The Crow Behind the Mirror_Book One of the Mirror Wars

by Sean M. Hogan

  Gabriel lunged for Michelle’s throat with snapping jaws.

  She knocked his head back with a strike from her shield.

  Gabriel staggered back, losing his footing.

  She went for his head but he regained his balance just in time and dodged. All she got was the tip of his right ear.

  He kicked her back but she recovered quickly.

  “From birth, we start creating our own prisons of what reality is and can be.”

  Michelle swung her sword wildly. She caught Gabriel’s ribs, cracking bone and cutting and embedding into flesh. Blood sprayed staining gray fur.

  Gabriel grabbed Michelle’s sword, catching the blade before it went too deep.

  Michelle put all her muscle into it, but Gabriel was too strong. He lifted her into the air using the pommel of the sword’s handle as a dull spear to ram her gut. He swung Michelle off with a spin, hurling her to the ground a few yards away.

  “Consumed by the meaninglessness of the void we cling to our prisons like children.”

  Gabriel tossed her sword away and pounced on Michelle like a hungry lion.

  She blocked his bite with her shield.

  He grabbed ahold of the shield with his teeth and ripped it from her arms. Clawing at Michelle’s head he knocked Solomon’s golden mask off her face. He raised his other hand to strike the killing blow. But he froze instead, his whole body shaking with unspeakable horror.

  “Only through sorrow and despair can one truly free himself from all bonds of reality.”

  Gabriel’s ice-blue wolf eyes were now ghost eyes as he gazed down at the same face of that little girl he left for dead among the slaughtered so long ago. Now she was a woman, but still those cold pale gray eyes remained.

  “So, you do remember,” said Michelle, glaring up at Gabriel with a twisted, spiteful smile. “That’s right, monster—gaze upon the face of your sins—the face of the devil who will send you to Hell!” She slid out a dagger from her belt and plunged it deep into Gabriel’s gut. A pitcher of blood poured down her forearm as Gabriel let out a painful howl.

  ***

  “Only when everything is taken from you can you face the devil with a smile.” Rage’s astral projection inflated to its breaking point, dwarfing Sofiel and popping.

  A huge ball of fire burst out and barreled toward her. She stood frozen, like a deer caught in a bowman’s sight, paralyzed with fear.

  Boom!

  Sharon tackled Sofiel to the cave floor as the ball of fire hurled past them overhead.

  She gazed up a Sharon in disbelief. “Sharon... you shouldn’t have come back.”

  “I should have warned you that I have a nasty habit of disobeying authority figures.” Sharon shot her a smirk as she helped her to her feet. “What can I say, I’m a rebel.”

  “To think he could not just project his soul and give it an astral form outside his own body but to wield the very elements with it...” Sofiel said, gathering herself and quelling her anxiety with a few deep breaths. “His power is far beyond my understanding now.”

  “More than you’ll ever know, Sofiel,” boomed a dark voice behind.

  Sharon and Sofiel spun around.

  Rage stalked out toward them from a cloud of black smoke. Flames ignited on the ground before his feet.

  The flames encircled Sharon and Sofiel in a ring of fire, trapping them behind rising walls of hellfire.

  Sofiel stepped in front of Sharon, shielding her from Rage.

  He walked through the wall of fire. “Death is coming,” he said. “Sofiel, not even you can stand in its way.”

  Burning corpses tore themselves out of the fire behind Sofiel—their flesh made of roasting coals—and seized her arms. They dragged her into the fire.

  “Sofiel!” Sharon reached out for her.

  But it was too late. Sofiel was gone, disappearing behind the wall of flames.

  Sharon spun back to Rage. “Monster, what did you do to her?”

  “You’re underestimating Sofiel. Those parlor tricks will merely slow her down. I just wanted our little chat undisturbed. Miss Ashcraft.”

  She stood her ground. “So talk, Rage. Or should I use your real name? Asura. That’s right. Sofiel told me all about you. So, you can lose the mask and mysterious get up. You’re fooling no one.”

