CHAPTER 23
Esteban Medina is in the foulest of moods. If there's one thing he hates above all else, it's working with the old ones, particularly channels. Ancients are always bothersome company, none more so than the one he has come to see. Yet here he stands inside Ra's Diablo temple in Guatemala, amid the pictograms and elegant stucco masks carved into its walls. The architecture of the old world baffles him. Were these masks supposed to be scary? To him, they just look like some asshole with a badly broken nose. He'll take the modern design of his Bogota mansion any day.
All of the dust in the air is wreaking havoc on his new hairdo. They’re called frosted tips, not dusted ones. It will take an hour of solid scrubbing to get his head clean. If he knew it was this dirty here, he would have brought one of his thralls to clean up a bit, or at the very least worn a less expensive suit. When he arrived, it was a black and white pin stripe, now it looks more like desert camouflage. He makes a mental note to call his tailor and have something new custom made. A double breasted blue seer sucker would be nice, with matching stingray boots.
Out of the deepest recesses of the temple comes Ra. The smell of brimstone coming from his mouth brings tears to Esteban's eyes, “You're late Esteban. I was expecting you days ago.” One sentence into the conversation and Esteban is already sick of him. As if Ra's desires somehow take priority over his own. The elder species' leaders always addressed him as such. It’s an experience he's grown sick of.
“You're fortunate I decided to show up at all. I have more going on than just our little arrangement.” Running an international drug cartel is busy work. The demand for narcotics didn’t go down in war time. If anything, the business became even more profitable. War has afforded him some unique opportunities. In the opening days of the conflict, he managed to eliminate all of his competitors. The less time he spent placating Ra, the more time he could spend peddling his wares around the world.
The channel puffs out his glowing red chest and raises a smoking right hand to the sky in a dramatic pose. He chastises his guest, wagging a finger in Esteban's face, “The propagation of the holy one's will supersedes all other endeavours, Esteban. The work we do here is critical. We are preparing the way for the new world.” Melodramatic nonsense as per usual, always the melodrama. Esteban once told some of his employees that talking to Ra was like having someone read you Shakespeare with a rusty knife lodged in the cognitive centre of their brain. He has no time for the mumblings of the fire starter. Esteban is on a schedule.
“Yeah, that's fantastic. Let's just get this over with so I can get back home. I've got a shit ton of juice to get shipped out.” A shipment of juice that Ahmu and Kagan had been clamouring for. Every second more they waited is another foot closer they were to showing up on his doorstep.
“The concerns of your paltry cartel are drops of water in the ocean of time. Absolutely nothing in the grand design of the most high. It is what comes after the cataclysm that will shape what is to come.”
Ra kept mentioning those two things every time Esteban came to see him. The 'cataclysm' and the 'most high'. He wasn't clear on exactly what either of them meant. For now, he ignores it and tries to explain his situation, “If I miss a shipment to those slobbering looney tune mother fuckers, then the concerns of my cartel will matter to you. Because if they cross the pond and come for me, I won't be able to do this shit for you anymore.” While Esteban has a loyal following of other tractatori and human thralls, Ahmu's horde would rip straight through them in hours, even without juice.
Ra is not quite so concerned with them, “Neither the mindless consumers, nor the night kin would dare come to this continent for fear of me. You would do well to follow their example Esteban.” Ra raises his right hand once again. An aura of intense flame surrounds his form sending waves of oppressive heat sweeping through the corridor. Esteban's body temperature shoots up several degrees and sweat pours out of him like a river. The organs in his chest begin to cook. Even at death's door, the incubus remains indignant.
“You start the day with your pseudo biblical mumbling, now you're threatening me? It's always a pleasure when I come to visit Ra.” The sun god lowers his arm. For now, his point has been made. Slowly but steadily, the ambient heat dissipates.
Ra continues his eschatological raving, “Those that came before shape what comes after. It was ordained long ago. All will become ash as it has so many times before and from the ashes the new world shall rise.”
Skin scalded and losing more patience by the second, Esteban lashes out, “For fuck's sake, you never stop, do you? Enough with all the cryptic nonsense. Just show me where they are.”
Ra points back down into the temple, “I have sequestered the chosen deeper inside. You will make them understand their calling Esteban. Make them know the glory they have been selected for.” Ra needs as many willing participants as possible for his holy work. The first group of specially selected candidates performed so well for the most part. Only a few needed Esteban's special brand of coercion. The new batch is different, so many refused to accept their calling.
