Dire Symbols

by W A Rowland

  Rumor had it that the group that had beaten Julian’s pack so badly was led by an ancient demi. One of the gods of the old world: Bast. If he could bring her down, nobody would dare challenge his authority again. His plans would come to fruition. His power would be unmatched in the world. He just needed the opportunity. Ancient or not, his guide gave him power beyond any that she could possibly wield. And soon, everyone the world over would know and fear the name of John Black.

  He smiled, thinking of his ultimate victory that would soon be at hand, but his revelry was interrupted by a cry and muffled moan. He’d forgotten about his guest.

  “Oh, do forgive me. I got caught up in the moment. Where were we?” he said predatorily, looking at the girl who had just come around. Her face was bruised and bloody. Her body borne dozens of cuts and brands. He truly had enjoyed their time together, but she was quickly losing her appeal. The fear that had permeated her so abundantly before was starting to wear off and it was about time he found a new toy for his enjoyment.

  “I have good news, my pet. You’re leaving this place today. I’m letting you go,” he said with a too wide grin. She started to cry again, broken again, one last time. A moment of glorious torment. He reveled in the pain emanating from her for just one more moment, and then he snapped her neck. The girl’s body fell limp and all fear and pain stopped. John Black let out a sigh of satisfaction and left the room.

  “Clean up the mess and have the hunters find me a new toy,” he said to the guard at the door. The man nodded and entered the room to dispose of the body.

  John Black walked down the hall a few feet before a dark shadow appeared next to him, taking the arm of his pristine business suit.

  “Done with another one already, my love? You’re going through them fast these days,” said the sultry woman now walking next to him. “Perhaps next time you’ll let me join the fun. I can certainly help them last longer,” she said with an innocent air, like she was discussing the weather.

  “Thank you, Anita my love, but I do just fine on my own. Speaking of which, where have you been?” he said turning and giving her a smile.

  “You know me, always finding trouble,” she responded with a coy smile.

  “And just what will this trouble cost me this time?” he asked.

  “Nothing, actually, I do this because I love you so much,” she teased leaning in for a kiss. “And when I tell you what I know, I’m sure you’ll find some way to reward me,” she said, kissing his top lip sensually.

  “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement,” John Black answered.

  Anita Black smiled evilly. “So tell me, have you heard of a demi named Cindy Newsome?”

  THERAPY

  Liam had attempted to sleep after his encounter with Kat and Rich in the infirmary, but Kat’s word seemed to echo in his mind as he lay there, attempting to calm his mind.

  “…you Bastard! I hate you,” replayed over and over again in his mind till he couldn’t take it anymore. He needed something to distract him. So as his clock blinked 2 am, he found himself leaving his room and wandering through the corridors of the bunker, not really sure where he was going.

  He didn’t see anyone else in the hallways at this time of morning, and really didn’t find any signs of life till he got back to the common room. One of the demis that Liam hadn’t met yet was in the kitchen making a bowl of cereal and a few others were playing cards at a table.

  He was turning to leave when a figure waving from the corner of the room caught his attention. Sarah sat in a plush dish chair in one of the corners with a book in her lap as she waved him over.

  “Can’t sleep?” she asked as he approached.

  “Don’t you already know?” Liam snapped back, discovering that he was actually in quite a bad mood.

  “It’s polite to ask. Also, people find it’s therapeutic to say what’s on their minds out loud. It’s easy with me, because everyone knows that I already know what’s going on, so there’s less of a stigma about it,” she said, twirling her hands in a “keep going” motion.

  Liam sighed and took the seat across from her on a couch. “Fine, I don’t know what to do about Rich and Kat; they’re my friends, but I wrecked their lives. They can’t go back now that the Association knows they’re connected with me. They’ve done nothing but support me since I met them and all I’ve been able to give them back is to get them kidnapped, killed, brought back with memories of being violently murdered, and then sequestered in a strange place with people that most normal people in the world would classify as insane.”

  “Hey, we’re not insane!” Sarah shot back.

  Just at this moment, there was a pop in the room and a thud as a body appeared and hit the floor. A suddenly awake and startled Cindy screamed and ran from the room as the few people in the common room looked up. “Thank God she wears pajamas,” Sarah said absently, then turned her attention back to Liam who was sitting with a raised eyebrow as if to say “really?”

  “Ok, so maybe we’re a little odd, but not insane,” Sarah said incredulously.

  “My point is, I don’t know what to do. I can’t fix their lives, and I’m pretty sure they blame everything on me, which to be honest, they have a perfect right to. And I’m upset that I’ve hurt the only real friends I’ve ever had,” Liam said.

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” Sarah said, staring at him flatly.

  “You’re a terrible therapist, you know that?” Liam said.

  “I never said I was a good one, only that people found it easy to talk to me. You assumed the rest,” she taunted.

  “Hamster…” Liam grumbled.

  “Be nice, or I won’t tell you how to fix your problem,” she said pointing an accusing finger at him.

