Part Four: End - n

“No!” Kendra yelled. The shock of seeing her brother so viciously killed caused her alpha state to melt off her. She went to him but as she did, Bendis attacked Alrich.

Her grandfather put up much more of a fight, but in the end, it was just as laughably useless. He lunged at the goddess with all his strength but Bendis merely caught him in a restraining bear hug. She hauled the massive Prime Alpha up into the air and Kendra watched Alrich’s paws scrabble uselessly. She ran to him, but the second she made a move toward her grandfather, Bendis squeezed. She squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until her grandfather exploded like a watermelon with too many rubber bands wrapped around it. Blood and gore rained down in a sickening mist.

Another, even more massive bolt of pain ripped through Bendis and the force of it was enough to drive her to her knees. She clutched the sides of her head, her own fingertips digging deeply into her skin. She felt them puncture and rip off bits of her flesh. Blood, her blood, leaked out of the wounds she had inflicted on herself but again she ruthlessly forced all that away. She was on a mission now. And she didn’t care how much it hurt her.

She was going to kill Kendra Henner.

“You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you! You’ll scream when I tear you apart!” Kendra was yelling, tears streaming from her eyes. Bits of her grandfather’s blood speckled her naked skin like an abstract painting.

Bendis saw Kendra coming for her but she wasn’t going to kill her. Not yet. There was more pain she wanted to inflict. Oh yes! She got shakily to her feet, pulling in yet more of her power from the moon. The pain started to lessen somewhat, but she could still feel it lurking there nonetheless. It was a horrible thing. The worst thing she’d ever felt in all her long existence.

“I’m not done yet.” She wheezed harshly. There was a pause and then her blood flecked lips split into a wide, frightening grin. Without any warning, she took off and went on an all out slaughter-spree with her first target being…

Jenna Bishop.

“Jenna, run!” Kendra tried to scream at her cousin but before the sound even fully passed her lips, Bendis had reached into Jenna’s chest and ripped out most of her spine and some splintered bits of her ribs.

The open-eyed look of pain and shock on Jenna’s face as she died made another scream of horror and grief rip out of Kendra. But that wasn’t the last death she was forced to witness. Elijah was next. Bendis ripped his head right off his body. Felix put up a bit of a better fight. He erected a dome of protective power that lasted two hits before it shattered. After that, Bendis punched him in the stomach with enough force to rupture his insides. He fell to the ground and writhed in complete agony for several minutes before finally dying. Deirdre tried to protect Felix but Bendis grabbed her in both hands and ripped the werewolf in half. The rest of the wolves, knights, and mages all fought as hard as they could to bring the goddess down. They were not successful.

Every last person there was slaughtered by the insane goddess and she left Kendra alive to watch all their deaths. The last of her wolves. The last of the mages. The last of the knights. In the end, everyone was gone and Kendra was back where she started.

Alone.

Bendis was still breathing hard and the pain was pushing through the barrier she had erected to block it out. She stumbled through the ruins of the Hotel Lycaon toward Kendra, who was sitting on the ground naked and crying with so much grief it was practically ripping her apart from the inside out.

“You should be proud, Kendra,” Bendis muttered. There was a slur to her words. “You actually managed to hurt me.”

She spread her arms out wide and gestured around.

“But look at the cost, you ignorant little bitch. Look at the price you paid. Was it worth it?”

Her strength was waning and that draining of power only got worse the more pain that slipped past her defenses. She had enough strength, however, to get to Kendra before she could think to attack again. She reached down and grabbed the broken woman by the throat, lifting her up into the air. “I hope it was. I really hope it was for you.”

Then, with barely a struggle from Kendra, Bendis plunged her hand inside the woman’s chest, wrapped her fingers around her heart, and then yanked it free. It beat in her closed fist for a few seconds before she crushed it to pulp and threw it to the ground.

Kendra’s eyes widened. They glowed with that bright, white power for a few seconds but then it flickered and then blinked out, gone forever. There was a gurgle and blood dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. Bendis drew the dead woman’s corpse closer to her for a few seconds so she could savor that look of death for as long as possible. It didn’t last long. A second later and she was hit with the most massive wave of pain yet. Her hand suddenly grew nerveless and Kendra’s lifeless body fell, inert, to the debris-laden ground. She threw back her head and howled out to the sky, surrounded only by the dead. She dropped to her knees, clutching her head again. Her body writhed and convulsed and for the first time ever, she was not in control of it. In that moment, it did what it wanted and disobeyed all of her half-hearted attempts to reign it in.

Agony.

What she was experiencing could have newly defined that word because there was nothing in the world that could have possibly felt worse than her in that moment. She was consumed by what felt like fire yet encased in solid ice at the same time. Her head wanted to both explode and implode at the same time. Her skin was about to crawl off her body and run away. Her eyes vibrated inside her head. Her tongue felt thick and furry. In short, she felt very...human.

