by D. M. Pratt
“I don’t care what he said, I want no part of it,” a woman’s voice said.
“You gave up that choice years ago, Doctor,” a man’s voice answered. “Besides, I can’t do it without you.”
“It will be done in an hour and then I’m getting out,” she responded sounding more desperate than angry.
“It’s too late for that as well. You know that too. Just shut up and do as you are told and maybe…” he said and then stopped. “…. he’ll let us go.”
They were on the ground floor. Eve knew the voice. She leaned forward and as they stood at the bottom of the stairs she could see Millard Le Masters talking with a female doctor in a white lab coat.
Eve pressed herself back against the fourth closed door and held her breath. A barred window in the door of a small room was behind her head. She felt fingers touch her hair. Eve turned and a face peered out at her. A woman, young, as best as Eve could tell, peered from the darkness. Her eyes defined the word terror.
“Last door on the left. The utility closet,” the face whispered. “Don’t let them get you.”
The face faded back into the blackness of the room. Eve turned and looked. She had been offered sanctuary. She scurried down the hall, found the only unlocked door and slipped into the small room. Just as she closed the door the glow of light reached underneath it. She did her best to control her racing heart and shallow quick breaths, taking a moment’s respite from whatever was coming. She heard footsteps, but no voices. They came closer, opened the door across the hall from her and stepped through heading into the walkway that led to the back tower.
Eve jerked the door to the utility room open. The door across the hall from her was slowly closing. Another moment and the lock would have sealed her out. She raced across, reached and grabbed the handle keeping the magnetic lock from catching. Eve stilled herself, listening until the footsteps faded away.
She tore a piece of rag from the burlap roll and placed it carefully between the locking mechanism and the door. Eve laid the bundle down and quietly ran back to the fourth door searching for the face of the terrified person who’d saved her.
“Thank you,” Eve whispered.
“Get out before it’s too late,” the voice whispered
Whoever it was hid from her. The garish light from the hallway spilled into the small room. Eve could see a cot, sink, dresser and a small desk. There was a doll on the bed. Rumpled covers with soft green leaves and pale pink and white flowers crawling on vines stood empty and abandoned.
“Why are you here?” Eve whispered.
There was so answer.
“Are they holding you against your will?” Eve asked a second question.
“Please. Tell me what I can do to help you?” Eve asked.
The timer on the hall lights switched off and the corridor fell into blackness. The soft silver moonlight came through the window into the tiny room and replaced the harsh ugly green of the neon from the hall with cool tones of blue and pale silver gray. Suddenly the person, half in shadow stepped into the light. Eve could only see the profile of her body, long blonde hair that hung past her shoulders and the soft cheeks and mouth of a girl, a young girl. Eve saw one other thing. She was pregnant.
“Where are your parents?” Eve asked.
“I have none. It’s why I was chosen,” she whispered.
“Chosen by who? For what?” Eve asked.
“I needed a home, a place to stay. They gave me food and he… he said he loved me. I’m having his child, we are all…having his child,” the girl said and started to weep.
“All?” Eve asked.
She turned her head and looked down at all the locked doors that filled the corridor. She counted at least twenty, maybe more. Shit, Eve thought. Eve’s heart began to pump with adrenalin as additional pieces of an even more disgusting and very bizarre puzzle were added to an already perplexing and still undefined picture.
“Don’t let them take my baby,” the girl said.
Eve felt for this girl. She was no more than seventeen or eighteen, alone, pregnant and trapped, not by a regular mad person but a fucking demon who was breeding humans for… for what?
“What’s your name?” Eve asked.
“Azura,” she replied. “Azura Peet.”
“I’ve called the police, Azura,” Eve told her. “They’ll be here and they will get us out. I’ll be back.”
“Don’t leave me,” Azura said.
“I’ve got to find the keys to open the door. Just don’t have that baby until I get back here,” Eve said.
Azura nodded, reaching her fingers through the bars and touching Eve’s hand.
“Promise you’ll come back,” the girl implored.
“I promise,” Eve said.
Eve slipped away from the girl and made her way back to the hallway door, gathered her bundle and pulled the handle. She put the cloth in her pocket and waited for the door to seal shut. The click sent a shiver through her that the lock was there to keep people in as well as keep them out. Eve pulled out her cell phone and opened it to call Mac to make sure he was on his way. If they hadn’t gotten him out or Kirakin had killed him, maybe calling the police wasn’t such a bad idea. If they could get through the gate, she could help them through the illusion. Maybe. She turned on her phone. The battery was low, but even worse she had no bars. The swamp held zero cell towers. She dialed and waited. Nothing happened.
“Shit. Just be on your way, Mac,” she whispered.
