The Unseen

by Bryan, JL

  Hurry, she thought. Please hurry.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Kieran looked at himself in the black obsidian mirror. He was naked and shaking, but trying not to show his fear. He stood in a small, stone-tiled chamber furnished with chests and wardrobe, lit by fire in glass globes.

  “Do you feel ready?” Matt asked with a grin. The mission leader wore a hooded scarlet robe, and would serve as “sponsor” for Kieran’s initiation. He’d explained the questions that would be asked and how Kieran was meant to respond. It felt extremely uncomfortable to stand here alone with Matt so soon after he’d lain in bed with the man’s wife. He felt like he might throw up.

  “I guess,” Kieran said.

  “I know this is happening fast, but it wouldn’t happen if we didn’t think you were ready. The prophet says it must be tonight.” Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “Remember, you’re not alone in this. We’re all here for you—me, Deena, everyone.”

  Kieran nodded. “Let’s just...get it over with.”

  Matt led him into the cavernous underground sanctuary, all made of polished stone tile and lit by candles in glass sconces. Kieran had been here before for Sunday service with the youth mission group. Tiers of movie-theater seating faced the center of the room, and the first few rows were occupied by a few dozen spectators in scarlet robes, young men and women of the congregation.

  In the central depression stood a semicircle of more disciples in red. They’d pulled up their hoods, and wore pale masks depicting oversized, distorted human faces. They stood around the black marble slab of the altar in front of the enormous fireplace.

  Two figures stood out to him. One wore golden robes and a plain, expressionless white mask—Matt had explained this was the prophet himself, who would be performing the initiation.

  The other was shrouded all in black, including his face, and sat in a wheelchair slightly behind the prophet, close to the fire. Kieran could only see his twisted, palsied fingers on the arms of the wheelchair, nothing else. He had no idea who that stooped figure might be.

  A hush fell over the room as Matt led Kieran down the stairs and ritually presented him to the prophet. Kieran answered questions and swore his loyalty.

  “This one has been chosen for the highest honor,” the prophet announced, more to the spectators than to Kieran. “He shall be host to our Great Lord Nibhaz.”

  Roars, snarls, and applause rose from the disciples. Kieran hoped they were cheering.

  “Now, he is mere flesh, a low beast of the earth,” the prophet continued. “With the Great Lord as his patron, he shall lead us all into our destined future. He shall be our messiah.”

  The spectators let out another wave of sound. There seemed to be many more voices than people—hundreds or thousands of voices shouting and growling through only dozens of mouths. Kieran felt fear all the way to his core. He knew Deena was in the room somewhere, but he couldn’t find her. Maybe she was among the masked disciples at the center.

  When instructed, Kieran stepped forward and lay facedown on the chilly marble slab of the altar. The prophet dipped a long iron needle into sooty ink and stabbed it into Kieran’s back. Kieran winced, and he wondered exactly what was going to happen to him. The idea of being their messiah suddenly didn’t thrill him at all.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Ibis drove his rental car as fast as he could through the rain, but obstacles blocked them at every turn. Traffic inched along in the storm, and many people had pulled to the side of the road, waiting for the worst to pass.

  Ponce de Leon, the main road that would take them to Decatur, was blocked by a four-car accident and a swarm of police and emergency vehicles with their lights flashing. Ibis turned to navigate down narrow residential streets lined with old trees, trying to work his way east.

  As they raced through a neighborhood, lightning struck an old sycamore tree leaning over the road. Ibis wrenched the wheel to the right, hitting the brakes, and Cassidy immediately flashed back to her wreck with Peyton. Her heart felt like it would explode.

  A tree limb thicker than Cassidy’s leg smashed through the driver-side window, scraping Ibis’s face, and Cassidy ducked as it reached over her head and smashed through her window, skewering the car.

  “Ibis!” she screamed.

  “I survived.” Ibis turned to her, his face bloody with scratches. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m having a great time,” Cassidy said.

  “The magic barriers around the temple are blocking us.” Ibis unbuckled his seatbelt.

  “I’d say it’s a tree that’s blocking us.”

