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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 2.

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But a small flame still burned. A single light, little more than a gutter candle, flickered against the Tyrants’ darkness. All it needed was fuel.

—excerpt from The History of the Tyrants’ Theocracy, by Tina Allard

Chasity “Chase” Alberta Glassner

The book opened my eyes.

Everything John Stuart Mills wrote about contradicted the teachings of the Church and the way my parents had cultivated humanity. The book taught that men should be free to act as they will, so long as their actions did not unduly harm another. But Theocracy taught that men must obey the will of the Living Gods and their earthly representatives without question or hesitation.

Why would Grandfather give me this book? I tried to ignore it. It couldn’t be saying what my parents did was wrong. But it lingered in my mind. It nibbled in the back of my thoughts while I was trying to sleep or crept upon me as I lay panting after making love.

A month later, right after Silas married Andrea and Delilah, I embarked on a tour of various parts of the world to let the citizens see their Goddess and know that they were loved. On Liberty stuck with me. I couldn’t see the world the same way any longer. It opened my eyes to the oppression of the Theocracy.

When the demons escaped Hell, many cities had been destroyed and many lives lost. Much of the world had to be rebuilt. There was a sameness to everything now. There seemed to be only a dozen different plans for houses; neighborhoods in rebuilt Paris looked the same as ones in Jerusalem. Government buildings were built to the exact same plan, laid out in squares with each building resting at the same spot in relation to the others. The same statues dotted parks and the same fountains were the centerpieces of squares. The only things beautiful or original were the monuments and buildings that had survived the Demon Wars.

My parents had approved the new building plans, and no one had either the daring or the desire to build something different.

Even the citizens were all the same. Sure they had different skin colors, different facial features, but they were identical. Farmers wore the same roughspun garb; miners dressed in leather jackets and orange helmets; nurses in their low-cut, white dresses. They all smiled and talked to each other politely. And they all stared at me in awe. Every last person was under my parents’ powers, ordered to love their neighbors, to obey the laws, and to never harm another human.

There was no culture. Nor diversity.

There was no humanity.

The citizens were happy and healthy. They had food and shelter. But they were slaves, even if their manacles were invisible.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, John Stuart Mill had written almost two hundred years ago, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

I was horrified and, when I returned home, I foolishly expected my parents to see the error of their ways when I carefully explained it to them. We sat at dinner, served by scantily clad maids. Supposedly, the maids and other servants were all volunteers, but was that true? How could they not volunteer when they were told to obey their Gods and love them and serve them in any way possible by the Church and my parents’ weekly broadcasts.

“Don’t you see what you’ve done?” I asked my parents when I finished. “While your actions were certainly laudable and well-meaning, they were still tyrannical. You’ve robbed the people of the world their most inalienable right: the liberty to make their own decisions.

“That’s what you’ve done to them to end crime. You smothered all the uniqueness out of them. You’ve killed that spark inside of them that makes them human. They should be allowed to choose what their profession is or who they marry. They should have a say in what houses they live in, or even what style to build them in.”

Mother stared in disbelief at me.

“She’s your daughter,” Father said and laughed.

Mother glared at him.

“You have to understand, Chase, we did it for their own good,” Mother explained with the patient tone used on a child.

I grit my teeth.

“Choices just make things… difficult. It’s better for them this way.”

“Really? Why can’t they make their own choices?” I demanded. “Why do they have to take the aptitude test and be assigned their jobs and their housing? Even their spouses are chosen for them. What’s the harm in a little freedom?”

“Give a man an inch, and he’ll take a foot,” Father answered, his mirth fading away. “Humans do poorly with freedom.”

“And that’s why you won’t let them choose their own spouses?” I shook my head. “What about love? About finding that special someone and choosing to be with them? Like you and Mom?”

“They’re free to love,” Mother answered, her expression softened. “They’re assigned spouses based on personality and suitable genetic traits. But they’re free to take any lover they want, or to be monogamous. We do not deny them their pleasures.”

