by Ash Krafton
"Chiara?" He gently shook her. "Honey, wake up."
No response. She was limp and heavy in his hands. Home. She had to get home.
He hefted her and started running. At the end of the alley, he uttered a chant, trying to cloak them from passersby. Couldn't do the full spell without burning a stick of chicory and he couldn't do that carrying her.
At best, the spell would blur them, make them less noticeable. And right now all he could hope for was the best.
Getting her through the door was a challenge he didn't need. He chuffed out a charm that blew the door flat against the wall, the clatter ricocheting across the street. Adrenaline and sheer force of will propelled him up the stairs. He kicked the door open.
"Upstairs." Chiara's eyes fluttered. "The end of the hall."
Her shirt was crimson, sopping with blood. It slapped wetly against him when he moved. "You need a doctor."
"No. The pool."
He staggered up the staircase, unable to feel his legs. "You've lost too much blood. I don't think a swim is what you need."
Chiara gasped, each breath seeming to bring new pain. "It's the only thing."
He turned the corner and spied the door at the end of the hall. It swung open, smoothly and silently, as he rushed toward it. Once inside, he skidded to a stop, nearly dropping her.
He'd only glanced in here, briefly, the first night he stayed over. A marble bath, thirty foot ceilings, a glass tiled sunken bath. The water was milky, a blanket of steam snaking across its surface.
The décor had a mystical, murky feel to it, like oil on wind, and he struggled to remember what had ever made him consider spending time in here the last time he visited.
"Hurry," she whispered. "Get me in. Don't touch the water, don't touch."
"Dammit, what am I supposed to do? Just tell me!"
"Set me down. The edge."
He knelt and gently laid her at the water's edge. The grey pallor of her face made his heart pound even harder.
She looked up at him, grabbing his shirt. Their gazes locked. "Whatever you do—don't get wet."
He nodded wordlessly.
She rolled off the edge and sank out of sight. No bubbles, no splash. The water swallowed her like it was a pool of molten metal.
Simon screamed at the surface.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
The surface stilled.
Time passed, but just how much time, he hadn't a clue. There was no sense of movement. His breaths barely stirred the air in front of his face. And, although initially it had taken many long, dragging moments, he eventually had detected a scent in here, subtle yet pervasive.
Was it the water? The steam slicking its way across the mirrored service? Or was it something that burned in the braziers glowing in the corners of the room? The incense was acrid, scraping his sinuses and throat, leaving rawness in its wake.
This was a terrible place to spend any time. Why someone would put a pool in a room that stank like a chemical fire—
Wait a minute, Simon, try using your pea brain a minute. She's not swimming, is she? She's lying on the bottom of a pool that doesn't have actual water in it, bleeding out from a devastating wound. If she's not dead, she soon will be. Should be.
He banged his head against the tiles. And there wasn't a goddamned thing he could do about it. She said don't get wet and the tone of her voice, even in pain, promised him she meant it. He took that part seriously.
He hunched against the wall, knees drawn to his chest. Various charms lay scattered about him, each one considered but discarded. There was no amulet that would be any use to her, not now.
Now, he sat motionless, staring with vacant eyes at the still surface, the steam rising in vague shapes that left him quietly terrified.
A soft sound from the pool roused him. Chiara slowly emerged, rising to the top, floating still and silent, face slack, eyes closed. The milky liquid streamed down her skin in thick rivulets.
Simon crept toward the edge, fear in his eyes.
"Chiara?" he whispered. "Are you—"
Her eyes snapped open and she sucked in a loud lungful of air. Panting, she looked wildly around like she didn't know where she was. But then she saw him. Her gaze locked on his face, she gradually calmed.
He remained perfectly still, unwilling to spook her.
Swallowing hard, she nodded, as if reassuring herself. She waded toward him, her breaths loud against the tiled walls, and draped her arms on the edge.
He drew back from the water that dripped from her skin, forming a small puddle beneath her arms.
