bedeviled & beyond 03 - bedeviled & beleaguered

by Sam Cheever

  I programmed in landing stats and sat back, forcing myself to think about the meeting ahead of me. I’d been avoiding consideration of the encounter since Raoul had called, realizing I was laboring under an intimidating fog of guilt for my role in Raoul’s breakdown. I knew that, ultimately, he’d made his own choice to dabble in the black arts and damage his soul but I couldn’t escape my part in that choice.

  I took a deep breath as the Knight slid silently toward the ground in front of the building that had once housed the Angel City coven. It was a large, low-slung ranch house, built of brick in warm shades of cream and brown. The grounds around the building were overgrown, with a general air of neglect. Weeds climbed the sides of the stairs leading to the front door and grew up in between cracks in the wooden deck that ran the length of the building.

  One shutter hung askew and black, sooty splotches marred the surface of the building. Most likely the remains of errant power jolts.

  I opened the front door and entered the dark, cool interior of the building, my gaze casting around in a wide arc to take in every corner and niche in the entryway and adjoining rooms. Emo stayed close at my back, one hand on the knife handle sticking up from his thigh sheath. I could feel the tension in his body from a foot away.

  “Raoul?” Someone had cleaned the place out, removing furniture and wall decorations as far as the eye could see. My voice bounced off the bare walls and came back to me sounding uncertain.

  I glanced at Emo. He shrugged. “I don’t feel anyone.”

  Frowning, I pulled a knife from the sheath I’d strapped to my own thigh. We worked our way through the building, finding pretty much the same thing throughout. All the rooms had been stripped of furnishings as well as the people who had inhabited them. Eventually we ended up in the room where Dialle and I had once expected to meet with the Supreme High Witch. Instead we’d encountered Astis, the beautiful and truly evil Supreme High Commander of the coven.

  That memory was the first time I’d thought of Astis since the unfortunate meeting. I suddenly wondered what had become of her.

  The room Emo and I entered still held furniture. And a person.

  “Hello Raoul.”

  He turned away from the garden window which ran the length of one wall. The flowers in the window looked well cared for and healthy. By contrast, the grounds beyond the window were brown and unkempt like the front, with huge holes marking spots where the previous month’s air battle had found its way to the ground.

  The room was cluttered and untidy. It looked as if someone had pulled a large part of the furnishings from the house into a single room. A messy pile of blankets and pillows covered the divan in front of a fireplace that burned steadily, thickening the air of the room with a slight wash of smoke.

  It appeared that Raoul had been living there.

  His eyes were filled with remembered pain. Circles deepened the soft brown of his skin to purple underneath his sad, brown gaze. His dark hair, previously glossy, with soft curls that spoke of his Latin heritage, looked coarse and dry and was liberally sprinkled with gray. “Hello, Astra. How are you?”

  Even his voice sounded damaged.

  Following my instincts, I walked across the room and pulled him into a hug. He stiffened as my arms went around him but quickly softened into it, returning the embrace as his arms went around my back. “I’ve been worried.”

  He sighed and his head rested against mine. I thought I felt his lips softly touch the top of my head but I wasn’t sure.

  We stood that way for a minute and then he pulled away. “I’m actually a lot better now. But it was a bit hairy there for a while.” His smile was tired but sincere.

  I nodded, glancing around. “You’ve been staying here?”

  “It seemed like a good idea. Nobody comes here anymore and I needed a place to stay where I could be alone.”

  Emo walked forward with his hand extended. “Raoul.”

  Raoul took the offered hand. “Emo. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Emo’s elegant, black eyebrows rose in question but he said nothing.

  Raoul walked to the divan and dragged the bedding off, dropping it behind the piece of furniture on the floor. He indicated with a sweeping hand that he wanted Emo and me to sit down.

  We complied and he moved to stand in front of the fire. He stood for a few moments, watching the fire. We waited.

  Finally he said. “I’ve seen my death in the mist.”

  I glanced at Emo. He shook his head sadly. Oh god, Astra.

