This is it, he thought. According to the legend, this is what will destroy all of Fractus and everything in it.
Not sure what to do with it next, he placed the talisman back into its box and began making his way back to the car.
CHAPTER TWO
JULY 30th
MEGHAN LANGLEY sat behind the wheel of her beat up but forever reliable blue car. She wasn’t the first to own the vehicle and probably wasn’t the second and maybe not the third. By this point in its existence, all four of the car’s doors were dinged and scraped beyond repair. The hood held a deeply concaved dent on its surface from where a large oak limb had crashed onto it during the horrendous thunderstorm just the night before.
The car was stopped at an intersection that was slap-dab in the middle of town. Outside of the car, the surroundings were a disaster. Trees and power lines were down everywhere that Meghan looked. People’s once tidy flower beds had been torn to shreds from the damaging winds and falling limbs. Most of the town was still without electricity. The power company’s trucks were scattered all around the county in a futile effort to restore power. A huge pecan tree was blocking one of the main streets that ran through the main part of town. In the center of the grassy square, the statue of the town’s founder, John Hexley, still lay face down on the soggy ground. The produce stand that once stood on the green was now a mess of board and tin. Tomatoes, peaches, and asparagus were among the fruits and vegetables that were strewn across the grass and hadn’t been picked up by a squirrel or other animal. Like the produce stand, many of the buildings around the square had been demolished.
Embry Abbott’s restaurant was among the fatalities. The restaurant had been his passion since he had opened the doors a decade earlier, and now it was nothing more than a pile of brick and useless pieces of stainless steel. Like the veggies that were scattered around the produce stand, silver forks and knives were tossed here and there all around the vicinity of the restaurant.
Normally there would have been a traffic light giving the signal to go, but that day, because of the power outage, there wasn’t. Instead, the rectangular, yellow traffic light hung darkly from the thick cable that stretched across the road. A police officer stood in the middle of the intersection directing traffic. There were cars stopped on each of the four sides, waiting on their turn to proceed. After letting the car on her right make a left turn, and receiving the go-ahead from the officer, Meghan accelerated through the intersection and guided the car away from town.
Embry sat next to her in the passenger seat. Embry’s small Yorkshire terrier sat happily in his lap. The dog’s name was Jericho. Jericho raised his nose to sniff the summer air that was coming in through the crack at the top of the window from where Embry had eased the glass down soon after sitting down. It was the end of July and the weather was blistering. The storm had only made things more humid than they already had been.
Shane Renshaw sat behind the two of them, in the center of the back seat. One each of his elbows was propped on the back of both Meghan and Embry’s headrests. His hands were together, one fist inside of an open palm.
To Meghan, it felt like she was living in some type of joke.
Why was the woman driving the car with two demons and a tiny Yorkie as her only passengers, she imagined the joke beginning. “You know, we’re not technically demons,” Shane was saying from the back seat, looking at Meghan.
“So if you’re not demons, then what exactly are you?” Meghan asked with a genuine interest. She was confused about the whole thing. Just several days earlier she had been living a semi-normal life. But it seemed like just in the past seventy two hours she had been dropped dead center into this whole mess of a story.
This was what she knew...and as much as she knew that it was true, she still could hardly believe it. It seemed so far fetched and preposterous; she imagined what it would sound like telling the situation to someone else, a psychiatrist (who would probably say that everything that had happened thus far was Meghan’s way of coping with her past) or telling her story to a national audience on “The News” or “Reality TV” or a TV show such as It Happened To Me or My Journey to Another Realm. Here goes…
I am in love with a demon. Ok, I know, already crazy. The demon comes from another realm that is called Fractus. And yes, it is a real place. I’ve been there myself. I fought tooth and nail and successfully killed a power hungry demon called Cupid just to rescue Embry’s Love. Fractus was created with magic sometime way back in the 1700s. Long ago, the demon’s ancestors, the Primordial, made it so that every demon would be able to fall in love, that their one True Love would be marked. It would be love at first sight. I was marked to be Embry’s True Love.
Shane, who is another one of the demons, or not-demon, as I’m now learning for the very first time, fears that he is in deep doo-doo for a crime that he didn’t commit. He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He fears that the soldiers of The Indescribable are coming for him. They have already whisked Chris (the guilty demon) away. And Shane is right, it was all Chris that killed that girl, I have even seen the events unfold myself. The demons have a way of spinning you into the past and placing you on the sidelines of whatever drama it is that they want you to see. But Shane is certain that he too will be blamed. He believes that through the eyes of The Indescribable, just for being with Chris on the night that it all happened makes him just as guilty of breaking the laws of The Primordial.
And as dreadful as all of this sounds; believe it or not, there is hope.
There is a mythical book called The Book of Demon Lore that supposedly tells about all the rules of The Primordial. It is believed that the antiquated pages hold the history, secrets, and prophecies of The Primordial. Hopefully, with the book in our possession we will be able to figure out how to be able to protect Shane.
