Chapter the Tenth

In which a Decision is reached

Earlier, her emotions had been rolling around like a pot of boiling water which had, through their conversation, been reduced to a simmer and now, whatever inner turmoil Delia had been facing was resolved and she was calm. She sat, not moving, not doing much of anything besides breathing.

Finally, she turned to her father, "How do I give myself to Satan? Is there something I have to say, or do?"

Damien sat there speechless, nearly wanting to refuse to believe what he had heard because it had been too easy. Delia had had inklings from an early age that she might be different, and now she knew that she was, and whatever reaction he had been expecting, it wasn't this. He had just heard his nine-year-old daughter willingly, and, if Damien was honest, without much work on his part, want to give herself to Satan, her God and creator. She had accepted what he had told her, no, more than accepted it, she had embraced it. He could do nothing but keep staring at Delia, who sat there staring back at him.

"Daddy?"

"Delia?"

"I don't know what to do. If there is something that I have to do, I want to make sure I do the right thing."

Damien shook his head, "No, you don't have to do anything. You, me and Alexander were born belonging to Satan. If you are truly turning your back on their god by accepting your birthright, then you are giving yourself to Satan and accepting him as your God."

"Are you sure?"

"Delia Thorn, this is your immortal soul that is being discussed right now. If there was something that you had to do to ensure that it goes to Heaven when you die, I'd tell you."

She was silent and regarded the soup in her bowl, "I don't know what to say right now."

Damien got up, came over to her and sat so that he was resting on his haunches and looked her in the eyes, "You don't have to say anything. Sometimes, things happen that are too big for words."

She stuck her finger in her soup and frowned, "Can you please put my soup in the microwave?"

Damien reached out and kissed her on the forehead, "Of course."

He got up, took Delia's bowl, put it in the microwave, set it to heat for a minute and a half and then turned back to Delia, who was re-reading the article in the magazine about the trinity of stars that had aligned ten years ago.

Damien let the realization sit with him: it was over, the worst of it anyway. Of course, he still had to bring Alexander through all of this, but Damien hoped that would be delayed for a few years. The timer binged and he brought Delia's soup back to her.

"May I be allowed to do something? Well, two somethings, actually."

"That's very vague. I need more to go on than that if I'm to tell you whether you can do these somethings or not."

"May I be allowed to read the bible and to go to church?" She put a spoonful of soup in her mouth.

"Do you know what indoctrination is?"

Delia thought about it, "Telling someone what to think?"

"Kind of...it means to tell someone what to think without giving them other opinions to balance what you told them. I indoctrinate people into my way of thinking all the time, but I will not do that to you and Alexander; you're my children, not my disciples. I'm happy that you want to read their bible and go to church, it means you want to know things for yourself. We can go starting this Sunday if you want."

"What about Alexander?"

"It would be difficult for him to be in one of their churches because he doesn't yet know who he is. That repression that you felt? Alexander would feel it too, as you will also. You have reason, as does Alexander, but you now possess self-knowledge and can use it to lessen the effects of their control on you. We can drop him off at Anna's, or better yet, she can come here."

When they finished eating, Damien asked her to wash her hands and then come back to the table. Once she returned, he told her to get a chair, put it behind him, and stand on it. She was now staring down onto her father's head.

"What am I doing?"

Damien turned around to look at her, "You're looking for something. I won't tell you what, you'll know it when you'll see it."

So she moved around Damien's hair, peering intently at her father's scalp, focusing her attention to the back of his head. Then, she saw something and realized that she was looking at three numbers. From one angle, it looked like nines, but Delia tilted her head and realized that they could also be sixes. She gasped and jumped downed off the chair.

Damien looked at her, "What is it?"

"You're the Beast from Revelation," her voice was a harsh whisper.

"Delia, how do you know that?"

"Everybody knows that, the number of the Beast, 666, that's in their bible." Delia looked at her father and was hit with a sudden realization, "You're the son of the Devil...are you the Antichrist?"