  Let’s just hear him out.

  Raoul turned away from the fire and approached me. He said nothing, simply holding out his arm. I swung my questioning gaze from his face and looked at the proffered arm.

  I gasped. “Holy shit!” All of the blood fled my face.

  He had a mark just like mine on his wrist.

  I looked at him. “Has he visited your dreams?”

  Raoul nodded. “I’ve been fighting him...”

  I stood up. “You need to keep fighting him, Raoul. He can’t do it without us.”

  Emo shot to his feet, “Us?” He grabbed my arm and turned it over, running a finger across my devil’s mark. “Astra! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I sighed and yanked my arm away, ignoring Emo and keeping a fierce gaze on the witch in front of me. “We can’t let him do this, Raoul.”

  He sighed and dropped into the chair nearest the fire. His gaze slid back to the flames. “I won’t let him win, Astra. I’ll kill myself first.”

  And that told me more clearly than words what his intentions in calling me there had been. I shook my head and dropped to my knees in front of him. “No! No, Raoul, listen to me.” I grabbed his face between my hands and turned it so he couldn’t avoid my gaze. “Killing yourself won’t stop him. Don’t you understand, he’ll just find another conduit. He’s chosen us for a reason. We need to figure out what that reason is so we can use it to stop him.”

  Raoul turned a haunted gaze to me and smiled sadly. “I don’t have the strength to do that Astra. I-I’m afraid.” He dropped his head into his hands. His voice came to me muffled. “I’m afraid I won’t have the strength to resist him.”

  I glanced at Emo. He shook his head. He has a point, Astra. He looks like hell. No pun intended.

  I ignored my partner’s voice in my head and sat down on the divan, leaning forward so that I could lay a hand on Raoul’s knee. “Tell me what you know about this mist.”

  “The mist holds my death,” he responded dramatically, “It holds the deaths of all humans.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged, “I’ve felt it once before...during the great wars.”

  My eyebrows flew north, “But you were only a small child.”

  “My gift of awareness has been both a curse and a joy. I feel the changes in the magical sphere before they physically manifest...I always have.”

  I sat back hard, the air in my lungs exploding out of me in shock. What must it have been like to be eight years old and have that kind of knowledge? The respect that I’d always had for Raoul expanded exponentially. “Shit.”

  The room was silent except for the warm crackling of the fire. I stared at the lively flames and came to a decision. Sitting forward again I reached for Raoul’s hand, taking it in mine and giving it a squeeze. “You are much stronger than you give yourself credit for, Raoul. In a way you’ve been preparing for this all your life. You knew about the twisted magic entering this world before anyone else did, your sensitivity to it can help me now. I need you to reach down inside yourself and find the strength to do what needs to be done.”

  He shook his head, pulling his hand from my grasp. I frowned. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your fellow humans who will die along with you...in madness and pain.”

  Raoul seemed to fold in on himself. “It grows worse by the day. My brain feels like it has knives in it.” He looked up at me and I saw the truth of it in his gaze. “I’m holding onto my sa
nity by a thread, Astra. I don’t know if I can keep it together long enough to help.” He looked down at his hands, which dangled between his knees. “But if you can help me, I’ll try.”

  I closed my eyes, not realizing until that moment how much I’d needed to hear him say those words. I don’t know why but I believed Raoul was crucial to us in defeating the invasive force.

  I stood up and moved to stand in front of him. “I’d like to see if I can take some of that pain away if you’ll let me.” He stared hard at me for a beat and then nodded.

  Dropping to my knees, I placed my hands on either side of his face. I reached for my power and pulled it forward, allowing it to slide into Raoul.

  Though I’d tried to insert the healing magic into him in as gentle a fashion as possible, he stiffened when it hit and his eyes rolled back. He slumped in the chair, unconscious.

  I pulled my hands away from Raoul immediately, panic slithering through me. I looked at Emo. “Should I stop?”

