by Sara Snow
“Well I’d say he did a pretty good job,” Jose commented with a smile.
“I’d have to agree,” Eli said, ruffling Jose’s hair playfully. “Alright, Carter, where do we find this ritual?”
“We’ll have to crack open a very old book to find it,” Carter answered.
“Well let’s get cracking, then,” Eli said.
“I’ll get the book. You guys clear the floor,” Carter instructed.
Carter retreated to the library to find the book while the rest of us cleared some space in the game room. It felt strange to have to wait for someone to find an answer to a question that Kingston would have been able to give us right away. I couldn’t help but notice the look on Jacob’s face. He looked so tired, bags weighing heavily under his eyes, his mouth turned down into a frown. I cautiously wandered over to him, clearing away some knick-knacks from a little end table near the chair he was dragging toward the wall.
“Is this ok with you?” I asked. “Sorry, I probably should have asked before suggesting it.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” he said, much more gently than I’d anticipated. Something was obviously not fine, but I wasn’t sure if that something was related to my surprise funeral ceremony for his dad or if it was just the weight of everything pushing down on him. I didn’t want to press my luck and push him too far.
“If you want me to, I can tell everyone to forget about it. We don’t have to do this if you’re not comfortable with it.”
“Really, Georgia. It’s ok.” He seemed more sincere. “I want to do this.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip for a moment, thinking over my options. I didn’t want to give off the wrong vibe, but fuck it. We were all friends here. “You know you can talk to me if you want to, right?” I said, hoping he wouldn’t read too much into it.
He seemed to mull it over. “Thanks, Georgia. It’s nice of you to offer.”
That hard line still persisted between his eyebrows, though, and there was sadness in his eyes. I knew it was killing him to have to act tough and swallow it all down. On top of that, I wasn’t oblivious to the dagger-like glares he had been shooting in Carter’s direction. Maybe Carter had been a bit rough on Jacob before, but we all had to be in this together and I didn’t see a point in engaging with that particular issue at the moment. I didn’t want to drag down the energy, so I kept the thought to myself and worked on moving chairs and tables.
I had no idea what to expect from a Venandi funeral and was curious, eagerly awaiting Carter’s return with the book. By the time we had opened up space on the floor and made a circle with pillows for each of us to sit on, he returned with a few items in his hands—a large stone pot, a handful of matchbooks, and an incredibly dusty book that had clearly not seen a whole lot of use in the last couple of decades.
“Ok, if you guys are ready, let’s get in a circle,” he said.
Everyone complied and chose a pillow. Carter took a place at my left and Jacob sat to my right, his gaze softened from before, the crease in his forehead now eased. It almost made him seem more somber, though I knew he’d do anything in his power not to show it in front of the group if he was hurting. Hell, I knew he was hurting. I sure was. We had both just lost a parent, and if anyone knew what he was going through right now, it was probably me. I remembered his warm, comforting hand on mine in the car, but I ignored my urge to return the gesture now, especially with Carter so close by.
Carter passed around the matchbooks and had each of us take one before he set the stone pot in the center and plopped himself down on the pillow, cracking the book open to a marked page in front of him.
“This ceremony is a celebration of an angel and their time with us as well as a send-off as they return to the source of their light, according to the book” he said, smoothing its pages to read a passage to himself. “Alright, now everyone hold one match in your hand. I want you to hold it up and then look deep within yourself and think of your strongest, most positive memory with Kingston. As long as there’s a powerful emotion tied with it, it’ll help make the ritual stronger.”
“Stronger?” I didn’t mean to ask it out loud, but my curiosity was burning and I wanted to know the exact nature of the ritual.
“If you put a strong feeling into the pot, it will burn brighter.”
“What does that mean, “burn brighter”? What will this ritual actually do?” I asked.
“It sort of acts as a beacon from us to wherever Kingston is. If we burn the pot bright enough, he’ll be able to feel its presence and know that we’re honoring him. At least, that’s what the book says. And that’s assuming he did return to his source of light,” he added a bit cautiously.
Amazing. I had no idea that such a thing was possible, and the idea of sending Kingston one last farewell made my heart jump. I realized that Jacob may be getting his final goodbye with his dad that was taken from him at the cemetery.
He didn’t seem as enthused as I was, his eyes resting on the pot in the middle of our circle instead of seeking mine out in excitement as I had sort of expected.
Carter either didn’t notice or didn’t care as he continued. “When you have your memory in mind, really focus on it and feel the emotions you felt in that moment. Try to picture Kingston as clearly as you can and hold the image in your mind, and then when it all is strongly in focus, light your match and keep holding it. Once everyone’s match is lit, we’ll throw them into the pot together and I’ll read the casting off.”
We all nodded in agreement and Carter instructed us to close our eyes before he read something from the book in a language I didn’t recognize.
I sat for a moment, going through my memories, trying to pick out a single memory that I could strongly recreate in my head. I thought of the first time Kingston and I met, when he cooked for me and I shoveled it in my mouth like an insane person who had never eaten food before. I’d felt so strange that day, but I remembered how desperately I wanted to impress Kingston, how drawn to him I was. His energy was so warm and welcoming, and I couldn’t help but want him to like me. Maybe it was because I thought my supposedly absent “real” dad sucked so much, but his fatherly presence was so strong right off the bat. Thinking back on it now with the knowledge of how much my actual father sucked, I yearned for that warm feeling even harder.
