiled, oozing over and spread for a rebirth.

"It’s not over," Wild Card mumbled.

"What?" Ira exclaimed.