1. Valley of Fire

15 Years ago

Somewhere in Africa

The fast spinning blades above them blew a warm breeze into the chopper bay. It kept them relatively cool as they flew over the dry terrain underneath a scorching sun. The motley band of soldiers were cramped together in the small chamber and yet still managed to remain separate. Their egos didn't want to brush too close to one another. It was kind of like being in middle school. Everyone wants to be the cool loner type. So the group sat there and discreetly competed for the crown of coolness. Each one readied their various guns for the conflict ahead. It started with himself, Henry Todd. He checked and rechecked his Soviet AK47. Then he went to his CZ52. It was an uncommon gun, but he liked it. It looked cool. Polishing it, he was reminded of his first gun. He was five years old and growing in Texas. He loved the Lone Star state. It was the state where a man had the right to shoot trespassers after sundown. At least that's what his daddy always said. His first gun was a rubber band gun. At age five he learned how to kill with it. Of course it stared with small animals first. You blind them by knocking their eyes out. Then you can either finish them off or watch them bleed to death. Mother thought it was an unhealthy habit. She thought it was even unhealthier when he chose to stay with his father after she walked out on him. His father didn't really support him. The advantage was that he left him alone. He didn't bother him or take any interest in him. That continued until he got to high school. Circumstances finally forced his laissez faire attitude to end. It was then that Henry Todd, age 18 ended up in boot camp. It was there that he finally got a chance to do what he always loved most, run around and shoot shit. The military taught him well, but his real education began after his discharge and he entered the "commercial" field. He was a merc.

They were all mercs. Next to Todd was Grace. Sounds like a woman's name and it was. He carried the photo of a woman in his breast pocket everywhere he went, except the brothels. Who the woman is or why he carries it around was anyone's guess. The blonde certainly didn't look like him. He was tall with long red hair, probably had some Norwegian stock in him. His preferred choice was the KG-99, more commonly known as the TEC-9. Modified to be automatic he used it with a 500 drum magazine. It was like a modern day Tommy-gun.

Beside him was Stevie Wonder. Not THE Stevie Wonder. He was a former revolutionary in Cuba. When things went south on his island he went freelance. At least he tried. They caught him trying to leave and put him in prison for a while. He was beat up, tortured even. He was not a nice guy. He killed quite a few when he finally made his way out. He got out via a boat heading to Soviet Russia. From there he ended up in Afghanistan, on the wrong side. Not morally, merely that he got caught again. He was tortured some more and finally he killed a few more on his way out. Some people said he had a complex about being caught. Maybe he liked the challenge of escaping. Then again, maybe not. Everyone was left wondering why he stayed in the business. So the name Stevie Wonder caught on. A little after that he started wearing the dark shades.

Lean Jean spoke French, sounded French, and lived previously in France. Interestingly enough he wasn't French. He served in the Legion. Instead of taking advantage of his new French identity, he decided to make a name for himself as a soldier of fortune. He stuck with his M16. He said it brought him fond memories. Alternately he would use a French MAS-36, a holdover from his days in the Legion.

Last but not least was the odd looking fellow who was way ahead of them all in terms of coolness. His white hair and young features stood out like knife at a gunfight. Truly separated from the rest, he sat on the edge of the chopper bay with his legs dangling in the air. While all the rest of the bad ass looking mercs loaded, checked, and polished their guns, he sat there and stared into oblivion. His MP5 was slung over his back with his two most prized possessions holstered on his sides, Ebony and Ivory. His fellow mercs might have nicknamed him that if he hadn't said his name was Dante. With a name like that, who needed a nickname?

The chopper dropped them 20 clicks from the target. They made the rest of their trip on foot. The target itself was a village nestled into a low lying valley. Their mission, "relocate" the villagers. A nearby warlord is carving himself up part of the countryside. Part of his new plan is to use the area to construct a military base. Unfortunate for him, the villagers are hostile to the idea. They sent back a few heads as a warning. Unfortunate to the villagers, the warlord hired four of the meanest mercs he could find. He paid top dollar for a blood bath. Four men against a village? The odds were against the villagers. The warlord was generous, that can't be denied. Seeing that the village was a hold out of some kind of ancient religion, they were offered safe passage to Dumary Island. They turned down the offer. That was very unfortunate for the villagers.

In five minutes each one of them had placed an explosive in a nearby hut and reached their insertion points. The explosions were designed to scare them, distract them, and get them worrying about the fire spreading to the rest of the village. The four of them remained in hiding, waiting for a cluster of panicked villagers to gather round the different fires. Minutes passed, not a single person emerged. The fire had already spread beyond the first four huts they set ablaze. Todd noticed that Grace had left his hiding place and was searching a nearby hut. He mentally condemned the move but at the same time was ticked off that their plan wasn't working. In fact it seemed that the village was already dead. Lean Jean followed suit and also began to search huts. Finally he joined them. His first hut was empty, deserted. His second was just the same. His patience, what little he had, also deserted him.

"What the Fuck!" he yelled.

"Callate, asshole! Keep it down. These guys may be around here somewhere." Stevie said.

"If they were around here, they would already be shooting spears at us and trying to cut are heads off."