  “Didn’t you say ‘good luck with that?’” he grumped.

  “I did. And I say that mainly because I not only know what’s going through your head, but also Kat and Rich’s. What you need to understand is that your poor friends just had their world turned upside down, and yes, it’s your fault, but they don’t really blame you. Kat is just acting out because you’re the only person near her that she feels comfortable screaming at other than Rich,” Sarah explained every bit as clinical as a shrink.

  “She just went through something extremely traumatic and it’s going to take time and a whole lot of effort to live with that, but she’ll get there eventually. And while she’s doing that Rich is coping in his own way, which is to cling to and protect the only thing in his life right now that he’s connected to, which is Kat. It’s just how their personalities handle extreme stress and trauma. Eventually, Kat will figure out that you’re not to blame, and Rich won’t need to try to faux protect her from you,” Sarah said definitively, then looked back down at her book.

  Liam just stared dumbstruck at the girl who, for all intents and purposes, looked like she should be in Junior High.

  After a few moments of him just sitting there, trying to form a coherent thought, Sarah spoke up again, annoyed. “I told you earlier, I’m 287 years old. I’ve picked up a few things along the way,” she said, not bothering to look up from her book. “Now shoo… I need to find out how Wesley saves Buttercup,” she said with a waving hand gesture.

  Liam came back to himself and opened his mouth. “Haven’t you seen the—” Liam was cut off by an angry glare from Sarah.

  “Another word and I tell everyone about what happened in the fifth grade,” she said threateningly.

  “How do you know abo—” Liam started.

  “I didn’t before, but now I do, and just to say… ew,” she said and then went back to her book, taking her attention away from a very embarrassed Liam.

  Despite all of the snark, talking with Sarah actually had helped though. Knowing a little more about what was going on in his friends’ minds helped him draw some comfort that they weren’t lost to him forever, and even if it was a slim one, there was still a chance to try to patch things up between them. With this in mind, he finally was able to ge
t back to his room and get to sleep.

  It was late the next morning when he roused himself. He was surprised that nobody had woken him up earlier, but figured the rest of them were recovering as well from the hubbub the day before. He slowly got up and showered, still feeling worn out. The last three days had been insane and he was definitely feeling the fatigue.

  “Didn’t you mention something about needing less rest or something, way back when we met?” he thought to Lily as he walked from his room to the kitchen.

  “Eventually, it depends on how quickly your bond grows,” she responded. “And we haven’t had nearly enough time together for it to be noticeable.”

  “Right, well, I feel like I could sleep for a week,” Liam thought back to her.

  “No time,” came a chirping response from a figure running by him. “Meeting in the Boss’s room pronto!” Sarah called back to him.

  “Definitely annoying,” Liam said remembering Steven’s words the day they’d met about the telepath’s tendency to glean from people’s minds without their knowledge.

  Liam just shrugged though and made his way through the kitchen, snagging a cup of coffee on the way, and headed into Bast’s room. Inside, he found most of the group that had been on the mission the day before. Michael and Cindy were missing, but Thea, Sarah, Steven, Jax, and Hand were all gathered, sitting on the couches. Bast, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  “What’s going on?” Liam asked as he approached the couches. A round of shrugs confirmed that everyone else was just as in the dark about everything as he was.

  “I assume that she’s decided to tell us something about what happened yesterday,” Steven said from his spot in between Jax and Sarah who were already glaring at each other. Liam was about to comment on the two when Bast’s sonorous voice washed through the room.

  “You are correct, Steven, there are a few things that you need to know about the entity you encountered yesterday,” she said walking into view from a shadow at the back of the room.

  “I want to do that!” Lily said excitedly from Liam’s head.

  He mentally hushed the guide when Bast noticed his smirk. It was obvious that she was not in a joking mood this morning as her normally relaxed demeanor was missing and she wore a perpetual scowl. Liam looked down, not wanting to meet her eyes at the moment.

  This was a scary Bast, the same Bast that he’d seen tear that giant werewolf to shreds the night before, and the last thing he wanted right now was to be on her bad side.

  “First, you need to know who you escaped from last night, and then why you should stay the hell away from him,” she began. “His name these days is Julian, but his history is long. He’s been around since around 150 B.C. and he’s spent most of that time killing,” she said.

  “That’s a long life for a were-creature,” Hand said, a little shocked.

  “I thought most of them only lasted for a century or so before they had to go back to the astral plane,” Sarah added.

  “Normally, yes,” Bast continued. “But Julian isn’t a were-creature. True, when he was born, he was just a normal were-wolf. Part of the Apennine Pack in what’s now considered Italy actually. He became rather famous in his native land working for the Romans as a general. He won a lot of battles for the Roman Senate, who were primarily made up of low-level demis, but the bastards didn’t like that a wolf was gaining such acumen among the people and decided that they couldn’t risk letting him go any further. They issued a banishment curse on him centered on a river that was supposed to send him back to the astral plane if he crossed it. You’re, of course, familiar with Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon?” she said and paused.