Eve turned and headed through the dim light of the full moon to the tower at Thibodaux Asylum.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The door to the tower was unlocked. As she entered, the space was much larger than she’d first calculated. From the front administration building it had looked thinner and taller. Now that she was inside the tower was huge. A wide stairway curved upwards lit by moonlight that streaked in through a series of vertical turret-shaped windows cut into the brick. The narrow windows let the moon’s light fall across five floors of what looked like the inside of a curling nautilus shell. She imagined how they gracefully connected to circular halls on each floor, which in turn connected to multiple rooms. A small, half-moon-shaped elevator door waited opposite her, but Eve knew she needed to walk for fear someone would hear the elevator and know she was approaching. Eve looked up at the host of dim night lights that emanated from each floor. The lights gave the place a comforting feeling and the air around her felt soft and warm. There was no smell of pungent chemical cleaners that usually permeated hospitals, only the sweet scent of the warm summer night mixed with night blooming jasmine. Eve couldn’t see what was behind the single door that stood at the far end of the first floor inside the circular hall. She stepped closer and a wave of dizziness washed through her; she reached out and held onto the wall to steady herself. With the dizziness came the scent of honey, thick and sweet. It was the aroma she’d always gotten from Beau. It lingered on her skin after they’d made love and she could taste his sweetness on her lips and in her mouth. She felt herself salivate. She started perspiring, her inner thighs flushed sticky and moist. She felt him.
“No” she whispered. “Not now.”
She demanded her thoughts to stop. She had to find a place and lay the powders, draw the circles and pentagram, set the candle and prepare the silver spike. She had to figure a way to distinguish the difference between the real Beau from the manifestation the Nephilim conjured and sent to her. Was there a difference? She thought. He had come to her without the Nephilim hadn’t he? Hadn’t he? She would know the difference between Beau and the Nephilim itself. She had to.
There was something about being in the confines of the hospital walls that made everything feel different. She could feel Beau’s thoughts searching for her, reaching for hers through the thickness of the walls and the dense night air. Eve felt the strength in her legs coming back as the rush of dizziness cleared from her head.
Eve grasped the thick wooden handrail and began to ascend the sta
irs. She noticed how each floor was painted a different color of pastel – pale pink, baby blue, soft yellow and could see the lightest green adorned the first floor. Eve reached the second floor and gathered her courage. It and the one above sat centered by a big curved glass wall and looked into a wide half moon shaped room. A soft light emanated from this room as Eve crossed closer to look. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching her. She peered in and saw rows of small beds, each bed filled with a peacefully sleeping child. Eve covered her mouth. She moved back away from the glass, her mind fitting the pieces of a complicated puzzle together into a picture she didn’t want to see. She turned and moved up the next set of steps. The yellow of the second floor blended like a sunset into baby blue and the ever continuing wall led to another glass window. It too held rows of beds. They were slightly bigger, enough space for toddlers up to perhaps five-or six-year-old children. Eve’s mind raced as she continued up the next flight of stairs, watching the blue bleed into the pale pink of a sunrise. Another glass wall, more stairs and more beds, each time a little bigger, each time filled with children. She reached the soft sea foam green of the fourth floor. Behind the curved glass there were fewer beds but they too held children. She stepped closer, pressing her face to the glass. Sweet dreaming faces resting in warm comfortable beds. These were the eldest she’d seen. Some children looked as old as perhaps twelve or thirteen. Their skin and hair was as varied as their features. The children included every nationality from white blonde to ebony black and a rainbow of humanity in between, each child more exquisitely beautiful than the next. She wanted to scream out and demand for someone to tell her why? Why are these children here? Who do they belong to? Why and by whom are they being bred?
Eve looked down at the bundle in her arms. She’d come to stop some great evil, but other than the illusions of the gate and the crusted buildings she’d only seen beauty. Beauty! She reminded herself. Except the frightened young girl and the impossible possibility that Cora might have been taken from the hospital, she thought. Then there were the murders of Evine and Ms. Clarisse. Although that had not happened here, there was no beauty in those horrific events. The Nephilim had taken her too, she couldn’t forget that. That’s only what she knew about. What if others have died?
She turned her face and looked up the stairwell that led to the fifth floor. Eve squeezed the burlap roll tighter, placed her hand on the smooth wooden rail and made herself place one foot before the other up the stairs to the top floor. When she reached the top, there were no glass walls only a single door: a door with no bars or window to look through. The door was solid, made of oiled oak with iron hinges, closed and hiding its mysteries inside.
Eve stepped to the door. She pressed her body against the rough honed wood as she slipped the bag inside her coat. Quietly she placed her hands on either side of her, turning her face to gently lay her ear on the door. The sound was soft and distant but she could hear Millard’s voice and the voice of the doctor. One of them was pacing impatiently. Waiting for the stroke of midnight, she thought. Beau was inside too. She could feel it in her heart and something told her Cora was there—hurt and helpless. She wanted to burst in and draw the gun and kill them, free Cora and Beau and run away, but the Nephilim would never allow something so simple and clean. She needed to destroy it or them and seal the portal. Eve stepped away from the door and turned back into the room.