“And what if they hate their spouse?” I demanded.

“They won’t,” Father said. “When they’re assigned their spouse, they’re told that they will always love each other. We care about our followers, and only want the best for them. We order them to be happy, so they are.”

I threw my hands up. “That’s what I mean. You’re taking away even the most intimate decision they can make!”

“What’s the harm? They’re happy.” Mother fixed me with a hard look. “Our system makes all the decisions for them, leaving them free to enjoy their lives as they make the world a better place.”

“But they don’t live! They just exist. You’ve robbed them of free will, of what makes them human! Why not give them just a little freedom? What is so wrong about that?”

Father sighed. “Chase, do you know what the world was like before the Theocracy?”

“I’ve watched your movies.”

My father’s eyes became intense, the blues hardening into sapphires. “Those are fiction. Like the books you’ve read, the ones that have poisoned your mind. Before we imposed our Utopia, men had all the freedom they wanted, and what did they do with it?”

I shrugged, wilting beneath my father’s gaze.

“Men were brutal beasts. Every day, thousands were murdered, raped, and abused. Mothers drowned their children because they inconvenienced their love lives. Husbands murdered their wives for insurance payouts. Children killed their parents for drug money. Companies sold products that killed and maimed, then covered up their crimes to maintain their profit margins. Dictators starved their people to suppress them while religious extremists butchered those they disagreed with on how to worship the same god. There is no depth to the evil and depravity that men and women can sink to.”

“Thanks to us, people only die from accidents, old age, and illness,” Mother added. “Children aren’t abused. No one murders. No one hates. No one harm another.”

“’That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant’,” I quoted from On Liberty. “Just because someone might do something, or because you think you know better, is not a good enough reason to impose your will on them!” I slammed my fist into the table. “What gives you the right to make slaves of mankind?”

“We are Gods, Chase,” Father said, his voice calm, imperious, and remote. He looked like a statue brought to life. “That gives us all the right.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. On Liberty didn’t cover the ethics of an actual God, only temporal governments. My fiery certainty vanished. A nervous skitter shot through me. Father sounded so certain, so commanding, that I felt foolish for even challenging him.

“There has to be something better,” I lamely said.

“There isn’t,” Mother said as she took my hand. She gave me a loving smile, her green eyes so warm. “Trust us, baby girl. Humans are children, and we’re their loving parents. We know what’s best for them.”

“Okay,” I sighed.

She hugged me and I savored her motherly affections. They weren’t monsters. They didn’t oppose to make people suffer, but… Maybe Gods did have the right to do it.

For several years, I dropped my objections, letting them fester in the back of my mind. Since I could find no answer to my parents’ assertion, I didn’t see the point in fighting them. My parents were Gods; I was a Goddess. We were better than all those other humans, so maybe it was only right that we reshape mankind into something greater than they were. Wasn’t that the point of religion? To extort mankind to be better than their base urges. My parents were just more successful at it than the false religions of the past.

It was a chance comment I overheard that changed everything.

I needed something from Sam. I don’t remember what it was, something inconsequential, so I headed to her quarters in the mansion to retrieve it. I didn’t knock. After all, I was a Goddess, and I could go where I pleased.

“If they’re Gods, why did we have to figure out their miracles?” Candy complained to Sam. The TV was turned up loud, and they hadn’t heard me enter.

They were sitting on their couch, watching some documentary about Mother and Father; television was the only form of culture allowed in the Theocracy, and it was mostly bland stuff compared to the entertainment that had come before. Mother and Father had quite the collection of movies and TV shows, things banned by their Theocracy.

We’d often watch them together.

Sam answered her wife with patience like this was a reply she made by rote, “Great men and women have always stood on the shoulders of their intellectual betters. Why would Mark and Mary be any different than the thousands of petty tyrants that have come before?”

