go.
“Inside this canister is the distillation of God’s wrath.”
“He is not my God,” the demon spat defiantly.
“No matter whose God He is, this canister holds but a sample of the anger that He heaped upon the Pharaoh of Egypt for not releasing the Israelites from slavery.”
Francis lovingly stroked the ornate, copper-colored canister.
“Maybe you saw the movie? One of Chuck Heston’s finest.” The angel paused, ruminating. “That and The Omega Man—and the one with the monkeys, of course.”
“What are you babbling about?” the demon asked. “You tell me you have a container that contains the power of your God, and I ask you, so what? It changes nothing in the scheme of things.”
“But it does,” Francis said.
“What does it change, angel? The Bone Masters will continue to be the deadliest of assassins, and your friend is going to die.” The demon smiled nastily. “You see? Canister or not, nothing changes.”
Leona’s engine purred strangely, almost sounding like a chuckle—at least, that’s what it sounded like to Francis.
“With this, everything changes,” Francis said, lifting the canister of God’s wrath up from the ground about an inch and then setting it back down.
“This is your end,” Francis said icily, waiting a moment for what he was saying to sink in. “I never wanted it to get this bad, but no matter how I tried to figure it, you were right. No matter how many assassins were taken off the game board, as long as Remy was still alive there would be Bone Masters coming for him.”
“Maybe even the simple-minded eventually come to understand the futility of fighting back against the Bone—”
“So I decided to change everything,” Francis said, interrupting the demon. “To clear the game board completely.”
The Broker still wasn’t quite getting it, but he was onto the fact that something serious was about to go down.
“Sure, I understood that there was probably nothing that I could do about the assassins already on the job, especially if you had zero intention of calling them in—I got that.”
Francis looked away from the demon, at his dwelling, and at the barracks behind it. He then looked in other directions at the dwellings there as well.
“But then I started to think of the Bone Masters and what absolute pains in the ass they’ve been to me since this whole business happened. Nothing but a perpetual thorn in my side, and a continued thorn in the side of my friend Remy if he should survive the current contract.”
“Go on, angel. I’m starting to lose interest.”
Francis smiled again, that cold, awful grin.
“So I decided to do something drastic. I decided that I would remove that thorn from my ass and from the asses of anybody else out there that might some day have a run-in with you Bone Master douches.”
Francis slowly squatted down, taking the top of the canister in hand and beginning to twist.
“What are you doing?” the Broker asked. Was that a hint of panic he was now hearing in the demon’s voice?
Should have been.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Francis answered. There was a resounding crack as the seal was broken, and the lid slowly began to unscrew.
The Broker started to push away, as the bluish gray–colored mist began to escape from beneath the lid, seemingly heavier than air, slithering down from the canister to the ground.
“I’m going to kill you all,” Francis then explained, continuing to twist the lid. “I’m going to kill everything in this world—the young and the old; all future Bone Masters in training will never get to ply their trade, I’m sorry to say.”
“You’re mad!” the demon exclaimed.
“I’m mad, all right,” Francis said, removing the lid and tossing it aside, where it clattered to the street. “I’m pissed the fuck off at the fact that I have to do something so drastic, but you left me little choice.”
He stood up, leaving the canister where it he had placed it. The contents continued to crawl out from inside, where they had been kept—imprisoned—since they were last used against Pharaoh.
“Never thought I’d ever actually be that desperate to open it,” Francis said, shaking his head as he watched God’s wrath continue to emerge. “But desperate times and all that shit.”
The Broker had managed to push himself up against the wall with his legs and was fighting to stand. “You can’t do this!”
“But I am,” Francis said. The Wrath of God had fully emerged now, filling the air and spreading off in various directions. “In the old days it took the form of plagues: water into blood,