The Defiance

by Laura Gallier

  Another platform just like the first rose from the fiery chasm, and a Ruler of equal height emerged from the forested shadows. This one was bulky and draped in vibrant blue. His entire face was masked in dark brown metal with narrow slits over his eyes and mouth, identical to the revolting veils on Gentry and Zella. Twisted strands of barbed wire oozed out of the being’s chin like metal drool, creeping down his chest and encircling his arms, then coiling like cobras around numerous daggers he held in each hand.

  I’d had bouts with loneliness before, but this . . .

  This was a misery all its own, like no one knew me or wanted to or cared if I lived or died or went missing without any explanation. Even with Ray Anne pressing against me, the sense of isolation was soul-crushing.

  “I’m here,” I told her, looking to somehow ease the pain she was bound to be feeling too.

  Custos was there again. Ray and I shielded our eyes from his blinding brilliance as nearby Creepers dispersed like roaches fleeing a floodlight. He pressed his huge palms against our stomachs this time, his fingers extending all the way to our necks. “The Spirit of Addiction has no authority over you.”

  Instant relief, followed by a sinking realization. Is that the feeling that drives my mom to drink?

  Now was not the time to ponder the distressing thought.

  As the Spirit of Addiction stepped onto his own grisly platform, a third Ruler arrived. This one was arrayed in solid gray and hunched over like an elderly man, even though he was built like a ten-ton monster. Instantly, it was like a fist pressed into my chest, knuckles digging through my muscles and into my heart, infusing me with such crippling depression, I wanted to run away but lacked the motivation to bother.

  Ray Anne let go of my hand, and we both groaned as all sense of contentment was swallowed by emptiness and longing and an overbearing desire to be left alone.

  “The Spirit of Depression has no authority over us.” I was suffering so badly, I asserted spiritual authority myself. But Ramus appeared beside us and pointed to the peace-sucking principality.

  “Despair,” he corrected me, so radiant I could hardly look at his epic armor for the brief moment he was there.

  I cleared my throat, acting in spite of the debilitating stress on my soul. “The Spirit of Despair has no authority over us.”

  It worked.

  The hunchbacked Spirit of Despair let out a barbaric grunt, and two Creepers stepped out of him—one after the other, exiting like a swinging door was hinged to his torso. They rushed away as another Creeper slipped out of the Spirit of Slumber’s back and ran into the woods.

  Ray Anne tugged on my arm to get me to bend down. “The Rulers house and release lower-level Creepers to carry out their assignment.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  Soon, all three Cosmic Rulers stood atop floating platforms, orbiting above the simmering pit like uninhabitable planets, heads swaying as if reveling in the echoes of insincere praise from the bones.

  Then a fourth giant entered the scene, this one bat-faced with ruby-red eyes, like the bats that had badgered me in my nightmare and in real life, but with gums flared, like a pit bull in a dog fight. He wore an obnoxiously-bright red robe, and Ray and I watched in silence as multiple Creepers fled his body too.

  No fatigue came over me this time. No despair. Instead I was overtaken by such furious rage, my entire body tensed, from my clenched jaw to my locked knees. I didn’t trust myself to be near Ray Anne. Although aggression toward women was among my most hated human violations, I felt like I was fully capable of yanking her by the arm and shoving her. More than capable—I wanted to.

  Ray Anne pushed me away, obviously battling the same hostility. I was popping my knuckles when Custos spoke into my ear. “Strife.”

  I wanted to punch someone or wrestle something to the ground. But I knew the insanely intense urge wasn’t mine, and I’d better confront it. I popped another knuckle, even as I spoke. “The Spirit of Strife has no authority over us.”

  Ray Anne sighed, then raised herself to her tiptoes and threw her arms around my shoulders in a tight embrace. “Thank God that one’s over.”

  But the weird thing was, for me, it wasn’t. The fury had lifted somewhat, but not completely. I managed to hug her back, keeping my predicament to myself.