I was shocked. Never had I heard anyone impugn my parents. It sparked my curiosity. Did Sam and Candy not believe in my parents’ Godhood? In mine? I backed out of their room, my thoughts whirling. Sam was close to my parents, a former slut turned vizier. She was an expert on the mystical arts.

And didn’t believe my parents were Gods.

A few days later, I tripped Candy into my bed. After some vigorous fucking, we cuddled. I stroked her head and then asked her bluntly, “Do you think my parents are Gods?”

“What?” she gasped, tensing in my embrace.

“I walked in on you and Sam the other day. You were complaining about something on TV.”

She swallowed. “You heard that?”

I nodded. “It sounded like you two don’t think we’re Gods.”

She gave me a considering look, fingering a lock of her honey-blonde hair. I knew from pictures she used to dye it garishly, half-pink and half-blue. “Have you ever read the Magicks of the Witch of Endor?”

I frowned, that sounded familiar, but I was sure. I knew I hadn’t read it.

“I’ll email you Sam’s translation,” she told me.

It destroyed my world.

My parents weren’t Gods. They were just something called Warlocks. Regular humans who made deals with the very demons who’d ravaged the world during my childhood. It was vile reading about some of the acts you had to perform to make a Pact with them.

What sort of monsters were my parents?

All their justifications for enslaving mankind rang hollow in my ears. They weren’t better than the humans. They were humans. They were subject to the same flawed hearts they claimed could not be trusted.

The same flawed heart that beat in my chest. I wasn’t a Goddess. I wasn’t special. I was just… human.

I couldn’t look at my parents without feeling sick. I imagined Father sacrificing a woman to Molech. Or Mother strangling a girl for power to Ashtoreth. I felt suffocated in the mansion, surrounded by evidence of my parents’ abhorrent excess. Even Candy, who seemed so critical of my parents, wasn’t disturbed by their powers, just jealous of them.

I had to leave.

At the age of twenty-three, I walked down the driveway of the mansion and out onto the roads. I had never walked any great distance, but I was young and I adapted. I walked for hours, leaving the large compound that made up the Theocracy’s Capital of South Hill. I didn’t know where I was going, what I was doing. I just had to escape.

Two bodyguards tracked me down on the second day. “Holy Daughter,” 312 said respectfully to me. They all went by numbers, some perverse act my parents had inflicted upon them. “Your parents are worried about you.”

“Let them worry,” I said with a toss of my auburn hair. I kept walking.

“They want you to come home,” 71 added. “They’re concerned about you.”

“I don’t ever want to see those monsters again! I want nothing to do with Warlocks!” I put all my hate, all my disgust, into that word.

Warlocks!

I knew the stories: before the demons there were the Warlocks. Petty men and women who sold their souls for power. People just like my parents.

I kept on walking while the two bodyguards said nothing. I could feel their stunned eyes as I marched down the road west toward Tacoma. I left them behind. When I reached I-5, I trudged south. I just had to get away.

Day after day, I walked until I became tired. There was always a helpful citizen who, thanks to my parents’ mind control, would offer to let me stay in their house. When I was hungry, I ate at the communal cafeterias that provided free meals to their neighborhoods. I hiked down the West Coast into Mexico. When I reached Panama, I followed the canal east until I reached the Caribbean. I followed that back north and entered what used to be the Southern United States.

Every so often, a representative of my parents would find me, and try to convince me to come home.

I told them no.

I grew lean, hard. My feet became leathered with callouses; my face darkened by the sun. When I reached the East Coast, I took a cargo ship to Europe. Normal citizens weren’t allowed to travel, but I was a false Goddess; nothing was denied me. I was aimless, restless. Five years had passed without me even realizing it.

Why was I walking? Everything was the same. The people were all the same slaves.

I needed to free these people. I needed to atone for my parents’ great sin.

How?

I tried to find allies, to stir up the population.

It wasn’t easy. Sometimes, I’d find a man or woman who had some passion, some spark that hadn’t been stamped out of them by my parents, and I would latch on to them. I would cling to them as tightly as a drowning person to a piece of flotsam in a storm-tossed sea. Man or woman, I’d take them as my lover. We’d pass the weeks talking, plotting, trying to find others to help us.