  “That is only the particular physical manifestation,” Ibis said. “The unseen world forms and shapes the world we see. Come on, we’ll have to finish on foot.”

  They managed to climb out of the car and left it where it was, hurrying onward through the rain. Ibis wore his old leather pack on his back; Cassidy carried her painted wine bottle in a backpack.

  “Is that what made Peyton and me crash?” Cassidy asked as they ran along a slick sidewalk bent and broken upwards by underground tree roots. “A barrier?”

  “That was probably a deliberate illusion,” Ibis said. “Nibhaz must have decided to take you out, or at least incapacitate you, while the cult made its move to recruit your brother.”

  “So there was nothing there at all? No hearse like I saw, no truck like Peyton saw?”

  “If you had driven through it, you would have been unharmed.”

  They put on speed, cutting through lawns and between houses. Ibis stopped to grab a big green Waste Management garbage bin from beside one house, then dragged it behind him.

  “What’s that for?” Cassidy asked.

  “Here.” Ibis led them through a stand of trees to face a gray stone wall, about eight feet high. He pushed the trash bin up against it, then climbed on top. He looked down on her, his face lit by a flash of lightning. “We’re here. They’ll know it as soon as we go over this wall, so get ready. As soon as we’re on the other side, take out your weapon.”

  Cassidy nodded, though it was hard to think of an old wine bottle as a serious weapon. Under her breath, she practiced the Egyptian chant Ibis had taught her.

  Ibis climbed up onto the wall. Cassidy clambered on top of the big garbage bin and joined him.

  Together, they jumped down. Cassidy tried to land on her feet in a squatting position, but the hard pavement was slippery, and she banged her knee. She clenched her teeth, suppressing a cry of pain.

  “Okay?” Ibis asked, helping her up.

  Cassidy nodded and opened her backpack. Ibis brought out his bottle in one hand and his wand in the other.

  “Get ready. Let me take the brunt of their attacks,” Ibis said.

  They ran only a few paces before two security guards ran toward them. At first, they looked like regular teenage boys in suits, drenched by the rain. After a flash of lightning, they seemed taller, with sharp teeth and long claws.

  Ibis stepped in front of Cassidy and chanted quickly, punctuating his words with small waves of his wand. On the unseen plane, his wand drew crude hieroglyphs to help things along.

  The two boys howled and staggered, losing their momentum. A plume of inky darkness flowed from each of them, swirling into the mouth of his bottle like twisting, thrashing, weirdly organic ropes of black smoke.

  The two boys collapsed to the pavement, one writhing as though in a seizure. The other grabbed at Cassidy’s ankle as she ran past, and she kicked him away.

  Cassidy and Ibis approached a complex of odd-shaped buildings with steep, angular roofs. Four more people emerged, and Ibis began chanting and waving his wand again. He was able to rip the spirits from three of them at once.

  Cassidy focused on the fourth, another boy in a suit and tie. She spoke more slowly than Ibis, since the language was entirely foreign to her.

  The boy was almost upon her before he dropped to his knees. He opened his fanged jaw and vomited out a cloud of deep, diseased-look
ing green, which poured upwards into Cassidy’s bottle. She looked inside to see the thick, dark green mist whirling at high speed, a shrieking gargoyle-like face occasionally forming and dispersing within it.

  “Almost there,” Ibis said, leading her to the high, narrow, peaked double doors of the central church building.

  The doors opened and a flood of dozens of young men and women in scarlet robes poured out like fire ants boiling out to face a threat to their nest, snarling and howling, their bodies and faces contorted by the demons inside them. They charged down the steps to face Cassidy and Ibis.

  “Oh, shit,” Cassidy muttered. She held up her bottle and repeated the chant as fast as she dared while trying not to stumble over the words. She sucked smoke the color of blood from one of the girls in the lead, but she clearly wasn’t going to be able to capture them all before they overwhelmed her. The bottle grew heavier in her hands.

