Chapter 37: Cold as Hell, Part 3

Sam was riding the wave.

He had never wasted time with things for subhuman retards like drugs, but he imagined that the high must feel similar, albeit much lesser, to hook so many people.

But a question still lingered, disturbing his high.

It wasn't about how he had unlocked the power over ice if Adams wasn't dead after all; don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The real problem was what he would get after killing everyone else. The flame inside him was like a great bonfire.

He had no doubt that he would draw a strong card. His powers hadn't disappointed him so far. Even blindness, which had been inconvenient when his plan was to act stealthily, would be critical to directly massacring all the Wrights, which he should have done from the beginning.

No, not from the beginning, but now that he had become so strong, what was the point of hiding and acting from the shadows?

He could end all of this now, and he would.

He probably didn't need anything else, but he was simply wondering...

When he killed Ivor and... What was the other one's name? Some name starting with J or something. Well, it didn't matter. He had killed two people, although Jaiden had been an indirect murder. However, he had only received one power in return.

Satan had given him the hypothesis that this was because he had considered it as a single mission. He didn't think he was lying. Satan had good reasons to want his success, at least until he got out of the cage, and he had even planted one of his demons inside to help him (although all Belphegor had done was complicate things).

In that case, how many powers would the people he had killed in the chapel count for? Surely it wouldn't be a one-to-one ratio.

Anyway.

There was no point in speculating, he would find out as he went along.

It had worked well for him so far.

He encountered one of the Wrights in the middle of the hallway. Even without the commotion of the resurrected Rose appearing, today's meeting would have already ended. They would be scattered throughout the mansion, thinking about their things, plotting. Not knowing that the devil was coming to drag them to hell.

That suited him much better than if they had barricaded themselves in Blake Wright's office, all experienced mages with the best tutors in the realm in charge of their education.

"Samuel?"

Then this man, whoever he was, noticed his eyes.

"Dem...!"

He didn't get to shout his warning, or perhaps to curse him. Sam fired more than a dozen icicles. The ice lances separated him from the floor with the force of the impact and made him fly like a straw doll. He ended up impaled against the wall, a grotesque decoration like all the corpses in the chapel.

A woman stopped in the middle of the stairs. She had chosen a bad time to start going down the stairs, she recognized it, and a tenth of a second later she turned around, running back up again.

Still too late.

Sam summoned ice under her feet, making her trip. He had always known it would be a possibility, but he felt disappointed when the fall was what killed her.

He hadn't had time to torment her and make her suffer like the demon he was. Well, in any case, he had a mission. He shouldn't waste time on unnecessary things.

"You're incredible, my prince," Belphegor said almost breathlessly. "And to think that you're practically a newborn, that it hasn't been a month since your powers awakened."

He had almost forgotten she was there, following him like his own shadow. Almost.

"You might become more powerful than Satan himself."

Oh? That was interesting.

"You think so?"

"Without a doubt, sir, you are magnificent. I am eternally grateful for the glory of being in your presence."

She was either a fanatic or exceptionally good at kissing ass. In any case, it fed his ego, so Belphegor wasn't so annoying after all.

He still hadn't thoroughly searched the first floor, but he felt like going up the stairs now. Step on the blood of the woman he had just killed and finish off anyone who might have come out to see what the hell was happening.

And there was no reason not to do it.

"Stay here," he ordered. "Make sure no one escapes."

"Yes, my prince."

Part of him didn't want to take his eyes off her in case she did something to Violet and Christina, if they hadn't already left the mansion grounds, if they were waiting out there, wondering what they should do.

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But he recognized that this was the best decision.

"Someday you'll call me king!" Spitting out those somewhat careless words, although he doubted Satan wasn't aware of his ambition, Sam went up the stairs.

They gave him a warm welcome as soon as he reached the top of the stairs, after, of course, doing what he wanted (trampling on the blood of his most recent victim). Another genius who had had the idea of trying to kill a demon with flames.

He probably could die from that, not that he had immunity to fire just for coming from hell, but it sounded counterproductive. And it was, although for a completely different reason. With these powers, it was very easy to put out the fire. The pathetic flames were consumed by his ice in the blink of an eye.

The ice lance left the bastard on his knees, destroying his right leg. He fell groaning in pain, spitting blood from his mouth.

The man, whatever his name was, had the guts to laugh at the end of his life.

"What is this? Blake Wright's heir, sent by the heavens themselves. And in reality, you're nothing but a demon." He laughed bitterly. "Are you... Are you Satan himself? Am I going to burn in hell?"

"Hell is nothing more than a prison for the devil too." He approached the guy, prostrated before him, and put his hand on his head. "I very much doubt he controls who goes where, but what do I know? I'm just his son."

The man's eyes widened, perhaps wondering if he also had demon blood in his veins, if his brothers and sisters, his relatives would have it. How far this nightmare reached.

Then his eyes exploded, along with the rest of his head, flying away. The contents of his skull spilled onto the carpet.

