Bleed Away the Sky

by Brian Fatah Steele

  Inanis sighed. “Audrey Darrow, you will finally find purpose in your life. Elliot Byrnes, you will be the protector that your sister never had. Alec Hayden, you face the greatest supernatural threat to ever walk this earth in your lifetime. Allison Roma, you get to see a truth that most can’t even conceive of. And Emily Binici, you finally, after all these years of study and research, will get to see the Crimsonata flow.”

  They all stood there, gaping at him. His words had cut deep, exposing exactly what all of them needed. It was too apparent, too real. Each of them knew they would go.

  “Oh look, the police. Time for me to go. See you in Eldridge.”

  And he disappeared.

  “You know, you said ‘witch,’ but,” said Roma. “I’ve never met a witch remotely like that.”

  * * *

  They were blaming it on bats.

  It was a ridiculous story, but no one wanted to think about the alternative. Mutated babies with wings crafted from a lower dimension just wouldn’t play on the nightly news. Seven people were dead, five injured. Everyone but those in their little party was in shock, and that wasn’t to say they weren’t also reeling.

  Hayden still wanted to take Audrey in by force, but Roma stood firm against him. She pointed out that it probably wasn’t smart to piss off a High Mage. There had been friction between the two ever since Inanis left. She was no longer taking his lead, no longer deferring to him. Something had broken between them and Roma didn’t seem to show any inclination of repairing it. They had worked well enough together to smooth things over with the police concerning their discharge of weapons in the bar, something about concealed carry permits and special authorization. Audrey didn’t understand all of it, but she assumed it had to do with the Wall. At one point, the detective to whom they had been talking had received a call, gone pale, and then promptly told them to have a nice night.

  Binici tried to contact Faure again to no avail. Inanis’s words about Eldridge lingered and the old woman was worried about what had happened to her friend. Audrey wanted to trust the professor, but just couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. In many ways, that made her sad.

  They sat at the bar talking to the cops for hours. The people from the hotel were beside themselves. Not only was the bar trashed, but customers were leaving in droves. A bat attack in Cleveland? Everyone knew it was cover up and that made them more terrified. The piles of ash that were once flying babies were being swept up as just another part of the mess.

  Elliot stayed beside her the whole time, and while Audrey appreciated his dedication, she was beginning to feel like he didn’t believe she could do this on her own. Yes, she knew she was an anxious, paranoid mess, but she had survived all these years just fine without him. He was overcompensating, and she knew that, but it was starting to become suffocating.

  A bartender appeared behind the bar, offering free drinks to the victims. Audrey, Elliot, Binici, and Roma all lined up, Hayden standing there glowering at them. To make things easy, they all ordered double vodkas on the rocks, clinked glasses, and began drinking. Audrey peered at Roma, trying again to guess her age. Probably around twenty-six or twenty-eight. She decided Hayden didn’t have an age, as he probably wasn’t human.

  Binici turned in her seat. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How long have you known that… individual who destroyed all those monsters?”

  “Mr. Inanis? A few days. He just kind of appeared.”

  Binici nodded, eyes cast down. “He scares me.”

  “Scares me, too,” said Roma. “That’s some high-grade voodoo, Nth level. No incantations, no talisman. Well, maybe that rose. That’s strange. Still, he’s the most powerful spell caster I’ve ever seen.”

  “They all die the same,” said Hayden.

  “I have a feeling that this one doesn’t,” Binici said into her drink.

  Audrey thought Hayden hadn’t heard, but she saw him frown. Good. He needed his black and white world shaken. His belief in a bullet was sickeningly alpha male in her opinion, too.

  She didn’t know how Inanis’s third option would pan out, didn’t want to get too excited by it. She had been disappointed too many times. Eldridge, Ohio seemed like a weird place to go for all this, but one spot was as good as another. She had resigned herself to embracing her Crimsonata heritage but trying something else first was worth a shot.