It always ended the same way—they would be unable to change. Unable to break free of my parents’ control. Melancholy would beset me and I’d walk. I desperately wanted to be with my family again, but I couldn’t ignore the monstrous nature of theirTheocracy. If I could just find a way to restore Liberty to mankind, I knew I could go home.

I knew we’d be a family again.

I traveled the world, crossing every last continent save Antarctica. I was immortal; time didn’t matter. I looked nineteen, even though I was thirty, then I was thirty-five. It was hard to care any longer. When winter came, I went south; when summer came, I would go north, or further south. I once stood at the tip of South America, staring at Cape Horn, and remembered the stories I had read of great sailing ships battling the elements as they rounded this point. I would imagine the terrible storms that would assail them as the Europeans explored the world.

When my melancholy was at its strongest, I contemplated suicide.

Once, I stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon, gazing down into red depths and the blue Colorado snaking on the floor below. One step…

A few years later, I sat at the edge of Victoria Falls, watching the curtain of water pour over it and turn into mist. I thought I could just swim out and let the current take me away from this life. But then I’d remember I was bound to Mother. If I died, I would just wait in the Shadows with all those chained to my parents who’d perished, dwelling in a limbo.

My thirty-ninth birthday passed as I walked the Jordan River and reached the Dead Sea. I floated in the warm, salty waters, trying to wash clean my parents’ filth. I had just broken up with Barakat, a beautiful Arab youth. He was eighteen, his skin the color of rich coffee, and his eyes full of life. I had let myself foolishly think that I again had found the one person who would care about what my parents had made of the world.

And then he had come home, excited that the aptitude test had selected him to be a farmer.

“I thought you wanted to be an engineer?” I asked him.

“I did,” he shrugged, “but the Gods need me to be a farmer.” He smiled broadly; that beautiful, happy smile I fell in love with.

“So be an engineer; don’t let them choose for you,” I told him.

He frowned. “But they need me to be a farmer. The Gods know, Chase.”

My love died, like it always did. So I walked and walked, following the Jordan River south until I reached its terminus—the Dead Sea. As I lay floating in the saline waters, I thought about drowning myself in the warm, salty embrace. After hours, I lost my nerve, and swam back to the shore.

I kept walking.

I trudged south onto the Arabian Peninsula. I followed the Red Sea Coast for a week—I was in no hurry; my life had no meaning—when I came across a sign that pointed to a mountain called Jebel al-Lawz. A single word was spray-painted beneath the mountain’s name: Hope.

Hope. I had been without hope for over twenty years.

I followed the road. It led to a low, conical mountain. It was really more of a steep hill to me. I had grown up in the sight of Mount Rainier rearing up like a monolith looming over you every day. I pictured her slopes clad in the blue-white majesty of its glaciers. Jebel al-Lawz was a squat, ugly, red mound rising out of the desert, the summit blackened like it had been engulfed in flames.

As I neared the mountain, maybe just a few miles away, I passed through… something. It was a warm membrane of energy that gave way before me, enveloping me in golden light for the briefest instant, and then I passed through.

I gasped. Suddenly, the valley around the peak wasn’t empty any longer. Tents—colorful and ranging in shape, size, style, and materials—spread out around the mound. They were pitched haphazardly, with no thought or planning.

People milled about. They were all… different. No one dressed similarly. People laughed, children played. As I walked closer, I realized these were people who lived. What was this place? Who were these people? They saw me, and a hush fell upon them. They began to gather, watching me with cautious faces.

“H-hello.” I swallowed. I felt… afraid of them.

I had never been afraid of my parents’ slaves; they would never have been able to harm me or anyone. But these people were free. I could see it in their eyes, in their postures, in the way some viewed me with hope, some with skepticism, or fear, or distrust.