  Beside her, Ibis sucked out spirits two and three at a time, herding them into his bottle with his wand—his bottle seemed brimming with dense darkness, and the hieroglyphs on the outside glowed, though the rain was beginning to erode them. Cassidy wondered if their rain-soaked clothes had smeared away the symbols painted on their bodies, but she hardly had time to check.

  The cult members quickly identified Ibis as the larger threat and swarmed over him, tearing at him with claws and fangs, goring him with horns, stripping his flesh from his bones with long tongues lined with sharp bits of shell. They surrounded him until Cassidy only caught glimpses of Ibis, his clothes and most of his skin gone, the demon-possessed cultists ripping at his organs and snapping his bones.

  “Ibis!” Cassidy screamed, and then something slammed into her back like a falling boulder, knocking her forward. She clenched her hands around her bottle, trying to protect it, but it shattered when she crashed into the pavement. Shards of glass punctured her hands, arms, and stomach.

  A cyclone of screaming smoke and disfigured faces blew up around her, reeking of brimstone, as her captured demons escaped. A taloned hand seized her shoulder and turned her on her back. Cold laughter rang out as someone straddled her, pinning her down.

  Peyton grinned down at her with his fanged, dripping mouth, his eyes glowing red and reptilian. He wore the scarlet robes. He was the one who’d caught her.

  “I’ve got you this time, Cassidy,” he hissed. His icy forked tongue flicked across her face. “I’m going to suck the marrow from your bones. I’ll keep you alive to relish the pain.”

  “Go to hell, Peyton,” Cassidy said. She tightened her grip on the broken bottle neck, heedless of the pain as glass splinters dug deeper into her fingers. She swung her hand up and stabbed deep into the side of his neck, slicing through his artery. Blood sprayed out through the wound, and he slumped with a gurgling sound. Cassidy shoved him off her and pushed her way to her feet, but she was unsteady, her leg aching worse than ever, and she’d lost her weapon.

  Somebody smashed Ibis’s bottle, too, and the demons escaped in a volcanic eruption, scattering like fireballs as they returned to their human hosts.

  Then the cult members surrounded Cassidy, biting and punching her. One oversized hairy hand with an extra knuckle on each finger seized her and slammed her to the pavement, and the pain of the impact knocked her out.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Cassidy awoke to a boot kicking her in the back. Her eyes opened, and her blurred vision took in a plain concrete wall. She grunted in pain as the boot connected with her again.

  “There you are,” said a husky female voice. The kicking stopped. “Look at me.”

  With an effort, her entire body filled with pain, Cassidy pushed herself over onto her back so she could see her captor. Her head was throbbing, and it took Cassidy a moment to remember where she was. Somewhere in the big Church of First Light complex. Ibis was either dead or captured, and far too hurt to help her. They’d failed.

  Her eyes focused on the girl who stood over her. A wet mop of blond hair, a single blue eye.

  “Reese,” Cassidy said. The effort of speaking made her cough hard. Her arms and hands felt particularly weak. Countless bits of glass jutted out from them, soaking her in wet blood.

  “This is all your fault, you know?” Reese squatted beside her, shaking her head. “I tried to tell you. I tried to bring you in so you could be one of us—but no, you had to be a total bitch instead.”

  “Where’s my brother?” Cassidy whispered.

  “Just where he wants to be. On the altar, being prepared for the Great Lord. He’s going to be our messiah, Cassidy. You, on the other hand—you’re going to be a plaything for the church elders, at least until you’re dead. That won’t take long. Your brother won’t save you. He won’t care about you at all anymore.”

  “Where’s Barb?”

  “She’s here,” Reese said. “Next cell over, actually. Our little insurance policy in case you got in the way—obviously, we don’t need her anymore, so I’m sure she’ll be dead before the night’s over. She’s halfway there as it is.”

  “Ibis?” Cassidy croaked.

  “Who? The hottie with the magic wand? Oh, no, we didn’t bother keeping him alive. Not much left of him, to be honest.” Reese smiled. “You really fucked the pooch this time, baby. Why couldn’t you just listen to me?”

  Cassidy’s mind spun as she tried to figure out what to do.

