part0030

T he skies were black now, the full moon had risen high. The battle was over; it had lasted all but a few minutes. The Order was too great for what was left of the Syreni.

“We’re not done yet, we must kill the creature,” he shouted as I looked at the carnage. The once luscious green grass was now red.

The rain had come back, pushing the blood off the cliff, a waterfall of redness pouring down onto the beach below. A memory of Jason lying in the fields, blood pouring out of his chest, entered my mind.

“Mark!” a familiar voice yelled. I turned around to someone hugging me.

“Charles!” I screamed while he and members of the Seven that had killed Jason approached.

“I didn’t know anything about this, Mark, I swear. Mom just told me about it, she said I would have to take her place,” he pleaded.

He looked down at Daisy’s lifeless body and his eyes widened.

“What is he doing here?” I asked, pointing at Ryan as members of the Order restrained them.

“Mark, I’m sorry about Jason. I panicked, thought that we were the ones who had killed Veronica!” Ryan screamed as they forced him to his knees.

“This is the one who killed Jason?” Devin questioned, walking toward him. “I’ll take care of him!”

“No!” I yelled as he stopped in his tracks. “Look around, guys, enough blood has been shed already. We’ve lost enough people as it is.”

Looking out across the town, fires still raged and bodies lay everywhere .

“I swear, Mark, we didn’t know about any of this!” Rachel screamed.

“Let them up,” I ordered as Rachel, Ryan, Jimmie, Russell, and Katherine stood up.

Charles walked over and stood next to them.

“You six are responsible for Jason and Andrea’s deaths,” I said firmly. “That is something you all will have to live with, but there is hope for you, hope for us moving forward. Pledge yourself to me, to the Order, and we half breeds and humans can continue eliminating evil from this world.”

“Of course, Mark, we were just scared; we will join you,” Ryan pleaded as the rest followed.

I could see Lexi and Chloe kneeling behind them, the look of terror on their faces telling me they didn’t know of the truth either.

I could easily kill them all for what they had done but that was not the future we wanted. We would need to rebuild our numbers, moving forward.

“Mark, watch out!” Richards screamed as I moved out of the way.

Turning around, a hand was on the edge of the cliff. It pulled itself up, revealing who it was; Aurora. A young girl stood across from me, the girl who’d given birth to me and Autumn. But it was a disguise, one the mermaid creature just used to pose as a human.

“Hello Mark, Autumn, and the rest of you ants,” she laughed.

“Why do you wear the skin of your daughter?” I called to her as she focused on me.

“I needed the form of a human to walk amongst you, child,” she laughed. “I’ve been watching you grow up for a long time. Attending your school, your football games, drive-in theatre. I’ve been with you every step of the way, Mark. ”

“I’m not a child; you will pay for what you have done.”

She laughed as the skin ripped off of her. She had transformed in front of all of us, the girl had transformed into a towering creature. Her skin peeling from her face, the black hair, the black eyes—I remembered them all.

“There is the hideous beast I’ve been searching for,” I mocked her, not backing down.

“I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time, grandson,” she said as she moved closer.

“I have been waiting a long time for this as well,” I said, pulling the dagger out that Dexter had made from the scale. “It’s time you paid for killing your daughter and rest of the sacrifices.”

“Daughter?” she laughed. “Your mother was weak, boy. She fell for that angel, broke the ancient rules. You may be a new race, but you’re still just as dumb as your mother.”

She raised her arms and closed her eyes.

“Your army won the fight with the mortals, but you’re forgetting one thing,” she said, pointing to the full moon in the sky. “You see, all of this killing up here, well it gave me a lot to feed on when I was sitting at the bottom of that cliff.”

I glanced down, noticing the blood pouring off the cliff edge. I instantly remembered my vision of Future Mark warning me of this very moment. ‘Blood over cliff’. A shock shot through my body; the final sacrifice had happened! 6,060 sacrifices had just been reached. I’d failed the only thing I’d been tasked with doing. Future Mark had warned me of his mistakes, ones I had just let happen.

“This is the start of the new world, Mark, I want you to witness it first-hand,” she laughed. She raised her hands and a loud boom echoed across the sky as an invisible wave pushed through us .

All around us, the dead rose, standing up. The people slaughtered from both sides lived again. They were now taken over by demonic souls straight from hell.

I lunged forward, stabbing her with the scale in the heart, breaking it off inside her. She screamed, forcing us all to the ground as she fell back. She grabbed onto my arm as she hung over Mermaid Cliff.

“Thank you, grandson,” she whispered. Dark pieces of flesh floated around her. “I always knew you would one day set us free.”

She let go and I watched as the mermaid creature fell to the sharp rocks below. I had spent several months thinking of this moment, finally defeating her.

“Mark!” Dexter screamed as the dead continued to walk toward us. From all over town, bodies made their way toward us. Hundreds, thousands of them came at us as we stood together.

“What do we do?” Cheryl yelled as they were only a few feet from us.

“We fight!” I screamed as the group charged them, swinging their weapons at the dead.

A piercing noise forced me to turn around, seeing something emerging at sea.

“Autumn, come with me!” I yelled to her as we made our way down the side of the cliff onto the beach.

The monster from my vision was emerging in front of me. Out at sea, the moon revealed a monster standing up in the ocean.

“How is this possible?” Autumn yelled as we made our way to Aurora’s body.

Just as we got to her, she had changed back into the girl, our mother. She took one last breath as her blood drained into the water.

“The sacrifice!” Autumn yelled again; she must have opened the barriers .

Focusing the monster at sea, bodies fell off of the cliff around us. They must have been getting pushed back from the horde above.

Autumn stood next to me as we both focused all of our energy at the outsized monster moving in our direction.

“We can do this,” she whispered. “I love you, brother.”

“I love you too, sister.”

We both focused on the monster with our minds, trembling, screaming as the ocean broke apart, creating a single path between two giant waves. I could feel blood running out of my eyes and nose as Autumn dropped to her knees. Wrecked ships on the bottom of the ocean rose, creating a spiked wall in front of the monster.

The monster moved closer, revealing its spreading tentacles. A piercing rang in my ears as the giant entered the path we had created. In an instant, it was consumed by the spikes and waves.

Autumn fell to the ground as I kneeled down. The waters turned blood red as the monster was no more. The sky changed to scarlet. I could feel the last of my energy now drained, my powers subsided.

“Autumn,” I called to her as I fell face first into the sand.

My eyes closed, and I could just make out lights moving toward us, the flickering of flashlights, several moving closer. Blinking, feeling my life slipping away, the power gone, the lights shining right on me, I closed my eyes and a single tree entered my mind… A tree, growing in the middle of a blood-soaked field. I could feel it calling and pulling my mind toward it.

My eyes were too heavy. I closed them as the men with flashlights surrounded me. I could only make out what they were wearing; military uniforms.

“Hang on, kid,” the voice said as I drifted off. “I have the chosen one. ”

Everything I had been through caught up to me in that moment. From finding the truth in Rockport and learning of the Syreni, to meeting the Order of Lai and Josiah in Dracfort, and to learning of my ancient history. Now, I added to this list that I had failed to save the world. I was tired, weak, and exhausted. It was time for me to rest.