"Again, that's their word, not ours, as is the bible their book, not ours. That's an overly simplistic term that they use. Whatever christ is, then I must be opposite to him, but in the spirit of the question being asked, then yes, I am the Antichrist. Delia, you've been doing fine with accepting what I've told you, very well, in fact, much better than I thought, but what is it about this that's bothering you? Please tell me."

Delia knew her father was important in business, that he ran the largest company on the face of the planet, but this...Damien was in The Bible, he was important on a level of which Delia had never conceived. She shook her head, trying to make sense of the enormity of it all. "You're in The Bible," she continued to stare at Damien, "you're supposed to stand against their god in the end times. God and Jesus are supposed to defeat you, but…" Delia could only shake her head again.

Damien had gotten up by this point and moved towards Delia, who did something that she had never done in her whole life: she backed away from her father.

Damien's terror took hold of him and memories of Mark and a snow covered forest in Wisconsin filled his head; however, he quickly reigned in his fear, knowing that it would spill out into his daughter. He needed to find out what was happening and he reached out to her, but what he found wasn't the loathing and detestation that Mark had felt in Damien's presence; rather, he felt fear and abject loneliness coming from his daughter. He sat in front of Delia, who was still choosing to remain at arm's length from her father.

"Why are you feeling like you're alone right now, like an orphan, like you've been abandoned?"

"How can you be my father? You're important; you're in The Bible."

"Their god is in the bible, and so is jesus."

She shook her head in frustration, "But that's different, they were both important, and they existed a long time ago."

"Delia, the presence that you felt in your dream was the nazarene, who could have, theoretically, been born again and would have very much existed in the here and now."

She couldn't find the words to express everything that was going on inside of her, so she just felt and thought it all at him...

Delia was unworthy of her father's love and attention. Certainly, Damien had much more important things to do than to raise her. She felt like she had last night while she had been shaking and crying in her bed, but now it wasn't that she was afraid that Damien was dead; now she was afraid that she wasn't important enough for him. How could the title of father ever be as important as that of Antichrist? How could helping Delia conjugate Latin verbs ever be as important as plotting the downfall of their god and his son? Maybe it would have been better if Damien had died, then he would be where he belonged, in Heaven with his Father...

Damien felt relief wash over him; this he could handle. Delia was not rejecting him, she was afraid that he would reject her. She was not turning away in horror and disgust, she was absolving him of his role as father, preparing to spend her life alone as an orphan whose father was alive, but did not want her.

Her negative emotions poured out over her herself and her father like black oil, and Damien couldn't take it any longer, for either of them, and reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him.

"Delia Thorn, you had better believe that I am your father. Even if I had died, you and Alexander still would have been born because your mother was pregnant with you before what you saw happen in the church. If I were going to die, then I would leave behind progeny to carry on to ensure, in some way, that Satan's kingdom could still be made on Earth. When your mother conceived you, nearly to the moment that it happened, I could feel you inside her. I knew you existed before your mother knew that she was pregnant with you and that goes for Alexander. And for nine months, I felt you grow and eventually reach out for me, seeking out something that was like yourself.

"Then on Christmas morning, and I couldn't have asked for a more fitting day on which to have my children born to me, your mother went into labor and there you were: my daughter Delia, my first child conceived, my first child born, whose name I chose because it means visible and was proof of Satan's power in the world because He gave me life and saved it and He gave you to me. I brought you home, here, and watched you grow. You took your first steps here. You used to hold out your chubby little arms and hands to me when I would come into your room and you were in your crib, and it made me happy to feel how happy you were to see me. I love you and Alexander more than I ever thought possible…the way I'd only ever thought that I'd love my Father."

"I don't know what to call you," Delia's whisper reverberated with awe and reverence.

"Father, daddy, Damien...your brother has started calling me D-man, which, before you start getting ideas, is already one child too many using that particular term of endearment. Neither one of you seems to be fond of dad, but what you're feeling right now? You aren't my disciple, you don't have to feel those things for me; for Satan, yes, but not for me. Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that I want you to feel love for me because I'm a good father, not because I'm the Antichrist."

Delia sank down into her father's arms, "I'm sorry."

Damien held her and he felt her relax, "Junior, there's no reason to be sorry, but," he looked at her and smiled, "would you like to see something? Would you like to see proof right now that you're my daughter?"

