"Do you think that will be enough to kill me?" Hunger asked, her mouth full of blood and a grotesque smile on her face. More striking than her chest—torn open in a disaster of skin, flesh, and blood, revealing the gleaming bones of her ribs spread wide like the petals of a flower—was her certainty.

"You can't kill me, Sammy. Not me, nor the life growing inside me. You've already lost."

Hunger recovered—or as much as she could be said to recover—grabbing him by the neck and hurling him far, smashing through the trunks of several trees. Far. So far. Sam felt his bones breaking, and blood rose in his throat.

For a moment, he had the melodramatic sensation he’d die before hitting the ground.

Of course, he didn’t. But when he landed, his body processed nothing but pain. He surely had more broken bones than intact ones. But what mattered was that he was alive.

Although he might recover in time, time was the one thing he didn’t have.

Hunger approached him through the shadows of the trees, her eyes blazing and her chest wound already healing.

He hadn’t had much time to develop as the Devil’s child. He hadn’t reached the peak of his power, and this was the result.

No, no, no, enough! Every time someone pushed him to the edge, he felt like the world was collapsing on him. He’d inherited the powers of Hell, but no one had ever told him this would be easy.

On the contrary.

He’d known from the beginning he was at risk, that his existence could be erased in the blink of an eye.

And at first, he had enjoyed every second of tension, every moment of the game.

Nothing had changed. The only difference now was that, after believing he’d overcome his greatest obstacle, he realized it was just the beginning.

The massacre of the Wright family had always been the least of his problems.

He was still too human.

That was it. That was the problem.

As such, he was sick of the fear, the pain, the tension. He just wanted a break.

He could breathe once he killed that damned bitch.

He’d gone through too much in too little time. And on top of that, the solution to his recent problems wasn’t intelligence, his greatest weapon, but brute force.

A field he was entirely unaccustomed to.

This considerably increased his mental, physical, and spiritual fatigue.

I can rest when Hunger is dead. When I make sure the bastard she’s carrying no longer breathes.

So what if all my bones are broken? So what if my entire body aches? So what if I can barely stand? None of that matters.

She has a fucking hole in her torso. And she’s coming for me.

Pain, fear, humanity, soul—it’s all an illusion I can transcend.

Little by little, as Hunger lunged at him, Sam stood up, his eyes glowing like two molten gold coins.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Like gates to Hell.

——

Christina stabbed the tree trunk into the hole with precision, feeling the impact against the creature—Pestilence, the next horseman of the apocalypse.

It was surreal to think about who she was fighting. Even more so that she was winning.

If this worked, if it went as Heather planned… though she wasn’t entirely sure of that. She didn’t even know if there was more to the plan beyond driving the monster into the pit so it couldn’t escape, then stabbing it with the trunk, like a giant wooden stake.

Still, Christina played her part. Without hesitation, it was better than standing idly by, waiting for the monster to emerge from the hole and strike back.

She was sick of fear. Sick of pain. Sick of the tension. Sick of trying to anticipate what fresh hell would rain down on them next.

She wanted to bury every monster that came for her family in the depths of darkness.

Christina raised and slammed the stake down with fury, screaming until her voice was hoarse. It felt as if her throat would tear from the effort. She gasped for air. It wasn’t a physical effort, but the magic required was draining.

Each time the stake came down, she heard the crunch. Felt the impact. But because of that, she couldn’t see if her efforts were yielding any reward.

She wished she could know. From the sound of those disgusting, heavy blows, it seemed like she was grinding it down. She hoped so. But deep down, she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. It was a damn horseman of the apocalypse.

And the two of them hadn’t even completed their magical training.

They’d never attended any academy. They’d been instructed by the best tutors money could buy. But they hadn’t finished their education. They were just kids, and now they had to deal with this.

"Why the hell do we have to deal with this?"

Because Sammy turned his back on us, an insidious voice answered.

Because he walked away without a second thought. Because he didn’t care what might happen.

Shut up! Shut up already! He’s my brother. You don’t know anything about him. Not a damn thing. Damn it!

No matter how fiercely she fought against her inner voice, her rage was fiercer as she drove the stake into the monster.

Still, it didn’t work.

At some point, amidst the blows that should’ve driven it back down repeatedly, Pestilence slipped out of the hole.

It oozed bile, green, red, and black blood—proving many of its limbs were broken and twisted. But it escaped nonetheless. And those were problems it would soon fix, Christina knew.

She threw the tree trunk she’d been using at it. Pestilence didn’t even flinch.

It took one last hit from the ice tree, which split in two on impact and fell at its feet as if it were nothing.

"What the hell do we do now?" Heather asked.

"I have no damn idea. Don’t look at me."

——

Sam fought like a wild animal.

But it wasn’t enough.

Hunger didn’t even bother to finish the fight. She kicked him in the stomach.

When his guard dropped, Sam doubled over, gasping, clutching the impact zone. And by the time he looked up, she had vanished without a trace.

That was all it had taken. One moment of distraction. One moment of weakness.

Her victory condition had been escape all along. Killing him would’ve just been a bonus.

In the end, she must’ve decided he was becoming too much trouble, Sam supposed.

Now he was screwed. No trace of her. No damn trace. And when he found her again, she’d probably have already given birth to that abomination.

He wanted to scream.