Chapter 50: I Am the One Who Rings Death’s Bell, Part 4

Sam frowned.

The desire to possess his sisters had overcome his common sense. If they killed War, in theory, the puppets should be freed from her control. Not for any special reason he knew of, but simply because of the logic that there would be no one left to give them orders.

The fact is that what Christina wanted wasn't an impossible mission, not at all.

In theory.

But between practice and theory, there was a gap as wide as life and death. Perhaps the confirmation that War was forbidden to kill him was the only reason he was willing to attempt this madness. To win this fight without getting his hands dirty with the blood of the innocent, or some other equally melodramatic way that Christina and Violet would undoubtedly express it.

Sam thought...

No, to think he needed information. So the only thing he could do now was buy time to gather that information. That is, to flee with his tail between his legs, shooting only at War, who was advancing slowly but inexorably along with her small army.

Only at her, it was becoming increasingly difficult to attack without causing collateral damage. Due to the rush, constant movement, tension.

And also because, damn it, it was night. He could see less than he would like, much less. To make matters worse, he was still no closer to deciphering War's trick than at the beginning.

No matter how quickly he attacked, no matter how accurate his shots were, the horseman of the apocalypse remained intact.

It was creepy. Sam had seen spectacular things since coming to this world, things that were obviously supernatural. That was the point. Something so subtle would inevitably give him goosebumps, precisely because of that.

It also made him wonder what would happen when the subtleties were dropped.

What happened when an unstoppable force collided with an immovable object? Nothing, obviously. They would repel each other, and everything would return to the beginning. It was no mystery. But that only applied if he could be the immovable object, and he couldn't. As long as he had to fear for Christina and Violet's lives, what was happening was that his defeat was approaching with each passing second. Inexorably.

Sam took a deep breath. He felt like vomiting. The pressure, an almost claustrophobic sensation. He was in an open field, but it was as if walls were closing in on him. The darkness of this night was as dense as a black wall, definitely.

A crunch. An explosion of blood.

He saw one of the puppets fall without making a sound. It was missing a leg. Sam turned his head towards Violet before realizing what had really happened. Before processing it.

"Violet!" Christina shouted.

"Hey, it was an accident! I was aiming at that bitch, but it got in the way."

Had it? Sam hadn't been focused enough to realize, but it made sense. War didn't need a human shield. They hadn't been able to touch her even once after dozens and dozens of attacks, after all. But seeing his doubt, anyone would take advantage of the useless morality that bound them.

She was a demon or something like that, and she didn't need her puppets, not really. Why not discard them? It was the right decision to corner him. Maybe she believed him to be truly weak, maybe she knew he had to pretend in front of his sisters. In any case, sooner or later she would have made that decision.

And now... What would he do now?

This was his opportunity. If she was going to use them as human shields, it wasn't his fault anymore. He had tried. Christina couldn't say he hadn't tried, so... Or would she blame him anyway, because deep down she suspected him a little for being Satan's son? If she did, he could get out of it, make her feel guilty until she begged for forgiveness. It wouldn't be a problem.

"Christina, we tried, but now we have no other choice. Don't blame your sister."

Christina grimaced but didn't protest.

Good. Good. Everything had to go perfectly for him. That's why he had gotten this second chance. He had never believed in God or fate, but now he did believe in the latter.

He was destined for greatness. He was destined to crush his enemies. He was destined to get everything he wanted. Everything, everything.

Sam smiled like an animal and intensified the force of the ice storm. Three puppets were torn apart without doing anything to War.

"There has to be a way to save them all," Christina murmured. Was she still talking about that? For God's sake! He couldn't help but notice that she was doing what she could to ensure that attacks were only directed at War. She controlled water, so it was easier for her than for Violet or him.

They had projectiles, while she could manipulate the trajectory in mid-air whenever she wanted. It was a fundamental difference. She, at least, supposed she could keep her 'hands clean'.

She could afford the privilege of following her morality and believing herself better than others, despite death knocking at their door. Well, Sam didn't care. He knew he wasn't better than others. That he was a monster. It's just that her innocence was annoying in this sense.

"I'm getting tired of playing, Sammy," War said, bringing a hand to her heart, smiling sinuously. "You should listen to the voice of reason. Everything would be easier if you surrendered. You should have known from the beginning that you couldn't do anything against me, but now it has been demonstrated beyond all doubt. You're Satan's son, of course, and in time you'll be something great. In time. Right now you're just a chick fresh out of the shell."

"Shut the fuck up!" Sam spat between his teeth. "If it were that easy, you wouldn't be wasting time talking or trying to crush my spirit."