  The Spirit of Strife stepped onto his own suspended podium of bones. The heat raged hotter on my cheeks as the simmering fire flashed brighter, and all four Rulers gazed down into hell’s open chamber. That’s when those atrocious fat bats I’d seen in the cornfield—all six of them—came charging out of the pit, flying in ungraceful circles around the Rulers.

  “We’ve marked all thirteen.” The raspy-voiced bats spoke in unison—and in English, a huge advantage for Ray and me. “Every one of them must die.”

  I was sure they were delivering intel on behalf of their detained master, Molek.

  Three Cosmic super-Creepers nodded in uncontested submission, but Slumber dared to pose a request—in English again. “Give us until the new moon.”

  I could hardly believe my eyes when one of the bats opened its mouth and extended a tongue as black and thick as a whip and lashed the Spirit of Slumber’s head, sending him careening off his platform into the blazing chasm. “That’s too late! Kill them at once!” Then came a slew of profanity mixed with such vile threats, Ray Anne covered her ears.

  One thing was certain: as effectively as the kingdom of darkness collaborates to destroy humanity, its agents have nothing but spiteful contempt for one another.

  The bats flew up and disappeared into the night sky—on their way back to Molek, I imagined. Meanwhile, Slumber climbed out of the pit as if an invisible net stretched up and onto the ground. He stood and faced the crater, still heavy-eyed and nodding off. The three remaining Rulers dismounted from their hovering platforms, stepping back onto land, and the bright inferno began to dim. The spirit world shifted and swirled back to the wood’s natural setting.

  As the Caldwell cemetery spun into place, my stomach churned. I wrapped my arm around a tree to keep from staggering and held Ray Anne with my other. By the time everything came to a standstill and I regained some sense of balance, the Rulers were gone, yet the spectating Creepers remained.

  And there were voices coming from the old Caldwell graveyard.

  SIX

  YOU WOULDN’T THINK STARING at something fiery bright in the spirit realm would create a need for physical eyes to adjust to the darkness of earth’s night, but that’s exactly what happened to Ray and me. We stood a short distance from the Caldwell cemetery, blinking and blinking. We’d had no time to process all we’d just witnessed, and already we were being confronted with another mystifying scenario.

  Little by little, as my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I spied what looked like people climbing and hopping over the rundown fence into the graveyard. They spoke in hushed tones as their spirit-realm chains clanged against the iron bars—an audio overlap of dual realms that I always found disorienting. The silhouettes clustered in front of the two arched tombs, by the Mary statue.

  “What are we supposed to say?” A giddy young voice. A girl, from the sound of it.

  “I’m scared!” someone else said, provoking satisfied cackles from the onlooking Creepers.

  “You should be.” A boy, for sure.

  I could see five people now: two ponytails, one head of long hair, and two ball caps. No Light aura around any of them. They were all wearing dark pants and long sleeves.

  “Say it, Gentry!”

  Ah. Gentry—and Zella too, I figured—plus three of their friends. They stared up at the stone-carved Mary and used their phones’ lights to illuminate her face and one another.

  A kid wearing a hoodie and a backpack—Gentry, I was pretty sure—stepped close to the sculpture, tilting his head back like he wanted to make eye contact with her. The gawking Creepers looming overhead all leaned in.

  “Mary, Mary, there’s a secret only a few do know. If we ask you
kindly, you’ll let your real tears flow.”

  “Now, watch this!” one of them announced. Zella, I think.

  There was a silent pause, followed by gasping and muffled screams as they took pictures with their phones.

  “You see anything?” Ray Anne whispered to me.

  We were too far back. I took her hand, and we marched toward the spectacle, refusing to slow our pace as Creepers swooped down and lurched at us. I found myself stomping unnecessarily hard, still simmering with aggression left over from that Cosmic Spirit of Strife.

  A girl spun around and faced us. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s okay.” I tried to act normal and collected, even though I didn’t feel like myself. “We just want to know what you guys are doing.”