  Emo shook his head, placing a hand on Raoul’s forehead. “He’s just unconscious. It’s probably for the best. Go ahead and see what you can do before he wakes up.”

  I nodded, returning my hands to Raoul’s head. I probed with my power and found what could only be described as a clenching in his mind, apparently being fed by an overabundance of electrical activity in his brain. I gently massaged the rigid area with my magic and, when I had managed to loosen it, I gathered the excess energy in the brain and used it to create a barrier that would give him relief for a time.

  Then I pulled my power back and stood. I sat back on the divan to wait for him to wake up.

  Emo handed me a cup of hot coffee and I looked up at him in surprise.

  He had a second cup in his hands.

  Raoul stirred after a few minutes and sat up. He looked at me as if he didn’t remember what had happened, then his hand lifted and he touched his temple with trembling fingertips. A slow smile spread across his face.

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  I grinned, “Good.”

  “Thank you, Astra.”

  “I’m glad I could help. Okay, we need to talk about this force. Are you up for that?”

  He nodded and Emo handed him the second steaming mug. Raoul took it gratefully.

  “First, tell me what you know about this twisted layer?”

  Raoul sipped his coffee and sat back, propping his feet on the table in front of us. “It’s like a massive blanket of electrical energy. But it’s more than simple electricity. The electrical components that make it up have been skewed somehow.” He frowned as if trying to figure out how to explain it to me. “When this...thing...hits normal electrical energy it bounces off, initially rejected. What happens then is blurry but I think it somehow wraps itself around the normal energy, choking it off and then realigns it so that it’s compatible. That’s how it continues to grow.”

  I frowned, “So it feeds off normal energy?”

  He nodded. “But it isn’t compatible with it.”

  I thought about this for a minute. “Only magical energy?”

  “That’s just the thing. It doesn’t look for magical energy. It goes after non-magic sources.”

  My eyes widened, “Humans.”

  He nodded. “It strips us of our good energy and forces the skewed energy into us. Which is why we go mad. Eventually nothing in our bodies can function anymore, everything shuts down and we die.”

  I shuddered. “What’s with these?” I held my wrist up for him to see.

  Raoul unconsciously rubbed his own devil’s mark. “These mark us as conduits. But you already know that.”

  I nodded.

  “What you probably haven’t thought about though is that they also mark us as being dangerous to the veil. You see, once the veil has pulled all the energy from the human population, it will turn its attention to magical energy. But if we can use our power to lock the veil down, we might conceivably be able to use the same power to get rid of it.”

  Emo had returned with another mug of coffee, the last bit of news stopping him as he was lowering his butt to sit on the divan beside me. “It will attack you and Astra?” He glanced my way, his handsome face clearly showing his concern.

  Raoul nodded. “And all the other conduits, including, theoretically, the Serpent. The Serpent knows that he needs to stop the veil before it reaches that point. To accomplish that he needs to perform a halting ritual.”

  “But then why release it in the first place if he’s just going to get rid of it in the end?”

  Raoul shook his dark head. “You misunderstand me, Astra. He won’t get rid of it. He’s just going to halt its progress. It will still consume the Earth.”

  “Shit!”

  “So...do you have any idea how we can stop it?” Emo’s face was pale, his eyes dark with worry.

  Raoul held the coffee mug in both hands and stared over it thoughtfully. “As far as I can tell it has only one weakness. That initial rejection when it first reaches out. Maybe we can work with that.”

  I frowned, feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead of me. “How long do we have before this thing eats through the human race?”

  Raoul shrugged, “Weeks maybe...months...a year at most. It moves fairly slowly but the more violent the humans are in reaction the more quickly it feeds on them.”

  Emo sat up straighter, “So violence feeds it?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  He looked at me. “Then we’re in trouble.”

  My stomach churned in agreement. I thought about Raoul’s information for a minute, then I had an idea. “So we can slow it if we slow the violence?”

  Raoul scrunched up his face. “I think so, yes. It seems logical.”

