But it wasn’t just for me. It was for the Prince. He was worth it. My victory would be a victory for all of those unnoticed and underserved atrocities committed since taboo came into existence. Every sneer, every roll of the eyes, every harsh word, every raised hand against my people fueled me for what would go down in the old church on Halloween night.
Yes, my people. We are not a race or a religion or regional clan. We come from all walks of life; in all shapes, sizes, colors, heights, weights, sexes, and forms—we exist. But our common thread surpasses those things. It runs deeper than hair, than skin, than speech, than beliefs, than thought, and into the very thing that makes us live: our hearts. All humans have them but only some are chastised for using them, for feeling the most primal and important impulses our species can feel. My friends, my lovers, my community, my people were worth it.
“You slept well,” said a voice at the end of my bed. The sun poured in on what I thought were two Angels watching over me. When I reached for my glasses, I saw them clearer. Not Angels, but two souls. A man and a woman stood at my feet. “Do you know us?” asked the woman, “From your dreams?”
“Helena? Francis?” I croaked, still groggy and slightly incoherent. She was as beautiful as Garth had described her. Francis looked just as warm.
“We have come to speak with you about your plan,” Francis said.
“It will not work,” said Helena.
My lips began to quiver. “But the hag, she said—”
“The one you call Nick. He is not strong enough to awaken the Old Magic,” she whispered.
“His soul is weakened by your cousin’s presence. He is tainted.” Francis said.
“Why have you come to me? Souls are supposed to help the Immortals. Why haven’t you gone to Garth?” I cried.
“We have,” she said. “We come to you also.”
“To prepare you for when the time comes,” he finished.
“So I have to…”
“Quiet, Prince. Our time here is brief. You must ensure the sacrifice heals the Way of Things,” she said.
With a slight bow, they dissolved into the air.
It was up to me. My newfound pride had to be re-channeled from living for others, to dying for them. I didn’t even know how to begin justifying my sacrifice. Did people even do that anymore? I thought martyrdom went out of fashion with the Bubonic Plague. Despite the fact I was so young, was it possible my mortal experience was over? Was I full of life to the point of ending it? When an old person dies, people remark on how complete their life was.
What if it wasn’t?
What if they had much more to do?
If we’re all so different and unique, our capacities for life should be equally so. Maybe a person can reach their limit at a young age. I was no longer the rainbows-out-my-ass, typical twenty-something little shit I’d been in January. I’d been shown things no human had ever seen. How could I possibly continue living in a world that’s wonder had been exposed? Even though most of my experiences with magic had been stressful, terrifying, and generally unpleasant, I was lucky, at least, to know the truth. As one of the only witnesses to the Way of Things, it was my responsibility to use my knowledge and heal it.
The next day I finished my costume, confirmed my friends’ attendance at another party, casually checked in with my parents, and sat quietly in my room. I watched the setting sun cast weird shadows on my world. I knew it would be the last I saw of it. I took a mental photograph and then left to meet Garth on a rooftop, just as I had done almost every night for eight months.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
18. Deep Magic
I figured if it was going to be my last Halloween, my costume needed to be nothing short of amazing. I arrived at Bryant’s apartment painted gold and donning dramatic eyes, cheeks, and lips. “What are you?” he asked.
“I’m King Tut,” I said, adjusting my headdress. “I figured this is an ode to my two alter egos. I see you’ve embraced the vampire thing tonight.”
“There’s no better time,” he said as he dribbled faux blood from his lips. He was dressed in Victorian blacks and burgundies. There was something terribly sexy about that fetishized version of him. Would one last romp be that terrible on the night of my death? “Garth’s on the roof. He’s in a weird mood.”
As usual, Garth was perched on the edge of the building, looking over the city. “Are you stressed out about what to wear?” I said. “We can grab you a sailor hat on the way if you’d like.”
He obligatory-laughed at me. “You look good,” he said. “You are rightfully royal this evening.”
I originally hadn’t planned on mentioning my Christmas Carol-like visit that morning, but I was curious. “When was the last time you saw Helena?”
He turned around with defenses up. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” I clucked, chickening out.
“I haven’t seen her since she became human. The Angel took her to safety with the hag in the woods. By the time I got there, she had already left. I hear she lived her life quite fully.”
Case closed. He wanted to move on.
“Oh. Why didn’t you go after her?” I pressed.