  “Did she now?” He stalked her way. “No, I’m afraid Asura has been dead for a very long time now, my sweet angel. The Undead Bride saw to that.”

  “The Undead Bride?”

  “Though I have collected his memories and preserved them within my dreaming eye. Along with countless others. Over the centuries, I have acquired the memories of so many it’s hard to keep track. Legions upon legions. I have seen their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams, and their sins. From the gods to mere children. And I have judged them all.”

  Her eyes widened. “What the hell are you?”

  “I am the answer to mankind’s apathy.” He grabbed hold of his hood. “You said you wanted me to lose the mask. Shall I grant you your wish?”

  Sharon stepped back only to jump forward when the tips of her wing feathers touched the flames and singed. “Stay back, you freak!”

  The wind picked up, catching the flames, and encircled the two in a tomb of hellfire.

  Rage peeled back his hood and removed his skull mask. “Now, Sharon, is that any way to speak to your father?”

  Sharon’s heart sunk into her stomach as she gazed upon the devil’s true face—the face of her father, Eric Ashcraft.

  CHAPTER 29

  One’s True Path

  A TOY MOBILE dangled over a crib. Tiny dancing crystal fairies basked Sharon’s bedroom in rays of blue reflected light.

  Sharon stood over the crib—staring across at her father—frozen like a freshly carved sculpture of ice.

  Eric smiled back, bending down and scooping a baby in blue pajamas into his arms. A baby girl named Sharon.

  “You’re not my father,” she whispered to herself, whispered to her younger self. “You’re not...”

  Eric rocked the fussing baby back and forth. “Shhh, little one. You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Daddy’s here. I will make the fear go away. The pain. The emptiness in your heart. I will be the father you always wanted, you always deserved.”

  Sharon’s whole body trembled. She couldn’t believe yet she could not disbelieve either. She was stuck in a limbo of doubt and dread. “You’re not my father...”

  “Together we can make new memories and fix the old. Replace the sorrow. Punish the wicked.” He slid out his red crystal and let the baby grasp onto it with her tiny, pudgy hands. His eyes rose to meet his daughter’s. “I’m going to kill everyone whoever hurt you or made you cry. I will make those worms suffer till the very end.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “This is just a dream. A bad dream.” Oh God, you even smell like him.

  Eric grew cold. “For I am a god of Death.”

  Enough games. “Don’t screw with me!”

  The baby cried.

  He became still and watched her with a patient curiosity. “Joy was wrong about you. You don’t want heaven. You desire hell.”

  Flames ignited all around her, leaping up the walls, eating the wallpaper and leaving nothing but suffocating black.

  “We are the same, you and I. Deep down, we carry the flame.” His eyes reflected golden fire.

  She tightened her grip on the edge of the crib. “I’m nothing like you.” She spewed the words out like venom, hoping to do as much damage.

  “You hate me as much as I hate them. Maybe more. But in the end, you can’t help but love me. With all your heart. Why else would it hurt so much?”

  Sharon hugged herself in an almost involuntary recoil. More than you’ll ever know.

  “The strongest hate always comes from love.”

  More than you’ll ever care to know.

  The walls gave way and the flames died.

  Sharon found herself in the living room.

 
Her mother sat at the table, sipping a cup of tea in the same violet turtleneck sweater Sharon had last seen her in. Eric walked over to her, handed her the baby, and kissed her on the cheek.

  She bit down hard on her teeth. Bringing my mother into this was a mistake. All it’s done is make me hate you even more. “You know nothing about me. You were never there. Not when it counted.”

  “It counts now,” said Eric. “We are together, now. We can be a family, right here, right now. Isn’t that what you always wanted, Sharon? I can give you that. I can love you.”

  “It’s too late. Things will never be okay.” I will never be okay.

  “All you have to do is let me in.” He extended his hand. “Just take my hand.”

  “Listen to your father, honey,” Grace said, glancing Sharon’s way. “We can finally be a family again. Complete. Whole. As God intended.”

