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For a list of all the Devil’s Pact Chapters and other stories click here

This is a revised version of the story that I published on Smashword starting back in 2014. It is rewritten with much-added material. However, I did have to age up some of the characters so no one is underage in this version.

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Click here for Chapter 4.

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The demon revealed her treachery.

—The Gospel of April 50:1

Tuesday, November 18th, 2014 – Mark Glassner – I-5 at Seattle City Limits

“Do you know how to use that dagger?” I asked Jessica as she fingered the hilt of the knife strapped to her waist. She had been nervously stroking it the entire limo ride to the meeting.

“Not really,” Jessica admitted. “But, just in case something happens…”

“It makes you feel a little safer?” I asked her.

“Yes, Master,” she smiled, her caramel face lighting up as she stared at me.

“If anything does happen, just run for the guards,” Mary said to our slut. “Don’t try to fight if you can help it. Lilith’s daughters, well, they are very dangerous.”

“Of course, Mistress,” Jessica answered. Her smile faded as she fidgeted in her seat.

I felt the same way. My own stomach was a pit of vipers, writhing and wiggling. I couldn’t eat breakfast. I only had a cup of coffee which just made my stomach feel worse. Mary leaned against me, her body occasionally trembling, even if her face appeared serene. She had grown adept at hiding her true feelings from the public over the last year. You would have to know her intimately to see the signs of her tension.

I gave her shoulders a squeeze and kissed her forehead.

“We’re here, sir,” Leah reported, slowing the limo to a graceful halt.

“Be safe, Master,” Violet said. Her pigtails swayed about her shoulders as she gave me a hug.

“Don’t let that cunt do anything to you,” Alison said, looking fierce in her tactical gear, Desiree sitting beside her.

All our the sluts were in the limo along with Sam and Candy. The diamond-tipped rods rested in a duffel bag, ready to be used to bind Lucifer if the worst should happen. Hopefully, it never would. For the good of the world, Lilith had to live.

I slid out of the limo into the weak, November sun. The wan light did nothing to take the bite out of the cold air. My breath frosted before me as I helped my wife out of the limo. She nodded her head and adjusted her body armor, stitched with protective spells. Soldiers were spilling out around us from their Strykers, setting up their defensive positions. Down the highway, the mass of Lilith’s daughters did the exact same thing.

I summoned the ghosts. Energy poured out of me, feeding the bodies they would inhabit. It had been a while since I had needed them. With the Patriots wiped out, and Lilith staying in Seattle, I hadn’t needed them since last May on the airplane. Twenty-two figures formed out of the mists: beautiful women in shining, silver armor and holding silvered weapons.

I blinked; twenty-two. I recounted.

Twenty-two? There should only be twenty-one.

No one had died in the last six months, so where did the twenty-second ghost come from? I stared at them, trying to figure out which one was the new spirit. Then I saw a ghost with sandy-blonde hair pinned up in a tight bun.

“Noel?” Mary gasped at the sight of our former slut

“Hi,” she said, standing stiff, a silver handgun gripped in her hand.

“I freed you.” I felt flustered, off-balanced. I released her from the Zimmah bond over a year and a half ago. We hadn’t seen her since. She shouldn’t still be bound to me. I was flabbergasted, my tongue suddenly so heavy as I struggled to think of something to say.

“I’m not bound to you,” Noel answered as she glanced at Chasity. “I didn’t want to be apart from my loved one.”

“Huh?” I asked, glancing at Mary in confusion. “You seemed pretty set against us, Noel. I thought you hated us.”

“I do hate you,” Noel answered frostily. “You’re not the loved one I’m talking about.”

“It’s Chasity,” Mary explained, rolling her eyes. “Didn’t you see them together those last few days before the nuns’ attack?” Chasity had died when the nuns attacked us over a year ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. So much has happened since that sad day.

“Really?”

“God, you’re blind,” my wife said with a fond smile. “How did you die, Noel?”

“I made a mistake,” she answered. A look of self-hatred flashed across her face. “More than one, actually.”

“Well… I…” My voice trailed off. What did you say to the dead? I cleared my throat. “Be ready. If anything goes wrong, I want you racing across the bridge. All of you.”

“You can count on us, Master,” Chasity assured.

“It’s time, Master,” Jessica said, her hand gripping the dagger hilt.

Mary gripped Jessica’s shoulder, giving her a tight smile. “It’ll be okay.”

Jessica released the dagger, her caramel cheeks darkening with a blush. “Of course, Mistress. Shall we?”

Mary took my arm, her other hand resting on the hilt of her own bronze dagger. Just in case.

We walked in silence down the concrete roadway, Jessica trailing behind us. Tufts of grass grew through cracks in the concrete. No one had used this stretch of I-5 in a year, and it was starting to show deterioration. Bands of dirt caked the road in undulating ripples; erosion washed down the highway by the heavy rains.