The moon broke from behind cloud cover and the shift in light drew her attention to her arms and the floor. She’d been washed in shapes that fell across her in magnificent colors. Eve looked up and saw arched above her a massive, stained glass dome. It turned the white moonlight into a pallet of hues and myriad shapes. The scene in the leaded glass was a biblical version of paradise; a golden sun shone down on purple and red hills, lush green plants and fruit trees, colorful flowers, animals and birds all coexisted together in peace alongside a flowing stream. Glittering green-blue water with fish frolicking happily in the ripples of a river flowed by the scene. No humans, Eve thought. Even still, it was breathtaking and for a moment, she felt safe. Here, she thought, this is where I should take my stand. This is where I should meet the Nephilim.
Eve positioned herself at the very center of the floor and unfolded her arms. The burlap roll was worn and weathered. Pieces of thread hung like skinny rag dolls dangling helplessly from the edges. The empty corner where she’d torn out the piece to hold the lock open stared angrily back at her. The fabric, though coarse and tough, was in fact frail and delicate. It felt weathered and smooth in her hands and held in its fibers both sadness and strength. Evine had prepared each ingredient meticulously sometime in the last hours of her life and filled each vial and candle with the power of her knowledge. She’d created weapons of protection and destruction.
There, in the flood of colors shifting in and out of clouds, light fell down from the ever rising moon; she laid the fabric on the floor and carefully unrolled it. Each turn exposed one more element; the vials of red, black and white powder and the red and white candles appeared on the floor in front of her. Finally, she touched the narrow silver spike; hand hammered from pure silver, it was as long as her hand and as thick as half her finger.
Remembering the visuals from the picture, Eve gathered the first vial of white powder and carefully poured lines with the coarse grains; lines that would form the five points of the unicursal pentagon. The star had to be formed using five straight, unbroken lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon. Her angles were straight and sure allowing the finer granules of dust from the powder to curl up like tiny ghosts, carrying a smell of pungent white sulfur to rise up and burn her nose. It was mixed with a hint of white sage to soften the bitter scent, but she still had to wrinkle her nose so as not to sneeze. She finished the last line and looked down. The lines crossed and each of the five points reached out from the center pentagram, their tips looking like five knives jutting out around her. She felt a rush of strength the instant she closed the last line. Some ancient inner voice inside her gave her the feeling that if she could stand inside the three circles and place her feet at the very center inside the pentacle, it could protect her.
The first outer circle she drew according to the picture was made of the black powder. Fine grains of the ink black powder sparkled, catching the light as she tipped it from the vial. It fell heavily onto the floor. No dust rose as she poured. It lay motionless on the wood floor. This was to be the innermost circle, black iron carefully drawn. She had to make sure the black line touched each of the white tips that reached out of the white pentagram. The black felt powerful as it fell to the floor, lying smooth and flat. This would be her great ebony wall. The black iron would create her last line of defense; the final barrier of her inner sanctum sealed the white pentacle with its army of points.
Eve studied the strange art she was creating. The two elements matched the drawing perfectly.
She opened the red powder and the scent of amber and cayenne burned her throat and made her eyes water. The harsh scent flooded every cell of her body. It was the Nephilim’s scent: hot and spicy with an intoxicating sweetness that, until that very moment, she hadn’t realized was part of Beau’s taste. The taste had lingered on her skin and lips after Beau as the Nephilim had made love to her. That was how she could tell the difference. Her senses could distinguish the sting of the red pepper when it mixed with Beau’s sweet honey. That combination of their two scents was a provocative passionate aphrodisiac; its scent had become a prelude to the pleasure before, during and after each time she had been seduced. It was there, lingering whenever he or they made love to her. She felt the tingling of promise in the core of her body. A part of her found it, and thereby him, irresistible. Forgetting for a moment, she opened her mind to the thought of him and in that instant she wanted him, ached for him, his fingers in her hair, his touch, his kiss, his body commingling with hers.
“STOP IT RIGHT NOW! Don’t you dare go there,” Eve whispered out
loud in a harsh whisper.
She checked the closed door, holding her breath and hoping no one had heard her. Eve shook her head and refocused on the task at hand. She had to keep her thoughts off of the sexuality Beau ignited in her. Her fear of what it could mean if the Nephilim came to her before she was ready was not anything she was ready to deal with at the moment. It was the scope of danger that she, Cora and Beau were in that brought her back to the reality at hand. Eve focused on the ancient ritual, reopening the vial of white powder. The sulfur mixed with the pepper and iron smelled like fresh blood. The scent wafted up. It stung her nostrils and burned her eyes as pungent as the first strike of smoke that billows from the tip of a newly lit match when it ignites. The smell was dark and bitter; Dante’s Inferno she thought. Hell. His hell and she was heading into the ninth circle to take him on. The combination of scents turned her stomach and a rush of bile surged into the back of her throat. Maybe it would repel her from his seduction and wake her from her passions. Maybe, she hoped. Maybe it would draw the Nephilim out of Beau and to her.
She poured the white powder so that it gave just enough space to hold her feet and Cora’s or Beau’s. How could she leave either? There was enough space between the white and red and then between the red and the black. Here’s where she would trap the Nephilim and hold it until she could take out the spike, say the words and plunge the spike into its right temple. Then it would be over.