Epilogue
Aldrian Kyrrith
Fifty six years. Born in 1490 in the year of our Lord; died twenty four years later, a mercenary, on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. Revived into a vampire's half life, he spent the next four hundred and ninety eight years cycling back and forth between periods of wanton carnage and of soul rending remorse. Four hundred and ninety eight years, with tens of thousands of victims weighing down his soul, Lord Harry, Hal Yorke, was once one of the dreaded Old Ones, and one of the most feared amongst their number.
He had defeated Satan twice in his long unlife, once permanently. He had personally driven a stake through the monster's heart. Fifty six years had now passed since that day, when a werewolf, a ghost and a vampire took down the Devil itself and regained their humanity. He is all that is left now. Alex and Thomas had passed on a decade ago. He lies in his hospital bed, the beeping of the heart monitor beside him his only company at the moment, eyes closing, his too long life coming to its end. He hopes to see them again.
The world goes dark, a shining door begins to form in the corner of his hospital room, and Hal dies alone.
L
"Harry, how nice of you to join us."
The words bring him back into awareness and his eyes open. He looks down at his hands, no longer wrinkled and aged. He looks forward, horror showing on his face, at the sight of Captain Hatch, seated before the television monitors, stilled adorned in his fine, purple suit, a devilish grin on his face.
"So, did you like your little respite from the weight of your own inhumanity, your temporary sojourn into mundane mediocrity?" The Devil smiles cruelly, "I must thank you for your cooperation. I'm not sure I could have pulled it off without your advice."
Confused and not entirely lucid, Hal stares blankly, for a few innocent moments, before the truth slams into him. He repeats those same words from so long before, recalled from the fog of distant memory but at this moment so horrifyingly precise. "You should have put us together…"
Hatch smiles, all teeth. "And so I did, old boy. An entire life, years spent together, all in the span of minutes. And, well, needless to say, your friends all came to me, in their own time of course." He extends his arm, gesturing towards the broken, bloody body of the werewolf spread-eagled on the floor. "Unfortunately, ghosts leave little physical reminders of their passing, but you can take my word for it. Alex has moved on as well."
The devil rises from his seat behind the desk, and walks forward, standing before the vampire's hunched form. "And so the trinity shatters, and it's just you and me, Harry, together again." He takes up the remote and switches on the monitors. Hal Yorke watches in horror, as BBC television commentators speak of nuclear missiles launched from the United States, of mass suicides sweeping like a wave across Europe, and of new plagues overtaking Asia, as destructive and virulent as the ones he knew in his youth. The Devil smiles, "So Hal. What say you to that?"
"I don't believe it. Not even you could start the apocalypse on such short notice."
"No, I really can't." Hatch agrees, lifting his cane to point towards the monitors. "Regardless, within a matter of days, this is going to be the world. My guarantee. And I could not have done it without you. After all, only you and your… friends knew about and prepared the ritual that can kill me but… well, it's a bit too late for all of that now."
"So now what? Are you going to kill me too?"
The Devil steps back, "Kill you Hal? Do you honestly think me so uncreative? No, I'm going to let you live, for now, in this new world you helped me create. I hate you Hal, with all the passion I possess, so believe me when I tell you that you will be leaving this studio, unharmed and unmolested, to see with your own eyes what will have become of this world: what you will have helped me to shape. And the moment you begin to grow complacent, to accept the horrors that surround you… only then will I kill you, as slowly and painfully as I can manage."
The devil removes from beneath the desk two glasses and a bottle of wine, and sets to filling them. "To be honest, I think you're going to live a fairly long time, and I believe we're going to get to know each other quite well. With that in mind, I'd like to propose a toast: to bargains well struck. You, friend, got to live a lifetime as a human, free from the destructive debauchery your condition is heir to and, as for myself, well… we both know what it is I received from the bargain." He hands one of the glasses out to Hal, though the vampire, still shocked and more that a little bit broken by the sudden turnaround, wordlessly refuses the offer. The devil, smiling, shrugs, and sets the glass back on the table. "My sincerest gratitude. I really couldn't have managed all this without you, and I do so hope that those extra years I gave you worth the payment exacted.
"Welcome to Hell."
Fin