by Ryan Attard
There was also the added complication of Abi’s new demeanor. My sister had offered to call, but no one had picked up. My apprentice had been out doing her Batman routine.
And according to Gil, she had stopped taking calls from anyone familiar. The office phone was for clients alone and even then, they had to know a perpetually-changing password. Her cellphone, Gil had told me, had been chucked into the ocean after a particularly grim case. She had also deleted all of her social media.
To sum it up, short of someone actually bumping into her, there was no way of reaching my apprentice.
It was evening by the time we reached my office. Jeremy had recovered in a few hours—which made me breathe out in relief. I’d thought I had crippled him somewhat, but I guess I had more control over my raw magic than I’d thought.
Well, that’s it for the good news.
Since he had no money, I had to help Jeremy hex a vending machine for some food. I promised him real help and I intended to keep that promise. There was an orphanage I knew on the other side of town, run by a former nun. Long story short, she and her convent had tried to summon some angelic being, which turned out to be a demon in disguise, and it all went to shit. Sister Edna was the only survivor, minus her right arm. She renounced the Church shortly after and set out to do some actual good.
Her orphanage was a good place for Jeremy to stay and get a square meal while learning about the dangers of dark magic.
But before all that, he had a message to deliver.
My office was the same from the outside, but the changes inside were stark and evident. The lights were off but even from the other side of the road I could see the pizza and Chinese takeout boxes littering my desk. Protein bar wrappers overflowed from the bin at the side.
The wall I had once used as a trophy space had been cleared off. Now there hung a massive whiteboard, with several case files hanging on it with magnetic clips.
There were a lot of case files, too many for one person to handle alone.
I stood on the other side of the building and peered through Limbo, searching for magic. As I expected, the place was a stronghold of alarms and magical wards.
Again, all in excess.
But that was not what had me worried. The wards were not for monsters, ghouls, vampires, or ghosts.
No, they were for anyone with magic in them.
People.
My apprentice wanted people away, while almost inviting monsters of darkness inside. She was literally asking for it. Abi was daring every monster in Eureka to come at her.
Either she had bigger balls than me or she had gone completely insane.
We waited for her but she never came in through the front door. I only sensed her through Limbo.
Abi was sneaking into her own dwelling.
I directed Jeremy towards the back of the office and after digging through some shrubbery, we saw a dark figure shimmy down a drainpipe and land in a perfect roll.
“Abi,” I said, forgetting she could not hear me.
My apprentice was clad in tactical black with the exception of a red sash draped around her waist. Only the Sun Wo Kung staff, collapsed to a small golden baton, glinted from a holster on her right thigh. The black mask, a mixture of leather and plastic, resembled a cat or a wolf—some kind of nocturnal animal.
I had seen her on camera but there was no preparing for the change. She had put on some muscle and walked with a predatory stride, always on the lookout.
Which was how she spotted Jeremy before he could utter a single word.
One of her guns appeared in her hand, pointed squarely at the kid.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Chapter 7
Abi thumbed back the hammer of her pistol.
“I won’t ask again, kid,” she said. Her voice had a growl to it. “Who are you?”
“Christ, Abi,” I began. Then, I looked down, at the kid who was now trying not to wet his pants. “Stay calm, Jeremy. She’s not gonna hurt you.”
That was bullshit. I could see her eyes through the mask—Abi was not bluffing, and judging by her curled trigger finger she did not give a shit who she shot if she saw them as a threat.
“Tell her you are a friend of Erik Ashendale,” I instructed.
Jeremy obeyed.
It was the wrong play.
Abi pulled the trigger. The gun spat a bullet that exploded inches from the kid’s feet.
“SHIT!” I screamed.
Jeremy was now on the ground, tears flowing and his sobs panicked.
“Erik Ashendale is dead,” Abi said murderously. “Who sent you?”
“Jeremy, listen to me,” I said, kneeling down next to the kid. “Do not use magic. Do you hear me? Do not fight her. She won’t kill you if you don’t fight.”
“Kid,” Abi snarled. “I’ve had a shitty night. I can also tell you have magic. Either tell me what you want with me or I can rip the information out of your brain. Or I can just kill you.”
Jeremy looked at me. “Help me,” he pleaded.
“Who are you talking to?” she demanded.
“Me, you crazy bitch!” I yelled. “Tell her, Jeremy. Tell her it’s me and that I’m a ghost. Tell her to look beyond the veil.”
Jeremy sobbed and cried again.
Abi snatched him by the shirt and pressed him against a fence.
“Start talking.” Her voice was slow, deliberate, and deadly. “Who told you that name?”
“He did,” Jeremy said. “The ghost. The ghost told me to come here and tell you to look beyond the veil.”
Abi paused. She shook her masked head. I felt the slightest surge of magic, controlled and restricted within her immense willpower.
Suddenly she was looking at me.
I wasn’t sure what to expect out of her, but Abi did not react.
At all.
“Go home, kid,” she told Jeremy, releasing him. “Don’t come back here.”
The hanging threat was obvious.
“Go,” I told Jeremy. “You remember that orphanage we went to this afternoon? Ask for Sister Edna. Tell her I sent you. She’ll take care of you, I promise.”