  “Nibhaz doesn’t want Kieran,” Cassidy finally said. “He wants me.”

  “Right.” Reese snorted. “He wanted me once. Remember that night? He’s touched my insides. I know his immense power. Maybe I’ll become your brother’s consort.”

  “The archdemon needs a strong host,” Cassidy said. “I have all the power in my family, not Kieran. My father was an ancient Druid, three thousand years old. I have more power than generations of my ancestors.”

  “I think he would know that, if it were true. Don’t try to save yourself with desperate lies, Cassidy. It’s pathetic to watch.”

  “He already knows,” Cassidy said. “That’s why I’m not dead already.” Cassidy pushed herself to a sitting position, wincing at the pain all over her body. “My brother was just bait for me. Go and tell them. Go tell your prophet...Nibhaz can have my body, as long as they let Kieran and Barb go. Tell him I consent to be possessed by the archdemon.”

  “Stop calling him ‘demon’!” Reese snapped. “He’s a great celestial lord.”

  “Whatever you call him...go tell him he’s won. He can have me, but only if he releases Kieran and Barb. And he has to promise that no demon will possess my brother.” Cassidy coughed hard again.

  Reese gaped at her, clearly unsure what to say.

  “Go,” Cassidy said. “Before I bleed to death. You already failed him once when you couldn’t recruit me. Imagine the punishment if you fail him again and lose the body he actually wants.”

  Reese stood slowly, confusion replacing the look of triumph.

  “Go!” Cassidy said.

  Reese nodded and left through the only door into the tiny concrete room. A heavy bolt slammed into place on the other side.

  Cassidy gritted her teeth as she extracted a long, thin sliver of glass from her arm.

  With her other hand, Cassidy peeled up her shirt, soaked by blood and rain. It seemed to take all the strength in her arm to simply push the wet material up under her armpits.

  Grimacing, Cassidy cut her exposed stomach, drawing fresh blood.

  * * *

  The door opened several minutes later, and Cassidy barely managed to pull her shirt down before Reese entered the room, smiling again. The prophet called Eli was beside her—Cassidy recognized the man from the church’s literature. His pale green eyes looked her over.

  “Reese tells me you offer yourself as our Great Lord’s host,” Eli said.

  “Yes.”

  “You offer your consent freely? You cannot be under duress. You must accept the Great Lord fully.”

  “As long as Kieran and Barb are released.”
>
  Eli nodded.

  “Bring her,” he said, and then he left the room. Young men in scarlet robes entered and hoisted Cassidy to her feet.

  “You made the right choice,” Reese told her. “Maybe we can be friends, after all.”

  Cassidy said nothing as the young cult members escorted her into the hall, surrounding her. They walked several paces behind the prophet. Cassidy was barely able to walk, and they ended up losing patience and carrying her through the narrow, candle-lit corridor.

  They finally emerged into an underground sanctuary. They carried her down the stairs, past a few rows of cult members into dripping wet scarlet robes, towards a large central depression with a fireplace. More disciples dressed in scarlet robes and grotesque masks waited there. Near the fire sat a figure in a wheelchair, shrouded in black, not moving at all.

  Kieran lay on the black marble slab before the fireplace. He was naked, with a strange tattoo inscribed on the center of his back, freshly carved and leaking blood. He sat up at the sight of her.

  “Cassidy,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Everyone ignored him.

  The cult members stood Cassidy on the bottom step, supporting her so she didn’t collapse. Eli approached the man in the wheelchair and lifted the black shroud and hood from his head. The face within looked elderly, shriveled, swollen with tumors. A few dead strands of gray hair clung to his mottled, liver-spotted scalp.

  Eli knelt before him.

  “Great Lord Nibhaz,” he said, “The witch of Darmoughan offers herself as the Great Lord’s new and permanent host.”

  The man smiled with a few rotten, crooked teeth. His cataract-clouded eyes turned deep black, and rows of shark-like fangs sprouted from his black gums. He spoke in a deep, echoing, monstrous voice that Cassidy recognized from years ago, when it had spoken from Reese’s mouth.