"Cole's their dad?" I was shocked.
"My children are hungry," Cole bellowed. "Who will make the ultimate sacrifice for me?"
The Demons began to fight each other. Their long claws stabbed through open wounds and the screams were horrific. I felt their shrieks all the way to my toes. They pushed each other forward and fought to go back to the wall. Clearly no one wanted to be dinner.
"You," Cole cried out to a smaller Demon who had landed in a heap on the floor. "You will serve me. Disrobe."
The hideous Demon disrobed reluctantly and his comrades against the walls hissed and laughed maniacally. His muscular body was covered in open wounds and dried flakey blood. My gag reflex rose quickly.
"Oh fuck no," Lucy grunted and turned her head as the Demon laid himself at the clawed feet of the Things.
The sounds were Hellish and the screams from the peanut gallery made the entire show more macabre. The vultures viciously tore into the live body of the Demon as he screamed in agony. Cole clapped his hands with delight and the Vultures ate hungrily. If this was the warmup act the evening was going to be very bad indeed.
The magic in the air of the gym thickened and Cole's eyes widened in excitement. His pacing became erratic and his cape blew around him making him look like he was ready for takeoff. "She's here," he announced loudly over the roar of the Demons and the shill keening of the vultures.
The crash through the ceiling and the explosion of glass, wood and metal made me hope for a short moment that Mother Nature was making a violent entrance, but that would have been too easy. I didn't need my grandma. I didn't need to be saved—I simply needed to figure out what the Hell was going on. A Dragon the size of an SUV barreled down from the sky holding a beaten, bloody and barely breathing Eve in her sharp talons. She wasn't dead. It would take far more than a beating to kill Temptation. The Demons danced wildly and the vultures in their ecstasy coughed up chunks of bloody Demon. The bile rose in my throat and I realized that half the battle would be to keep from vomiting.
"You're late," Cole shouted as he ran to my mother's crumpled body and pulled her from Rhonda's claws. He ran his hands possessively over her in such a sexual way I had to turn my head. Could no one deny temptation?
"Silence," Rhonda the Dragon roared so loudly I winced in pain. I yanked Lucy behind a cardboard boulder and watched the disaster unfold. Before I could act I needed to be sure. More plaster and metal fell from the ceiling, impaling and beheading several Demons. "I said silence," she screeched. The walls trembled and the floor shook, but she accomplished her goal. The room went quiet.
"You hurt her," Cole accused as he ran his open mouth down my mother's neck.
"I'll hurt you if you don't shut up. Where are they?" she demanded. She stomped around Heaven and crushed two Things to death beneath her massive feet. Cole barely noticed his feathered children had died as he was too engrossed with my mother.
"Soon. Amanda is luring him. Where is the Sword?"
Amanda, my father's consort, was luring who? Was she luring my father here? Were they planning on killing my father in front of me?
"She has the Sword," Rhonda snapped. My mother did have the Sword. It was strapped to her back. Had Mr. Rogers caved to temptation too? "Where's God?" Rhonda's beady eyes swept the room.-
"Won't be coming," Cole said as he backed away from the furious fire-breathing Dragon.
"Can you not get anything right?" she hissed as an explosion of flames burst from her nose and destroyed a clump of Demons cowering in the corner. "I have spent a year weakening and brainwashing the bitch to make her steal the Sword and neglect her job and you can't do the simple things I asked?"
"We don't need him. We'll have Satan. When he sees Eve he will break. He has loved her for millions of years. He lives for the day she will come to him and stay," he rasped as he cupped my mother's breast in his hand. "We all do. . .She will do as told or we will kill her daughters in front of her."#p#分页标题#e#
Well now I knew why we were here. Lucy gripped my arm and growled.
"You think that will work?" Rhonda asked so quietly my hair stood on end. "We needed them to fight over her to destroy each other. We need a heart to break so the Sword of Death will work. This is a folly you've created." She stomped her foot and took out the other two Things.
"It will work," he said as he gazed at my mother with such longing I felt ill. Was she such a temptation to all that she could end the world? Did balance mean the end of my mother?
"Her denial of him will break him?" she demanded as she advanced on Cole.