She nodded and Damien got up, set her on his desk and then turned around; she climbed onto his back and he brought her into the front hall powder room. Once at the counter, he turned and she got off and sat on the counter. He reached into the drawer, pulled out a hand-held mirror and then angled it behind his daughter's head so that she would be able to see what was in the mirror. Without searching, Damien put his fingers on a spot and moved his fingers and her hair out of the way and there, on Delia's scalp under her short, dark hair, were three sixes formed the exact same way that Damien's were.

It took a moment for Delia to process what she was seeing and she reached up, touched the mark and then looked at her fingers, worried that somehow it had come off. She reached up for a second time, touched it and then checked again and when she saw that she had not been able to remove it, she let out a scream.

She jumped down off the counter, ran out into the foyer and she spun around, her arms out, enraptured by the knowledge that she and Damien were inextricably bound together. "We're the same, the same, Delia and Damien, both the same," she spun and spun, uttering the words, like a mantra, until she fell onto the floor, too dizzy to stand up.

"And yes, before you ask, Alexander has it too," however Delia could only look up at her father, a pie-eyed expression on her face and anyone who would have walked in would have thought that she was drunk or high and indeed, that's what it felt like to Damien as she bathed in the glow of her new discovery.

Delia lay there, but eventually recovered herself and then got up and collapsed into her father's arms. "I want to see your mark again," Delia took his hand and led him back into the bathroom. She got up onto the counter and stood. She pulled her father to her and it took less time to find the three sixes and she touched them, tracing the numbers on her father's head. "I think it's beautiful, daddy," and she bent down and kissed the three sixes. "And so are you," Delia turned him around and kissed him. "Did you check, when we were born, that we had the mark?"

"Yes, Alexander first, then you."

"What would have happened if we didn't have the marks?"

Damien led Delia out of the bathroom and back into the study, this time both of them sat on the large leather sofa. "Yours is symbolic, so that I would know that you're mine and I would take care of you, but," Damien made sure his daughter was looking at him, "I'd love you and take care of you even if you didn't have it, but I'm glad you do. I knew your brother would have it because he'll be Antichrist one day when I die, but that won't be for a long time. However, if I would have died before you both were born, you and your brother wouldn't have been born at the same time."

"Huh?"

Damien got up and went to one of the bookcases, retrieved a book, returned to his daughter and handed the book to her.

It was a medical textbook, dog-eared to a certain page. Delia flipped it open to that page and read. She understood most of it, helped by some weird pictures that looked like they belonged in a horror movie. She read it again and handed the book back to her father.

"So, if you would have been killed, Alexander and I still would have been born because our mother was pregnant with us before that woman in the church tried to kill you. I would have developed first and then my mother would have given birth to me. However, inside of me would have been Alexander's embryo because I would have absorbed it, but this fetus papyraceus

thing wouldn't have happened because Satan would have kept it safe until Alexander was supposed to be born." Delia, in shock, looked at Damien, who shook his head.

"No, you wouldn't have given birth to Alexander. He would have been removed from you and placed inside your adoptive mother. But even if I wouldn't have been there is person, so to speak, I would have been with you in spirit...guiding and helping you because my soul would have survived since how it was necessary to kill him didn't occur. And then this way, when it came out that you were my daughter, nobody would suspect that Alexander was genetically connected to you."

"I'm glad that you lived. I like having you and a brother who was born at the same time as I was," she moved closer to her father, who had resumed his spot on the couch. Damien put his arm around Delia, who looked up at her father, "What am I?"

"You, Junior, would have, and will one day, run Thorn Industries. You would've been the me that the world sees...corporate big-wig and business tycoon extraordinaire. This way, not only wouldn't there have been anybody who would have suspected that you and Alexander were related, but the burden of the jobs would have been divided between two individuals," Damien felt relief from Delia, who had feared that she was superfluous in all of this, though he had purposely, for now, left out one of the reasons for her existence.

"You said that priests had read the prophecy and tried to kill you…what happened to them?"