She drooped her cheek onto the back of her hand.
"Chiara." His voice was ragged, the screaming and the dry acridity of the room roughening his speech. "What can I do?"
"I could use a shower." She smiled wanly. "Hand me a towel?"
Wrapped in thick towels, Chiara dozed on her crummy couch, her head on Simon's leg. He'd dragged it over to the grand fire place to help keep her warm. He stroked her damp hair, absent-mindedly, having an oddly peaceful moment.
Maybe he needed a bath, too. Her blood had run down his waist, soaking his pants, making him look like he'd been the one who was hurt. His clothes were still marred by dried, dark brown streaks that had stiffened as the blood dried. It made him itchy.
All this reminded him of past experiences. Back then, there'd been no magic pool. Those who had bled didn't survive. He'd been terrified that she wouldn't, either.
Now, she slept, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. She was alive. And he never had felt more relieved in his entire life.
She stirred, slowly opening her eyes. She pushed herself upright and sat next to him, drawing her bare legs up onto the couch.
"Ah, there she is." Simon reached for a throw pillow and snugged it against her for support. "Feeling better after your tub?"
She laughed gently and ruffled her fingers through her hair. "Much."
"Let me have a look at that wound. I thought you would have bled out by now."
She leaned away and parted the towel enough for him to see her bare waist.
There was no wound. The skin was perfect.
Wow. Just—wow. He had not the words, for once. Simon whistled in astonishment. "No need for a reeking but mind-blowingly effective poultice, I see."
She re-secured the towel and tugged a fleece throw off the back of the couch. "I did say I was much better."
Better. Back from the dead was more like it. Simon snorted. "Angel magic, eh? I should have guessed."
She scooted away. The smile she wore was thin and bittersweet. "You would have guessed wrong."
Poor kid. Her dual nature truly tortured her, didn't it? The last thing she needed was to feel bad about circumstances beyond her control.
"Maybe," he said. "But I guess that's because I try to look on the bright side of things." He pulled a lofty face at her. "I am, above all things, an optimist."
"You?" She scoffed, the line of her mouth hinting at a wry smile. "An optimist?"
"Sure. I firmly believe that things will absolutely, positively, without doubt, go to utter and complete shit. But, but—" he continued, talking over her chuckling. "I also believe that all this can't be for nothing. There's a reason why I can do what I do, why Mack singled me out. Things will go to shit, over and over, but I'll just keep kicking it back at them. I'll fight. And I'll do it beside you because I absolutely believe in you."
Her expression lost some of the weight it had been carrying. "I've always done this alone."
"You're not alone. Not as long as I'm around."
"Yeah." She patted his leg. "Too bad you couldn't be here forever."
"Not going anywhere at the moment. I kind of forgot my van."
"Not what I meant, but still." She reached for his hand. "Thank you."
"Where did that portal go?" Simon leaned over for his pack of cigs. "Kid was in rougher shape than you were when you came back through."
"Considering
she was dead…"
"Nah, just knocked out. Portal travel makes you dizzy and nauseous and feeling like someone gave you an atomic wedgie but instead of using your underwear, it's your stomach—"
"Wasn't a portal." She cut him off. "It was a hell gate. And she went to hell. And she came back dead."
Simon sat unmoving, agape. It was impossible.
"No." His voice was perfectly reasonable, but his brain was a clanking jumble of thoughts that just didn't fit together. "Hell gates can't open here."
"They can. And they do." She sighed. "And that's a huge problem."
Hell gates were a problem, all right.
Simon had studied them under one of his masters, an eccentric Cambridge scholar named Kent who claimed he'd stayed in Aleister Crowley's dormitory and had been visited several times by the old magician's ghost.
Admittedly, it was the wild name-dropping that had led Simon to the old gent, begging him to take him on, but the hell gate thing had come clean out of the blue. One night of expounding on the subject had secured Simon's devotion to his master and put Crowley out of his head altogether.
