Minutes to Midnight

by Phaedra Weldon

  Oh….shit. Was that possible? I sure as hell didn't want to find out.

  When he pulled his knee off me to grab my other arm, conveniently still tucked under my chest, I turned into him, into the side he was holding. Having his captive roll toward him disoriented him enough to make him hesitate. That's when I pulled my free hand out, reached over, and grabbed his chin…. "Immaru!"

  I wasn't ready for the strength and intensity of the power that flowed out of my hand. The officer's body tensed as he released me. His eyes rolled back into his head and he shook violently before he collapsed on top of me. Something very large and very dark and very powerful fled Officer Jones's body. It hovered above me and and smelled like raw sewage as it writhed and undulated in the air. I managed to get Jones off of me, but the arm he'd twisted up behind me wasn't working. It was out of its socket and hung limply at my side.

  ABYSMAL FIRE! YOU ARE NO GUARDIAN! WHAT SORT OF MONSTER HAS SHE BROUGHT TO US?

  The voice filled everything, including my mind. And whatever Ripp'n Ja— was, I had this sinking feeling it wasn't Abysmal. And it wasn't Ethereal. But it was bad. And I'd just pissed it off.

  "Darren!"

  Stella!

  The thing continued to move about in the air over the tops of the spooky trees. I pushed myself up against the piece of wall and started toward her. But my light vanished, swallowed by Mister Big and Spooky hovering in the air like a huge cloud of nasty. I took a step toward her and met with something solid.

  NO DEAL. SHE'S MINE NOW.

  Abruptly the haunted forest, the ruined castle, and the figure vanished. I fell about three feet onto the pavement, onto my injured arm. I cried out, and hands caught me. They rested on the sides of my face. "Dags, open your eyes. Dags!"

  That was Mike. I opened my eyes and saw him looking down at me. He looked worried, and his hands were moving expertly over my body. When he got to my shoulder I hissed and he put a hand to my cheek again. "Sshh. It's dislocated. I need you to hold still, okay? Darius, can you brace him?"

  "We searched this alley a dozen times and he wasn't here. Now he is? Where the fuck did he come from? And look at him. He's covered in ash."

  "I can see that, Dar. Just hold him."'

  "Why is he shaking like that?"

  My teeth clacked against each other as I shook violently. My skin felt hot and I was sweating. Every muscle burned when I moved. I'd felt like this once before; the first time I came out of the Cairn to Alfheim.

  Mike grabbed my arm, and I knew what was coming and it was gonna hurt like a mother.

  "I think that cop's dead over there."

  Cop? I turned my head and saw Jones's smoldering body just past Darius's knee.

  Mike turned and shoved my upper arm. Agony shot through my shoulder, down my chest to my toes and shorted out the lights.

  THREATS

  Sometimes I wish I could find a magic mirror and ask it to wipe away every memory I had so I could start over. That's what moving to Savannah was supposed to be. A time for new beginnings. Forget the nagging in the back of my head, the voice that told me there was more to come. That beings far older and meaner existed…and they wanted what was in my chest.

  No.

  They didn't just want it. They believed they owned what was there.

  One being in particular held the strings. She'd been a constant bruise in the corner of my mind, brushing up against my conscious and unconscious thoughts, building a fear that one day she'd appear to me again and take me, the way she threatened to.

  So when I opened my eyes and saw her standing there in all her Angelic glory, panic overrode any other pain I felt in my shoulder as I scrambled to get off the bed and away from her. But she was fast and had her hand on my throat before I could draw a breath. She didn't choke me, or cut off my air—well not totally. She made it impossible for me to cry out for Mike or utter a spell. I hadn't ever tried one of the spells against her. I was terrified what the consequences would be if I tried and failed.

  Gabriel was a Cherubim, a protector of the Throne of the Seraphim, the ruler of Heaven. The Angelic and Dark Worlds had similar hierarchies, with nearly mirrored pairs. The Dark had the Phantasm seated in the Dark Throne. His protectors would have been the First Born, if they hadn't been forced out into the Material World by one of their own. It was a story I remembered reading in a First Born's journal that now rested inside the Grimoire. One of the Phantasm's own children took over his Throne, destroyed him, and then took power, successfully ridding the Dark World of its Throne's protectors. Except for two.