  Roma downed the rest of her drink just as the police cleared them to go. She stood up and stretched, looking at the rest of them. “We should all get a few hours of sleep then leave late morning, agreed?”

  Hayden started to say something but was interrupted by Elliot. “I think that’s a fantastic idea. I was already looking up Eldridge on the internet. It’s only about two hours away.”

  Audrey downed the rest of her vodka. She stood up and adjusted her shorts. Part of her felt like she should be wearing something other than a tank top and cut offs when she faced this monumental event tomorrow, but that’s all she had with her.

  “If you try to run…” growled Hayden.

  “Oh, give it a rest,” snapped Audrey. “This isn’t fucking about you.”

  With that, she turned away from him and left all of them standing by the bar.

  CHAPTER 35

  That night, while the Bitter Born were attacking a Cleveland hotel, the Invocated were invading another small town.

  Jessica Fulmer hadn’t been to sleep yet. She had been lying in bed, texting her boyfriend for hours. At sixteen, almost seventeen, she and Connor had been together all of their sophomore year. He wasn’t perfect, but she loved him. She also wanted to start having sex with him, something he was strangely hesitant to do. Jess tried not to take it personally, tried to listen to his concerns about pregnancy, but it still stung. Most of their conversation that night had surrounded the topic.

  There wasn’t much for young people to do in Bolton, Pennsylvania besides get drunk and screw. The nearest movie theater was thirty miles away, the nearest mall another twenty miles past that. There were no coffee shops or skate parks, no teen clubs or youth organizations. They were simply expected to stay put, entertain themselves, and behave. As if that had ever worked in the history of humanity.

  Most of Jess’s friends were no longer virgins. She didn’t consider it a big deal, just another hurdle to jump in life, something to get out of the way. It wasn’t something precious like the bible-thumpers wanted you to believe, just another natural act. But it nagged at Jess that Connor didn’t want to. Like she wasn’t worth it. While she knew she wasn’t a Hollywood model, she felt like she was pretty enough. And he swore up and down his undying devotion to her. She just didn’t get it.

  According to Connor, he had a deep-seeded fear of getting her pregnant, of ruining their lives. She tried to explain to him about this new-fangled invention called condoms, but he didn’t seem convinced that these could save them from the curse of procreation. The conversation had gone like this, in circles, for hours, and Jess was beginning to reassess her relationship, based more on her boyfriend’s revealed stubbornness than anything else. She’d never seen this side of him, it bordered on unstable.

  It had become quite late and she’d had enough for one night. Saying goodnight, she thumbed out of the messenger app and climbed out of bed. The willowy redhead was supposed to go on a two-mile run in the morning with her best friend Gillian, but had a feeling she was going to skip out. She went downstairs to get some orange juice, skipping the glass and drinking right out of the carton.

  That’s when she heard the gurgling in the living room.

  Setting the carton back in the fridge, she stepped into the living room. She hadn’t recognized the noise, assumed the cat had gotten into something. It hadn’t. It took her a few moments to understand the scene before her eyes. Her father on his knees, two people in white beside him, blood everywhere. Her father screaming at her to run.

  Jess ran. Jess could run well, she was a premier track star. She bolte
d out of the house and across the lawn. Down the street and across to Mrs. Bailey’s house. Banging on the door, words trying to form in her head, she didn’t see the white form loom behind the window until it yanked open the handle. Jess screamed and kept running.

  She saw them now, everywhere. She heard the screams. People dressed in white were murdering the town. People dressed in white with horrible faces were killing everyone she knew.

  Gillian’s house. She knew her best friend’s dad was a gun nut. Jess crept inside, hoping they were safe. Gillian’s mother, Faith, was splayed out in the kitchen, entrails splattered across the floor. Her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. Jess choked back a sob. The woman had been like a mom to her since her own mother had died of cancer five years back. Creeping deeper into the house, she saw a pair of Gillian’s old running shoes sitting by the basement door. Still hampered by bare feet, Jess slipped them on. She quietly called out her best friend’s name but got no answer.