Advancing slowly, making the difference between them so clear. It was like a cat playing with its prey. At any moment she could have started running. He wasn't interested in her stopping the games, but she managed to offend him. It couldn't be helped.

He was a proud bastard. Besides, her logic made some sense. If it were so easy to crush him, why hadn't she done it already? She had said it. This was just a job for her, she didn't enjoy it. She had no reason to prolong it. Just because he couldn't see a way to win didn't mean one didn't exist.

Besides, maybe it wasn't about that. Maybe it was something much simpler and ridiculous. Maybe she was afraid. He was the boss's son, after all. Made in his image and likeness, capable of using infernal powers. And Satan had no idea.

He could tell her what he had gained thanks to the death of Evelyn and the others, but as for the massacre in the chapel and the events that followed, he was in the dark.

Maybe she was keeping her distance and playing it safe only for fear of an ace up his sleeve that didn't exist.

It was almost funny.

True or not, that thought made her seem more human than before and that was a good thing. Human. That is, vulnerable.

In response to his provocations, War shrugged.

"As you wish."

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Tentacles came sliding out from under that woman's short skirt. For a moment the heat rose to his head again and he wondered if his daddy knew the kind of things he saw. That couldn't be true, of course. Satan didn't even know he was from Earth. But, well, men were stupid.

She seems to be designed for me, he thought, but still I can't lay a hand on her. Well, life is full of great and small injustices.

War ran for him. For them, and her army also started running. It didn't matter what Christina said. If he stood with his arms crossed, they would tear him to pieces. If he wasn't able to withstand another massacre, well, he would lose her anyway.

Sam shot to kill.

But she was too fast and it was that she was actively resisting, not just walking, so he had no chance. The tentacles flew around her and destroyed the pieces of ice with a single blow. It gave the impression that just grazing them would be enough for each ice lance to crumble into a thousand pieces. War had been right, of course. Maybe someday he would become strong enough, but right now the difference between them was simply too great. A gap he couldn't bridge.

The army of puppets was reduced significantly and without mercy by the three, fortunately by all three. But that was the least of it.

He already had War on top of him. Those tentacles would impale him easily. Sam dug his feet into the ground, preparing himself. He tried to form an ice barrier as quickly as he could. A water barrier formed twice as fast as he could have.

Christina.

No, stupid. Defend yourself! But the air to protest was ripped from his lungs in a single blow. The tentacles didn't reach him. The water barely gave him time to form the ice barrier, which also shattered easily, and that made him fly backward.

He landed on the grass. His head was spinning.

A scream of pain. His heart leapt into his throat. Christina...

She was still alive, but her right leg had been pierced by one of the tentacles. She was crawling backward on the ground, leaving a thick trail of blood. All his nostrils could capture was the smell of blood. This killing field reeked of blood, entrails, and burning, for some reason.

The real fight hadn't lasted even a full minute.

Christina was only wounded and not even seriously, but it wasn't going to stay that way for long. War prepared to finish her off. Sam extended an arm towards his little sister. Far, too far.

"Enough! You win."

War turned her head mechanically to look at him.

"I already knew that. What do you think you're doing? You're already defeated, this is not a negotiation. You lost your chance to negotiate a while ago. You threw it in my face. You have nothing left to offer me."

Sam spat blood and saliva onto the grass. His eyes burned. Whenever his demon eyes came out, he could feel a strange pressure impossible to mistake.

"Cut the nonsense, will you? No more games. What I'm offering you is my cooperation."

"Cooperation?" she repeated, still pretending not to know what he was talking about. Irritating.

"After you take me far enough away that you have nothing to threaten me with except coming back to kill my sisters. That kind of cooperation. That's what I have to offer you."

Slowly and after a while, War withdrew the tentacle from Christina's right leg. What was left of it.

"I'm surprised that you're really going to sacrifice yourself for them, when you can simply turn your back on them. Maybe you were right. You don't resemble your father, although that's no advantage right now."

War laughed. The bitch openly laughed at him. Why wouldn't she? She had won.

"Come here." War lifted him like a sack of potatoes, placing him over her shoulder. On top of that, she had to make it humiliating. Well, better this than if she had carried him like a princess or something.

"Sammy..."

Christina gasped. She couldn't breathe well from the pain. The blood flowing from her destroyed leg was slipping between her fingers. Her skin, white as the moon, was now tinged red. Like a pressed flower. The bloody mess of her knee reminded him of a pressed flower.

"Sammy!"

His head hurt. She should stop shouting, it was already too late to do anything. They shouldn't have stopped. They should have gone much further from the mansion. Or not, he didn't even know how they had been found. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, it would have only prolonged the inevitable.