Meghan glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed Shane remove the old, discolored green trucker cap from the top of his head. He scratched at his short cropped, matted down, dark brown hair. In the mirror, Meghan saw the scratches that were scattered across her own face. She looked down at her hands as they gripped the steering wheel in front of her. Her fingers were scraped and scratched. Bandages were wrapped tight around several of her fingertips where the fingernails had been broken off, split, and peeled away as she had fought her way through the portal that had led her into Fractus.
Battle scars, she thought.
“You know, I don’t know,” Shane said and looked toward Embry. “Do you know what we actually are?”
Embry smiled and looked back at the other man. “Durori,” Embry answered.
“What?” Shane asked, unfamiliar with the strange word. It was obvious that he was racking his brain trying to figure out if he had ever even heard it before then.
“Durori, it is Latin for hardship.” Embry looked out of his window at the passing landscape.
Even though they had made it through town, there was still no end to the destruction that the storm had left behind. Similar to what they had seen before, numerous trees were down everywhere that they looked. A black power line lay snake-like on the road side. On the other side of the asphalt, the power line was still intact, but a two pronged limb was caught there and sagging the line down, giving the impression that the line could snap at any moment. The limb looked like a giant wishbone that had been tossed to the side and landed in its current spot. A fence ran along both sides of the road, but somewhere in its length it had been broken down and several fat, black and white cows wandered aimlessly along the ditch banks, among the dandelions and briars, occasionally stopping for a mouthful of green.
“Oh, that’s much better,” Shane added in response to what Embry had said about the Durori. “Durori,” he said the word again, quieter this time and nodded, trying to let it sink in. “You know, I think I have heard that before.”
“Somewhere along the way, things got all mixed up and people started to mistakenly call us demons,” Embry threw in. “It’s the
word that a lot of people tend to stick to things that they don’t understand; supernatural, evil things.”
“So then wait a minute, this book that we are looking for, the translation may be all wrong once we find it?” Meghan asked. The book had supposedly been written in another language, but had at some point in time been translated by a man by the name of Zeke Thaniel. “I mean, what if Zeke had no idea what he was doing? He’s obviously the one that mistakenly said the word demon in the first place.”
Shane laughed out of nervousness of the ever increasing doom that the three of them seemed to be falling further into.
“It’s possible,” Embry said and shrugged his shoulders. He turned to look at Meghan and at the same time petted the top of Jericho’s silky head. “I mean, yeah, when Zeke translated the pages he might not have known what he was doing, sure,” he nodded.
“So it could be useless?” Meghan stated.
“Look, if there is any chance at all that this book will save me then I need to find it,” Shane spoke up from behind them. Out of exasperation, he had once again flung himself against the back seat. “I’m innocent,” he said as he reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a rectangular cardboard pack of candy cigarettes, flipped the top open, and slid one of the slender, sugar cigs between his fingertips and into his mouth. He bit down, savoring the satisfying snap and rush of sweetness. He had never fallen into the slippery and fast trap of nicotine. Instead, candy cigarettes had long been his go to fix when things got too stressful. “I didn’t have anything to do with killing that girl, you know?”
“I know, Shane,” Embry said. “That’s why we’re doing this. We’re trying to help you out.”
Even though Shane needed the book for his own reasons, Meghan had other intentions. She believed that the book would hold a way for her to turn off the part of Embry that made him be a demon, that it would be possible to change him, take the evil away. The fact of being in love with a demon, or a Durori as she had now learned they were called, just didn’t sit very well with her at all.
Outside of the car, the sight of destruction from the previous night’s tremendous storm continued, but off to the west, the sky was clear, a cornflower blue. In the east, a few of the lingering gray-black storm clouds were still visible but were drifting further away. The sun was finally breaking through the cloud cover and was actually glaring for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. Meghan reached to the center console, picked up her sunglasses and placed them over her eyes. She looked at Embry who was also in the process of putting on his own pair of shades. The bright sun shimmered on his pomaded, spiky black hair. In the backseat, Shane was without any type of eye gear and his eyes were squinted against the bright sunlight. He pulled his cap down further over his forehead, attempting to block some of the sun. There was a sparkle of sunlight on the fishhook that was clipped to the bill.
Embry explained that in order for a worker of dark magic to open a portal into Fractus and call forth a Durori, he or she had to be in possession of the book. The portals were scattered all over South Carolina and Georgia. It was common knowledge among the Durori that the book had been used in Truesdale in 1908. Back then, a man by the name of Mr. Baxter had used the book to help Franklyn Hexley make a deal with a female Durori that would give the town the perfect weather for growing anything. The price was that every thirteen years the town would provide her with a sacrifice. Four Durori were sent to Truesdale, Embry and Shane among them, and the responsibility of the sacrifice would be rotated among the quartet. The sacrificial cycle had by that point come to an end, and it was possible that Embry and Shane could be sent on a new mission any moment.
