Jack's Back ((Ascension: Book 2)) (2 page)

The Impostor

Lucifer smiled and kissed Melanie, his live-in girlfriend
, on the cheek. He ruffled his adoptive sons hair but the boy shrugged him off and backed out of reach. Lucifer didn't care. He didn't care for either of them but he had to keep up appearances.

They thought his name was Jack. Jessie thought he was his real father and Melanie thought he was the man she'd fallen in love with
over a year ago. What they didn't know was that he'd tricked the real Jack almost exactly one year ago and switched places with him, assuming his identity, even his characteristics and mannerisms.

He thought of poor Jack roasting in hell. All Jack had tried to do was help him. He didn't deserve what Lucifer had done to him. But Lucifer had to do it because God checked in
on hell from time to time and did something akin to a head count. God would mistake Jack's soul for his and then be on his merry way, none the wiser.

Lucifer knew God didn't suspect a thing because if he did, he'd be dead or
roasting right now.

He'd already wasted a year getting situated. Time was of the essence and he just didn't know how much he had to play with
anymore.

Melanie said, "Luke, you forgot the car keys."

Lucifer had insisted they call him Luke instead of Jack because the name Jack brought back feelings of regret. Also, he hated the name. Luke was close enough to his actual name without letting the cat out of the bag.

They'd all assumed new identities
after the ruckus last year, but Luke's was the only alias that had stuck.

Lucifer said, "Whatever would I do without you?"

He pulled her close and kissed her fully on the mouth. Then he retrieved the keys and left.

He was on his way to his church. He had built it from the ground up over the past six months and he had quite the following already. There were
new recruits waiting to hear his sermon and he hated to leave his adoring fans wanting.

As he got in the car, he nodded at one of the two men patrolling the grounds of his house. They were parishioners, working for him for free, simply because he'd asked.
They didn't have a clue who he really was either or else they most certainly wouldn't be so eager to help.

He
'd told Melanie that the patrols were only there to keep a lookout and to keep them safe.

The truth was very different. He had the house watched to make sure Melanie and Jessie didn't take off while he was gone. He wasn't being overly protective, or controlling, he worried that either of them might suspect that he's not really Jack, but instead Lucifer.

News like that could not circulate. God could not know.

The constant charade was exhausting but it was necessary. And with some luck, it would pay off soon enough.

He pulled out of his driveway and headed off to work. He had lies to spread and fears to exploit. He loved his job.

Jack's Lady

Melanie watched Luke pull out of the driveway. She had mixed feelings about her man these days. The man she'd met a year ago was a kindhearted, intelligent, easy going atheist. This new version was a highly driven religious nut.

He'd swung so far in the opposite direction he even had a religious following of what she could only
describe as cult members.

He'd explained
his new position simply: He'd seen the depths of hell and he'd do anything to never have to see it again. He never once tried to force her to see things his way, which she was grateful for.

She was a true believer; she just didn't much care for the way God was running things. But that was all in the past. The present situation was even more bleak to her.

Things had not turned out the way she'd hoped. The love of her life seemed to only pretend to care for her these days. The absence of passion was evident despite Luke's efforts to hide it.

How had they
arrived here? Just a year ago, they'd shared something terrible but also special. They'd taken on a secretive underground government operation in order to free Luke's son, Jessie.

Jessie was a small, weak looking boy but he possessed an unnatural power that made the small hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention
whenever she thought about it. When he dreamt, his dreams became reality. Some of his dream manifestations were living creatures which had helped them escape from the facility last year with horrifying consequences.

The government scientists studying him had no clue that his powers came from a sacred ritual performed during his conception
a decade earlier. They just thought he was weird and scary and spent countless hours attempting to exploit his abilities. But in the end, his abilities baffled them. They couldn't know the true magnitude of the big picture.

Luke was
Jessie's real dad but he didn't even know Jessie existed until he was brought into the government facility to help study the child's strange powers (he'd been tricked by Jessie's birth mother during a one night stand a decade earlier and then left in the dark about the birth).

What
only a select few people were aware of was that Jessie's powers had been borne of hell. It was all by design, to aide in Lucifer's escape from his hellish prison. Those involved with helping Jessie were all aware of the endgame and they were eager to release Lucifer. Lucifer wasn't the bad guy; he was a misunderstood angel who only wanted to undo the horrific shit God had inflicted upon mankind; that was all.

Lucifer would overthrow the status quo and set himself up as a new, caring, compassionate God who actually
gave a damn about mankind. That was the plan.

It was Luke's job to release
Lucifer from his bonds. Luke was a late arrival to the whole situation but he caught up quickly and performed his duties admirably.

She remembered the details from a year ago like t
hey had just happened yesterday:

All of their planning had come to a focal point and it was time for Luke to finally release Lucifer.

He'd opened the portal to hell with a red death ball that came from Jessie's dreams (that also killed on contact). The ball had become two dimensional as it floated above the ground.

Time ceased for Melanie at that point so she didn't see what happened next, but Luke told her
it became a hole between realms and Lucifer was on the other side of it, looking back at him.

He spoke to Lucifer
for a long time but in the end he rejected his advances and locked him back up in hell for eternity. It was a turn of events no one had foreseen. Lucifer was denied entry. A decade of planning was thwarted by Luke's inability to pull the trigger.

Melanie was secretly overjoyed by the outcome
though. She'd fallen in love with the man and the thought of an angels soul residing within his body kind of freaked her out.

That's when things went sideways. E
verything got really boring in a hurry.

