"Enough."
I heard the sound over the din but could not see where it had come from. Melody had got to her feet and was scrabbling around in the detritus of her former home and during the fighting had located a bottle of clean water in a plastic bottle and was now offering it to her shocked guests. The best had black soot around their nostrils and mouths with blood drained white faces and deep open eyes like devilish court jesters, the worst were adorned with full ash masks which were smeared from eye to cheek in tear lines where the soot caked into charcoal stains as they began to weep uncontrollably. My duty was to help those in need and less fortunate than I but I did not turn towards the group that were now sat at Melody's feet being given water and aid; instead it went to my employer, my friend, who had rescued and supported me through more stories than this book has pages and if this was the end of us, of him and me, here on this scorched site in burning woods then I could see no better place than by his side.
"Enough."
The word wasn't repeated it just filled the world. I was moving with all the energy I could muster in my fear and grief for my fallen friend. All I had just done had occurred within a heartbeat as the sound carried on. The trees were ignited in a celebration of light but no smoke billowed above them, instead it was pulled into the creature as if it was sustaining itself from the destruction of the ancient oaks and majestic silver skinned birch and regaining its strength like a fallen soldier taking succour from the canteen of a comrade. Mary was visible now, untouched and unsullied by the products of combustion and standing as she was within the flickering death of an oak whose life had spread many generations of my ancestors, she was as clean and pure with perfect neutral hues to her skin and clothes not burn or even singed as if she were protected from such devastation by a higher power. For all I knew she probably was.
"Enough."
The word finished and everything seemed still, even the rampaging flame high above and surrounding us obeyed the command and contented itself with a flicker made ghostly in the brilliant moonlight.
Mary was radiantly beautiful with skin so pale like a porcelain doll and radiating confidence with a smudge of inner truth known only to children displaying curved chocolate remains thickly applied to their lips and cheeks whilst standing defying their mother over her accusations of the last know location of the sweet treats now not residing in the torn wrapper lying discarded at their feet.
She stepped forward out of the flames and towards Xanthic who was still and unmoving apart from the curling of his fingers. I willed him to get up, to move away from the tiger stalking him in the forest. He did not.
Mary stood over him, a look of contempt upon her face and she spat down onto his body.
"I have never seen anyone bring low a Dancer.” She said acidly, “and I feel your power even now as it ebbs away Dark One. I can taste the deceit on you as clearly as I can see you. The male form suits all that you stand for and your duplicitous nature, your presence here sullies the purity of the Universal Mother and the sisterhood. But now it is over, the Universal Mother will take you in and cleanse you of your ills"
Was it over? Did Mary show her strength and now wanted to show her compassion? Somehow I doubted it.
Mary pulled out of a sheaf a long knife of her own. It was all ornamentation and flair, the kind that even if sharpened regularly would dull and be blunt even by looking at it. A fancy knife good only for looking at. I knew from studying old manuscripts the true blades that symbolised power or which had removed the beating hearts of thousands of sacrifices were not pretty nor were they covered in any flowering scrollwork or unnecessary decoration, they were hard, they were sharp and they did what they had to do and did it well. Some had runes or symbols carved into the cold metal but first and foremost they were designed to cut and to kill.
In a blur of motion that swept the scene, with a thumping musical accompaniment Xanthic spun on his back bringing a leg around in a wide arc which toppled Mary like a bowling pin and with his other he kicked her away sending her ignobly into the ash covered undergrowth where she swore deeply and loudly repeating a curse well practiced and learned by rote.
They both rose showing no weakness or signs that the last few moments had actually happened, but neither exactly sprang to their feet. It was like watching a Grandpa leave the room and ascend the stairs ignoring his arthritis and swollen knee after Grandma had informed him, against all logical progression of time and the calendar clearly showing a different date, it was his birthday and she was waiting in the bedroom to give him his present.
Once upright, Xanthic rested his staff vertically on the toe of his boot while his hands gripped it firmly at its centre. His aura-sonus smoothed taking the peaks of heavy brass down to the gentle air of a bright flute as if he was saving his breath for the final bars of the song.
The smoke dancer seemed to be licking its wounds with harsh distortions of colour slashed across the once again muscular body where Xanthic's earlier attacks had landed. Behind the sockets that held dull muddy eyes anger burned.
"I've been called worse." shrugged Xanthic calmly in reply to the comments aimed at him moments ago.
"Duplicitous cuts both ways Hag, Your body hides your form perfectly, at least superficially from the easily fooled."
"I fool no one, I give them what I promise, a connection to power and a release from the shackles of the mortal realm. What do you deliver unto people of this world in their cattle like understandings other than words that turn from ash in your mouth to cancers in their ears. You have given nothing but taken it all." Mary's voice sounded like song and it rose and fell in timbre like a mother calming a fallen child.
"I thought I knew it all, I thought I had this figured out. A silly group of girls wanting more from their small lives and falling for a confident leader who promises everything they want and then sells them down the river for profit or amusement. It’s how cults start, it’s how girls go to the black market as innocents and if they survive end up chewed up, used and spat out when they no longer have a use. Only you have taken more from this, made a deal with the Devil or worse than the Devil and gloried in what you have imagined as power. But you have been greedy, whatever your Master’s intentions were with you have changed, I have been put on your trail and that of the vampire, to hunt you and trap you."