He had come out of the massacre in the chapel spotless, not a single drop had stained him, but now he couldn't avoid being bathed, naturally.

Well, actually, he didn't mind. He liked the feeling of blood on his skin and clothes. A scarlet rain he would never tire of. Maybe it was in his blood or maybe he had just never had the opportunity to do something like this in his old life, too worried about the consequences. Of spending the rest of his life behind bars.

He didn't know and didn't care. As far as he was concerned, that life was nothing. Less than a shadow. He felt much more real, much more alive, here and now.

Three Wrights came out into the hallway. Two women and a man... No, more like half a man. One of the children.

They didn't hesitate to attack him although they surely didn't understand the situation yet.

He didn't know who had done what, but Sam ended up flying backward. His back hit the railing, he almost flew over it, returning to the starting square. Telekinesis, it had to be. There weren't many possibilities. It could be wind magic, but he hadn't felt a gust before it happened.

Sam got up, leaning with one hand on the railing, and discovered a piece of it in his hand as he stepped forward.

He had torn it off without realizing it.

Either the impact had loosened it too much or one of the powers he had obtained in the chapel was super strength. Perfect. It had been one of his problems from the beginning. Being a teenager again, smaller, thinner. A clear disadvantage. Now that he could kill people with his mind, it wasn't such a big deal anymore, but it was still good to cover that gap. He opened a hole in the chest of the woman who had done this to him, probably, by throwing the piece of railing at her.

Or that was the intention, but the woman tried to dodge, so instead of that, he cut her in half. Too bad for her. All she had gained with her efforts was a slower and more painful death. If she had stayed still, if she had stopped fighting, she would already be on her way to the eternal pit.

There was no healing magic that could snatch her from the clutches of death. None that would take effect before she bled out, in any case. Not to mention that from the little he had been able to read about it, the image of healing was exceptionally complicated, requiring a perfect mental image of the entire body and great concentration. How was she going to concentrate being cut in half?

Yes, he was thinking too much about useless things. It was obvious that he had killed her, but he was still affected by Adams' disappearance and what could have happened to him.

Chasing shadows, so to speak.

The child...

He had disappeared, hiding again in his room. And the other woman...

Sam raised an arm. As a result, the knife stuck in his forearm instead of his head. It had been close.

He thought the danger had passed, that he could lower his arm and kill her as if she were an insect. Crush her that easily. He was wrong. An explosion of pain. The knives multiplied in an instant. In the blink of an eye, he had identical knives from his wrist to his elbow.

Sam gritted his teeth, almost biting his tongue.

He swung his arm against the wall.

The knives broke in a crystalline shower that disappeared before touching the ground. They weren't crystals, but magical energy.

It didn't matter, they were real enough to pierce his skin. He killed the woman by making her fly over his head, doing somersaults. Her scream only ceased when she reached the ground. He could imagine her head bursting so vividly that he didn't need to move back and take a look. Evelyn had given him plenty of experience in that regard.

Sam pulled out the knife in his forearm, the only one that remained, and licked his own blood from the blade.

Besides, as he had said before, he had priorities.

"Come to die, come!"

He was the eye of an ice storm. The ice not only came out when he attacked, but it was spreading across the floor and walls. He could hear window crystals cracking as the spikes dug deep.

Surely the Wright family deserved to burn in the flames of hell, but instead, they would have the completely opposite death, but deep down not so different. Sam touched the ice on a piece of the wall as he passed. As he pulled his hand away, his fingertips burned. Satan was absolutely right. Ice could burn.

"And you will burn," Sam said.

In a low, sinister voice, without the expectation that anyone could hear him.

Promises to himself. He felt a movement nearby and reacted before the door opened. The door flew off its frame along with a dozen ice lances, and it hid the corpse that collapsed against the floor after hitting the wall. All he could see were his boots and the blood dripping from the holes in the wood.

He was the perfect killing machine.

How easy. So much caution at the beginning, but how damn easy it was turning out to be.

He wouldn't say stupid things like things were only worth it if they posed a challenge. That was the trivial desire of people who had nothing better to worry about. The lack of difficulty was the best. The key ingredient, of course, was that he had earned it the hard way, so they weren't completely off track.

More Wrights came out to meet him. They had prepared some kind of trap at the end of the hallway. They jumped as soon as he was about to turn the corner and he had to admit, they surprised him. But it didn't matter.

He broke the magical construction without giving it the chance to trigger its effect.

To be exact, a semi-transparent wall of blue color and honeycomb pattern.

He considered stopping to let it do something, since he had no fucking idea what it could be. And he almost did, almost.

"Shit." The resigned exclamation of one of them. The same message could be seen on the faces surrounding him.

Now that he had broken through that magical construction, they were basically defenseless.

Sam smiled.

He fired ice lances in a circle. They killed the Wrights not by piercing them, but by exploding on impact, which caused their broken fragments to scatter everywhere.

All of them, without exception, died before touching the ground.

Cold as Hell, Part 3: END