Farther down the highway, Lilith strode forward, trailed by Lana and Chantelle. Both women had daggers tucked into their belts and dressed in utilitarian clothes: loose-fitting pants for mobility, long-sleeved shirts, and bulletproof vests no doubt looted from Seattle P.D.

My skin tightened the closer we got, ratcheted by the tension crackling through the air. Waves of cold flooded through my veins, pumped by the increasing beat of my heart. I recognized the signs of adrenaline coursing through me, preparing me for battle. It sharpened my senses and readied my muscles to spring into action.

I flexed my fingers. One word, and my sword would appear. A second, my armor.

We stopped ten feet from the demoness. Lilith looked like a pin-up model with her huge breasts and voluminous, silver hair that possessed the tousled, just-been-fucked look. She wore a sheer, red dress, translucent enough for her naked flesh to bleed through where it pressed against the fabric. A smile glinted on her lips, dangerous, victorious.

My stomach sank.

I pushed Mary behind me, my eyes scanning for the trap.

“Mark?” Mary said, voice soft, tight.

“I’ve waited so long for this day,” Lilith purred, violet eyes shining in triumph.

My heart screamed in my chest. Everything felt wrong. My eyes flickered around the roadway. Where was the trap? Was it a Haja cloaking itself about to fire a beam—

“No, Mark!” Mary shouted, then screamed in pain.

I whirled about. My heart stopped.

Mary was falling to the ground, her shoulder bloody. Jessica stood over Mary, clutching a dagger. The black blade, crudely made, glistened red with my wife’s blood. White-hot anger flashed through my mind, a rage that wiped all thoughts. Jessica roared inhumanly as her dagger thrust at me.

I spoke a word, summoning my sword. It appeared in a flash of heavenly light, my arm already swinging at my treacherous slut. The celestial gold blade, glinting in the sunlight, arched right for Jessica’s neck. I didn’t care that it wouldn’t hurt her—she was human, and the blade only hurt the supernatural.

She attacked my wife! The traitorous bitch would pay!

The golden blade cut through Jessica from shoulder to hip.

She fell apart in a spray of crimson blood as two meaty chunks of flesh hit the ground and changed. Her caramel skin rippled, turning a pasty white; her body shrank, becoming emaciated; her lustrous, honey-brown hair bleached pale. I stared down at her, a single thought knifing through the fury: she was one of Lilith’s daughters.

One of Lilith’s daughters stabbed my wife!

“Lilith!” I roared, rounding on the fucking demoness. My vision shrank to pinpricks, focused on the bitch. I drew back my sword, my entire body tensing for the attack.

“I…” The fucking bitch blanched in fear as she spluttered. She took a step back and cast her gaze wildly around. Then she glanced at Lana and Chantelle standing behind her. “Defend me!”

“For my Goddess!” blonde Lana yelled, drawing a bronze dagger and charging me as Lilith fled past her.

I slammed my sword into Lana’s face. The blade didn’t bite into her flesh; she was human. Instead, the force of the blow broke her nose. She slammed down into the concrete. She groaned, her eyes rolling back into her head as she lay in a daze.

Hissing in anger, Chantelle danced towards me and stabbed with her dagger. I swung. She nimbly dodged. She moved with grace as she spun away from my every thrust and swing. I hacked at her, snorting like a bull.

I growled in rage. Every second I wasted on her, Lilith came closer to her army. So I left myself open. Chantelle took the bait. Her arm shot forward, dagger gleaming. I caught her wrist in my left hand, broke it, and slammed the hilt of my sword into her face.

She fell senseless beside her wife.

Lilith was halfway back to her army, struggling to run in her dress and heels. I could overtake her. I was as fast as any Olympic sprinter. She would be dead before she reached her monsters. A warning voice whispered in my mind. What about the world? What about Lucifer?

I hesitated.

“Mark,” Mary gasped weakly.

I turned to my wife. She was still on the ground. The cut didn’t seem that bad, so why was she still down? I glanced at that dagger; it looked evil. I knelt down and grasped my wife’s hand, thinking she must be poisoned. I concentrated on her being healed.

“Tsariy!” I cried out. The scarlet light engulfed her.

“It hurts, Mark,” she cried out as the light faded.

The wound on her shoulder was still there, ragged and torn. The shock of seeing it punched me in the gut. The spell had failed to heal her? Why? How?

“Oh, God, Mark!” she screamed.

I must have cast the spell wrong. I could heal her. I could save my wife.

“Tsariy!”

Her blood flowed dark from the wound, pouring down her arm. My tears seared my cheek, panic nibbling at my senses.

“Why didn’t it work?” I shouted into the air.

No answer.

“M-Mark,” she groaned, sounding so tortured, her face pale, twisting.