"What vampire? Are you mad?” She called back “You know nothing of me. I am a sister to our Mother, the Universal Mother. I love these girls like my own and send them away to be part of something bigger. They will return stronger and better in the fullness of time." came the reply.
"They return in body bags if there is enough left of them to scrape off the floor." I heard myself scream and pulled back in shock at the sound as Mary turned to look at me.
"They come back stronger as real women and go off to spread the word to sisters in need across this once beautiful Country and it will be beautiful again when my sisters rise up and show the stifling controlling." she directed the next comment straight at me, looking into my eyes with pure hatred. "You could have been by my side when the tide turned and elevated us to the powers promised by She but you have thrown it to waste, you could have been great." there was pity there but mixed with anger like chillies mixed into milk.
"Have you seen what happened to your girls? Have you seen their suffering?" I exclaimed from a slightly pulled back location edging behind Xanthic, who stood there taking it all in. I could see his eyes flitting across every angle of the area taking it all in, I knew he was processing the information and I hoped he was formulating a plan.
“Because I have and they died fearful and confused on a butcher's table.”
"How very dare you.” Mary screamed at me. “How very dare you accuse me of such things, I love them all. What do you love? One so freely laying her head on the shoulder of a deceiver, of a tainted creature not fit to look a at woman let alone command her. No, I do not cause them pain, I free them to fulfil their destiny but will you cause them pain and suff
ering?" she said this defiantly whilst raising her arms high as if calling to the sky itself.
The wind didn't so much as blow but funnel its flow in a concentrated tunnel of motion as the single colossal smoke dancer soundlessly laughed before pouring itself back into rivers of burnt fumes which streamed like dirtied water down a plughole into the remaining girls on Mary's side of Xanthic's defensive line. They staggered forward dully before their eyes took on a ruddy sheen and they moved towards us with purpose. Xanthic raised his staff and swung it a few times like a club in preparation of the attack.
"You can't." I called into his ear as a thunderous mix of crackling fire, pouring wind and inhuman voices filled the forest, the aura-sonus gearing up for a key change coming off Xanthic like a stink. "Don't hurt them it’s not their fault."
Xanthic's practice swinging slowed and he looked at me. He threw out an arm in the direction of the smoke infused teenagers who were almost upon us.
"You think they are innocent? They want to rip our heads off and pour smog into our lungs without having the restrictions of forcing its way down our throats."
"But they are just girls." I said in a final attempt to convince him to find another way. A whack by an aged length of timber may slow down an otherworldly smoke monster, but I'll bet a month’s wages it'll be more permanent on a teenage body.
"Trust me." he said as he pushed me back and I felt Melody's arms take hold of me and pull me away from the fight and out the back way from the cottage into the cool night air and the last unburnt undergrowth and pushed me to flee the area. I was caught up in the group and tussled around in general direction of 'away', I managed to hold onto a tree to pull myself away from the gravitational pull as strong as any moon feels next to their planet away from the escaping group when I saw Xanthic without delicacy or any sign of remorse knocking the staff against the unprotected beautiful blonde haired head of Gemma.
My heart filled my throat in a hard lump and I felt sorrow for the pain she must be in. Her face didn't show any, I saw the staff connect to the side of her face, a good amount of the end met the length of her chin and up to her temple, it even followed through taking with it flesh and teeth and bone, I could see the figure falling to the side just as I could see Gemma stood upright just stood there looking confused but I didn't have time to look in depth to this as the others, came at him snarling with strands of saliva dripping out of their mouths. They looked hot, not just the full blossom flower of youth hot but as if they were igniting internally. Pyrolysis vapours began along their robes before flames gutted in and out of life.
Xanthic hit these girls too, taking the staff from right though to left in a massive swing.
My heart filled my throat in a hard lump and I felt sorrow for the pain she must be in. Her face didn't show any, I saw the staff connect to the side of her face, a good amount of the end met the length of her chin and up to her temple, it even followed through taking with it flesh and teeth and bone, I could see the figure falling to the side just as I could see Gemma stood upright just stood there looking confused but I didn't have time to look in depth to this as the others, came at him snarling with strands of saliva dripping out of their mouths. They looked hot, not just the full blossom flower of youth hot but as if they were igniting internally. Pyrolysis vapours began along their robes before flames gutted in and out of life.
Xanthic's first thrust of his weapon sent it forward into the closest girl’s stomach, it caught her and she bent over. The second tore at Xanthic's face with manicured nails painted in high gloss sweet pink; they touched his face and I grimaced in anticipated of my employers pain but each of the nail pinged off one by one as they failed to rake deep lacerations into his cheek. I bet her shining blonde hair was fake too. She screamed a brimstone char of frustration then threw a punch as ineffectual as her last assault which Xanthic hardly registered brushing it off easily. The creature inside rallied and the white vapours up the arms ignited fiercely quickly spreading across her whole torso then without flair fell forward arms outstretched spreading flames which greedily ate into the fabric on Xanthic's clothes everywhere her body touched.
