Hellbound Twins

Chapter 12 — Marcus | Two Hundred Years.

Chapter 12 — Marcus | Two Hundred Years

"I know the Montana mountains," he had said.

Not the way a tourist knows them — not the marked trails, not the panoramas on brochures. I know them the way a hunter knows them. The corners where night falls faster than anywhere else. The places where animals turn back for no apparent reason. The zones where the air changes texture and you feel something ancient in your bones. That's the hunter's instinct, my sons.

Raziel lives in one of those zones. Off the radar, off the grid.

We'd been driving all night. Arthur at the wheel of the pickup. Elidja behind us in the Ford. Me in the passenger seat, staring at the journal on my lap without opening it. I know every page by heart — but tonight the symbols feel different. Heavier. Like they know what's coming. I feel it the way you feel death approaching.

The black sedan followed us all the way to the Montana border.

Then it stopped. Abruptly. Like something was blocking it.

I saw it in the rearview mirror — the headlights frozen at the edge of the road, like something had hit them full force. Elidja noticed too. He said nothing. We kept going straight. Like nothing had happened.

---

"After a few miles, the roads got strange."

Here the roads become tracks. The tracks become paths. The paths become nothing at all.

We stop at the foot of a wooded hill when the GPS starts losing its mind — along with the radio that had been playing rock.

"This is it?" asks Arthur.

"This is it."

We get out of the vehicles. Montana air in the dead of night — cold, clean, heavy with pine resin. Elidja blows a cloud of white vapor.

"I can't see anything," he says.

"That's the point."

We walk a few steps.

---

The first trap is two hundred meters into the forest.

I see it just in time — a line of symbols carved into the tree roots at ground level, almost invisible under the dead leaves. I raise my hand. Arthur stops a fraction of a second before stepping on it.

He crouches to look.

"Enochian," he says.

"Yes."

"Same as in the farm?"

"No." I crouch down. I know these symbols. I've studied them for years. "These are defensive. A demon that steps on this — its legs give out. It can't move forward." I stand back up. "We step over. We're human."

We step over the line.

Nothing happens.

We keep going.

---

The second trap is more sophisticated — nearly invisible threads stretched between the trees at chest height. Crystals of blessed salt attached at regular intervals. Elidja spots them at the last second, moonlight catching a crystal.

"What do these do?" he asks.

"To us — nothing. To a possessed — it burns their lungs from the inside. Like swallowing boiling water without realizing it."

Arthur looks at the threads with something that resembles respect.

"He did good work," he says.

"Raziel knows what he's doing. He's had two hundred years to perfect his system," I say. "Two hundred years."

Silence.

"Two hundred years," Elidja repeats softly, with genuine respect.

We duck under the threads.

---

The house appears in a clearing. Alone, isolated, no neighboring house in sight.

Small. Stone. No visible light — but symbols everywhere on the exterior walls, carved into the stone, some so ancient they're half worn away. The kind of protection you don't build in a night. The kind you build over decades, with a lifetime of hunting knowledge.

We stop at the edge of the clearing.

"Raziel," I call out. My voice in the silence of the forest. "It's Marcus Voss. I'm not here as an enemy."

Arthur adds:

"We've got a bottle of old whiskey for you."

Nothing.

Wind in the trees.

"I know you can see us," I continue. "And you already know we're human or we wouldn't have made it through your lines." I pause. "I have the journal. And I need you."

Thirty seconds of silence.

Then the door opens.

---

He's older than I remember.

The last time I saw Raziel — twenty-two years ago, when I was thirty with two young sons and a wife still alive — he looked like a man in his sixties. Now he looks a hundred. Small. Thin. A white beard down to his chest. Pale grey eyes that see too many things at once.

He looks at all three of us on his doorstep.

His gaze stops on Arthur. Then on Elidja.

"The sons," he says. His voice is strange — slightly off, like someone speaking several languages at once and choosing each word carefully. "I wasn't expecting them this soon."

"You were expecting us?" says Arthur.

Raziel doesn't answer. He turns and goes back inside.

We follow.

---

The inside is a library.

Floor to ceiling — books, scrolls, maps. Candles everywhere. Symbols traced on the wooden floor. At the center of the main room — a large table with a map spread across it. A map I don't recognize at first.

Then I recognize it.

It's the world. But marked differently — seven glowing points traced in red ink. Seven places on the planet.

Seven seals.

Raziel settles into a worn armchair. He watches us file in one by one.

"Show me the journal," he says. "And bring out that whiskey — I heard you just fine."

Raziel produces four glasses and pours for each of us.

"Marcus," he says. "Let's get to the point."

I pull out the journal. I set it on the table in front of him.

He opens it without touching it with his hands — just a gesture, and the pages turn on their own all the way to the last one. The page with the ancient handwriting. The prophecy.

He reads it in silence.

Then he looks up at me.

"Azazel has broken two seals," he says. Direct. No preamble. "He has five left."

"How much time—"

"Listen first." His grey eyes settle on Arthur and Elidja one after the other. "This journal you've been carrying for years, Marcus — you think it's just a notebook." Not a question. "It's not."

I look at the journal.

"Then what is it?"

Raziel places his finger on the leather cover.

"It's a location scroll. One of the oldest in existence." His voice is flat. Matter-of-fact. Like he's explaining something obvious. "Every symbol in this journal corresponds to a seal. Its exact location. Its state — intact or broken." He looks at us. "It's a map, Marcus. You've been carrying a map of Lucifer's seals against your heart for twenty years without knowing it."

The silence in the room is total.

"That's why Azazel wants it," says Elidja quietly.

"With this journal, he can locate the five remaining seals instantly. No more searching. No more wasted time." Raziel closes the journal. "He can break them all in a matter of weeks."

I look at my sons.

Arthur's jaw is tight. Elidja stares at the map on the table — the seven red points.

"And the prophecy," says Arthur. "The two brothers."

Raziel looks at them for a long moment.

"The prophecy says a hunter carrying the scroll will father two sons. That those sons will be present at the opening of the final seal." He pauses. "It doesn't say they'll stop it."

"What does it say exactly?" asks Elidja.

Raziel rises slowly from his armchair. He goes to the window. He looks out at the forest — the black trees, the moonless night.

"It says they will be the choice," he says. "Between war and the end."

No one speaks.

Outside — the wind stops.

As if the forest itself is waiting to see what we decide.

Everything became so calm all of a sudden. I had the feeling something was about to happen.

——

The first one lunged toward...

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