I did inventory again of what was on my person—the athame was gone, either knocked aside in the woods or taken when they’d searched us—and then double checked from all angles of the room that I had no cell signal. Everything else was either in the messenger bag or back at the hotel. At least I’d told Dad where we were staying but he knew to give me space—it would be ages before he figured out something was wrong. Tanvi...maybe I should’ve risked the contact and told her.
Or I never should’ve been here to begin with.
“When they open the door, we jump them,” Melinoë said as she paced. “Just go right at them. No one’s prepared for that.”
“Unless they have your gun.”
“I can disarm them.”
My stomach churned. We were locked in here—they didn’t even need to come for us. They could just wait until we starved. Or more likely died of dehydration.
I eyed the door again—hinges were on the other side. There were multiple locks if not a bar. Maybe throwing our weight on it might make it budge, maybe not. No way to pick a lock if it was on the other side.
I sat silently on the floor while I thought, idly pressing my palm to my left thigh and squeezing my eyes shut.
I did not want to do it. It might not even work here, but that wasn’t really what scared me—what scared me was what it would cost me if it did work.
But we might not have another choice. Melinoë and I might not be close, but we certainly weren’t enemies, and I didn’t wish her ill at all—I couldn’t let an innocent die because I was stubborn about paying this price for potential help. And Dev was already missing. What would it do to Dad if both his kids disappeared without a trace?
I cleared my throat as I opened my eyes again. “I might have a Hail Mary pass if we can’t break free.”
Melinoë stopped pacing and turned to look at me.
“Literally last resort.”
Something in my expression must’ve warned her because her cheeks went ashen and expression was grave. “What do you need?”
“One of these nails.”
We found a good candidate with minimal rust and kicked at it until it bent. Back and forth a few times, the old metal snapped. I was left with about two inches of steel.
I scraped off some of the rust with my fingernail and tested the end—it was sharp, with enough pressure it could cut skin. Thankfully I was up to date on my tetanus shot.
I set it aside and unbuttoned my jeans, worked the zipped down.
“Uh, Elis?” she asked.
“I need to rip my jeans.” I got them down enough that there was some give to work with, roughly guessed where I need to tear, and used the nail to rip through the fabric.
Melinoë eyed the tattoo on my thigh. “I don’t recognize that.”
I raised a brow at that and glanced at her standing over me. “You don’t?”
“Should I?”
“It’s Enochian. The Aanzhenii use it.” The writing formed a sigil, with one gap in the center. There was no scar there—not once had I ever used this.
But worst-case scenario, this was our only potential option to get out.
I pulled my jeans back up and checked the tear—it was right over the center of the tattoo, right where the gap was. The nail, after running it through the open flame of the lantern on the wall and letting it cool, I worked into the sleeve of my hoodie in a tiny tear.
Now we had nothing to do but wait.
*
I checked my phone enough to know roughly an hour had passed when we heard steps outside the door. Melinoë flew to her feet immediately as the lock clicked and door started to open.
Just as a figure stepped through, she threw herself forward; a club cracked against her, tossing her back. I was on my feet then, crouched around Melinoë protectively.
Steps clomped on the floor as we were surrounded. I recognized our assailants, vaguely. Three of them in the room now, several crowding the hall outside the door—all townspeople. The man in front of me had worked the diner we’d been at, the waitress from the bar beside him—fucking bitch, we’d left her sixty bucks in tips. The nearest figure was a man I didn’t know but he had to be from the town as well. They all carried clubs that flared with foreign sigils, and the one I didn’t recognize had rope.
Our hands were bound and they dragged me forward first, Melinoë behind. With every step I called for magic but nothing answered. It wasn’t just the room, it was the entire building.
I couldn’t say any longer if it was a cabin or what. No windows, just a long winding hall that seemed to move downward though there were no stairs. Other locked doors, each with padlocks and pairs of horizontal bars. I heard nothing out of the ordinary, just our own steps.
At least my hands were bound in front. I shifted a little so I could reach the nail. It wasn’t enough to cut through the rope, but I just needed to cut skin.
Should’ve told Melinoë what to do. What if I’m incapacitated? But I hadn’t warned her because I had this one thing, this one possibility, tucked in my back pocket. I didn’t want to use it, swore I never would, and I didn’t trust she wouldn’t jump the gun if given a chance.
I still intended to get out of this another way.
At the end of the corridor, we were taken through a set of double doors into a wide hall that reminded me of a church. Rows of benches with an aisle between, but instead of a pulpit there was a large armchair with no back, the seat and arms plush with blue-hued fabric, and the base polished dark wood. Hand-built, and larger than an average chair.
There was a pit to the right of the chair, just two feet deep with a ridge of gray stone around the top and a floor made of wood, where Melinoë and I were led. I stepped down carefully while Melinoë took a shove to get her to join me. Nothing else out of place in the small round pit, but I was left unsettled. Still no use of magic for me.
