The Omen: Legacy

All religions issue bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the verdict.

Mark Twain-1889

Prologue

Kate drove; Damien sat in the back seat with Peter. Occasionally, Kate would look at them in the rear-view mirror and see Damien's arm around Peter's shoulder. Peter smiled at Damien, who smiled back and while he could feel Peter's love and devotion for him, Damien felt nothing for the boy, whose soul now belonged to him and Satan.

As she drove, Damien's mind reached out to Kate, not to Kate herself, but to a presence he hoped to find growing within her. However, since he had only had sex with her yesterday, the likelihood that she was already pregnant was slim.

Damien had let everyone think that he had been duped by Kate, but he knew that he had needed her to carry his offspring in case he did not survive and then Damien's children would take up the mantle and work towards manifesting Satan's kingdom on Earth.

Damien felt nothing for Peter, but his children, that he would miss. The thought that his own children would have to make their way in the world without him troubled him more he thought that it would, but while Damien would not be there physically for his children, he would be there in spirit.

Damien possessed six of the daggers, daggers that were now safely in the hands of Thomas Chambers and because DeCarlo would only have one with which to kill Damien, it would only end his physical life; all seven daggers were necessary to completely extinguish Damien's life, including his soul.

If Damien did not survive, he would first have a daughter. Damien would be there for his daughter, guiding her, teaching her. One day, she would run Thorn Industries as his inheritor and maintain and grow the empire that Damien had built. A daughter who would be as powerful as her father, capable of making terrible things happen should she need them to and be able to protect the secret that she would carry inside of her. Damien smiled.

Inside of his daughter would be the embryo of her twin brother, whom at some point would be implanted inside his daughter's adoptive mother. Nine months later, Damien would have a son that nobody would suspect was Damien's spiritual successor and while his son would be a separate entity with his own psychology and would not physically resemble Damien, they would be the same where it most counted: his son would be the Antichrist reborn.

The priest had chosen a far out of the way spot, three hours outside the city. Damien removed his arm from around Peter, who then reached out and took Damien's hand and then...Damien felt elated, free and better than he had since the Nazarene had been born weeks ago; he felt like his old self, strong, confident and above all, powerful; then, there it was again, corruption, perversion, repression, the Nazarene sapping him of his energy.

Eventually, Kate reached the church and began to slow down and then pulled over. Kate got out of the car first, followed by Damien and Peter. Kate walked on ahead, as did Peter, albeit in opposite directions, when for a few seconds, Damien felt fine again, and he took a deep breath, and then he was hit with that feeling that made him feel like walls were closing in on him. The change in how he felt was so sudden and severe, he collapse against the car. Nausea gripped him and he broke out in a sweat. Peter began coming back, but Damien waved the boy away, the last thing he wanted to do was make nice when the world was sincerely screwing with him at the present time.

The three of them went into the church; Kate quickly jogged down a short flight of stairs and Damien followed, with Peter beside him. Damien had nearly made it to the bottom of the stairs when, on his right, he spotted DeCarlo. Damien turned around and with speed and surety, pulled Peter to him. DeCarlo stepped in and before DeCarlo knew what was happening, Damien shoved Peter onto the knife and Damien held DeCarlo's gaze, reveling in the priest's horror as it dawned on DeCarlo that he had not killed the Antichrist, but had instead murdered an innocent boy. Kate turned, expecting to see Damien dying and instead watched as Peter collapsed; Kate went to her son.

Damien moved towards DeCarlo. "Where is your god now, priest?" His hands found DeCarlo's neck and squeezed, intending to choke the life out of him, but instead moved on towards their christ. As he moved through the church, he was fine, momentarily, and then he cried out as that other horrible, familiar consciousness of the Nazarene pushed its way back into Damien's mind, bringing Damien to his knees.

Something was happening and Damien needed to stop and think. The brief moments of tranquility would allow him time to sort out what was going on, but they were too brief until that feeling of being smothered by the Nazarene again overcame him.

Damien moved forward, when he noticed movement on his left, a shadow and he moved towards it. Then he could feel IT happening again, but this time, Damien drew on strength from the depths of his soul and when he felt ecstasy and freedom, he held it and made it stay and he screamed as the other…reality tried to push its way back into Damien's mind, but he held on and then

LOVE

PROTECTION

FATHER

and Damien understood. A huge smile spread across his face as realization took hold and for the first time in weeks, he could breathe without feeling like there was a crushing weight on his chest.