  Once broken, always broken. “I’m not like you, Mother. It’s not so easy for me to believe in the impossible.” But for the first time in a very long time, Sharon found herself wanting to believe. She wanted to forget the bad so much her whole body ached. “Why is it always on my shoulders?” Her mind flooded with questions. “Why can’t I see the world like the rest of you... like you, Mom?” Cynicism had made her always right but never happy. She took a step toward her mother. “Why can’t I hope?” She took another step. Before she knew it her body was moving on its own. She was lost in her mother’s warm smile. Everything she ever wanted was staring her in the face, just an arm’s length away. Just reach out and take it, she told herself. So, she did. She reached for her father’s hand.

  Just before their fingers touched Sharon heard a faint sound. Crying.

  Who’s crying? Is it the baby? Her gaze fell to the baby. She was still. No… It’s faint but I think it’s coming from outside. She turned to the window.

  In the backyard, under a tree filled with crows, the Crow Boy sat, naked and pale, wrapped under dark angelic wings and weeping black tears.

  Sharon exhaled. “Once again, you saved me.” She recoiled from her mother and father’s embrace. “I wish I could be like you, Mother.” The sweetest dreams are always dreams of denial. But so, too, are the darkest nightmares. Sofiel’s lessons came back to her. The root of her suffering resided in her own reflection. Her own self-image. “But my eyes are no longer clouded. When I looked into my own reflection today… I saw the truth.” She stretched out her wings. “I am not a god but neither am I a worm.” She turned to face her father. “I don’t need you anymore.”

  “What?” He glanced out the window and spotted the Crow Boy and scowled. “Again with that blasted crow. I should have never sent that foul creature in the first place. If only Joy was strong enough to contain the Undead Bride by himself, I would’ve been able to leave the temple and you’d be mine already.”

  Sharon glared at him. “You’re not my father. And even if you are—you’re not.”

  Any false kindness in Eric melted away. “I think you need me more than you realize, child. I know what you really are. Why do you think the crow chose you out of all the billions on your world? What makes you so special? Only I can give the answers you seek. Only I can make you complete—whole—as you were born to be.” He pointed to himself. “Without me, you’ll always be broken.”

  She watched the Crow Boy weep and, in his despair, she gained hope. “I’m not broken, not anymore. My name is Sharon Ashcraft and I am good enough. I am complete.”

  “No,” Eric lashed out in a furious spout.

  Grace and the baby melted into glowing molten lava. Flames ignited, devouring the walls.

  “It’s your destiny to become my legacy, Sharon, your destiny to fulfill my dream. Together we will plunge them in a lake of fire and bury them below a beach of ice. Together we will show them hell.”

  She stood her ground before the gathering flames. “I am stronger than you think. I am brave. Not because I want to be, but because I have to be.” She gathered courage from the Crow Boy’s bottomless black eyes. A glimmer of gold shined through in each pupil. “For his sake.”

  “Who is he to you? A mere stranger. A nameless face in a sea of faces.”

  “It doesn’t matter who he is. All that matters is that he’s suffering. And maybe I can do something to change that.”

  “Forget about him. Kevin is meaningless. Just a pawn in the bigger—”

  “Kevin?” Sharon staggered, supporting herself against the back door. So, it’s true. The crow was once a real, living boy. A boy with dreams and hopes and maybe, like me, a family to return to. “His name is…” All along he was just a lost scared little boy waiting to be rescued from this monster. He was… is a boy with a name. “Kevin.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Eric, “he’s just a—”

  “No, you don’t—do you? How could you, Rage? Empathy doesn’t enter into your equation. That’s not your emotion. All you feel is hate. And if I stay with you that’s all I’ll ever feel.” She turned her back on him and opened the door.

  Rage slid his skull mask back on. “What makes you think you of all people can save him? Delusional fool, how can you believe such nonsense?”

  Sharon glanced back. “Sometimes faith is all one has.” She ran out into the backyard, running with all the breath in her lungs and all the strength of her legs.

  “Stupid girl,” Rage yelled out to her. “You won’t save him. You won’t save any of them. I’ve already seen to that. As we speak, the gods are spilling each other’s blood. Together, united, they could have stood a chance. But divided... They’re all damned.”