Jeremy ran off like a scared rat. Abi glared at me.
“Interesting detail,” she said. “Usually they try to coax me to join them in the afterlife. Or have sex with them. That’s always a good one. My favorite is when we fight to the death. But they never sent a kid to an orphanage before.”
“Abi, it’s me.”
“Ah, there it is. Same opening line.” Abi turned and opened the back door. Wordlessly, she went inside. I peered through Limbo for magic wards before following her inside.
There were none.
“Coming?” she challenged. “I’d rather stay warm inside.”
I followed her in, walking in through the back door, and then past her to the main office.
My heart thumped hard. I was home again.
My home!
Except there was none of the joy that this place once held. I didn’t need the weird energy ribbons running through Limbo to tell me that there hadn’t been other people in this place in a long while.
I turned around, looking towards the main door.
Mounted on top of the door was a short sword with a ring cross-guard and a leather-wrapped handle. Djinn glowed like a halogen bulb in Limbo. The magic inside called to me like a flame to a moth.
But I didn’t dare peer closer. Not when I knew the dormant Jinn spirit inside was very much alive. I had fought it for dominance once—not something I wished to repeat.
I turned around again and watched Abi lean against the desk, watching me.
“You like my sword?” she demanded.
“You wish,” I said, grinning. “Like that sword would respond to anyone else but me.”
“Indeed.” She tapped Sun Wo Kung. “I prefer my own, anyway.”
I looked at Djinn again. Now, I understood why it was up there. It was the last thing she looked at as she walked out—a reminder
of her loss.
Abi took off her mask and gently laid it on the table. Red hair flowed down to her neck as she released it from the knot she had it tied in. It was a lot shorter than I remembered. Black bags under her eyes indicated lack of sleep while a mixture of old and fresh bruises on her jaw and cheeks spoke volumes of her nightly activities.
She gave me a half-grin.
“You’re staring.”
“What are you doing, Abi?” I forced myself to speak calmly and not give in to emotion. “What the hell happened to you?”
“You tell me, Erik,” she replied, adorning my name with air quotes.
“I think you’re trying to get yourself killed.”
“I must be doing a shitty job of it then,” she said flippantly. “Because I’m still here. Turns out that when you don’t give a shit if you live or die, you fight better.”
“You also fight dumber.”
She laughed. It was an ugly, cynical laugh. “Are you really here to discuss battle tactics with me?” she said. “Because last time someone tried that, it didn’t go so well.”
“Gil told me about Sun Tzu.”
She blinked at me, silent. I could see her doubt for a second.
“Hell, Abi,” I pressed, “you pissed off the guy who literally wrote the book about warfare. Even I had better sense than that.”
“You’re not real,” she told herself.
“I am real,” I said, taking a step towards her. “Come on. Ask me anything. I am the real Erik Ashendale.”
“FUCK YOU!”
With her outburst came a surge of magic that threw me off my feet. When I scrambled back up, Abi was standing up, shaking.
“You’re dead,” she snarled. “I saw your body on the ground, in pieces. And when your Life magic put you back together, you were still dead.”
Her clenched fists shook by her side. She looked at them and released a breath. Her fists unclenched.
“Erik Ashendale is dead,” she said again. “His body is in a goddamn tank, floating somewhere in his sister’s mansion, while she studies the residual magic in it. She thinks she can bring him back.”
“She did!” I yelled.
Abi gave me a look of pure murder. “She says I’m crazy but at least I can let go. I have accepted that Erik Ashendale is gone and he’ll never come back. And you… You are just a torment, a facsimile my own psychic powers conjured up. Did you know I used to talk to you? For the first two months, I would create a mirage, just like you, and spend hours talking to you. But even when I stopped doing it, my powers subconsciously kept conjuring you up.”
“No, Abi, I’m real,” I pleaded. “Please, you have to believe me.”
She peeled herself off the table and went around. I heard a drawer open.
“And then the ghosts started coming,” she went on. “They would sense my torment and take your shape.”
She extracted a sheet of paper and stuck it to a wall. I recognized the sigil—a banishing spell. And she had stuck it to one of the thirteen crystals I had installed in the walls of my office to enable me to use magic back when I was alive.
Abi picked up the mask and donned it.
“Abi, no,” I cried. “Don’t banish me. I’ll go back to Samael. Gil’s work will be for nothing.”
Shit, shit, shit.
I closed my eyes. Maybe if I did magic, maybe that would prove who I am to her. I reached towards the strands of power through Limbo. This was familiar magic—my magic. These crystals had been powered by my power for so long that they retained my signature. In fact, everything here was a part of me. This was my home, a place I had built from the ground up. A place where I had lived.
The first dregs of power collected around me. I felt myself growing stronger, becoming more solid.
But she had changed everything. Abi was as much a part of this home as I was.
And she was not having any of it.
She slapped her hand on the sigil.
“Erik Ashendale is dead,” she growled. “Now get the fuck out of my face.”
Magic flared and I was yanked out of existence.