Shortly after Damien had found out about his parentage, he developed an interest in jackals; in the animal itself, but more so in myths surrounding the animal. Not prevalent in the Western world, Damien had turned to African folklore and it had not taken long until he had found what he had wanted.

In Khoikhoi myths, people native to Namibia, the black-backed jackal was often paired with the lion. Stronger and larger than the jackal, the stories depicted the lion being outwitted by its smaller and more cunning counterpart. The lion…even as a teenager, Damien knew that in Judeo-Christian beliefs, Christ was often associated with a lion. Only this time, it had not been the jackal that had used deceit, it had been the lion.

There had been an alignment of stars in the early morning of March 24th, but it had been meaningless. Instead, their god had taken possession of Damien's mind and made Damien believe that the Nazarene had been reborn. So completely had the Nazarene and his father controlled Damien, it had prevented Father from reaching son; only when Damien's life had been moments away from ending had Satan been able to breach the veil that his counterpart had created. Even in the chapel, when Damien had reached out to God, he had been prevented from listening to what his Father had been trying to tell him. Now that Damien was aware that it had all been a lie, the so-called god and his son could no longer control him.

Damien watched as the shadow continued moving towards him and realized that it was Kate and realized that he had foolishly left the dagger behind after he had killed Peter. No doubt Kate was coming to kill him for having taken her son's life. Not that Damien could blame her, he would be outraged too if someone had killed his child, but Damien's empathy was reserved for himself, his Father and, hopefully, his children.

With the Nazarene and his father out of Damien's head, he was at full strength. Damien moved, clouded Kate's mind so that she wouldn't realize that Damien was no longer in front of her and then, he was behind her and before Kate could call out or scream, he placed his hands around her neck, pressing with the heaviest pressure he dared until she went limp and he gently placed her on the ground.

First, off came his belt; he bound her legs with that. Next, he took off Kate's blouse and fastened her hands with that. Damien removed his coat, his sweater, and his shirt; put his sweater and coat back on, ripped the shirt and used it as a gag. Damien reached down and picked up the dagger; he was now in possession of the only things on the planet that could kill him. Damien clutched the lone knife in his hand and moved towards the priest.

"I asked you where your god was, but I'm guessing that that you've found that out for yourself. You can feel it, can't you? Emptiness, nothingness, flaccid rage; while my Father, God, Satan, to whom I give boundless gratitude for my salvation, works His will in the world, showing your impotent god and his worthless son to be the liars that they really are. Guess that baby was just a baby. Oh well, better luck next time." Damien turned the corner and DeCarlo was across Peter, the priest's body shaking with grief.

DeCarlo knew. The priest could feel the withering away of the Nazarene and knew that it had all been a horrible lie. Damien reached down and yanked up the priest by his hair, chunks of it coming away in Damien's hand, but DeCarlo was past caring. DeCarlo had been betrayed by God and that sense of loss, so many dead; his faith, gone. That misery poured over Damien like sacred water and baptized him with the sweetest agony. Damien wanted to look DeCarlo in the eyes, however, the priest had closed them.

"I hope all this grief isn't for Kate and Peter? In few months from now, nine to be precise, his mother is going to get to give birth all over again, to my children. You have sex with someone and you get her pregnant, that's how procreation works in the real world." Damien looked down at the knife and back up to the priest and then drove the dagger through DeCarlo's right eye, twisting it for good measure. DeCarlo was dead before his body hit the ground.

Damien wiped the blood off on the priest's coat and pocketed the knife. Damien returned to Kate, and found her car keys in her pants pocket, lifted her up, and held her against a wall and then hoisted her up over his right shoulder.

Damien moved back the way that all of them had entered the church. Damien would send people here to clean up. DeCarlo could be buried anywhere, but Peter would have to be brought back. Damien went to the car, unlocked and opened the trunk and placed Kate inside and closed the trunk. The car door was open, so Damien got in, started the car and made his way back into the city, knowing where he had to go.

Thomas Chambers worked at Thorn Industries and headed up mergers and acquisitions, but served as one of Damien's personal advisers and was one of Damien's inner circle. Thomas had come to England under the guise of looking in on things in the London office, but had come to take care of things if DeCarlo had been successful in killing Damien before he could kill the Nazarene.