  One was named Inanna, and the other was her younger brother, Azrael. The usurper allowed them to stay, until Inanna's Book of Shadows was found and she was also expelled from home, leaving Azrael at the mercy of his father's usurper.

  And Inanna's Book of Shadows? You guessed it. It's the basis of the Grimoire inside of me.

  I was still a bit hazy on the powers of a Cherubim. I knew they could manipulate people and objects in the Material World and, if they chose, inhabit human bodies the same way as the First Borns did. But whereas the Dark First Borns didn't have any reservations about sharing physical form, the Cherubim were proud and hated humans. Believed them to be little more than monkeys or cattle. I'd heard, before I left Atlanta, that the last time a Cherubim took a human body, thousands of people died in gas chambers.

  It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out whose body they took. But the burning question for me, the one no one ever wanted to answer, was what happened to the essence of the Cherubim or the First Born if their human hosts died and they didn't take a new host? Were they still here? Lingering in the between of the Spirit World? Or forever trapped somewhere incomprehensible?

  More importantly, did I really want to know? Because right now, my immediate concern was wondering what Gabriel wanted and why she was in my bedroom.

  I don't know what she looked like to a normal person, meaning someone without the little Planar abilities of Mind, Spirit, and Outer Worlds. To me, she looked like Switch from The Matrix. Sort of a reverse goth. White hair, white leather trench, white boots, and white tight-fitting bodysuit. Her eyes were the color of aquamarine, catlike as they sloped up on the outer edges. Her lips were the same white as her clothing and hair.

  And she glowed.

  "What the hell are you doing?" she hissed, and tightened her grip. "You disappeared from this world again and I couldn't sense you. I warned you not to do that ever again, Guardian."

  I tried to answer but couldn't, so I put my hands on her wrist and coughed. It took her a few seconds before she relinquished her hold but she stayed very close, making it impossible for me to roll off the bed away from her. I swallowed a few times before speaking and my voice came out a little huskier than usual. "Leave me the fuck alone."

  "After what you did when you got here? No damn way, Guardian. You endangered everything by going into Alfheim. I wrote a part of me on the page I placed in that book." She arched a pale white brow. "That way I always know where you are. So when you disappeared the other day, I sensed it."

  "You've been watching me this whole time?"

  She moved so close we were nose-to-nose. Ever been nose-to-nose with an Angel? It's freakin' terrifying. "Why did you go back?"

  Wait…the other day? What day was today?

  "I…I don't know where we went." So I gave her an abbreviated version of what'd happened after Officer Jones and I stepped into the alley between the two bars.

  When I was done, she grabbed my injured shoulder and squeezed, then slapped her other hand over my mouth when I tried to yell out. She leaned in and sniffed, and then abruptly let go and took several steps back. I propped myself up on my good elbow. "What?" My shoulder throbbed so bad my eyes teared up.

  "I told you—I threatened you—I ordered you to never return to that World."

  I frowned up at her. "Uh…what World? The one with the trees and the ruins and ash? I've never been there—I told you, I didn't recognize it."

>   She came back at me, her hand once again around my neck. She didn't cut off the air supply this time, but held me down on the bed. "Don't play the fool with me. You went back to Alfheim—you went back to the 'Pheral." She hissed.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. The 'Pheral? The same place Darius told us about? The sixth world? "You mean…Alfheim is the Peripheral?"

  "Alfheim is one of many places inside the Peripheral." She released me and stood back. "Now that I know where you've been, I can smell it. I can smell her. The place reeks of her. But…" She looked away and appeared to be staring at something I couldn't see. I don't know, divine communion? I stayed where I was, wondering where Mike was. If he walked in now, I was afraid she'd blast him. Gabriel didn't care about anything except what Gabriel wanted. I'd known that the moment I met her.

  That was a day I didn't like remembering. Although it was one of the clearest memories I had.