“Yeah, yeah. Brainwash your suicide bombers just like the last time. I know the drill. Just give me the relevant information and take me to them.”
Arriving at the inner sanctum, Ra stops in his tracks. He motions at the next room over, “The chosen lie beyond this threshold. The flickering demon device right here contains the information you seek.”
A single dusty laptop sits idle in a recess within the temple wall. Esteban snaps it up, “You mean the computer, idiot? Yeah, thanks. I guess I'll start now.” He shakes his head at the ancient's superstitious musings. Ra referred to most technology this way. It would make Esteban laugh if he didn't find it so pathetic.
Across the threshold, Esteban sees the sheer scope of what the channel is planning. More than a hundred various men and women sit strapped to chairs all over the massive chamber. Bound and gagged, the terrified captives struggle against their restraints and beg incoherently for Esteban to release them, “Holy shit! I thought it would be the same as the last time. There's at least three times the amount of people in here than there was before. This could take me fucking weeks.” Properly breaking the will of a single person was no joke. The prospect of doing it to all of the people in front of him sent his mind reeling.
“Then I suggest you make haste Esteban. I require at least fifty more prepared to accept the mantle of the chosen by the end of the week.”
“You're dreaming. At best, I can give you ten in that time. Turning an unwilling participant into a suicidal extremist takes time and focus. I have to get to know them so I know what buttons to push. It's more than just pheromone saturation. The pheromones wear off, the conditioning is what sticks.”
Ra was expecting immediate and absolute obedience. Most would not dare even imply deviation from his edicts. His previous display of power had not frightened the incubus as much as he originally assumed, “You will expedite the process or pay the consequences incubus. The will of the holy shall be obeyed. Your laziness will not impede the new age.” Molten insides boil over. Scorch marks appear under the soles of Ra's calloused feet. The entire temple's structure acts as a giant heat conductor. A cloak of flame spreads out over the sun god's form as the temperature climbs ever higher.
After all the threats and intimidation he's been party to over the past few months, Esteban is at his wits end. Vampires, animi, and now channels all thinking they can tell him what to do. Enough is enough. Esteban Medina will be nobody's bitch, “Let me make something abundantly clear to you. While a vampire or animi may cower in fear from you, I will not.” The veins in his body push up against the skin as muscles flex. Pheromone glands engorge and inflate the neck like a bullfrog. Sweat pouring from his body shifts from translucent liquid to a viscous, sickly green sludge. His barbed tongue swings back and forth dripping a waterfall of sticky fluid onto the floor, “You see, the apex predators rely on actually touching their prey to harm it. Scratching, biting and all that shit. I do not. I only have to breathe on you to make my fucking point.”
Any ordinary incubus can influence most basic emotions and sensations with their pheromone spores. Rage and arousal being the gold standards. Esteban Medina is anything but ordinary. From the most acute paranoid delusions, to suicidal depression, he could do it all. What he is planning for Ra fell somewhere in the neighbourhood of total schizophrenic dementia. To flood the mind with so much serotonin and dopamine in a single burst that it could never again make sense of a single shred of data. An endless cacophony of nightmarish hallucinations coupled with permanently frayed nerves.
“You're no more than a few feet away from me, Ra. One strong exhale and I could reduce you to a gibbering vegetable.”
Noxious fumes paralyse Ra from the neck down. The first stage of the reaction is already taking place. Twinges of pain creep their way up his spine. Ra reaches out at Esteban, voice cracking, “You would not dare attack your God.”
“God? You know, I remember when my people used to believe that. Built temples the size of mountains in your honour. Cut out the hearts of our enemies at dawn to appease you. For what? Because you can make a few measly fireworks? What was it they called you back then? Tonatiuh wasn't it?” Gods. All of the elder immortals are so fond of calling themselves that. Each one has steered one culture or another over the course of history under such false pretences. Esteban didn't care for godhood. He doesn't need a church in his honour to make people worship him. All he has to do is breathe.
“I cooperate with you because your bombings are helping keep Kagan and Ahmu from making a move on South America. Not to mention how much fun I have making the puppets dance. Don't for a second assume that I owe you anything, because I don't. I know full well just how much of a 'god' you are. Ten thousand years ago you got lucky and inherited some power. Kudos. You're the supernatural equivalent of a trust fund brat. I earned my empire. You're just keeping yours warm.”
Esteban loosens his hold on Ra's nervous system. Shivering on the ground, Ra hisses, “You dare!”