The point is that they had been decisively defeated. All that was left was to accept the end.

Of course, that didn't mean there wouldn't be a second battle. As soon as he had the chance, he would slit that bitch's throat. He couldn't allow her to get away after humiliating him like that. It had nothing to do with her being his enemy and that he had to kill her. Sam needed to get revenge for that humiliation, nothing more.

His whole body hurt, but he had no wounds. External ones, at least. War moved away from Sam's sisters. He saw how Violet approached her little sister while War took him away from there. She would take care of her and make sure she survived. He knew it, and she better succeed, because if not, that rage, that frustration, that terrible experience would not have been worth it.

Sam looked around, the little he could look at it being so dark, in any case.

The number of puppets had been considerably reduced, although, of course, that didn't mean anything. They were three or four people. People from a distant village, she had said.

Would that be his fate?

Reduced to a puppet, trapped in his own body, the ultimate prison of flesh? Even without saying yes to Satan. He was getting unnecessarily nervous.

At first, War had said she had no idea what Satan was planning.

So, for whatever reason, she shouldn't be able to turn him into a puppet. Or, at least, the yes wouldn't count if he pronounced it in that state.

Otherwise, forcing him to accept that Satan use his body wouldn't be a problem. Satan would have been ready to use the perfect servant to get him the body he wanted. He wouldn't have tried to force him in the mansion or manipulate him: he would have gone straight to the point.

It made all the sense in the world, but it didn't reassure him. It was impossible for anything to reassure him, defeated and trapped by an opponent ten times stronger than him. And War was just the first of the horsemen, according to the Bible.

If the Apocalypse established some kind of hierarchical order, it's that Death, the end of all things, was naturally the strongest of them all. The rest mattered so little that they hadn't even received names. Not officially, of course. And the Bible hadn't said they were women either, so in any case what it said mattered little.

The point is that he had no basis or reason beyond the certainty that Satan had not sent his strongest servant after him. If War was ten times stronger than him, what chance did he have against all the sisters?

It was so obvious that it didn't need to be said, but he couldn't succumb to despair so soon. There had to be a way.

And for his own good, he'd better discover it before War took him wherever she was going.

His hopes of survival, as an independent human being in any case, dwindled with every second, every step that demon took.

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Violet put both hands on her little sister's wound, pressing to slow the bleeding.

It had no effect, or at least not nearly enough.

She clicked her tongue.

She was going to get dizzy.

With the smell of blood filling her nose and lungs, with the sensation of her little sister's blood running between her fingers. She took a deep breath by reflex. A mistake, of course. The only thing you could breathe here was death.

No. She's not going to die, not today or ever.

"We have to go after him," Christina said, as if protesting.

Violet avoided her gaze, tore off a piece of her dress and used it to bandage the wound. Something is something. Christina was a water mage, but she couldn't heal herself. They would have to seek medical attention. And answer too many questions.

But afterwards, well, afterwards...

"I know. I haven't said no."

"Then do you believe him now?"

She felt deeply uncomfortable. She still couldn't look her in the eyes.

"What he said to the angel could have been to manipulate us, tell us what we wanted to hear, but letting himself be captured is no advantage. So of course I believe him. I have no choice."

He had proven it.

If he were just manipulating them, he could have gotten out of this, avoiding being captured. While the horseman War (good God) had orders not to kill him, he would always have the advantage being alone. He had discarded the only advantage he had over such a terrifying enemy to save their lives.

So of course she had, they had, to return the favor. She saw no other explanation. There was no other explanation. And, naturally, she was so relieved that she wanted to cry. She had tried to be strong and rational for the sake of her little sister. To see what was there, not just what she wanted to see. But, of course, she hadn't wanted to lose her little brother either. She was so happy that tears were welling up in her eyes.

Christina extended a hand to wipe away the tears with her fingertips, slowly and lovingly. Times were changing very quickly. She remembered changing their diapers more than once, hers and Sam's, and now it was Christina who was consoling her.

Violet nodded, trying not to start shaking. She had to be strong. For her... and for Sam.

She helped her to stand up, let her lean on her shoulder. They still had a long way to go, plans to make. War hadn't told them anything, but it wouldn't be difficult to track them. If she took Sam to the village where she had bewitched all those people, well, there were trails all over the field. That was the most likely place. A fortress surrounded by hostages loyal to her.

If it was another place, well, there were easier and harder methods. They would manage. They always did.

"Come on, sister. It's not as bad as it looks," Violet said as if she had some kind of medical training.

The piece of dress she had used as a bandage was already completely soaked with blood.

I Am the One Who Rings Death’s Bell, Part 4: END