  I hopped the fence without Ray Anne. She couldn’t risk agitating her injuries.

  They all had their flashlights aimed at me now. “Are we in trouble?” a trembling girl with glasses asked.

  “No.” I glanced up at the Mary statue. Thick cobwebs draped down her veiled head like feeble strands of hair, though I couldn’t tell if they were physically there or a spiritual reality. “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  Zella stepped beside me and pointed up, sober tonight, it seemed. “See her tears?”

  A dark streak lined the statue’s left cheek. I reached toward it.

  “Don’t!” Zella swatted my arm. “You’ll make her mad, and she’ll haunt you.”

  “Enough, Zella.” Gentry spoke up. “It’s none of his business.”

  I crossed my arms. “Uh, this is my property. Everything that happens out here is my business.”

  There was a collective oooh—the overly dramatic, immature kind.

  I sighed. “What grade are you guys in?”

  Zella pointed to herself, then Gentry. “Ninth.” The other two girls and the remaining boy were sophomores. “We’re in a group together at school,” Zella said. Whatever that meant.

  I refocused on the stone-carved Mary. I swiped her cheek, unafraid of any supposed retribution for touching her.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” Zella shone her light on my finger, damp and dark red now. “It’s blood.”

  “Well?” Ray Anne called from the other side of the fence.

  I made a closer examination of my fingertip. There was no denying it. “It does look like blood.”

  “Isn’t it the coolest thing ev-ver?” a smiling girl with braces said. The surrounding Creepers stirred.

  “No, it’s not cool. It’s evil.”

  They all rolled their eyes like I was old and lame.

  I turned to Gentry. “Where’d you learn that chant?”

  He took a big gulp and hesitated. “Just some girl . . . my brother dated a few months ago.”

  I didn’t know Lance had had a girlfriend after Meagan, but then again, how would I? Our friendship hadn’t survived past high school. It was hard for me to picture him with anyone except Meagan, but she’d been dead for over a year. Even so, I still suffered from agonizing memories of her . . .

  My hand unable to make contact with hers as her petrified soul reached for me in anguish.

  Don’t think about it.

  “Who’s Lance’s ex-girlfriend?” I wanted to know.

  Gentry gave me a lopsided grin. “A hot blonde that drove a red BMW.”

  It was like I could feel the synapses firing in my brain, connecting seemingly random bits of information to form a clear picture. There was only one young blonde I knew of who’d driven a red BMW around Masonville. “Veronica?”

  “That’s what they called her on the news, but her real name is Eva,” Gentry said.

  There was no telling how many names she’d gone by. She was a fraud, like the rest of her occult colleagues. And now I realized my suspicion about Lance was spot on. He had been one of the masked security guards at the human auction, no doubt inducted into the secret society by his then-girlfriend.

  “She brought you out here and showed you this?” Ray Anne asked Gentry. He nodded. “When?”

  He shrugged. “Before she got locked up.”

  “Wait a minute.” The girl with glasses pushed her friends aside to get to Gentry. “Your brother dated that gangster girl that got arrested for kidnapping a baby?”

  After Veronica had been hauled to jail for abducting Jackson, Detective Benny had released a cleverly spun web of lies to the public, saying that the abductions were gang related. But Elle had determined to report the truth, supported by evidence—until a man in a ski mask rose from the backseat of her Audi one night and held a knife to her throat, vowing he’d come after her husband and their little boy if she dared challenge the detective’s statements.

  But this sophomore girl with glasses and a shackle had no clue about any of that, and naturally, she’d believed what she’d seen on the news. Like most people do.

  Gentry looked past her, at me. “We’ll leave, Owen.” He tugged anxiously on the straps of his backpack looped around his shoulders. “Please don’t call the cops.”

  This time I understood why they dreaded involving the police. I didn’t want Detective Benny coming around anymore than they did. “I won’t,” I said, “but you guys can’t come back here. Understand?”

  All five of them nodded.