“Yes, I do. Like it or not, you need me. Not the other way around. Now piss off old man. I've got some brains to wash.” Ra stumbles away and leaves Esteban to his work.
Starting up the computer, Esteban searches for a particular type of personality profile, someone simple, someone vulnerable. Start with the ripest plum as it were. He needs another Clyde Simmons. The third profile he reads yields exactly what he's looking for.
Single white male, forty two years old. Never married, only one living relative. Mother. Documented history of drug addiction and chronic unemployment. Twice arrested for terrorist related activities. Name: Micheal Segdewick.
He finds the man among the crowd and removes his gag, “Look, I know what you guys want, OK? I'm not gonna do it. That glowing freak already tried to talk me into this and I'm not playing. I'm a decent person, not a mass murderer.” The man was defiant to start, for certain. All the better. Manipulation makes him feel that much more powerful when they try to resist. Esteban walks around the man in slow circles and begins the work.
“Says here in your file that you did kill a few people once. You blew up an oil pipeline and a handful of the workers died. Sounds like murder to me.”
“That was unexpected collateral damage. I would never harm another human being willfully.” Hands clasped around the man's face, Esteban says, “You will Micheal. You will.” The sweat from his palms soaks into the human's temples. In seconds, the spores have made their way to the brain. A warm itch travels to the tip of every extremity, followed by a potent surge of adrenaline.
“What was that? I feel so... angry.” The stage is set.
“Yes, I know. Just like when your mother died of cancer.” The fuse is lit.
“She didn't. She lives in Pasadena. She just visited me in prison a couple months ago.” All he needs to do is tell the man a story, then sit back and watch the memories change.
“No, Micheal. She died. From exposure to asbestos. Filthy, filthy asbestos. Do you remember how horrible she looked in the hospital, Micheal? The tubes? The wires?” Fuzzy images begin to appear in the man's mind. Had she really died? He wasn't sure of anything. Not even his own name.
“I...don't.I...” Perception is bent and contorted. The elderly woman's emaciated face is everywhere he looks.
“The way she coughed? The way she shook like a leaf while the life left her body.” The illusion is complete. Tears fall from Micheal's eyes as he feels his mother's loss a dozen times over.
“Yes, I remember. She was all I had.” Esteban further builds the mythology around the forced delusion.
“And that corporation. Didn't pay a dime in restitution, did they Micheal? Laughed you right out of court. It's a crying shame what Angelista thinks he can get away with, isn't it?” Give a human being an enemy and watch the hate take over.
“That bastard! I remember him. Laughed right in my face that day.” The delusion takes on a life all its own. Nothing left but to turn the enemy into a viable target.
“I know, I know. You're not the only one he's hurt, Micheal. He's hurting the whole world. But there's something we can do. Something you can do.”
Micheal looks up at Esteban with sad but hopeful eyes. He asks sheepishly, “Really? Like what?” It was almost too easy. Ra would have his first willing candidate in no time. Hopefully, the rest would fall in line just as readily.
“We have so much to discuss. I know you're hurt and confused. I can help you make sense of it all. I can give you purpose again.” Their little chat goes on for several hours. Plenty of time for Esteban to reinforce every part of the man's brand new 'holy mission'. Where, when and why he will explode. All of humanity's various and sundry failures that lead to the necessity of the attack, every aspect in vivid detail, exactly to Ra's specifications.
He brings the new Micheal Sedgewick before the sun god, “So you've made progress with the chosen incubus?”
Esteban pats the man on his back and announces proudly, “Why don’t you ask Micheal yourself?”
“Are you prepared to accept the mantle Micheal? Can we count you among those glorious martyrs who will usher in the new age?”
Ra holds out a flaming hand to the hypnotized human. Without hesitation, he steps forward and accepts the offer, “I stand ready to strike out against the enemy of all that is good and right. The tyrant Angelista will shudder in terror at the coming of the chosen.” The fire creeps up Micheal's arm and envelops his entire form. When the flames subside, he will be a channel himself. One brand new man bomb, ready and willing to commit genocide in the name of the most high.
A smug sense of self satisfaction fills Esteban to bursting. It is truly one of his best mind reassignments ever. Nothing left between the ears of the victim but what he placed there, “Do you like how I even convinced this one to talk like you? We can make a new video for Kagan's website using this one here. Really send a message. Have him film himself giving some kind of 'the end is nigh' speech into the camera before he goes boom. What do you think?”
“Impressive, incubus. We will employ this one in our message to the devil himself. You may continue with the rest of them now. I require more martyrs as soon as possible.”