They'd adopted aliases, although hers and Jessie's didn't stick the same way Luke's had (his real name was Jack). They drove from hotel to motel a lot those first few
months.

Then out of the blue, Luke got religious and started his own
weird little cult. After that, money was no object. One of his followers even gave them the house they now lived in.

The church Luke presided over was
once an old school house, converted to an antique store, and then eagerly bequeathed to him by the owners.

Luke spent a ton of time and money tricking the building out until it was more church-like.
His following was rabid and growing by the day.

So Luke's life seemed to have a purpose
, but what of hers?

She was a bright
ex-soldier with ambitions of her own, but it seemed like that all took a back seat to Luke's wants.

He probably wouldn't even give her children of her own since they hadn't been intimate in a
very long time, for reasons she just couldn't put her finger on.

And what of poor Jessie? She'd mentioned enrolling him in school but Luke rightly pointed out that if he dozed of
f in class and one of the dream-creature abominations materialized, they'd all be found out and the government would have them executed (because of what they'd done last year to those poor military guards at the facility).

So she home schooled
Jessie the best she could and just hoped every day for a change of fortunes.

For his part, Jessie seemed
to have adjusted well enough, although he had taken a distinct disliking to his father. She didn't understand that because Luke was a good man despite his quirky flaws, and he seemed to genuinely care for his son.

Maybe Jessie was acting out because he felt like Luke had abandoned him at birth, but that was unfair. Luke didn't even know he existed until a little over a year ago.
Jessie's mom was the one at fault. She'd performed the ritual that made Jessie special, failed to inform the father of the child, and then when things got scary with the boy, she simply abandoned him; she didn't have the moxy to finish what she'd started. (Child services then picked him up and it soon became apparent that he was unique. That's when the government stepped in and that's when she and Luke got involved.)

Jessie's mom caused all of his pain, not Luke. She deserved his ire.

Emotions are a funny thing, she thought, especially at such a young age.

She wandered
through the silent house, pausing at the kitchen window to watch one of Luke's devout followers walk past. He was patrolling the house as a lookout for approaching government agents. It sure seemed to her like they'd left one prison (the underground government facility) for a new, self imposed prison.

She
turned the TV on, watched a game show. She wept as quietly as she could, careful not to let Jessie hear her.

Jack remembers...a little

Jack's memories started to come back to him, but each one seared his brain, and he fought to cast them off before they did too much damage or caused him too much pain.

He had been tricked by Lucifer. Lucifer had used him to escape his hellish prison, then he threw Jack inside so that God wouldn't get suspicious. Apparently God checks in on hell from time to time to see that all souls are present.

But
according to the plan as explained to Jack, it wasn't supposed to go that way. Lucifer was supposed to just come along for the ride, inside Jack's body. They were supposed to be two drivers of the same car (with neither of them stuck in hell). For various reasons related to his hatred of God, Jack was fine with sharing his body with the soul of God's nemesis. But that's not what happened. He'd been played for a fool and tossed into the pits of hell like a piece of garbage.

Lucifer had stolen his ident
ity and he guessed that he'd also assumed his life since then. Did that mean he was with Jessie and Melanie? Had he killed them already? That thought brought a wave of fury with it and Jack snarled. He felt his horn nubs tingle.

The spider scurried off into another room
for safety.

The spider had found them an abandoned home to hole up in as Jack got used to the earth again. The earth seemed foreign to him like how
old childhood memories always come crashing down when you revisit a place where you grew up.
Didn't that house used to be bigger. Didn't the park used to be more colorful and have more vibrant scents? Wasn't my second grade teacher twice as tall, with the scowl of a demon?

Apparently all memories
were lies. That was how Jack felt right then.

The earth was drab, lacking any of the luster he remembered. Maybe it was because he'd spent the past year untouched by all things mortal? Or maybe he'd put it on a pedestal where it didn't belong in the first place.

Maybe he didn't respect earth anymore because he'd called hell his home for the past year.

He just couldn't remember any details. That was probably a good thing because those memories
were almost certainly poisonous, maybe even deadly.

Jack tilted his head up and sniffed the air. He looked all around; God was still in command, he knew. So why hadn't Lucifer
destroyed him like he said he would?

Maybe that was another one of Lucifer's lies?
Maybe his assertion that he would kill God upon release was a ruse to trick someone into freeing him?

It didn't matter now. Jack, was here to set things
straight.

He would kill Lucifer for his deceitfulness, make sure his
son was safe and reunite with the love of his life, Melanie. At least that was what he remembered as his original plan.

The spider still seemed to know more than he did, so he let the
little guy take the lead. He trusted it, as one would a loyal pet. It was like a guide dog, only uglier and far more terrifying.

He'd
recently named the spider Dick-eyes because it had a human dick and eyes, but he reserved the right to rename it as soon as he thought of something better.

Dick-eyes came back into the room with a baseball cap for him to wear. Jack put it on
, struggling to pull it past the sawn off nubs where his horns once were. The spider left once more, only to return a few minutes later with a bottle clutched between two of its legs. Jack picked up the bottle and the spider took off again.

It was a bottle of fake tan cream. Apparently the spider thought he should go incognito while he was up here.

That made Jack wonder if he was a marked man. If God found out that he had escaped hell, would he come after him?

Worse still: I
f God checked in on hell and noticed that the presence of evil had diminished, he'd go looking around the earth for Lucifer. And if he found him first then Jack wouldn't get the satisfaction of killing him.