That was it. The first time we met. That was my memory.
I focused hard, thinking about his face, the way the warehouse smelled when it was new to me, Kingston’s aura, all of it. I remembered how the food tasted, how funnily Carter had looked at me while I stuffed my face and the sarcastic comments from him that Kingston had brushed off like he’d been doing it forever. It had all felt so strange at the time, but now that I couldn’t have it again, I realized how truly lucky I was to have those small moments in my heart.
I didn’t need to strike my match against my matchbook, lighting it with my mind instead. Jacob, who had his match already lit, chuckled.
“Show-off,” he joked.
I smiled, glad I could make him laugh at least a little, though I noticed Carter glaring at him out of the corner of my eye. One by one, each member of the group lit their match until we all were holding them at the ready. We all watched Carter, and when he nodded his signal, we dropped our matches into the pot simultaneously. There was a flash, startling me, as the fire erupted in the stone pot with a fwoomp, only lasting for a moment before the light faded from a licking orange and yellow to a steady beam of white, rising up from the lip of the pot to hover gently as an orb in the air.
It was beautiful, seeming perfectly fitting for an angel’s send-off. It brought a tear to my eye that I discreetly wiped away before anyone noticed. It gave off an energy, too, so warm and comforting. For a moment, it almost felt like Kingston was there.
Carter traced his finger along the page of the book, again reading that unfamiliar language. The orb pulsated at his words, growing in size and intensity until I reasonably thought we’d all go blind. Strangely
enough, though, the light wasn’t painful to look at. It seemed impossibly brilliant, but I didn’t feel the need to squint at it. It was the weirdest thing, but I just chalked it up to magic. That seemed the likeliest explanation for most things, nowadays.
With one final, punctuated word—“Gavriel”—the ball of light expanded greatly before imploding in on itself and disappearing completely, sending a small wave of energy through the room.
We all sat silently for a moment before Carter shut the book, standing from his seat.
“What was the language you were reading?” I inquired.
“Enochian,” he said. “The language of the angels.”
“Ah, and here I was thinking that Kingston spoke English,” I joked.
“It’s the divine language. They only use it for angelic ritual. Kingston taught me a little bit here and there, but I’m only conversational in it,” he remarked.
“Thank you for the suggestion, Georgia,” Jacob said quietly. “That was nice.”
I studied his face, a soft smile on his mouth, though the sadness in his eyes betrayed it. It was understandable, though. It seemed obvious that he was still suffering, but the effort he was putting into keeping himself together kept me from saying anything. If I knew Jacob, he’d want to deal with this on his own, and I didn’t want to risk embarrassing him in front of the group.
“Alright, I think it’s time for bed,” I said, rising from the circle. “Any rest we can get will be good rest.”
“That’s a good idea. Anyone else want to develop any new superpowers while we’re at it?,” Olympia joked, raising her eyebrow at me. “Georgia’s flame powers are getting stronger so if anyone wants to try and one-up her, I think now would be as good a time as any.”
I knew she was making a jab about the change in my healing power, but it made me suddenly remember something.
“Hey yeah, speaking of which, are we ever going to talk about El Paso, Jacob?” I asked.
He seemed caught off guard, his eyes widened a bit.
“Huh? What about El Paso?” he asked.
“You remember telling a bunch of people that we were trying to save the world and having them just completely go with it, don’t you? The cops, the priest, the mechanic? There’s no way they’d just have believed you unless you did something to them,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. That’s a good question. I actually, uh… I don’t really know,” he answered with an awkward chuckle. “I think I know where I can find out, though.”
“Yeah, checking into it seems like a good idea,” I said. “Could come in handy again. Well, goodnight guys. Thanks for performing the ceremony, Carter.”
As I headed off to my room for the night, my mind was drawn to our little ball of light. I wondered where it went and hoped from the bottom of my heart that wherever it was, Kingston was there, too, with that warm smile on his face.
Jose
I woke up with a start, feeling uneasy. That was normal for a dream like this, but the images lingered in my mind far more vividly than they had before. I thought about waking Carter, but I wanted to make sure the dream stuck in my mind before I said anything. I ran it over and over again in my mind to solidify the details, feeling more and more fear creeping up on me each time I saw it.
I could see Bebal standing with his hand on Paimon’s shoulder, whispering something into his ear. I could hear only pieces of what he was saying.
“It’s coming,” he whispered to Paimon. “With Georgia’s loyalty, it will be here sooner than ever.”
Then there was fire. More fire than I’d ever seen in my entire life, and it was red, licking up from the ground to overtake entire landscapes. The air was whipping with dust where the earth was spared from fire, vicious dust storms raging in the skies. There was a voice growling, possibly Bebal’s, most of which I couldn’t understand over the furious crackling of fire and frenzied winds. There was one word I could pick out—a word that I’d heard Kingston use before.