We waited in the pit silently—Melinoë practically seething while my mind was whirling, trying to put together pieces when I knew I didn’t have all of them. The hall was lit by torches, my gaze following them up to the vaulted ceiling. Definitely church-like.
The double doors remained open and a few minutes later steps sounded beyond them, clopping along like an army. The people appeared, townsfolk we’d seen in St. Philip Point the past forty-eight hours.
At least it wasn’t a swarm of demon rats, but humans were just as bad in my experience.
None looked at us; they filed in, parting like streams onto the benches while staring straight ahead. Seeing them all together now, I realized most were wearing crosses, making this whole thing seem more and more like something religious.
Melinoë nudged my shoulder and lifted her chin in their direction, eyes wide.
I searched the faces until I saw the one she likely meant—Jim.
The man I’d killed last night.
He was dead in that ditch from a heart attack. Like really, seriously dead. His heart had stopped. He wasn’t breathing. Plus, I mean, I am good at what I do. I don’t leave survivors. I’d lost track of how many men I’d killed but I can say unequivocally none are currently still alive.
Except apparently this one.
Melinoë never saw a body the next day and no one mentioned the death. What the fuck was going on here?
When all were seated, filling the benches with more than a hundred people, the rear doors closed.
Not all of them were familiar, I realized. There were others I hadn’t seen in town, blank stares and weathered skin, clean clothes but something off and almost...dirty about them. The space filled with artificial scents like perfume, but beneath that was a rot.
There were no flowers in the cemetery.
A really ugly thought was starting to form, one I did not enjoy because if I was right, we were about to meet someone incredibly powerful and deadly—much more so than little me.
With all seated, silence fell among the group. None of them guarded us but there was nowhere for us to go—climbing out of the pit with
our hands bound would be tricky, and the only door seemed to be the one we’d come through—which meant a lot of people to pass to get out. Who knew how many were outside the doors or waiting.
A long, sonorous hum came from those assembled then, a deeply disturbing harmony that left my skin prickling. I would’ve covered my ears if I could’ve, something about the noise just as strange as the whole experience had been. Melinoë cringed beside me, tucked close to my side as we watched and waited.
The humming came to a crescendo and suddenly ceased, the silence falling heavily like darkness. I inadvertently held my breath.
The air crackled in front of us around the chair at the front of the room, sparking but not with lightness and electricity—instead it was black nothingness, a void of energy, the opposite of what I did.
Oh no.
I moved back on instinct, the backs of my knees hitting the wall of the pit.
The black forking energy widened as the air rent, the dimension giving a painful, audible screech as something tore reality. A booted foot stepped out of nothingness, then the rest of the body followed, hands gripping the dimensional tear and pulling it open fully. The figure was over seven feet tall, clothing slate gray wrappings around its legs and arms, a tunic over its torso and past the hips. Black leather gloves covered hands with extra-jointed fingers, and the creature’s profile showed a long narrow face with pointed features, something vaguely human and yet not. Skin was paper-white, stretched over sinewy muscle and bone, almost translucent and showing foreign cells beneath.
Last were the wings, the same height as the creature and with a span twice that should they extend. They remained folded and I understood then why the chair was backless.
The air closed up again as he sat and turned terrifying white eyes to us.
All the humans fell to their knees, heads bowed in prayer.
Son of a bitch, these fucking humans worshiped Aanzhenii.
Eighteen
Hail Mary Pass
Brethren of Angels. This was much worse than even I had been anticipating.
Melinoë stared in open horror—apparently all this hunting she’d done with Dev, she hadn’t gotten this close to one of them. I had been, but that didn’t shake the disturbingness of the creature’s presence.
The demons in our world were, for the most part, fairly acclimated. Or, rather, the earth had been acclimated to them over tens of thousands of years in preparation for an apocalypse that didn’t fully happen.
The Aanzhenii, though, did not come from those realms. They were entirely alien. The earth did not like their presence, like something existing here that should not. I wasn’t sure if they had the same reaction to being here as we did to them—if they did, they never showed it.
The spelling of this building to prevent magic did not apply to them because their power was so far the opposite of mine.
I said nothing, chewing on the inside of my mouth.
He watched us for seemingly endless moments, and then at last turned to his congregation. “And what have you brought me today?”
His voice rent the air and I winced, a pain starting behind my eyes as the atmosphere quivered.
Automatically one of the people rose, one from the nearest bench at the very end—a woman next to the man we’d toyed with at the motel, presumably his wife. “Witches, my lord.”
I knew they were worshipping him but “my lord” almost had my eyes rolling out of my head.
“I see. And thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?” He glanced at me, a smirk of all things passing his mouth. “Their words, not mine, little witch.”
I’d read about this, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner, but I’d never heard of a case in Canada. It was more of a south of the border kind of thing, but there was a whole contingent of humans who believed the Aanzhenii were “angels”. Like actual biblical ones.