  Further into the house, upstairs. The bedrooms, the bathroom, nothing. They weren’t here. Jess hoped they had escaped. Now it was her turn. She made her way back down to the first floor and peered out of the windows. Nothing but darkness out there, silent and still. Jess considered waiting it out in here but couldn’t bear to be near Faith’s body. The pain was too personal, too acute.

  She found a cell phone and assumed it to be Faith’s, but it was password locked. Nobody had house phones anymore. She had left hers back at her own home.

  She could run. She could sprint for miles, if need be. She was only dressed in shorts and a sports bra, but it was a warm evening. The highway wasn’t far, and she could flag down a passing car. Get help. She could do this.

  Jess eased the door open and stood in the shadows, psyching herself up. She couldn’t think about Faith lying there dead, or about Gillian, or about Connor. She just had to run. Just run. She shot out from the door and took off through the neighborhood, rocketing past houses. She heard noises but ignored them. Forward, faster.

  There were people lying on their lawns, gutted and draining. People torn through their windows. Children with their faces clawed off. Wetness everywhere, a sheen of blood that looked black in the night.

  Jess ran, the people in white appearing, seeing her, following her. Jess ran, fleeing the horror, willing it untrue as she passed it. They came in at her from the sides, and she began to cry, tears filling her eyes. Foot after foot, just make it to the highway. The highway would save her.

  The pain came out of nowhere and sent her to the ground.

  She tumbled, rolling a few feet from the momentum. Dazed, she didn’t have time to get back up before they surrounded her. Five, six of them. They backed off as a single one stood over her, straddling her. It stared down at her with too-large eyes, teeth revealed from lips cut away into a rictus. Sharpened fingertips reached down to her face.

  Jess began to sob, the only sound in the street, until she began to scream.

  CHAPTER 36

  It had taken some rearranging, but Binici rode with Audrey and Elliot while the two from the Wall followed in their SUV. It had been a rough morning, no one yet trusting each other, but at least everyone was underway. Audrey was feeling the day a little harder than the others, for multiple reasons, and sucking down her second coffee while chain-smoking out the passenger window.

  She didn’t really care about the two from the Promethean Wall at this point. Roma seemed decent enough and she felt like Hayden had been put in his place by Inanis. If anything, she was sort of glad for the backup. They had experience in dealing with this kind of madness.

  She still had no idea what Inanis was up to, but her wellbeing appeared tied to his own ends. She would roll with it for now. Roma thought he was some type of Super Sorcerer and Binici was terrified of him. Audrey just thought he was a bit of a prick.

  No, today’s issue was the lingering effect of another dream. The first dream she’d had was obviously something her pursuers had sent at her, but the second one had been something different. This was like the latter. It got inside her, touched her. She thought it had something to do with being the Crimsonata.

  Even now, she could recall it.

  There is a giant obsidian orb sitting in a desert. But it is not obsidian, it is not solid. It glistens and flows, liquid held in stasis. And it has the faintest red cast behind the black. A darkest crimson. Beneath this massive, surreal monument congregates thousands of women. They are of all nationalities and ages, all naked, and all rapt with religious fervor. They wait, they’re ready. The orb releases a tidal wave of itself in all directions, although never running out, never ceasing to be. The women are awash in a blood not theirs. I see through all of their eyes.

  The entire experience was surreal, something hard to recall, let alone put into words. It was more of a sensation and an overpowering one at that. It left Audrey battling conflicting feelings.

  “You okay?” asked Elliot

  “I’m fine.”

  “We don’t have to…”

  “Yes, Elliot, we do.”

  She didn’t want to be short with her brother, but she’d had just about enough of him, too. He’d become a little too overprotective for her taste. This was her choice and she was making it. They had gotten into a brief argument back at the hotel, Elliot still wanting to run. He thought that because he still had money that he could take care of her. He wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. Audrey had tried to spell things out for him, but he was just too scared. She got that, she was too. Eventually, she had to yell at him, and told Elliot to either get on board or go home.