  Sharon stood over Kevin.

  Kevin slowly lifted his head and his eyes rose to meet hers.

  She smiled warmly and offered up her hand.

  “You hear me, girl? You’re all damned to hell!”

  Kevin smiled back and grabbed her hand.

  “Dry your eyes.” Sharon placed his hand over her heart and her hand over his. “It’s time we set things right.”

  Everything faded to white.

  CHAPTER 30

  The Red Fairy

  THE FLICKERING LIGHT projected on the cave walls of the mystical cavern dimmed around Sharon and Sofiel as the last of Rage’s flames receded and sizzled out.

  Sofiel frantically waved her hands in front of Sharon’s face.

  Sharon’s expression was blank, her stare directed ahead at empty air and her body frozen in place.

  “Sharon, wake up,” said Sofiel. “You have to snap out of it. It’s just an illusion. You can’t let Rage win.”

  She grabbed Sofiel’s hand with a sudden burst of energy like she was snatching a fly before her eyes. “I don’t intend to.”

  “Thank goodness you’re all right.” She hugged Sharon. “I feared that I had lost you forever.”

  Sharon looked around. “The fire’s gone... And the burning corpses?”

  “All an illusion of the Dreamtime, no doubt. I lost you just after you saved me from Rage’s fire.” She placed both her hands on the sides of Sharon’s face. “What else did Rage show you?”

  “What I wanted,” said Sharon. “What I thought I wanted. But it was just a lie.” She clenched her fists. “What I want now is the truth.” She relaxed her right fist and found a crow feather resting in her palm. For too long she and Kevin were bound and weighted down by the iron chains of lies. But now it was time to break free.

  Sofiel narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Sharon shot her a glare. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about the mirrors?”

  She shook her head. “I showed you everything I know.”

  “So, you’re telling me you didn’t... that you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  Sharon turned back to the tunnel path leading to the mirror. “There’s something inside the—”

  Suddenly, a wolf’s howl echoed through the cavern tunnels and pathways.

  Sharon and Sofiel both turned to each other at the same time, uttering
the same name. “Gabriel.”

  ***

  Gabriel’s world was slipping through his claws in a flood of crimson. His pupils were contracting to two dark moons, the beating thuds of his heartbeat strained and erratic, and his breaths dying like a spark on cold rotten wood. He toppled over, falling off Michelle.

  Michelle calmly rose to her feet. She picked up her sword and stood over Gabriel as he crawled desperately in the dirt. “How does one kill a god?”

  Gabriel gave no answer apart from a painful gasp of air.

  “I suppose I’ll start with your head.” She raised her sword over her head. “Any last words?”

  He strained to form words. “I... I’m...”

  She let go a haunting laugh. “I can’t hear you, monster. Speak. Plead for your life just as my parents did that night you tore out their throats. Beg for the mercy you never showed them.”

  Tears swelled in Gabriel’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “What was that?” Her cheeks filled with red. “You’re sorry?” She kicked him in the ribs with all her strength. “You’re sorry!”

  Gabriel coughed up a pool of blood. “Please... after you kill me. Let go of your hate. Don’t let it consume you as it did me. It’s not too late.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said with cold pale gray eyes as she took aim. “I’m already dead inside.” She sent the blade hurling down.

  Whoosh. Clang.

  An arrow struck Michelle’s sword, knocking it from her hands.

  Michelle and Gabriel both turned at the same time and gasped the same name. “Sharon.”

  Sharon stood with Michelle’s discarded bow in hand at the opening of a tunnel, strands of her long black hair lifting with the breeze, loading and drawing back another arrow. “Looks like I finally hit the target this time.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Michelle shouted.

  “Saving my friend,” answered Sharon, taking aim. “And stopping another from going over the edge. Now step away from Gabriel, Michelle.”

  “He’s a monster—a beast,” Michelle fired back, swiping at the air furiously. “We have to kill him now before he kills again.”