Rumor insisted that the book had been used more recently in another town, one nearer the coast. The portal however was never opened because the final word of the spell had never been spoken, and so the book had been lost for all those years. Which town and where they didn’t know for sure, but that was where they were headed. They had no concrete evidence that the book would even be there. They were only following a rumor. Besides, what else were they supposed to do? This was a life or death situation.
After looking both ways, Meghan pulled the car into the intersection and headed southeast, toward the ocean.
Embry spoke up. “There’s something else.”
Both Meghan and Shane looked at him, on edge with what he was about to say. Even Jericho, the terrier, tilted his head up to look at his beloved owner.
“The soldiers will be coming for us too,” Embry said as he looked at Meghan from across the narrow width of the car.
Meghan felt her heart thud. “What do you mean?” Another twist to the story, she thought and could feel a sinking inside of her.
“When a Durori finds his True Love, it is law that they will be taken to Fractus where they will spend the rest of eternity.”
Meghan felt her pulse race. She actually felt her stomach go queasy at the new revelation.
She had a jolting vision of a chubby, winged creature crouching over her as she lay in bed sound asleep. The creature was no bigger than a common housecat. Its mouth was pulled back in a grimace of yellow teeth. The creature held an arrow in its hand and stabbed the pointed end into Meghan’s chest, right at her heart. It was marking her. From that moment on she was to be Embry’s True Love.
Meghan understood that the vision that she was experiencing was just a memory of a dream, but she knew that it had really happened in some way similar. That was what they do, the cherubs, they mark the True Loves with the arrows. She just couldn’t remember when it had happened to her. She must’ve been asleep at the time, just like in the vision.
As if everything that she had already heard and was just beginning to understand wasn’t bad enough, now she was learning from Embry that any moment could be the last that she would ever see of the world that she knew. And what about saving Embry, making him not be a Durori any more, how would that work?
“So after,” Meghan planned her words carefully, “after we are taken away, if we are taken away that is, I’m assuming that we won’t be able to come back to look for the book?”
Embry nodded at her forlornly and turned to look at Shane in the backseat.
Meghan glanced in the rearview mirror once again and saw the innate worry that was spread over Shane’s face.
“So we’ll find it before then,” Meghan said, reassuring Shane that she was there to help him, that it would be OK. She said it also to reassure herself. But even as she said it, she knew deep down that it was only a shot in the dark, that when the soldiers were ready, they would give it their all to succeed in their intended purpose.
As she continued to drive, Meghan tried to take her mind off the situation, but every song that came on the radio she could relate to what she was going through. Every moment that passed filled Meghan with more fear and worry. The stakes were sky high. Not only was she trying to help out her new friend, Shane, she was also trying to save the man that she loved, even though he was yet to know of her intentions, and to top it all off, it was a race against time. She knew that every shadow that caressed the car could be them, the soldiers, coming to pull the three of them away. They had to find that book before it was too late.
And so, Meghan, along with the two Durori and the small Yorkie in tow, sped down the highway toward the coast.
“BOILED PEANUTS!”
The sudden, excited proclamation came from the backseat, startling Meghan. By then they had been on the road for a good while, and she had already settled into the trancelike zone of traveling a long distance. She had been deep in thought when Shane’s voice had broken the moment of quiet contemplation.
Just seconds earlier, she and Embry had been discussing the soldiers of Fractus, what they looked like, and what they should be on the lookout for. Embry told her that at first glimpse they appear to be made only of wisps of the blackest smoke, but once you got close enough to them, you could see their structure. He said that they were the protectors
of The Indescribable, its defense, an army. Each soldier wore a mask that had been made out of red clay and formed into the likeness of a vulture, a symbol of protection. Meghan was imaging what it would be like to spot one of those creatures that he was describing, how horrible it would be to find her body wrapped within its powerful, feathered wings.
“Shane, you scared me half to death. I thought you were sleeping,” she said, looking back at Shane in the rearview mirror.
The car had just passed by the low plywood sign on the roadside that had gotten Shane’s sudden, eager attention. Meghan flipped on her right turn signal and pulled the car over to the grassy and muddy ditch bank. A massive, red pickup truck that had been riding her butt for the past several miles sped past, and Meghan turned around and drove back to the little roadside stand that stood alone in the middle of farmland and woods.
The produce stand was made out of wood that had been painted barn red. A tin cover that was supported by several posts had been constructed to stand over it. Tables that had been made out of wooden pallets were underneath the shelter, lined with the season’s freshest produce. Small, yellow butterflies flittered about the area in an amazing abundance. There was only one other car parked on the sandy area in front of the stand. It was an old station wagon. A man, presumably the owner of the station wagon, was perusing the selection that was laid out before him. A pretty brunette woman was standing behind the counter. She was filing her fingernails.
Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Page 4