“Humans need to be with humans. So they can do their work here on Earth. So they can live their lives on their own. Free will. After we aid you, we will do the same. We have meddled enough in your world.” The eyes under his raised brows looked deeply at me. “I did not go after her because I cared for her.
Bryant coughed to catch our attention. “The church has many secret passageways. In the seventies they were used for sex and drug use, but tonight they’ll be used to find our way belowground,” he instructed.
“Where to, exactly?” I asked.
“Well, we’re certainly not traveling all the way into the Underworld to summon the Demon, but we’ll need to get close. We can lure Nick into one of the abandoned subway tunnels for the offering.”
“The moon is getting high. We should utilize every hour of evening that is given to us,” decided Garth.
Bryant agreed. “The others will be meeting there soon.”
*
Walking through the streets instead of above them with my Immortal friends was exhilarating. I flaunted them like new shoes or a killer haircut. Garth beamed through his occasional self-consciousness. “I cannot believe I have never thought of doing this before,” he said.
“Awesome costume, man!” hollered a drunk guy. “Can we get a picture with you?” Garth looked at the camera like it was alien weaponry. I’d forgotten to mention that New Yorkers treat Halloween like a day at a Disney park. Pictures must be taken with every possible character, sometimes even video. Signatures are not required unless asking for a number or closing out a bar tab.
Among the unwelcome photogs was my unwelcome admirer, Robbie. I immediately began scolding him: “What are you doing here? I told you not to—”
Familiar faces popped their costumed heads through the crowd. Asher, Dan, and Meg, timidly smiled at my supernatural cohorts and me. “I thought you were all going to the party uptown?” I asked like I wasn’t standing next to anyone/thing peculiar.
“I told them to come. We all wanted to be here for you,” Robbie said. He grabbed my pinky finger and squeezed. “Don’t try and talk us out of it.”
I cursed under my breath before greeting them with stiff hugs. I tried to appear grateful but I couldn’t have been more terrified for them. Introductions were appropriately weird. Meg looked at Bryant and impulsively said, “You’re scary.” His strange eyes looked sharply back at her. The color from her head drained, which was his cue to cut the act. A warm smile spread across his face sending her into uncomfortable laughter that may have actually been the precursor to a panic attack.
“I’m sorry,” announced Dan. “Is anyone going to acknowledge how bizarre this is or are we going to pretend that these are his friends from summer camp? I mean, honestly.”
“It is very strange,” Garth sa
id. He was the last person I expected to speak up. I thought he’d trail behind and grumble to himself for most of the night. Well at least until we needed to make a sacrifice. “This kind of union of worlds is very rare so…” he trailed off trying to think of something poetic. Instead he opted for the truth, “…so enjoy it while you can because it will probably never happen again. Let us get going.”
After a brief stint in line, we entered the sanctuary of the old church. That cavernous space was one of the last giant dance clubs in New York. Its several levels of bars, lounges and dance floors were playgrounds for debauchery. A spectrum of lights blurred features, and sweet smelling smoke poured from hissing machines to mask the pungent smell of horny men. The costumes ran from barely there to permit-worthy construction sites. “Where are your friends?” I asked Bryant and Garth.
“They’re everywhere,” Bryant replied. His eyes danced from corner to corner.
We stood like Amish tourists in Tokyo.
Asher, without much knowledge on the situation at hand, critiqued us (as usual). “To seem less conspicuous, perhaps we should dance. Or drink.”
“Yes, do that,” I said. “We’re going to survey the area real quick.”
My human friends made their way to one of the overflowing bars as we maneuvered through the masses. “See that stairwell,” yelled Bryant, pointing to a far corner. “It leads to the basement. The passageways to the tunnels are down there. When Nick gets here, that’s where we need to lure him.” The music was absolutely roaring and we strained to hear every word one another said.
A new song by that week’s gay icon seared through the speakers. The boys went wild, like feeding time at a zoo. The entire club seized as the first eight bars of music pummeled us into unwilled dancing. Finding Nick and getting him in that basement wasn’t going to be easy.
The crowd swelled with the arrival of more guests. From the looks on Bryant and Garth’s faces, these weren’t your average attendees. With a sudden cool rush over my exposed shoulders, I could finally see them. Spirits floated around every mortal in search of us.
The gays however, were unfazed. The sensual beat, the glitter, the booze, the sweat, and the thickly pheromoned air put them into a trance that wouldn’t end until the lights went up at 4 a.m. Bodies writhed against bodies, smearing makeup and scratching skin. God, I wished I were lost in that daze instead of stressing out about which limb the Demon would devour first.