  She moved again and pushed her hand against my chest and then through it. My body went rigid and I nearly bit my tongue. Thomas the Rhymer had recently shoved his own hand into the book to place a page inside. The sensation wasn't as much painful as uncomfortable. I couldn't move and my sight was restricted to what was in front of me, which was the top of her head and the ceiling. Whatever she was doing pulled at my spine, and I whined and hissed through clenched teeth. The only thing I could compare it to was having my backbone ripped out through my ass.

  When she pulled her hand out, I nearly lost control of all my bodily functions before I curled up into a fetal position. I was a roly poly bug, protecting my soft middle, baring my hard outer shell. Inside I cried with fear and hatred because I couldn't do a thing to stop her. I felt violated, and utterly helpless. My skin was hot; I had a fever. I started shivering again.

  "I double-checked the page of your memory, to make sure you didn't lie to me. You are lucky you didn't, and the book's still intact. But what I don't understand is how a Djin could have escaped from the 'Pheral…" She paced, her trench coat billowing out behind her. "How would it know to take you? Or even what you hold within you? You told me they never knew who or what you were. You told me Maab was destroyed. That World has no entrance or exit save what we make and take. It's not possible such abominations could have grown to such a power as to break the barriers. We own the Watchers, we control the Guardians…"

  Her self-speech didn't make much sense to me. And I wasn't in the mood to comment. I continued to bury my head in my chest and hands, my thoughts turning to Stella.

  She was still there. I hadn't been able to help her.

  She was in the 'Pheral, captive to a…Djin?

  What the hell was that? Was Gabriel talking about a genie?

  Gabriel stopped pacing and came back to me. She knelt beside the bed and ran her fingers through my hair. The gesture was almost pleasant, until she grabbed a handful of it and yanked my head back so I would be forced to look at her. "You will do everything in your power to prevent going back to that place, do you understand me? This isn't a request, Guardian. If you so much as put another foot into that place, I will hurt her, Darren McConnell. I'll physically rip her spin from her body."

  And then I was alone in my room.

  I didn't move. I just closed my eyes tight and sobbed. Some man I was. A guy who'd made so many stupid decisions in his life that brought him to this. I already knew she couldn't kill me—if I died, then the book returned to the Well of Souls. Its knowledge would be shared with the universe. But what she could do to me was keep me alive enough to keep the book safe. Gabriel seemed to revel in physical torture.

  There were times, like now, I wished my family would have left me in that tree after mom died. I think I drifted off to sleep again, and felt the soft brush of fur against my skin, and the cold nose of a wolf against my cheek.

  A BREiF HiSTORY

  It wasn't a pleasant sleep, filled with nightmares of giant spiders chasing me through a sewer, and at the end of the tunnel was Gabriel wielding a knife to cut the book out of my soul.

  Mike woke me up with glass of water and an aspirin. He sat on the bed and watched me as I swallowed the pill and emptied the glass. "I thought you'd look better—but you look like you haven't rested at all."

  I handed the glass back to him. "I did. Just…nightmares."

  He held the glass in both hands between his knees. "Sorry. I had to get the arm back in. So…" Mike shrugged. "You ready to tell me what happened?"

  "How long?"

  "What?"

  I focused on him. "How long have I been in bed?"

  "Two days."

  "How long was I gone?"

  "Four." He pursed his lips. "I took it on faith you'd show back up again like before. And since I saw you and the officer turn left into the alley, I hung out there. Darius didn't want to believe me. So when you showed back up…" He shrugged.

  Jesus. "Mike…it was like before, wasn't it? Like when I came out of the Cairn?"

  He nodded as he looked at me. "Yeah. Fever. Chills. You were delirious. It was worse this time."

  I closed my eyes. "I think I was in the Peripheral."

  "The place Darius talked about?"

  "Yeah." I told him everything I could remember, except for the part where I woke up with Gabriel in my face. He'd seen the Angel before, but his abilities weren't a match for hers. The only person that could send Gabriel back to her World was Samantha. She'd tried to teach me the spell to do it since she believed I was a Sentinel like herself, a child of the God Mother born on this earth to keep the illegal aliens out. But it didn't work for me. When I told Nona what happened, her take was that my duel nature wouldn't allow me to banish anything.

  "I did learn something, though." I leaned back against the headboard. "Alfheim is part of the Peripheral."