Lean Jean came up behind Todd and grabbed him by the collar. "What the hell is your problem? Keep your cool. We sweep the place. If we don't find anyone, we napalm the place and get out, as planned." The two exchanged glances, Todd shrugged and continued his sweep. "And where the fuck is Dante?" Jean muttered to himself.

Jean turned around and instinctively squeezed the trigger of his weapon as a figure that was not there before was suddenly behind him. His M16 punched 20 rounds into the man that had so silently approached him. Jean was instantly struck by the fact that the man was still standing. He took rapid steps backward and studied the man. He was dark, tall, and dressed scantly in native attire. His muscle built chest reflected all the bullet holes that Jean had made in it. However the fluidity of his movement as he walked forward betrayed any hint of pain that he should be feeling. The man stopped his approach and merely hunched forward slightly and opened his mouth as if to breath. Air was not the only thing that escaped. Jean fell to the ground as fire came pouring out of the man's mouth.

"Merde!" he yelled as the fire nearly consumed him.

Grace was inside a hut searching the interior when he heard the yell. He was walking towards the hut's single entrance when a woman walked in accompanied by a small child. The two spoke in unison, but Grace didn't understand their tongue. The fire that emerged with their breath was universal however. He fired his weapon into the wall of the hut and softened it as he jumped through it. He landed face down into the ground. When he looked up, he found himself at the feet of another native. Again he spoke, but Grace didn't wait for the fire to come, he ran and frantically searched for his comrades. He found them back to back in the center of the village. The missing villagers had appeared from nowhere and had corralled them together in one place.

"Grace!" Jean signaled. "Have you seen Dante?"

"No, these guys must have got him. What the hell are they?" he asked as he joined them.

The three stood with their back against each moving in a circle, not firing a shot. The villagers walked towards them but stopped a few feet away from them. A section of the crowd parted and a single figure came walking toward them. His figure was typical of all the males they had seen, however his skin color was drastically different from anything they had seen. It was dark, but a grey. His eyes were red and contrasted his skin color. The three trained their guns on him. The man repeated the same phrase they had all heard from the villagers.

"He's saying 'die insolent ones.' Cheesy, isn't it?"

The three suddenly looked up and saw Dante standing atop one of the unburned huts.

"Dante? Where have you been? And where the hell did you get that sword?" Todd yelled.

His guns were still holstered and his automatic was still over his shoulder. In his hand he held a large sword. Dante threw the sword and it cut through the air like a missile and imbedded itself into the grey man's chest. Ebony and Ivory in hand, Dante leapt off the hut and began shooting the villagers who had suddenly become active again.

"The villagers are already dead; you can pump them clean of conscious."

The three mercs needed no other incentive and began to fire their weapon. As the grey man struggled with the sword in his gut, the villagers seemed to have been relegated to mindless zombies. Fire no longer spewed from their breath. Dante joined the others in their incessant fire and attempted to clear a path to where he had left his sword. No longer alive, the villagers were no longer restricted to falling dead from a hail of bullets, they persevered. They seemed to only remain dead after being riddled to pieces. While not impossible, the mercs did not have an infinite supply of ammo, and the villagers were numerous. Todd noticed that Dante didn't seem to have a problem with ammo. In fact Dante failed to reload his weapon at any time. Mysteriously, he kept on shooting.

The grey man broke through the crowd of villagers and stood before Dante. "Remove this devil blade from me!"

"With pleasure," In a quick and seamless move, Dante grabbed his sword, pulled it out of the man and held it in a defensive stance. Instantly the grey man spewed a massive ball of fire which Dante's sword deflected. The fire however continued past him and began consuming the villagers and then the mercs. Dante glanced behind him as their bodies became engulfed in flames. They all screamed in pain. The smell of burnt flesh filled Dante's nostrils.

Lowering his sword, Dante addressed the grey man. "Well, if isn't Ctholmec, fire demon. I thought getting isolated tribal people to worship you would have been old hat by now. I guess it's true what they say about old dogs and new tricks."

"I will teach you to mock me, Halfling." Ctholmec laughed. "Oh yes, I can detect your half breed stench."

Dante shook his head. "You know you could have made it a little more challenging. You could have hid amongst the masses. Too bad taking possession of one of the humans slowly kills the skin pigments. Now you stand out in a crowd. Speaking of which, wiping all these villagers' souls was a real nasty thing to do. I might have made it painless. Now, it's going to hurt, bad."

Ctholmec's inhuman laughter began to echo throughout the valley. "Really, and what is a half-breed going to do to me?"

A smile crept across Dante's face. In a flash, his sword was once again digging itself into Ctholmec's chest. This time its point of entry was near the waist. Grasping the hilt with both hands, Dante pulled the sword upwards ripping the torso in half. Innards, ribs, and muscles slowly dripped off of a lizard like creature whose bottom half was still inside the flesh of its human host.

"When you get to hell, tell them Dante sent you."

The echo of shots firing reverberated once more in the valley. Then all was silent save for the flames that still raged among the remains of the village. Holstering his pistols, Dante surveyed the damage. As he walked away, ready to leave the village behind him, his foot struck something. Dante looked down and picked up a CZ52 pistol from the ground. It was hot from fires that had consumed its owner, Henry Todd, but Dante didn't feel it. He was half demon or half devil depending on your point of view. To him, fire was like water to humans. He bathed in it.