  I had no clue how the statue was crying bloody tears, but it was obviously a paranormal trick intended to captivate, then somehow trap and torment young, ignorant souls. I’d never once seen or heard of God performing a meaningless miracle just to draw a crowd.

  The students climbed back over the fence and began the trek toward the main street beyond the woods. I followed, walking next to Ray Anne and behind Gentry, shining my flashlight and working to ignore the commotion of Creepers moving through the trees in all directions. “What’s in the backpack?” I asked Gentry.

  He sped up his already-hurried pace, and so did his friends. I caught up to him and asked again. This time, he stopped and faced me, his eyes plastered wide. “Um, just matches and outdoor stuff.” He took another big gulp as the others rushed ahead—except Zella, who stopped to wait for him.

  “Tell me the truth, Gentry.” I stepped close, realizing now how much his facial features resembled Lance’s. There was no sign of the horrible mask—the Spirit of Addiction’s influence. I assumed it was because Gentry wasn’t high tonight. At least not yet. That or I lacked compassion for the guy at the moment.

  I nodded toward his backpack. “Whatever you’re doing or dealing, just say it.”

  He rubbed his tongue in circles against the inside of his cheek and averted his eyes—the same thing my mother always did whenever I ventured to bring up her issues with alcohol.

  “You don’t know what things are like for me.” He spoke so softly now, I barely heard him.

  “So tell me.” I leaned in, already aware of some things about his life. His overly demanding mother. His quick-tempered stepdad. “You and me, we go way back, Gentry. You know you can trust me.”

  He sighed. “I gotta go, okay?”

  It dawned on me that he’d probably heard Lance talk all kinds of trash about me. No wonder he didn’t trust me.

  I thought about reaching and unzipping his backpack—what could he do to me? But once his dope or JUUL or whatever was in there was out in the open, all I could do was lecture him about it like some overbearing parent, and I knew that was useless. So, I stood there, shining my flashlight at him, hoping the weight of my gaze would at least make him think about things.

  That’s when I spotted a black horizontal streak in the crease between his chin and his neck, above his shackle. It was like a thin, sloppy tattoo that ran the length of his throat.

  Ray Anne obviously noticed it too. “Do you have a mark on your neck?” she asked him.

  She and I both knew it was there. The issue was, did he?

  He shook his head with a crinkled nose, rubbing back and forth on his neck—over his shackle, but it’s not like he could feel the freezing metal. “Can I go now?�
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  He caught up with Zella, and Ray and I trailed them out of the woods. They all refused a ride home. Ray Anne and I knew the risk they were taking walking the streets of Masonville, especially at night, but it’s not like we could force transportation on them.

  I hurried to the church on my motorcycle, hoping no one had broken in while I was supposed to be on night duty. Most nights, I stayed up until at least 1:00 a.m., listening, just in case. All the while enduring that unnerving sense I was getting in my room lately.

  I took a shower in the tiny bathroom attached to my claustrophobic space, the cinder block walls painted a warm vanilla color that still didn’t make the room cozy. I collapsed onto the uncomfortable bed—the only place to sit other than the floor—bored and restless and seriously homesick for my apartment. My 55-inch TV and king-size mattress were in storage, along with nearly everything else I owned. But this church-guard gig was the closest thing I had to a witness protection program.

  I glanced obsessively at the awesome red-glowing symbol on my arm while researching the phases of the moon. I quickly discovered that the next new moon was just ten days away, which meant that, unless evil’s plan was interrupted, the thirteen people marked to die—whoever they were—would surely be dead before then. Maybe even in the next day or two.

  Don’t get me wrong—I cared. But ten days or less? That was hardly enough time to figure out who the targets were, not to mention coming up with a game plan to protect them from the Cosmic Rulers’ death plot.

  Facing impossible situations was getting old fast.

  I found a pen in the nightstand and used the blank space on the back of a Chinese take-out menu to make my best sketched replica of the supernatural imprint on my skin: מגן. I snapped a pic of the drawing and texted it to my father. Any idea what this could mean?