The crowd parted. A rugged young man and a pretty young woman stepped out. The man was fit, sturdy, with brown hair and blue eyes, his arm around the woman’s shoulders. She had a round face, a welcoming smile gracing her lips. Circling her forehead was a crown made of her braided, black hair. Reassurance filled her green eyes.

“You’re not their slaves?” I asked, the shock of that realization finally settling in on me.

“No,” the man smiled. “We are the last free men and women in the world. I am Doug Allard, and this is Tina, my wife.”

The woman, Tina, smiled. Then she threw her arms around my neck, giving me such a welcoming hug and a sisterly kiss on my cheek. I relaxed into her. Emotion suddenly spasmed through my body as my arms embraced her back.

“I’ve been searching for this for so long,” I whispered, tears brimming in my eyes.

“And we have waited even longer for you to arrive, Prophetess,” Tina whispered back.

“Prophetess?” I asked, pushing away from Tina. The crowd had grown larger, more than a hundred adults. They all stared at me with… hope. I shivered despite the heat.

Doug nodded. “You are Chasity Glassner?”

“Yeah.” I looked around. These people were free. There were others who resisted my parents’ evil. Hope bubbled inside me. Had I really found what I’d been searching for? I pushed down my hope, trying to temper it with caution; I had been disappointed so many times. “What is this place?”

“The refuge,” Tina answered. “For forty years, Doug and I have waited in the wilderness for you, gathering those who were not satisfied with the world; with your parents. Excluding the children, we number one hundred and forty-four; seventy-two men and seventy-two women.”

I swallowed, “Why are you waiting for me?”

“To guide us,” Doug said, a smile crossing his lips. “To renew the Gift of the Spirit to mankind. To free the world from bondage.”

I’d found it. Relief ballooned inside me, hope swelling to engulf my entire body. So many years of walking, of doubt and bitterness, had finally paid off. “So why do you need me for that?”

“You are the daughter of two Warlocks,” Tina answered. “You have rejected their lifestyle and turned your back on evil. Only you can perform the prayer of Rapha.”

I frowned, not recalling that prayer from the Magicks of the Witch of Endor. “What does it do?”

“Gives back hope to mankind,” Tina answered.

“My wife and I are the last Priests living. Your parents hunted down the last few of us, the final threats to their power,” Doug said, eyes haunted. “But we have done our duty and hid while your parents dominated the world. All for this day.”

The Magicks of the Witch of Endor talked about Priests and Priestesses, men and women granted the powers of Heaven to fight Warlocks and Demons. They were called evil by my parents, the Nuns who tried to defeat them early in their power.

“So you need my help to exorcise my parents?” I asked, smiling. That would free mankind. We could be a family again. Tears misted my eyes. “This is perfect! It’ll break their mind control and make them human again!”

Tina gave me a sad look. “I’m so sorry, child.”

I frowned. “Why? Exorcising won’t harm my parents. Right?”

“Your parents are beyond exorcism. They’ve absorbed the powers of Lucifer, Molech, Lilith, and many other Powers. No Priestess has the strength to overcome that. Only a Priest’s sword killing your parents would work, and…”

“And Father’s immortal,” I whispered. Hope burst inside me, replaced by cold dread. I pushed down the panic. They mentioned the Rapha prayer. “That’s what the new prayer is for, right? Stripping them of their powers?”

Please, please, please, let that be true.

Tina’s green, sad eyes peered at me.

“They have to die?” That couldn’t be my voice speaking; I hadn’t sounded that young in years.

“I’m sorry,” Tina whispered.

I’m sorry. The words punched my stomach. I stumbled back; the world spun about me as tears burned down my cheeks. This couldn’t be the solution. Not after all my searching.

“I have to kill him?” My voice cracked, wavered. Oh, no. Father made himself immortal to everything except me. “Please, no! There has to be another way!”

Tina hugged me as I wept. “It’s your choice, Prophetess. The world can remain their slaves, or you can set them free.”