She fell on her back, her breathing shallow and labored. Her vibrating eyes stared up at the sky and focused on the moon. That great, beautiful orb.

She blinked and her body arched up as a particularly powerful spasm hit her. Even as it did, she saw something extremely strange up in the night sky.

W-what was that? she asked herself. Her mind was so overwhelmed by pain that her thoughts were broken and disjointed. She almost convinced herself that what she had seen was some kind of fever dream when it happened again and she knew she wasn’t just seeing things.

The moon had just blinked. Like an eye.

“No…”

Then it did it again.

“No…”

The moon blinked for a third and final time and as it did, her entire world burst into dust and started whirling around like a gigantic cyclone. Bright, white light exploded through the walls of the cyclone and speared into her. It hurt her already pain-filled body.

“Wh-what is th-this?” she tried to ask. Her voice was a weak, timid stutter. Completely unlike her.

“Hello there, dear,” a woman’s voice suddenly said. It was cheery and had a definite sense of amusement lurking in it.

Mocking amusement.

Bendis whirled around and found herself face to face with a vaguely familiar human woman. She was young and pretty, or at least pretty for a human, but despite how familiar she looked, Bendis had trouble placing her.

“Wh…”

“Who am I?” the woman asked. She flicked a hand lazily through the air and Bendis suddenly found herself flying backward until she crashed into an uncomfortable, leather couch and was forced to sit in it. “You probably find me familiar, right? You should I suppose, although it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you didn’t. So much life has been gifted to you and you used that to hurt so many of us. So many humans. Why should I be special? After all, you just tried to have your fire mage friend, Jonah, force me to kill my own daughter.”

Bendis’ eyes widened sharply at that.

“Helen Henner?”

“Correct.”

Bendis gulped, not liking where this was going. Things were sliding into place now despite how hard it was to think because of the pain twisting and sliding through her body.

Helen flicked her hand again and Bendis was flying up in that huge, white void. Then she was just as suddenly jerked downward with astounding speed until she hit the ground with brutal, painful force. Helen once again waved a hand and Bendis was jerked over to her. She floated a foot or so above what passed for the ground in that place, her arms behind her in an unnatural pose. Her face was just inches away from Helen. She tried to move and jerk around but she couldn’t even twitch a muscle.

Helen smiled and the look it gave Helen caused real, actual fear to flood Bendis’ entire body.

“You have no power here, Edolie. Or Bendis if you prefer. This place is mine,” she whispered. “Welcome to the World Between Worlds.”

Helen once again waved a hand and Bendis was knocked around so much and so hard that she lost consciousness for several minutes. Then she woke up and she was in…

Pain!

She wasn’t accustomed to this. What was it? It hurt so bad. It was like her insides had been replaced by rivers of molten lava. It clawed its way through her, weakening her and actually bringing her to her knees. She could feel her power still inside her but for the first time since she had awakened in this existence, it was nearly beyond her reach.

How can this be? she thought to herself, her inner voice sounding like a mewling, begging child. I am Bendis, Goddess of the Moon! I am immortal. This cannot be happening to me.

But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself of that, it was useless. She was hurting. She felt actual, real pain. She screamed out as a particularly intense wave of it hit her. When it was over, she opened her eyes and saw four people standing there, staring at her.

Looking down at her!

Kendra. Drake. Merrick Bane. And, of course, Alrich. Her Alrich. In that moment of complete and utter agony, she could still remember their time together. The love she’d felt had been real and the betrayal after he left her had been real too. She hated him for that. For daring to leave her but that hatred was nothing compared to what she felt toward Kendra. That woman was, no pun intended, a complete bane of her existence. All of her careful planning and for what?

Nothing.

She had nothing to show for it.

Kendra had thwarted her at nearly every turn. Every plan to destroy or kill her had backfired save for her boyfriend's death, Conor Dewar. There should have been nothing special about her and yet ever since she was four, she had stubbornly persisted and lived despite Bendis’ best efforts. Jonah had been the very first attempt to use Kendra’s death to hurt Merle Bane but somehow, the mother had managed to break the hold just long enough for the grandfather to charge in and stop her. That had still worked out more or less in her favor. Merle lost the woman he loved and his daughter as well. The girl even spent her childhood in those delightfully awful foster homes. Each time a family even so much as thought about taking her in, Bendis would guide them to a different choice without them knowing. That had been a pleasant little afterthought on her part. Things were progressing well after that. She had gotten her hooks into Merrick. Had turned Deanna Shade to her cause. Had finally managed to orchestrate the death of Alrich’s last living son, Merle.

But then Kendra gained her birthright, took the Alpha power, and, on top of everything else, had awakened some latent, extra-normal ability that shouldn’t even exist. She had used that power to devastating effect and instead of being reduced to a useless lump of depression and grief, she had managed to devise a plan that actually…

HURT HER!

How was that possible?

She was a goddess!

A goddess!