The drive back to the city took another three hours and Damien fought against the exhaustion that was threatening to overtake him before all of this was over. Thomas was staying at Felix for the time that he was here and Damien made his way to the residence that was located in London.

As Damien drove, he tried not to let his mind wander into the possibility of having children, but it wasn't working. Damien had overstated things with DeCarlo for effect, but each passing moment since his Father had intervened and saved his life had built-up in Damien the desire to be a father until by the time he arrived at Felix, having children seemed like the most logical and normal thing that had ever occurred to him.

As Damien pulled into the driveway, he checked his watch: it was eight in the morning. Damien got out of the car and rang the doorbell and moments later Thomas, in his pajamas, opened the door. "Lost?"

"No, almost killed." Damien explained to Thomas what had happened, finishing with telling Thomas that the birth of the Nazarene had been a trick to lure Damien to his death.

Thomas smiled at Damien and then broke into laughter. "So apart from giving me the good news to me in person, why are you here?"

Damien walked to the car and Thomas followed him. Damien pulled out the keys from the ignition, unlocked the trunk and opened it. Thomas looked down at Kate, who was still unconscious, and then back up at Damien. "Is she pregnant?" Thomas and Paul were the only ones who knew what the plan had been.

"Not yet, but I wanted to take her to Oscar. Not only that, but we've got to get people to go back to the church and clean up. I need Peter brought back, but DeCarlo can be disposed of anywhere."

"Okay, give me half an hour." Thomas went back inside the house alone assuming that Damien would want to wait in case Kate woke up. As promised, Thomas returned, dressed, with his brief case and a duffle bag and began the drive out to Oscar. Damien sat in the front seat and fought fatigue.

"Okay, so the plan is pretty much unchanged from our original one. We had people at the ready to take care of any extra bodies, in this case, DeCarlo, and it won't be you being taken care of by Taggart, it will be Peter." Damien's personal physician had flown to London with Thomas and had been in contact with enough of their medical people on this side of the pond to put together a plausible story if Damien had been killed. Covering up Peter's death would be much easier.

"When did you have sex with Kate?"

"About twenty-four hours ago, so that gives us a few days of waiting."

"And you'll know when conception happens?"

"I'm hoping that I'll be able to feel it, the child inside of her. If not, my Father will have to send me some kind of message that Kate is with child."

Thorn Industries kept houses and apartments available for visiting out-of-town business executives and the like in cities where Thorn had branch offices and London was no exception. London had two such properties, one located in the city, where Thomas was staying and the other in the country to where Kate would be brought.

Years ago, Paul had begun referring to the city dwellings as Felix and the more rustic dwellings as Oscar and the epithets had stuck. In this case, Oscar was a three-story house surrounded by oaks and rose bushes and covered with ivy, lovely by any standards, but in this case, its most desirable feature was that it was isolated with its nearest neighbors over a mile away.

Thomas pulled up to the house, removed a set of keys from his briefcase, got out first, and unlocked and opened the door. Thomas returned and helped Damien with Kate and the two of them brought her to the couch and Thomas went back and shut and locked the door. All of the dwellings were kept in a move-in ready state, so there was food in the fridge and the beds were made and ready to be used.

"Try to get some sleep. I'll be leaving at some point to meet up with the two guys getting rid of DeCarlo, but since nobody but the two of us knows that we're here, you're safe."

Damien didn't argue, grabbed the knife out of his coat pocket and went upstairs, all the way up to the third floor so he could have the most privacy possible, as there was only one bedroom on that floor.

When Damien got into the room, he shut and locked the door and closed the curtains. Next, he opened the top drawer of the desk and found the key to the large drawer in the bottom of the desk and placed the dagger inside and locked the drawer. Damien put the key in his pants pocket and as he did that, he also realized that he was hungry too, but he didn't think about it as he removed his clothes. By the time Damien was naked, his limbs felt like they were make of lead and he made it over to the bed, pulled down the covers and got in. The cool sheets felt good against his skin and Damien knew this would be the first decent sleep that he would have since the night of March 23rd.

As tired as Damien was, a smile fit for the Cheshire cat sat his face; he was alive and soon everything about all of this would be forgotten, with hopefully one exception: children. Damien sent out love and gratitude to his Father, without whose intervention Damien would not be here. Now, since Damien was alive, Satan would be the ultimate decider as to whether Kate became pregnant and as Damien fell asleep, he hoped that his Father's answer would be yes.