Page 109 of Ruled By Fate

Rashida’s green sedan pulled into the other end of the lot.

Mike appeared and tried to throw a little diplomacy on the situation. “Ladies, is there any way we could try to take this somewhere else?”

“No!” shrieked Sherry.

“Yes!” yelled Brie.

“What’s all the yelling about?” called Rashida. She’d parked and was getting out of her car a few rows down, never seeing Brie’s desperate look.

“Ida! Listen, you have to—”

She cut her sentence short as Rashida’s expression froze. She looked down at her sweater. What started as a dot of red quickly expanded into a pool of blood.

She fell without a sound, revealing a towering blonde woman with silver horns behind her, pulling a long, silver file out of her back.

Brie’s anguished scream echoed into the brimming dawn.

Mike immediately drew his weapon. “Get down on the ground! Drop your weapon and get down on the ground!”

When Mammon didn’t comply, he fired. Five shots rang out in rapid succession. Every one of them hit their mark. Not one of them made the slightest difference. They ricocheted, bouncing into cars, the walls, the ceiling.

Mike lowered his gun and stared at her uncomprehendingly. “What the hell—?”

Mammon let out a roar and, with a flick of her hand, sent him flying across the parking lot into a support pillar. He crumpled to the ground and went still. Sherry screamed in terror, dashing towards the elevator.

“Yes, run!” Brie cried. “Keep running!”

Cameron knelt to the ground, summoned the last of his strength, and flung scythe after scythe of that heavenly light. They bounced off harmlessly, vanishing in a golden mist.

Mammon’s feet became enormous hooves. Her nostrils flared with rage. She pawed the ground and started stomping toward them through the cars. The ground beneath her feet crunched and sizzled with every step. The paint on the cars blistered from the hellish heat radiating off her body. With every step, she seemed to grow.

“Have you had enough yet?” she roared as she closed in. “Is all of this—?”

She stopped short with a sputtering cough when she was abruptly covered in foam.

Sherry hadn’t run away. She’d grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and was now emptying the entire canister over the ancient, demonic woman. A woman who was frozen in utter disbelief. It seemed to last for an eternity until the stream of foam eventually slowed to a flaccid trickle. Mammon glared at Sherry, who was too terrified to break eye contact. When the last of the fire retardant fizzled out, they stood there in silence for a moment, Sherry holding the empty extinguisher with a look of dread, facing off against what looked like a fire-eyed abominable snowman.

Run! You need to—

Mammon flicked her finger and sent Sherry flying into the same pillar that had felled Mike. There was a sickening crunch as her head hit the cement. Brie let out a breathless scream as her body slid gradually towards the pavement before going still.

But Mammon wasn’t done. A wave of heat burst off her, singeing everything in its radius and blasting her free from the foam. She jabbed her index finger towards Cameron, who gasped as though he’d been impaled, then crooked it back and dragged him towards her like she had a hook in his spine.

“I’m going to skin them, you little bitch.” She locked eyes with Brie, malevolence radiating from her like a black sun. “I’m going to make you watch me turn them inside out.”

That was the moment something cracked open inside Brianna Weldon. Something old faded into memory. Something new and powerful rose in its stead.

A roar grew inside her like a tsunami, gathering tones like a wave gathers water. Light flickered beneath her skin like golden electricity as her body started to glow. Not a golden light like Cameron’s. This was pure and white. Blinding white. She levitated off the ground as the roar burst forth from her mouth, from her soul. At first, it was only incredible. In the space of a heartbeat, it was unbearable. Lightning cracked and whipped around her, forming itself into a dome of light. Her eyes, her pendant, and the inside of her mouth shone like a supernova.

Not so helpless after all.

Mammon took a step back and dropped Cameron. She lifted her hand reflexively to her ear, but it was no use. The roar surrounded everything, washed over it, pulsed through it. After a few seconds, she let out a shriek and tried to turn away, but no sooner had she taken a step than she was rooted to the spot by bands of light pouring forth from Brie’s hands.

Parts of her face and horns started to chip away, like a puzzle losing its pieces, as the still-rising sound tore through her. She started to scream in earnest, struggling against those glowing ropes, but it wasn’t any use. Her hooves turned back into feet, and her legs kept morphing between those of a woman and those of a goat. Her face remained a woman’s, screaming in pain.

In a merciless rage, Brie pulled on the ropes, forcing the creature one torturous step at a time into the dome of light. The moment she crossed its threshold, she started burning. Her ice-blonde locks sizzled and vanished. More puzzle pieces of her flesh disintegrated.

Brie pulled her closer still, until the two were standing eye to eye. At the last possible second, she grabbed Mammon’s face with both hands and spoke in a voice that was not her own.

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