  Mike's expression slackened. "We were in the Peripheral? The 'Pheral is where the Fairies live?"

  "Yeah. Apparently. And it's where Djin live, because that's what overshadowed Officer Jones." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked left at him. "It's got Stella, Mike."

  "Then we have to get her back."

  Two days. I'd been feverish for two days. And I still felt like hammered shit. Damn. "I have to come up with a plan. How's Officer Jones?"

  "In a coma. He's got third degree burns on the side of his face and neck. Your blasto-power, I assume?"

  "Yes." And more, but I didn't say that. I didn't want to admit that when I used the spell, I didn't know what it would do. I asked the book for help and that was what it gave me. Apparently it shoved out parasites…but it didn't leave the host in good shape.

  "What the hell is a gin?" Mike said.

  "I don't know." I stood and moved past him to the door. I was light headed like before and I grabbed the door frame to hold myself up. I was starving. "Where's the book?"

  "It's down on the table."

  We went down to the kitchen. Mike set the glass in the sink and I pulled a pack of processed meat from the fridge. After shoving rolled handfuls of it into my mouth, I grabbed a soda and went to the dining room table, sat down, pulled the book to me and started flipping through the pages. It was handwritten in some areas, typeset in others. A very odd mishmash of things in alphabetical order. Once I got to the Ds, it was easy to find the entry.

  "Djins," I said aloud. "Otherwise known as Genies."

  Mike came from the kitchen. "You're shitting me. He was possessed by a genie? I thought they lived in lamps and granted wishes?"

  "You watch too much TV." I skimmed through the text and didn't like what I saw. "Shit."

  "What?" Mike moved to read over my shoulder. "What language is that?"

  "Sumerian."

  "I thought you read that."

  "I do." I turned the page and continued. "I'm surprised no one's ever talked about Djins before."

  "Hello? Let me in on it."

  "Well." He pulled a chair out and sat to my left. "We got all the worlds down, right?"

  "Yep."

  "Now, what
I've learned about the planes, or worlds, comes from other planar beings, which you'll just have to trust me on. However, this text doesn't use the usual terms I use. It says before the Thrones of the Dark and Light were created, before the Holy Ghost, which I learned is a program called Geist—"

  "A program? You mean like a computer?"

  "Think organically. But it works the same way. But before all of that, most of the Outer Worlds existed as one. Everything lived in a sort of chaotic balance." I traced the words with my fingers, translating again. "When the Material, Mind, and Spirit Worlds formed, physical beings were born, possessing a collective link to Mind and Spirit. The Djin, creatures of smoke and shadow, were the first to toy with them. The Djin discovered death through the mutilation and torture of the physical beings; i.e., humans, animals, as well as other Planar beings.

  "There's a bunch of exposition about the meeting of minds…debates…the arguments between the God Mother and her children concerning the need to set up rigid borders between the World and set up rules…" I skimmed down the page. "Two names keep coming up—Samael and Lilith—a split of the same Planar essence."

  "Lilith? Are you serious? Wasn't that the name of Adam's first wife? Like…part of Apocryphal texts?"

  "Yeah…but I've learned you can't really think the literary names are what we've read. And looking at this…" I shrugged. "Apparently Samael and Lilith were the ones who set up the Worlds with the God Mother and worked together to sort of create a balance of parties for discussions."

  "You mean like Congress?"

  "I guess so? Dark and Light hashing it out like Republicans and Democrats. So in a way, we had the first man and the first woman taking on leadership roles."

  "Lemme guess, Lilith was the leader of the Dark."

  "No…actually she was the Seraphim, so that makes it Light, or Angelic."

  Mike looked surprised. "That is so….not really shocking."

  "I know, right?" I skimmed ahead, moving past lines and lines of who held what position and how it was voted on. I knew about Samael already because he was in that diary the Grimoire absorbed. He was also the father of the First Borns like Mephistopheles. It was sort of sad to read this, knowing one of his own children would betray him later on. "Here we go. There was an emergency council called early on—though it doesn't say how long after the Worlds were formed. It just says that the council was called to decide what to do about the Djin who repeatedly crossed the borders, bribing or killing the—" I stopped and sat back.