"I killed them first," Damien didn't bother to hide the pride that he felt.

"How?"

Damien explained to Delia about the Daggers of Megiddo and how they were used to kill the Antichrist. He explained how each of the priests had come after him armed with the weapons and how he had eliminated each of them until it had come to down to the events that she had seen unfold in the church, that the man Delia had seen her father kill was the last of the seven priests determined to murder Damien in order to keep the nazarene safe, which, of course, had all been a lie in the first place.

Delia beamed with satisfaction, happy that her father had been smarter than the humans who had taken it upon themselves to kill the son of Satan, "Where are the daggers now?"

"I have them, and that's all I'll tell you for now. You will know where they are when you are older, but I can show you pictures," Damien went to the filing cabinet and came back with a folder, which he handed to Delia, who then opened it.

A large, glossy photo told her all she needed to know about the weapons that had been created to kill both her father and her brother.

Someone had placed a measuring tape beside the knife and the dagger measured, from the top of the handle to the tip of the blade over twelve inches. She also noticed that the blade wasn't flat, it was triangular.

"Do you know why the blade is shaped that way?"

"To hurt more?"

"The shape of the blade prevents the flesh from being able to knit back together to heal and to rip someone open if you try to extract the knife . We might have to start tackling military history next."

Delia put the picture back, closed the file and buried her face in her father's chest, "Those knives are horrible, what a terrible thing to make. Didn't the person who made those think that he could be making your children orphans?"

"No, he didn't, all he cared about was making something to destroy me, or Alexander."

Delia pulled her head away from Damien's chest and looked up at her father, "I'm glad you killed them, father, I'm glad you have the daggers and that nobody will be able to hurt you, or Alexander, or me."

"Well, it's not as easy as that. The knives are meant to kill the Antichrist and technically Alexander's not the Antichrist, so it's still not clear what will kill him, or especially you, which brings us to Matthew Patterson's birthday party."

"What did I do to Benjamin?"

"Our minds are powerful weapons that can unleash Satan's power upon the Earth. If we have to, we can kill with them, from across the world if necessary. Before I became Ambassador to Great Britain, the then current Ambassador had to be eliminated. I killed him so that the post would be vacant and the President would offer the job to me and did it while I was still in Chicago."

"How does it work? Do you just think about hurting someone inside of their mind?"

"I've been waiting a long time to ask you this, but do you remember what you did to Benjamin?"

A wicked grin grew across her face, "I just thought about squeezing him until he couldn't breathe and then it just became snakes, maybe because his team name had been Anaconda, or could it have been snakes because Grandfather was supposed to have been a snake in the Garden of Eden?"

Damien smiled at his daughter's use of the familial title, "I have no idea, but do you feel comfortable with visualizing snakes?"

Delia nodded, "What about you?"

"Well, I tried ravens in my younger days, but those eventually got replaced with jackals, so jackals it is. We have the ability to control animals too, though when all of us were very little, we usually just ended up scaring other animals, except for…" Damien smiled. Inside her head, he told her to call her dog to her, but not to use words.

She did as he asked and silently called for Milo, who had been curled up on the floor at one end of the large leather sofa. He got up and lumbered over to Delia and sat, obediently looking up at his young mistress.

"These dogs are special, they're..."

"Familiars, protectors from Satan, to keep an eye on us," she backed up towards the door to the study and then again, silently called him to her. Milo moved over to Delia, who bent down and kissed the dog between his eyes. She suddenly laughed and shook her head, "I should have realized something was up, I've had Milo since I was little. He should be dead by now."

"Not necessarily, but you've had him longer than that. He showed up just after you were conceived, but very good, yes, they are familiars and that's why the dogs don't really need names. He comes to you if he senses you need him, or if he thinks there's danger, whether you use words or not, or if you called him Spot, but that being said, I've always thought that Milo was a very good name," Damien smiled at her.

Delia was about to ask her father if there was any way for them to somehow practice attacking using their minds, when she got a better idea. Warning him would be able to give him time to prepare, but she wanted to catch him off-guard. Delia had been petting Milo and she now stood and no sooner did she stand, then she thought herself into Damien's head.