But hell gates were not permitted on the mortal plane. That had been the big take away from those three years of apprenticeship.
(It had taken Simon nearly twice that long to discover where Master Kent had later hidden his apprenticeship blood amulet, the one that kept him firmly in servitude to his master. Mages were annoyingly jealous of rank and seniority and often went through ridiculous lengths to keep from being turned on by their former students. And Kent hadn't even really been an overly jealous sort of person.)
The years thinned a bit, and Simon couldn't help but remember those days and nights he'd spent with Kent. Back then, Simon was still wet behind the ears. Just come off a two-year apprenticeship with an exorcist priest. The Crowley thing was a much-needed distraction. Two years of pulling demons out of people tended to leave a guy's spirit a little bruised.
"Why can't they be opened?"
Simon had been sitting on a cabinet in Kent's study, drinking a cheap beer, having a cheap smoke. Then again, cheap was pretty much all an out-of-work twenty-six year old could afford.
Kent sat near his fireplace, bathed in the warm ruddy glow, swirling the dregs of a tumbler of Scotch. The fine cigar would be next. It was how they decompressed after a long afternoon of circle spells and grimoire memorization.
Tradition. For Kent, tradition wasn't habit. It was the structure that kept his life and his world and the whole of civilization from tumbling into powdery ruins.
Kent had made another of his vague references to hell gates, the kind he never followed up with an explanation. A slip up, a sign that he was exhausted enough to let his guard down. Usually, Simon was also too tired to pursue the thread.
This night, Simon wasn't worn out to the bones. His tolerance was developing. He wasn't done training. He wanted to know more.
Always more.
Kent did that to him. He gave him a hunger to learn. Damn professors and their educational hoodoo.
The older man, jowls bunching against his collar, frowned into his near-empty glass. "Because a demon has to do it. And demons cannot walk on this plane."
"Why not?" Simon didn't add Because angels sure do. "People get possessed all the fricken time."
"But those are possessions. Demon entities spiritually manifesting in a mortal body. Basically, really bad ghosts."
"Demons can be summoned. They can come out of hell and do real shit."
"No." Kent's tone was resolute, the sound of a centuries-old conviction. "They can't."
Simon scowled behind his bottle as he drained the last of his lousy beer. How could he argue without revealing his worst crime? Say, I summoned a demon when I was seventeen? Had it kill an asshole from my school? Watched it drag a little girl screaming into hell?
That's a quick way to get expelled.
"There are rules, Alliant. Rules of heaven and rules of hell. I will admit that here in between the rules get a bit…muddied." No mistaking that twinkle in his eye. He might look like a dignified old chap but he'd been a literal hell raiser in his gone-by. "But the rules still hold. No angels or demons upon the earth."
"And rules can't be broken?"
"They should never be broken."
Should. That was nothing more than a theoretical word. "But portals," Simon persisted. "Those are possible."
"Yes. Magical travel from one place to another has been a long-standing practice. England has a rich history of magical practice, you see…"
Here went the speech. Simon knew it by heart and recited in his head, lock-step with Kent.
"…a history that can be traced back to the days when Arthurian legends were still being written. England was magic, still is even today. But today it is a secret practice. To practice out in the open would lead to hysteria. Mayhem. Murder."
"Yeah, yeah. Evidence of which is ample in our own history in New England, just a few miles from here. The Salem witch hunts were a tragedy that never should have been allowed to happen." Simon rubbed his forehead. "But portals can be opened."
"Of course."
"Then why not hell gates?"
"Because a man is not a demon, even when he's possessed." Kent eyed him over the tops of his glasses. "You're an exorcist. You should know that."
"Yeah. It left me with this annoying sense of value for human life."
"No one is perfect," Kent said, his voice lilting with mild amusement.
"Says the man who was intimate with Crowley's ghost."