I kissed her hand. “Hang in there, Mare!”

Around me, the ghosts surged past me to meet Lilith’s attacking daughters with swords and guns. I was vaguely aware of the Legion opening fire down the highway. I didn’t care. My wife was dying, and I couldn’t help her. I tried a third time, and a fourth time, to heal her.

She couldn’t die!

She couldn’t die!

Please, please, please!

I tried a fifth time.

She grew weaker. Her eyes closed. Her breath became shallow.

“Don’t die, Mare! Stay with me!”

“What’s wrong?” Sam shouted.

I looked up, hope surging through me. Sam raced towards me. She’d know what to do. “The dagger,” I cried, struggling to speak coherently, emotion choking my tongue. Cold fear washed through my body, icy waves that threatened to immobilize me. “She’s dying! Save her, Sam!”

The Asian woman bent down and examined the dagger. She furrowed her dusky-olive brow. “There’s a maker mark on the tang.” She touched something stamped into the blade right above the hilt. “It looks like the Mark of Qayin. See the circle and the diagonal slash across it.” She held up the hilt, holding it like it were a venomous snake that could twist around and bite her at any moment. “It is one of the three Mispach daggers. She’ll be dead in minutes. I’m sorry.” Tears beaded in her slanted eyes. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“There has to be a cure!” She couldn’t die. Not my Mary. She was my world. Nothing would matter without her. She had to live. “Please, Sam!” I hugged my wife’s dying body to my chest, felt her weak breath on my cheek. “I can’t lose her!”

“You have to find the person to whom the dagger’s bound and spill their lifeblood on Mary. It wasn’t this… thing.” She motioned to the quivering remains of the creature who had posed as Jessica. “I can see her blood has splashed on Mary.”

“Lilith?”

“Probably,” Sam answered.

I had missed the chance to catch her. Now I would never cut through all of her daughters in time. I could feel the bit of Mary tied to my soul fading away. Her flame guttered out; I was about to lose my wife. Her breathing slowed. Her heart flagged.

She was about to die.

“Please!” I shouted at my wife, clenching her tight to me. “Don’t go, Mare!”

Only a tiny tongue of flame still burned in her, consuming the last of her life’s wick. She would burn out unless I could fuel her flame. I reached into my soul and touched the part of me that was tied to Mary’s, the deep connection between us. Spells, wishes, and love bound us. We shared Molech’s power. We shared our dreams.

We could share our life force.

I forced my energy through our bond. The flame burned brighter, consuming my wick.

I groaned, my head swimming. Dizzy waves of darkness washed across her. Mary devoured my life force, her flame burning fast. Her heart beat stronger. Her breathing grew deeper. I had bought her a little time, but not much. Maybe ten minutes before my life ran out and we both died.

Exhaustion swept through me as she consumed my life. I felt like I had run all day. I didn’t have the strength to kill Lilith and fuel my wife’s life. So I tapped all those other chains bound to my soul: the sluts, Mary’s family, the maids, the hundreds of bodyguards. Their energy flowed into me, and my energy flowed into Mary.

Sam gasped, her eyes widening. “Y-you’re feeding all of our lives into her?”

“My wife lives or we all die!” I growled. “I won’t let her perish.”

Sam sat back on her hunches, hugging herself, her face going pale.

“Mark,” Mary whispered, drawing my attention to her. I watched her eyes flutter open. A tremulous smile spread on her lips. “I was falling into darkness. And then your hand reached out and pulled me back into the light.”

“It’ll be okay,” I told her. “I have to do something.”

“Okay,” she whispered, her eyes closing. “I’m so tired. I’ll just rest here.”

“I love you, Mare.”

She smiled before her face slackened into unconsciousness again.

I looked around, thinking. I had to get to Lilith. I spotted a Legion soldier nearby, antenna thrusting up from his dark backpack. “You, radio General Brooks. Order him to send in the troops! Attack Seattle! Butcher Lilith’s daughters!”

“Sir!” the soldier said. She flashed me a salute and pulled the phone-like receiver of her radio off her backpack. “Crusader Six, Crusader Six, this is Emperor Prime, over.”

I balled my fists as I rose, turning to face Seattle. I looked past the fighting raging across the highway to the skyline beyond. Lilith would die today. I didn’t care that I would free Lucifer and damn the world to darkness and pain. My love was dying, and I did not give one shit about what it would cost to save her life.

“Get ready with the backup plan,” I barked at Sam. “I’ll be back with Lilith.”

She looked up at me, her eyes wide. Then she nodded and stood on shaky legs.

I drew my bronze dagger, thrust it into the fabric of reality, and carved my portal to the Shadows. Lilith was a coward. She would flee back to her lair: Seattle’s city hall.

To be continued…

Click here for Chapter 6.

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