  Feeling a little better, I glanced at Emo. “We need to engage the guardians.”

  He stared at me for a beat before he grinned. “That might just work.”

  Raoul sat forward in his chair. “The guardian angels? What can they do?”

  I moved to the fireplace and started pacing, thinking my way through the possibilities my mind was churning out. “They’re generally just supposed to watch and only intervene where necessary to keep their charges from traveling to the light ahead of schedule. But they can perform other roles if needed. One of the things they sometimes do is intervene when a charge has become morbidly depressed. They can usually improve the charge’s mood if only for a short time. Humans call their attempts manic depression. Sharp upswings in mood caused by guardian intervention, followed by the charge’s natural depression returning and then the rise in happiness again caused by follow-up intervention. It’s a difficult tactic and there will still be low levels that are conducive to violence. But it should slow the progress of this thing down a little anyway.”

  “And the guardians can do this long-term if necessary?”

  I glanced at Emo and he shrugged, nodding. “I don’t see why not. It will be difficult but the alternative is ugly.”

  I nodded. “I agree. They really have no choice.”

  ~SC~

  As soon as we got back to the office I reached for my cross and placed it on my forehead, saying Flick’s name. I started to sit down behind my desk but suddenly found myself space shifting. Destination unknown.

  Locked into immobility, my mind churned. Where the hell was I going and who had grabbed me? Pulling my power forward with a thought, I tried to prepare for whatever I would face when sound and motion returned.

  I landed in a world of wispy white. The specific place wasn’t at all familiar but the location was. I saw a clump of something brown and stringy in the near distance. Hair. Very dirty hair.

  I was on Flick’s cloud.

  I stomped toward him. Stomping in a cloud is decidedly unsatisfying. All I got was a few muffled thumps. “What the hell, Flick? Why’d you drag me up here?”

  He shifted to look at me and I nearly screamed. His pale, freckled face was red and scaly and swollen to almost four times its normal size. Stuff bubbled from his
nose, dripped from his nearly obscured eyes and leaked from the corners of his mouth.

  He couldn’t even lift his head.

  He looked for all the world like a stage four. Or five, which is already dead.

  “Holy shit! Flick. Shouldn’t you be in unplanned care or something?” I lowered my butt to a chair that I’d conjured with only a thought. That’s cloud magic. All you had to do was imagine something and it appeared.

  He opened his mouth and a pale, pasty looking tongue emerged to lick fever cracked lips. It sounded like sand paper scraping over rock. “They can’t do anything. I went this morning.”

  I frowned. “Nothing? That’s ridiculous. Are you gonna be okay?”

  He shrugged. Anyway, I think he shrugged. His bony shoulders lifted a fraction off his cloud bed and then collapsed back down again. “I’ll live. Eventually.”

  I stared down at him. I couldn’t possibly discuss engaging the guardians to intervene with him looking and feeling that bad. Finally he rolled bloodshot brown eyes my way and gave me an impatient look. “Did you come up here just to stare at me?”

  I shook my head and a white mug of hot coffee appeared in my hand. I quickly hid behind it, sipping a bit frantically. I had the sudden and uncharitable thought that he might be contagious.

  My chair moved silently back a couple more feet at the thought.

  He glared at me. “You can’t catch this. It only attacks angels.”

  “I’m part angel.”

  He shook his greasy head.

  I grinned, “How about fallen angels?” Royal Devil type fallen angels to be exact. Dialle’s father and I still had a score to settle with each other. I’d been watching my back for weeks.

  He frowned, “I don’t know. Why?”

  I thought of how much fun it would be to take a big, fat, juicy germ to Dialle the First’s chambers and plant it on his favorite mug.

  I was enjoying the thought so much I didn’t immediately notice that Flick was droning on. Shaking off my musings, I forced myself to focus. “What did you say?”

  He shuddered and his top half started to rise. A glass of water appeared in a very shaky hand. He sipped the water through a white straw and I waited impatiently. I really hadn’t liked what I thought I’d heard him say.