Revelare.
The moment demons would reveal themselves, making them completely visible to the mortal realm. The Revelare would effectively be the mark of the Tenebris’s success, the precise moment their plan would become irreversible. It was what we’d been fighting to stop the whole time.
Hearing the word in conjunction with the disasters unfolding in front of my eyes shook me, but the thing that terrified me more than anything was Georgia. She appeared from the flames, rising above the alight forest, her arms outstretched and her expression pure ecstasy. She looked almost crazed, and I knew what it meant.
Below her, we were fighting. Legions of demons descended upon the Venandi and we slayed them by the dozens. I saw myself wielding a stake, taking down a handful of them, and it seemed like a sign that it was my time to hunt with the others. If my vision had anything to say about it, this battle was going to be our toughest yet, and there was no way I could leave my friends on their own. I needed to back them up. It was time for me to be a Venandi for real.
I decided not to wake anyone yet. They were going to need all the rest they could get.
Eli
The plan was simple enough: we’d accompany Georgia to the palace, ready to defend her if need be and make sure that the meeting with Paimon went smoothly. Maybe it was a bit selfish of me, but I was sort of hoping that it didn’t go so smoothly. I missed out on El Paso, and with Kingston gone, I needed to get some small revenge or I thought I might start going crazy. Taking down a couple of Paimon’s boys last night helped, but if I got the opportunity to kick some more demon ass, I definitely wouldn’t be complaining.
Supernatural creatures already took everything from me when they killed my wife and son, but now that they had the balls to take one of my friends from me too, I almost looked forward to the fight. I joined the Venandi in a bad place after losing my family. I had fought off the demon that killed my family, even managing to kill the thing by accident.
Things weren’t pretty for a long time afterward. I quit MMA, a sport I’d been part of nearly my whole life. I was one of the best in the country, having claimed title after title. But none of those awards or prizes meant anything if I didn’t have anyone to bring them home to. I tried to keep fighting afterward, but when I started seeing these ugly creatures start appearing in the shadows seemingly around every corner, everything was thrown into chaos in my life. I hadn’t seen a demon before one killed my wife and son, and after that I couldn’t stop seeing them. I didn’t understand anything anymore. I thought I was losing it.
People kept away from me after that. My friends distanced themselves. The family I had left was suddenly too busy to drop off food or stop in for a chat. I was letting myself spiral, and no one wanted to stick around to stop it. I could hardly blame them.
Then one day, Kingston was kind to me. Even though I was just a human. Even though I was furious and taking it out on the rest of the world.
I could remember it clear as day. I was angry. So, so angry. The wounds of loss were still as fresh as ever, even after the time that had passed, and I was out late at night hoping that something, anything, would be out and about trying to give me a hard time. I had been wandering around to find those creatures that seemed to follow me, pummeling them into the ground as much as I could. I didn’t know yet how to kill them, but beating them down seemed to keep me sane for a while. But that night I was feeling dark. I didn’t think of it as hunting, I just needed an excuse to throw a punch. It didn’t take long before I got my wish and an especially ugly one stepped out to face me from an alleyway. He quickly found himself eating asphalt and probably a few of his own teeth. Honestly, if Kingston hadn’t approached me that night, I probably would have found a way to kill it with my fists alone.
Instead, he stepped over to me. He said he recognized me from my last fight and was impressed with my skills, and he asked if we could take a walk. I didn’t really understand why at the time, but I agreed. He called someone to come finish the creature off, and we set off toward the la
ke. He told me that he was looking for a group of creatures responsible for a series of murders in the area. He told me that they may have been the ones who killed my family. He said he’d been hunting them down, and at first I thought he was insane. It really hit home just how crazy I must have sounded to my friends and family whenever I brought it up, because I really thought he was a few marbles short for a minute. I had to remind myself that I’d seen them with my own eyes and that I wanted nothing more than to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
That was when he asked me to join his group. He gave me a purpose after I had lost it, and if I could repay him for his years of friendship by taking down the Tenebris, then I’d have done anything in my power to make that happen.
I lined up stake after stake on the countertop, divvying them up two to a man, though since Carter wouldn’t be accompanying us just yet, I set the extras aside. I hoped they’d get some use sooner rather than later, but it seemed like that’d be up to his healing, and who knew how long that could take. I laid out a longbow, a katana, a crossbow, some guns—anything I thought would be of use to anyone in the future fights.
I kept thinking about Kingston and what he’d think about all of this as I readied our equipment. Surely he’d be proud of Georgia for stepping up to the task, even though it was dangerous. I knew he would admire how confident of a hunter she had become and would worry over her like a father. Part of me wondered if he could see her and feel all those things from wherever he was.
I had no proof that he got to return to his angelic form, but I hoped like hell that he did. I still worried that something had gone wrong, but I couldn’t exactly place why. I was inclined to think that if he really had achieved full divinity, then he’d have come back to help us defeat the Tenebris by now. It seemed like a lot of this wouldn’t be necessary if we had a literal angel watching over us, but where was he? I didn’t like our odds of defeating the Tenebris without him. We could still save the mortal realm, but we were going to need help.