The Bo staff struck again taking the girl away but leaving a flaming dancer where she once stood. The wooden weapon was removing the Dancers from their unwilling hosts and Mary was becoming enraged. Dancer after Dancer fell to Xanthic's sweeping assaults through the burning clearing, he himself was burning with green tipped flames which slipped off his body in snakes of dripping oil.
I had not been slack in my absence of the intervening narrative, I had recovered Gemma who appeared concussed and shoved her as best I could in the direction of Melody and her former Akelarre sisters. I now stood in the open dragging bewildered girls to the relative safety of the blocks strewn across the clearing and the path to if not freedom at least clean air. At the back, away from the fire fight where the night sky was visible without the thick barrier of smoke plumes I could see the bold white moon smiling down on me almost caring in the way the craters appeared to be tear fuelled eyes. Within the woods there was a great undertaking, movement as if a stampede of cattle were charging upon our fixed point from the radius leading to the safety of the nearest road and the real world filled with people doing people things and thinking simple people thoughts.
Xanthic had cleared up the last of the smoke dancers, which without human batteries and pushed back away from the main seats of fire were dwindling fast just like the last few flames desperately trying to maintain their intensity on the last black lump of spent wood on an open fire and just like those flames they were darkening and growing cold. Mary would not give up the fight and rallied the smoke around her as a General would his last standing men after a failed charge she ordered them to fight to the last to protect her and cleanse the world with their fire this devil of a man who stood before her smashing her rightful place in the universe. The smoke Dancers attacked but like anything that exhausted they found a new power source with which to sustain them. They took hold of Mary and fed.
Mary was engulfed in strings of the now familiar smoke tendrils and I could see through their faintness caused by their reduced state that energy pulsed from Mary up to where they met the Dancers in constantly changing positions like storms passing over a planet’s surface as seen from space. Mary's skin visibly sagged and then wrinkled to deep valleys along her cheeks and around her eyes which sunk into her face as red veins snaked across the whites like shattering glass. The once generous full coloured hair turned to grey straw which snapped and fell dead to the ground leaving her with precious little covering her liver spotted scalp. But she was not defeated yet, her anger generated a force within her and she fought back through will power and skill the tendrils pulsed in reverse and she took back what was lost, not in its entirety but enough to give her back a figure so much more recognisable than the pitiful elderly wreck that was there moments before.
"You think you can stop me so easily." she called but I did not know who, if anyone, she was addressing. From around her neck which now hung low with a discernible wobble as she removed a necklace of worked gold culminating in a long drop stone of tinder grey which she cast to the floor and stamped on causing the fragile stone to crack. Instantly the Dancers shells disrupted and their humanoid forms fell into shades of nightmare images; some had huge insect heads other developed mis-shaped paws with long probing fingers next to hooked claws and barbs. Arched backs fed into three kneed limbs ending in feet which have yet to make up their minds over what they were going to look like on this Earth. Standing on the ground was as alien to them in their own forms as sailing through the imaginations of a hundred realities comes as naturally as a brick.
Hissing erupted through the trees as a jet of icy water fell through the condensing smoke clouds and rained contaminated drops of inky water all around. From the dark gaps between the trees where the very emptiness was solid came reflective strips on dark uniforms and yellow helmets. More jets of water flew up into the treetops almost instan
tly removing the fuggy orange light and turning the burning forest into a dark and scary environ.
"Fire Service." called a deep voice. "If you can hear me come this way."
More men moved around and I could track them by the beams of light coming from angled torches pinned to the breast of their thick tunics. I walked towards them partly due to the authority they radiated and partially due to not knowing what the bloody Hell was going on and now through relief that whatever it was, was now being managed by people in uniforms.
The smoke Dancers were all but gone, undone and twisting around in cold puddles of mud mixed with the dark exhaust fumes that was the very blood and bones that formed them. The cold had got them and the water washed them into the ground. I spared a thought of what would grow on this site and what it would look like when it flowered.
"How many people are there?" asked a firefighter with twin black stripes on his yellow helmet. "It’s not safe here, we need to get you away. How many more are there?"
I fumbled my words saying I had no idea I didn't know what was going on, all I knew was my friend was here somewhere under the streaming trees. I knew exactly where he was as soon as I spoke, his eyes reflecting the light as efficiently as the eyes of a tiger caught in a spotlight.
Xanthic came across to me and laid his hands down on my shoulders.
"There you are Valentine." he said. "I was so worried. Thank you officer for finding my niece." he addressed this at the firefighter.
"I'm Crew Manager White." replied the man, "Not an officer, you need to go this way." The arm of the Crew Manager pointed East away from the scene of almost a dozen men progressing through the forest with charged lengths of hose extinguishing the flames high and low as they pushed forward in well drilled teams.
"This is my land Crew Manager White." The statement came from Xanthic. "I thank you for your attendance here but what caused you to be here at this hour?"
Diary Of An Occult Resolution Assistant Page 34