  Collective jaws dropped as the group put the pieces together, but Liam was the first to speak. “So you’re saying that monster last night was Julius Caesar?” he said in disbelief.

  “Yes,” Bast said placidly. “As you’ve probably guessed, the curse of the Rubicon didn’t work as expected. True, it did something to him, but he didn’t disappear. Instead, it screwed up his connection to the astral plane somehow and made him stronger. Naturally, the demis in the Senate freaked out when he came riding through the gates of Rome and started planning to assassinate him. The irony is that the day he was killed, he was actually there to step down from power, but the idiots didn’t hear him out long enough to find out, instead they just pulled out their silver daggers and started stabbing.”

  “Wait, how do you know all of this? Especially that last part about him stepping down?” Liam asked

  “I heard it from a friend of a friend who was mistress to one of Julian’s lieutenants back then,” Bast explained nonchalantly.

  “And you were where at this point?” Liam replied but was cut off.

  “So, obviously, he didn’t die back then,” Steven pointed out, getting them back on topic.

  “Well, actually, he did. Body was cold and he was buried, just like the story says,” she said. “The problem is that he didn’t stay dead.”

  “Like a zombie?” Sarah asked.

  “The proper term is Vǎrkolak. Slavic word essentially translating as vampire-wolf,” Bast said. “You see, typically, astral creatures like were-wolves only have a body here, and a soul in the astral plane, much like us demis. When you kill the body, the connection disappears and body decays with only the soul being left in the astral plane. The best we could figure out at the time that Julian resurrected though, is that the curse had strengthened his bond to the astral plane so much that his soul was caught between the two and he now exists in both worlds simultaneously. Over the years, many demis have tried to kill him using every conceivable method, but he doesn’t stay dead.”

  “Odin and Ra once completely vaporized his body and he showed back up a few days later and cut off their heads,” she said with a grim finality. “The only effective method we’ve found for dealing with Julian is to lock him away from the world for as long as it takes him to break free, and then repeat. So far, his prisons have included the Tower of London, The Gulag, Alcatraz, and an iron coffin dropped into the Marianas Trench. Each time, he escapes and comes back to kill whatever demi attacked him last.” Bast paused for a long moments. “This time, I killed him, so he’s coming after me,” she said at last. “And Julian never stops until he accomplishes his goals.”

  “Ok, so we disappear for a while until he gets bored,” Jax said in response. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, Jax…” Bast said raising her voice for the first time in the conversation, “is that this bastard will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He’s started international wars for less of an insult! He tore Russia apart in 1917 when Loki dropped a bucket of manure down his chimney! Practically gave the country to Lenin when Nicholas the Second, also Loki by the way, ran! We still don’t know what happened to that idiot,” Bast finished, calming a little from her tirade. “So, no, Jax, we cannot just sit back and wait for him to lose interest, because he won’t.”

  “So what do we do?” Steven asked.

  Bast looked around at each of the group assembled and sighed. “The situation is no longer safe for anyone involved. Wolves are exceptional trackers and too many people know this location. I’m leaving the bunker,” she said.

  Around the room, silence reigned as the announcement hit everyone hard.

  “Leaving?! So you’re closing down the bunker?” Steven said eventually, not believing what was happening.

  “No, Steven, any who wish to try their luck and stay here may do so. You know I don’t like to give orders and this is too big a decision for me to do anything unilaterally,” she said looking sadly at him. “But for my part, I’m going. Julian has my scent now, and I will certainly draw him here. I would highly recommend that the rest of you consider leaving as well,” she said solemnly, then turned to Liam.

  “Liam, I’m sorry that your friends were dragged into our business, but if you’re a true friend to them, then you will take them as far from here as you can,” she continued. “They w
on’t be safe anywhere on this continent. If you need money, Thea will get you access to an account, but in the end, it’s still your decision,” she said and then turned back to the group as a whole.

  “I hope to see you all again one day; until then, farewell.” And then Bast, the ancient goddess of Egypt, walked away and disappeared into the shadows.

  HANDS-ON INVESTIGATION

  The next couple days were chaos in the bunker. Demis were leaving left and right, heeding Bast’s advice to scatter. Most were simply heading to other bastions of demis in other parts of the world. Some were deciding to go it alone for a while and see what the modern world was like. Apparently, it was common for some demis to never leave their bunker, and simply ignore the world. As such, some had no clue as to common customs and courtesies outside of their own times, and only the demi’s who did leave the bunker kept them up-to-date on the world.

  Liam didn’t know what to do. Thea had indeed given him access to a sizable account, saying that Bast had one set up for each of her cohort for this eventuality, but he didn’t know what to do with the money. He needed training and advice, and neither of those things would come from running.

  Thea, Michael, Cindy, and Hansen had all disappeared shortly after Bast, presumably traveling with the goddess as she avoided Julian for the next century or so while developing a plan to once again imprison him. That left only Steven and his team of people that Liam actually knew and trusted outside of Kat and Rich.