No, no, no. I wanted to free mankind, not murder my parents. This couldn’t be happening!

I pushed away from her and ran. My entire body shook. Ragged sobs burst from my throat. Tears stained my eyes, almost blinding me as I raced down a trail. I hated what my parents had done to mankind, but I loved them.

I couldn’t kill them. Right?

And it wouldn’t just be them I killed. It would be all the people bound to them. The sluts, my half-siblings, the bodyguards and maids. I had to trade my family for the world’s freedom. How fair was that?

This would be so much easier if I could hate my parents.

I ran up the side of the mountain, scampering up the gentle slope, climbing higher and higher. I didn’t care where I was going. I just had to move. To escape this awful weight crushing down on my shoulders. I scrabbled over red boulders. Years of walking gave me the endurance to keep running as my legs grew leaden. I paused only to drink from my water bottle, then kept climbing, ignoring the sun pounding on my back.

The rocks turned black; I found myself at the summit.

I stared out at the expanse of the Arabian Desert. Brown and yellow bled toward the horizon with just a smear of blue in the distance, the Red Sea. Once, black-robed Bedouin had wandered this wasteland, eking out an existence in the harsh landscape. But they had been moved to cities along the coast by my parents, ostensibly for their own good.

“We are Gods, Chase. That gives us all the right.”

“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.” The words from On Liberty echoed in my mind. Could I kill my parents? Was the blood of the few hundred people—my family—worth freeing billions from bondage? Did I have to destroy my soul to save mankind?

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson had written those words when the American Colonies revolted against the British when they had no say in their own governance, no representatives in Parliament.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Other words written by Jefferson.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

My parents had robbed the world of Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, leaving them only with their Lives. They may have meant well, but the results were monstrous. They had pruned all the character out of mankind with their tyranny, leaving behind only stunted bushes shaped to my parents’ will. Humans were mere automatons going through the motions of living.

There was a sci-fi movie my Father loved, and I remembered at the end as one of the characters was dying, having sacrificing himself for the ship, he’d said: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

One last tear rolled down my cheek as the sun set. The stars twinkled to life across the crystal clear sky above me.

The needs of the many.

I watched the stars wheel across the night sky, twinkling down on me. I envied them. They had no concerns, no torn emotions. They just burned brightly, happily fusing hydrogen into helium into lithium into iron until finally, they died, whether in fiery explosions or guttering out like a candle.

As dawn neared, blushing the horizon in pink, I heard footsteps behind me—Doug and Tina. He held a scroll, and she held a black knife. I stood and faced them. I didn’t know what to do. Which was the right choice. Did the needs of the many outweigh the lives of my family? Was the world’s need more important than the wounds to my soul?

“Prophetess,” Tina greeted.

“I’m not your Prophetess,” I muttered. “I… I don’t know what to do.”

“I understand, child. I would take the burden from you if I could.”

Her eyes burned with conviction. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. So I just blurted out, “What is that scroll?”

“The original copy of the Magicks of the Witch of Endor,” Doug said, handing it to me. It felt ancient, made of lambskin that had survived for over two thousand years. “I have kept it safe for forty years, waiting for the day you’d arrive. The prayer of Rapha is contained at the end of the scroll. Perhaps it will help with your decision.”

I unfurled the scroll. It contained square Hebrew letters and was written in Aramaic. It was familiar. The memory of Sam’s lessons in Semitic Languages from my childhood came back, and I recognized passages from her translation. I read the final prayer, frowning. This wasn’t in the copy my parents possessed.

My parents had definitely never seen this prayer. If they had, I would never have been allowed to roam free. “And the Creator knew, in his infinite Wisdom,” it read, “that a time would come when his Priest and Priestess would fall against the forces of the Adversary. Darkness would cover the world, and again the Gifts of the Spirit would be needed, spread by the words of the chosen Prophet, one born of the union of two Warlocks, bound by the Zimmah ritual, and used as the focus of the Eylowm ritual. Only the Prophet can restore the Gift to mankind upon the summit of Mount Sinai. The Prophet must…”

I looked up at Doug and Tina in horror as comprehension flooded my exhausted mind. “The Eylowm ritual is a trap?” My hand trembled. “My parents were manipulated into their own downfall?”

