Dominion: Chapter 2 – Hunting Ground

Hunting Ground

The house trembled from its shingles to its foundations, struggling to withstand the unholy force erupting within. A scream echoed down its halls and burst through its doors and windows, every molecule of air expelled from the victim’s lungs while his face became beet-red. It was two sounds mixed together, his own pathetically human cry of agony and desperation, and the enraged howl of the beast fighting for control.

“Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places!”

With trembling hands, the priest held the crucifix up to the bound man. The ropes holding him to the chair were frayed from his incessant pulling, while the wood itself splintered more and more with each passing second. The balding man gave another howl, the demon answering the priest’s challenge. Behind the priest, two women held each other in terror. The first was the man’s wife, her hair fully graying after months of fear and stress, fear of the beast trying to devour her husband’s soul.

It had started out with simple disturbances, bumps in the night and objects going missing. Soon enough, the eyes, eyes she never saw but felt on her at all times, shadows darting out of the corners of her vision, and silhouettes that could be seen only in mirrors. Then, a change in her husband began a new dark chapter.

“Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the Devil! The Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector; to you, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into Heaven! Pray therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church! Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us; take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit that he may no longer seduce the nations!”

Beside her, the daughter prayed for the priest’s success, that her father would return to the way he used to be, that all of the bad could just be explained away by possession. At nineteen years of age, she should have been in the prime of her beauty, but her face was horribly bruised and scratched from endless assaults. She remembered the first time her father had snapped, just a few months ago. They were having dinner, and while saying grace, her father suddenly fell into a violent rage, screaming at his family and throwing plates and food against the wall. Grace was never again spoken.

“In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints! And powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the Devil! God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him! As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God!”

The yelling continued, every minor issue seeming to invoke his rage. Soon enough, he was beating her simply for not closing a door quietly enough. Following the war against the undead, patriarchal puritanism made its return as people sought stability and security. In areas still not fully reclaimed and rebuilt by the government, the man of the house was obeyed like he was God, and what happened in the home was never spoken of to outsiders. That was the way it was in the isolated communities, where the phrase “God-fearing” had become a badge of honor.

“Behold the Cross of the Lord, flee bands of enemies! The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the offspring of David, hath conquered! May Thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us! As great as our hope in Thee! We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies, and sects!”

It was when all three family members began receiving scratches from an unknown origin, long cuts in their flesh, always in threes, that the presence of something otherworldly could not be denied. The wife and daughter had tried to avoid the priest, as anything to do with the church would invite beatings, but when he found out about the scratches, he gave them an answer and promised to rid them of the demon possessing the man.

“In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb! Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God’s elect and sift them as wheat! The Most High God commands you, He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal! God who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth!”

The exorcism had been going on for hours, with friends of the man doing everything they could to keep him bound to the chair. The priest continued with his prayers, saying them over and over again in the hopes of driving out the demon. His words seemed to cause it pain, but nothing he said or did could actually pry it off the man’s soul.

“Christ, God’s Word made flesh, commands you; He who to save our race outdone through your envy, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death; He who has built His Church on the firm rock and declared that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her, because He will dwell with Her all days even to the end of the world! The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith! The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head! The faith of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the other Apostles commands you! The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you!”

The man suddenly became silent, falling limp. Everyone wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but they knew it in their hearts that it was just a rouse. The silence was louder than any scream, and even more dangerous. The whole house then shook as if it had been hit with a wrecking ball, everyone shuddering from a crash loud enough to rip away their courage. The men holding the possessed were then yanked back, as if drawn by invisible ropes around their necks. In that silent room, the cracking of wood was almost deafening, as without anything holding it back, the chair began to levitate, floating up six feet in the air. This had already occurred a dozen times over the course of the exorcism, yet everyone stared in horror at the undeniable presence and power of the unholy spawn.

The priest barely managed to regain his courage.

“Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by the God who so loved the world that He gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting; stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty!”

The man and the chair crashed back down, and in that instant, everyone was knocked back, bleeding from a hundred invisible punches. Every window and piece of glass shattered, the man now howling louder than ever.

The daughter, barely conscious and lying on the floor, looked up to a familiar sound. The front door had opened, yet that simple occurrence, for some reason, seemed louder than her possessed father’s screams. In the doorway stood a man with a long black overcoat and matching hair, and an insidious grin on his face. Once again, her father fell silent, but this time was different. Normally, when he stopped screaming, he’d go limp, like a puppet with its strings cut. Now, he was staring wide-eyed at the intruder, the demon inside him apparently seeing something she couldn’t.

“After all these years, you people still cling to your delusions,” the intruder said. “Christ, God, salvation, all that nonsense. Your bible is nothing more than fairy tales, a mythology of a god that never existed. The real gods dwell not in Heaven, but a realm of eternal darkness. That cross you wield is nothing more than a useless piece of wood. It is the will of humanity that allows exorcisms to work. Because you cling to your faith, even though it’s a lie, you’re able to shape and focus your will, pouring it into a symbol like a mold. If your belief is unshaken, then so is your strength, and you can counter the chaotic sentience of the undead.”