Chapter 8
For the second time in as many days, I found myself hurtling through space and time. Abi’s banishing spell, much like the new version of her, was rugged, tough, and brutal.
I was blasted into Limbo and what little magic I managed to collect worked against me. I hurtled through the dimension, until I felt something inside me reach down and pluck me from existence.
Samael’s mark.
The Angel of Death had looked me directly in the eye years ago, marking me as one of his victims. Which meant that when I died, I’d go straight to his place. Don’t ask me why—I’m not even going to try and decipher how these high-tier divine beings think.
What I did know was that Gil’s Soul Snares were undone and I was pulled back towards Samael’s dominion like a magnet attracted to an opposite pole.
I caught the weird floating building as it spun through Chaos space, and suddenly I was flattened on the ground.
Cold grey marble pressed against my face and the weight of the world came crashing down on me. I felt heavy and sluggish, but managed to get to my feet regardless.
Was it just me, or was this world darker than before?
Everything was black and grey. Some kind of obsidian substance seeped through the walls. The air itself was heavy, almost humid but somehow more solid.
Shadows snuck past me, making me jump. They kept going, unaware or uncaring of the new guy that just showed up. As they passed by, voices echoed, whispering in voices so low I could not make out what they were saying. More whispers joined in, and suddenly everywhere around me a hiss of voices coalesced into one buzzing sound.
“The sins of the damned.”
I spun around and there stood Samael, a few feet away from me. His dark robes flared before and around him, and he almost casually leaned on his scythe.
A cold, primal fear ran through me, but I decided to be brave. If this was how I went, then I was going down in style.
“Way to be creepy, man,” I remarked. “Were you standing back there this entire time, just waiting to say that?”
Samael emitted a disturbing noise that reminded me of shattering rocks. I realized he was trying to laugh.
“So,” I said with way too much bravado to be believable, “are we gonna do this again?”
Samael approached. I panicked and stumbled backwards, nearly falling on my ass.
“You may run, human, but I will catch you. I will always catch you,” said the Angel of Death.
Okay, now I prepared to run.
But Samael knew how to get my attention. “Are you not curious about the next phase of your journey?”
I kept my distance despite knowing just how fast he was, but I wanted to hear where this went.
“Heaven or Hell?” I suggested. “Been to one and I know about the other. I’m not happy with either.”
Samael made his grating laughing noise again. “There are far more layers to the afterlife than your human mind can comprehend, even one enlightened to the ways of magic as you are.”
I cocked my head. “No one’s ever called me enlightened before,” I pointed out. “Guess it really is the end of the world, huh?”
“Far from it,” he said. Now he stepped towards me, liquid in power and form, the scythe dangling at his feet.
Light glinted off the wicked curved blade as he raised it.
Defiant to the end, I hunched my shoulders and raised my fists.
Yeah, like I had an actual chance in hell of fighting off the mother-freakin’ Angel of Death.
I watched as the scythe fell and fired my leg muscles, but I was slow—too slow—and the tip dug into my shoulder, the blade cutting and cutting…
NO!
The voice rung from the fabric of existence itself. It halted time, and the next thing I was aware of was Samael standing in front of me, while I was unharmed.
THIS ONE BELONGS TO ME.
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If that was not ominous enough, the world exploded.
I mean that literally.
Light, brighter than a thousand suns, went off. Light, heat, and power emanated painfully from all directions and drove me to my knees. Samael stepped back, his wings flared and his scythe held back. The words that began leaving him were foreign and harsh, full of their own world-shattering power.
And fear.
The Angel of Death was afraid.
I was suddenly aware I was floating atop a golden cloud, while the golden skies dimmed in brightness, going from supernova to merely blinding.
Samael was a black smear in the background, similarly floating in the golden nothingness. He was still speaking. The language was nothing like those on Earth but I had studied enough Enochian to recognize it.
Hang on.
Samael speaking his native angelic tongue and I’d already established he was afraid.
Whomever—or whatever—the voice belonged to was either a very old demon or a very old angel.
Perhaps even a deity.
Sure enough, Samael looked around him and suddenly relaxed. It was not the “oh, sorry, I didn’t see you there” kind of relaxed.
It was the “oh, shit, sorry Boss” kind of relaxed.
The golden sky unfurled on itself and roiled, moving and moving, becoming serpentine. Slowly it shrunk, until I could perceive its shape.
Massive, majestic, and utterly divine, the golden Chinese dragon made Samael look like a little black gnat before it.
The Angel of Death bowed.
“I have kept the soul safe, Eli,” he said. “But I failed to prevent the summoning.”
The golden dragon hummed, a rumble that made everything in existence shake.
INDEED. YOU HAVE DONE WELL, SAMAEL. It looked at me. Just a single gaze was enough to make me insane—which I think I became, for just a moment, before the same gaze restored me. Every emotion, every feeling, every state of power, every agony and ecstasy rushed through me with that one single look.
THIS ONE TENDS TO BE… SLIPPERY.
Great. Even the big dragon god can’t cut me a break.
I heard the flutter of wings and couldn’t see Samael anymore. Oh, good. Just me and the big dragon. I’m pretty sure this part wasn’t in the Bible.