"Please. Do not use the words intimate and Crowley in the same sentence. He had a reputation, you know. Even someone of my own nefarious past has no wish to be equated with Crowley's—"
Simon cut him off with a laugh. "You? A nefarious past?"
"I'll have you know I was part of HRM's Special Forces. We were quite active during the Second World War. I may or may not have been charged with the solemn task of dealing with Hitler."
"Hitler?" Simon nearly fell off his perch. "Are you kidding me?"
"Hitler was a fanatical occultist. He had a library full of grimoires."
"You're avoiding—"
"I'm informing. That is my role as master, is it not? Now. Where was I? Oh, yes. England wasn't the only country with a history of magic. But magic is shaped with the intent of the practitioner. Hitler was obsessed with demons. It was said he summoned Molloch."
"Do you believe it?"
"Rubbish. But Hitler believed it. He quoted from Schertel at great length. He who does not have the demonic seed within himself will never give birth to a magical world. Metaphorical, of course. 'Demonic seed' was a clever way of describing ruthless ambition."
"Are you sure about that?"
"I have to be." Kent shoved himself up to his weary feet and plodded over to the cabinet where his humidor was stored. There would be no further discussion once the cigar was lit. Tradition. "It's what keeps me sane…"
Simon sat in a strange bar. He'd been trying out new places since his last haunt went up in demon smoke. While the jukebox was appropriately loaded with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots and the like, it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. He sniffed, deeply. That was it. The air.
Too clean in here.
He swirled his glass, letting the last of his trip down memory lane wash away. Kent. Hell gates. Simon thought about that particular conversation more often than he'd liked. It wasn't because he was comforted by it.
Oh, no. Just the opposite.
It made him wince, a physical knee-jerk reaction to a shame that never lost its freshness.
"You are troubled."
Startled out of his reverie, Simon looked up to see Mack, perched on a bar stool next to him.
"Nah." Simon tipped his glass and drained the last of the whiskey. "Just thinking."
"About?"
How to describe Kent? Certainly no single word was encompassing enough. Professor. Mage. Master. Legend.
The whiskey was
working today, poisoning him with sentiment. Maybe one word would come close. And close was enough for now. "An old friend."
"His memory causes you pain?"
Simon swung a heavy look at the angel. "Can I ask you a question?"
Mack nodded one, slowly. "You may."
"But it doesn't mean you'll answer. I get it. Anyway." He drew a deep breath. "Is it true that demons cannot walk on our plane?"
"Odd question. You are a demonologist. Are you doubting their existence?"
"No. But I'm thinking about something an old master once told me. He said there are rules. He said that neither angels nor demons can walk upon the mortal plane."
Mack bowed his head. "Your master is correct."
"But you're an angel."
"I am a Watcher now."
"Still, an angel."
"In name only. Have you ever seen my wings?" Mack spun his stool a quarter turn to face him. The angel's face was stretched into plaintive lines. "It's because I no longer have them. They collected my wings when I began my service. It is the way of things. Angels may not tread upon the earth as long as mortals live."
"I don't understand—"
"You are not permitted to understand." Mack shook head, wearing a look of resignation, and heaved a sigh. "Some things you must accept."
"Then if you're not an angel anymore, what are you?"
"I am…" Mack turned back to the bar, his gaze lowered. "Blessed."
By this time, the whiskey had also done its other job—killing his patience. Simon popped his palm on the bar top. "Mortal?"
"No."
"So I can't kill you?"
Mack shrugged, a very human gesture. "You could try."
"Can I bind you?"
"If I were into such things." The barest hint of a smile tilted his mouth. "I had no idea that you were."
"Quit it, jackass. I'm talking magic."
"Quite impervious, thank you." Mack tilted his head and peered at Simon. "You are still troubled."
"What do you know about hell gates?"
Mack's phantom wing fog arced out before tucking back, tightly, like the flex and clench of a new fist. The air tasted like tin.
Whoops. Trigger word. Ho, ho, now the birdcage had been rattled. Someone's feathers just got ruffled.