It happened in the blink of an eye. The intruder zoomed across the room as if on wheels and grabbed the man by the throat, holding him off his feet without any effort. “But I do not need such insipid things. My will is absolute, and in time, even the Old Gods will meet their end at my hands.” He then dropped the man, but something remained in his grip, someone else. It was humanoid, but its body was jet black and covered in scars. Its grotesque face, boar-like, had twisted horns and misshapen tusks. He had ripped the demon from the man’s soul, revealing it for all the world to see. “I am Dominion, and you now belong to me.”

Everyone watched as the creature, held in Dominion’s grip, began to melt like a lit candle. But rather than falling to the ground, its liquifying flesh was being drawn towards his hand around its throat and absorbed into his skin. The demon shrieked in fear as its flesh and muscles peeled away layer by layer, its body consumed in a matter of seconds.

“You… you saved us,” the daughter gasped.

At her trembling words, Dominion laughed. “On the contrary. You were safer with the demon. Now that I’ve had dinner, it’s time for desert.”

He held out his hand, and her father, semiconscious and lying on the floor, was once more lifted up into the air by an invisible force. He floated before Dominion, sending chills down the spines of everyone in the room. The power lifting her father was demonic, but they knew it was coming from Dominion. His grin sharpening, he plunged his hand into the man’s chest, his fingers tipped with claws that tore through flesh and muscle with ease. The two women shrieked at the sight, the man vomiting blood as Dominion pulled out his heart, still connected to the main arteries and pumping in his grip. He fingers sliced through all four chambers and the man’s blood sprayed out.

However, like the demon, it was all being drawn to Dominion’s hand and absorbed into his flesh. It took only seconds for the man to become a dried husk, and was then thrown aside like garbage, but more had been taken than just blood. Blood was the medium of life, and through it, Dominion had seized the man’s soul and devoured it no differently than he had the demon.

The priest staggered to his feet and held up his cross. “You’re just another demon!”

Dominion stood with his back to the priest. “Don’t compare me to those pathetic undead.”

The same force that Dominion had used on the man, he used to throw himself backwards at the priest, flipping through the air. He opened his mouth, his teeth changing shape as if malleable like clay and becoming sharper and needlelike. Zooming over the priest’s shoulder, he sank his teeth into his throat, then, landed behind him, lifted the priest off his feet, and gave a hard jerk that snapped his neck like a wolf catching a bird. Blood covered Dominion’s face as he drained the priest, adding yet another human soul to his collection.

Both the slain man’s daughter and wife were now screaming, their clothes peppered with blood splatters from the priest’s murder. One of the man’s friends, exhausted from holding him still during the exorcism, gathered what little strength he had left and grabbed a poker from the nearby fireplace. He gave a desperate scream and charged towards Dominion, still siphoning every drop of blood out of the priest. He jammed the piece of steel into Dominion’s back, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. The poker had been buried deep, enough to puncture a lung, but from the sight of inky black blood oozing the wound, the attacker realized how foolish the move had been.

It happened in an instant, the demon they had all seen get devoured, reappearing. It burst from the wound in Dominion’s back, fused with him like a conjoined twin and given shape by his blood. It attacked the man without mercy. He screamed in agony as it gouged out his eyes with its clawed thumbs, only to be silenced as it tore into his windpipe with its jaws and began stealing his soul. Like all the other demons that Dominion had enslaved, this newest addition had lost its free will, its every move now subject to its master’s whims, its powers to be used however he saw fit.

The second friend, seeing what was happening to the first, bolted for the door. In the face of this godless horror, there was nothing he could do. The two women were beyond his saving. He could only hope they had the strength to run as he did, and that the Lord would forgive his cowardice. He managed to reach the doorway, the sweat on his face evaporating in the chilly autumn air. He went no further.

Without even turning away from his meal, Dominion pointed his hand at the fleeing man. They came from out of his sleeve, three tentacles made of jet-black flesh, each tipped with a barbed stinger. They ran through the man’s chest like harpoons, the pain making him want to scream, but the blood filling his lungs and esophagus not letting his voice escape. He was lifted into the air and the tentacles immediately went to work bleeding him dry and taking his soul.

Having now devoured four souls, Dominion at last stood up. The tentacles retracted into his arm and the demon on his back receded into the wound, closing it as it vanished. He looked down on the two women, a smirk on his blood-caked face. His eyes fell to the wife of his first victim and he showed some faint annoyance.

“Meh, you’re a little too past your prime for me.”

He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her off her feet with his claws digging into her wrinkled flesh. Her daughter threw herself onto Dominion’s arm, an action not done out of hope, but frustration. “Mom! Mom!” she shrieked, trying to separate the two of them. Dominion pulled her away, holding her off the ground with his other hand likewise around her throat. The difference was that while he was draining the mother, he was simply strangling the daughter to end her efforts.