“Why else is it so powerful?” asked Tina. “Immortality? No weapon, no force, no illness can harm your father, let alone kill him. Unless it’s wielded by you. It’s almost too good to be true, isn’t it?”

“That’s monstrous!”

“Your parents made the choice of their own free will,” Doug answered, voice soft, paternal despite his young age. Like me, his appearance was deceptive. His eyes were old. “They made their pacts with the Adversary, gained power in exchange for their souls. They declared themselves false gods, and unleashed the demonic hordes upon mankind. Choices have consequences, Chasity. The Creator is always ready to turn those consequences to his advantage.”

“If he’s so powerful, why didn’t he stop my parents?” I shouted. “Why do I have to do this? Why?”

“You do not have to do this,” Tina smiled. “It’s your choice. Free will is the most important thing in all of creation; he would never take that away from you. That’s why he didn’t interfere with your parents. They had to be free to choose to do good, or there’s no choice at all. Without it, then we’re just mindless puppets, slaves, and that’s not what he wants.”

Slaves. My parents had enslaved mankind; the most monstrous thing imaginable. They had made their choice and denied all the world theirs. It wasn’t right. The needs of the many have to come before the needs of the few. “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” John Stuart Mills was right; my parents had harmed, were harming, all of mankind, and therefore it was only right that power should be exercised against them. A strange calm filled me.

I made my decision.

“I will be your Prophetess,” I answered; my chin held high.

Doug nodded.

“This is a Mispach dagger. One of three forged by Cain from the metal of a falling star,” Tina said, handing me the crudely forged dagger. “Nick the blade, and your blood will bind it to you. Anyone wounded with this blade will die. Only your lifeblood will save them.”

I nodded; Lilith had almost killed Mother with one.

I took the ugly iron blade, stared at it, then I pricked my thumb. A drop of dark blood beaded on my tan flesh. I smeared it on the blade. The dagger turned red for a moment, drinking in my blood, then went back to pitted black. I was connected to the damned thing; it felt like an open wound throbbing on my forehead. Tina handed me a sheath, and I put the dagger into my pack.

I reread the scroll again, committing the Prayer of Rapha to memory, and turned to face the rising sun. “This is Mount Sinai?” That was the only place in the world the spell could be cast. “I thought that was up on the Sinai Peninsula, not in the middle of Arabia.”

Doug nodded. “Much has been lost in the thousands of years since the last Prophet stood here and gave the Third Gift to mankind.”

I raised my arms to the rising sun. “The Highest One, hear the prayers of your Children! Deliver us from evil, and send your Spirit to Gift us with your Blessing, to Gird us with Belief, and Arm us with Faith!”

Power flowed into me, golden, beautiful, pure, from Doug, from Tina. It rushed from my parents half the world away. More of the rapturous energy poured into from the spirits of the dead, the men and women who had died unable to pass their Gift on: Isabella, Agnes, John, Gregory, Eustace, Isolde, Tristram, and more. So many more. One hundred and forty-four souls gave up their Gifts, until they were all contained within me.

I was the Prophetess, the Vessel. I brimmed with the power of the Holy Spirit, the energy that made a woman into a Nun, a man into a Monk, and my parents into Shamans. I brimmed with the power of Heaven.

And let it go.

With a shuddering gasp, I shared the Gift to each of the one hundred and forty-four gathered here. It surged out of me to those standing with me atop Mount Sinai, and then down to the valley below where the one-hundred and forty-two waited. In a flash, they became the new Priests and Priestesses, the new Monks and Nuns.

They would liberate the world from the evils of my parents.

To be continued…

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I have released a part 43 of the revamped Devil’s Pact on Smashwords. Read this post for more information if you’re interested!