  This was the first they had spoken since the blow up. They had been listening to Explosions in the Sky quietly for the last half hour. Binici used this opportunity to speak up.

  “I feel like I need to apologize to you, Audrey.”

  “For what?”

  “For not doing more. Doing more for you.”

  “Jesus, I didn’t turn out that bad.”

  “No, no,” said Binici. “I don’t mean it like that.”

  Audrey twisted around in her seat so that she could look at both Binici and her brother. “Listen, both of you. I know I’m fucked up. I’m moody and twitchy and weird. I should probably be on a handful of meds daily. But I’ve made it this far on my own and I’ll continue to do so. I’m a big girl, an adult. I can make choices for myself, and I don’t need either of you taking care of me or feeling sorry for me. Are we clear on that?”

  Elliot mumbled out a, “Yeah, sorry.”

  Binici smiled. “I never meant to imply that I was anything other than proud of you.”

  “What she said,” added Elliot.

  “I can do this, because I have to. Because there’s been a lot of shit I haven’t necessarily wanted to do that I’ve done. This time, however, it’s more than that. It’s the right thing to do. I need to stop people from getting hurt. That I can get behind. Maybe I’ve analyzed too many comic book movies, I don’t know.”

  “I think your reasons for choosing to do this are exactly the right reasons,” said Binici. “If anything, they make you a far better Crimsonata than your predecessors who only did it out of a sense of familial duty.”

  “And if Inanis is telling the truth, you won’t have to do it long,” said Elliot.

  “I’m not even thinking about that right now,” said Audrey.

  Honestly, she wasn’t. She was more concerned with stopping the things that were killing entire towns full of people. If she had the power to do that, she would, no matter what the cost. Part of her wanted to be the heroine of this story and save the day, a role she had only read about, watched on the screen. She knew she was damaged, not exactly a paragon of strength, but she would try.

  Audrey knew she wasn’t a good person, but she could do good. That’s the best that most could hope for in life. To be better, to do better. And she was doing it for herself.

  Growing melancholy, she began flipping through songs until she found something more upbeat. Lan
ding on Panic! At the Disco, she took another sip of her coffee and tapped her fingers along with the beat. For her, it seemed appropriate music to go into battle.

  CHAPTER 37

  As per usual, Roma and Hayden drove in silence.

  Hayden was more tense than usual, gripping the steering wheel so hard he was white-knuckled. Roma tried her best to ignore it, to chalk it up to him mentally preparing for Eldridge, but she knew better. Mostly the sneer on his face the whole time gave it away.

  As soon as they entered the Eldridge area, something began to feel wrong to her. It was all too quiet. There should be more cars, more activity. The day was overcast, but it was more than that. The light looked wrong, somehow too dim. Everything had a greyish cast that shouldn’t be there on a June afternoon.

  She mentioned it to Hayden, but he only grunted. He had barely looked at her all morning. The rift between them was impassible now. Roma would have to put in for a transfer whether she wanted to or not. There was a good chance Hayden would put one in for her. That was fine, she was almost done here.

  Still…

  “Something is wrong with this whole town, Hayden. It’s pretty apparent. There’s no one anywhere.”

  No response.

  “I hope that mage knows what he’s talking about.”

  “He’s a filthy mage and needs to be put down.”

  Roma gave him a sidelong glance. “You do realize there are adept cells in the Wall that use magic, right?”

  His sneer deepened. “A fucking perversion of our calling. They are just as bad as the things we hunt.”

  Roma shook her head at him. She couldn’t believe she never realized what a zealot he was. The adepts were sanctioned by the Wall to use magic in the fight against their supernatural adversaries. It was well-known, and for the most part, well-accepted. A fight fire with fire kind of attitude. That he felt so strongly against it said a lot.

  “So all magic, anything supernatural, must be stamped out?” asked Roma.

  “Yes Roma, it’s not that hard.”