Not surprising considering that’s where the name we called them came from—the Ojibwe-language word, from what I could recall, and whoever heard of these creatures gave them that label at some point in history. What they self-identified as, I couldn’t say. But great winged beings that tore their way from the sky, vaguely humanoid and capable of a whole host of “miraculous” powers—that read as angel to a lot of gullible people.
Never mind that they were alien monsters, although, having read the bible, I could concede that yes, that would match up with the traditional description even if people didn’t want to admit it.
Generally the Aanzhenii wanted nothing to do with humans. But this one seemed settled here, being worshipped. He—and I was assuming here, I wasn’t sure how gender worked and hadn’t asked in detail, but I would go with whatever I was directed to should we enter a conversation about pronouns—regarded his people.
Some of them were dead, I believed. No fresh flowers in the cemetery, no recent graves. Jim was alive after I’d killed him. This creature raised the dead, or at least animated them. No one had really studied their powers and there was no telling what actually inhabited the bodies before us, but it was enough of a trick to make these people his followers.
Creepy fucking town. Where the hell was Dev?
“I’ll speak to the witches,” he said and gave a dismissive wave. “Await me outside.”
They all stood silently but, before going, dropped to a bow. This amused the creature, if the flick of his thin lips was any indication, though I supposed it might’ve also been contempt. Then the humans filed out again just as they had entered, in an organized, rehearsed fashion. Back out the doors, which closed after the last person.
Leaving me and Melinoë alone with the creature.
He glanced at us and then gave a flick of his finger.
Energy seized us, like icy fingers wrapping around my hips, a coldness that seeped through my clothes and skin straight to my bones. The force jerked us up from the pit and five feet ahead to be before him, both of us suspended a foot off the ground. My heart hammered violently, and I could not think of a single way out of this—other than to maybe run my mouth off. I tried to angle my leg so he wouldn’t see the tattoo and made a show of looking at the floor—in my peripheral vision, it seemed the tear in my jeans still obstructed a view of what lay beyond it.
“You’ve got them worshipping you?” I said at last.
His white eyes narrowed. “They’re easily led.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“Whatever I desire.”
He could already take whatever he wanted, but I didn’t press. “They kill witches?”
A loose, easy shrug. “Humans. They have their rituals.”
So did they kill my brother? “Did they kill another witch the past week? More specifically a male one?”
That drew his curiosity, his head tilting to the side. “Is that what brings you to my little place?”
“Yes.”
His tongue darted out like a thin white worm and wet his lips. No one knew what they ate or drank, if they needed oxygen, whether they were carbon-based or anything even close to that, but I knew his teeth were sharp like a predator’s and I tried to focus on the rest of his face rather than that little fact. “No. They bring them to see me first. No other recent witch. Will you die easier knowing that?”
“I don’t intend to die.”
His smile was eerie, full of sharp teeth and purely predatory. Mine probably looked the same when I was about to kill someone. “They never do.”
Melinoë said nothing, glaring daggers that might’ve set him on fire had that power been in her arsenal—and if we weren’t both blocked.
“Why are you fucking with humans?” I asked. “What is the point of this?”
“You’ve never been worshipped, child. There’s nothing like it.”
Motherfucking right-wing fundamentalist cults worshiping actual monsters who would as soon blow their heads off. A few years ago there was a rumour of a Brethren cult trying to form out west but it never got off the ground, and there’d n
ever been one here. This had to be an American influence. Huge swathes of the US were walled off now, the almost-apocalypse not going over well down there. No one I knew ever stepped foot in the country even with good reason.
I supposed that was something sort of human about the Aanzhenii—they were seduced the same way people were by perceived power.
“You die at dawn,” he said plainly. “The humans have their rituals, as I said—they will bring you clothes, cleanse you, offer to save your soul if you confess. You can swear allegiance to me—many have tried—but you will never be without your powers and cannot repent enough. They will hang you both. There will be a fire. That will be quick, but your torture will not.”
With a flick of his hand, we were thrust back to the pit. The floor beneath it gave way and dumped us into the darkness below.
*
Ten feet, that was all we fell, but without warning we landed in a muddy heap in the blackness.
The air stank, a deep dankness of old shit and piss and blood. Probably a torture chamber.
We were also in total blackness, which meant I couldn’t see my tattoo.
“Okay what the fuck,” Melinoë hissed.
“You haven’t seen these cults before?”
“Not up close and personal.” She shuffled beside me.
“Hold still, I need you to get my phone from my back pocket.”
Awkwardly we shifted around until my back was to her front. I bit back a joke about her getting fresh with me as she felt around for the phone stuck next to my ass, but at last she got it. Passed it to me, and I thumbed it on by memory, switching to flashlight mode.
Now this was a proper pit. Or dungeon, take your pick.
It was round, the walls weathered stone. About sixteen feet diameter. There were chains, both hanging from the ceiling and the walls, and a bloody wooden chair in the middle.
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