As I tried to join my brethren, Garth’s cold hand grabbed me. He pushed me behind him, bore his teeth, and hissed words that sounded as threatening as they did foreign. He commanded the Immortals to ready themselves for the impending conflict with Nick’s band of ghosts.
Dedicated to the party as they were, the gays couldn’t help but notice the arising conflict between what they thought were just some rowdy partygoers. Was there really a fight going down in one of their establishments? Fists weren’t meant to fly unless they were pumping to a decent beat. One man hollered for a bouncer then returned to his dancing. Security soon proved useless against guests with real fangs and ghosts made of real plasma. Nervousness rippled through the mortals, who seemed to sense something was a little off about that Halloween party. Claws came out and voices screamed at the highest possible decibel.
The attendees began their flee to the streets but the music and lights continued to blare. “What the hell is in these drinks?” hollered a brawny man dressed in gladiator gear.
A queen in Jackie O. drag grabbed his hand and rushed him toward the door. “I’m tweaking out. Let’s go.”
As the party drained itself of humans, the Immortals could safely face off against the ghosts and ghouls Nick had recruited. Meg, Asher, and Dan weren’t much help in battle. They did their part by following the crowd to the street and convincing everybody that the crazy things they were seeing were the result of drugs in the fog machine.
Garth picked me up and threw me behind a bar. “Stay here,” he commanded before jumping back into the scuffle. Surely whatever waited at the end of his fist would not be recovering. I peered my head over the sticky counter and spotted Nick, eagerly searching the crowd for me. It was obvious the real Nick had picked out the costume: sexy Harry Potter. Short shorts and a loose tie paired with round glasses and disheveled hair. It was probably the least threatening costume for someone looking for blood as eagerly as he was. Had my cousin any say in the dressings, Nick would be carrying a pitchfork. A real one. As his eyes scanned the room, he demanded a gruesome cohort help him in his efforts. The ghoul grumbled and set out on the hunt for me.
If I was going to act, I had to do it then. Garth had conveniently placed me near the stairwell door. All I had to do was make a mad dash and get into the cellar before Nick could see me. I grabbed a bottle, counted to three, and ran like the wind.
Just before hitting the doorway, Nick’s minion had me in its clutches. I don’t even know what breed of evil it was but it was ugly. The thing screeched in Nick’s direction, probably alerting his master of a successful catch. My bottle came down over its head before the last horrid sound could escape its mouth. I’d never been so glad to be in possession of peach schnapps.
It was no wonder the club had been shut down numerous times for mysterious deaths and drug overdoses. Dangerous nooks and crannies were so easily assessable; they might as well have had neon arrows pointing toward them. I imagined corpses rotting for days before an unfortunate club promoter stumbled upon them while looking for extra postcards.
As soon as I closed the basement door behind me, I began tumbling down the rickety stairs into a box of plastic cups. The florescent lighting buzzed and flickered like it should near the climax of any story. The storage room was stocked with every kind of booze imaginable. Were circumstances different, a chorus of angels would have marked my arrival in such a room. Behind the warped shelving and twenty bottles of house gin, I could see a wooden door. In order to reach it, the shelf had to be removed. Since I didn’t have my forklift with me, I simply turned the shelf over to grant me access. It was a real travesty for alcohol consumers everywhere.
Had diva number two not been bumping on the sound system upstairs, the shattering of hundreds of glass bottles would have been rather telling as to where I was. I kicked my way through debris and opened the door.
“Dammnit!” I screamed, and then kicked an unbroken handle of vodka. It was nothing more than an old cupboard. The shelving I’d just destroyed was its 2.0.
“That’s not the right door,” Bryant said from behind me.
“I know. Obviously,” I said. “What are you doing down here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Bryant, I’m…I’m the one meant to be sacrificed. Nick won’t be enough.”
I heard another crash in another part of the basement. We both ran for it. Broken boards lay in a heap next to a thin opening in the brick wall. That was the passage I’d been looking for. I needed to get down there before whoever broke down the door.
“Wait!” Bryant called after me. “We don’t know who’s down there.”
“Even more reason to get there first.”
We ran through the dark passages, holding cell phones as torches. The ground turned from cement, to stone, to dirt, to a watery mixture of everything. The tunnel rattled from the speeding trains around us. “We need to get lower,” Bryant said. We searched out ladders and stairways to continue our descent. When we met a dead end, we tried another hallway. If there was a door, we opened it. If it was locked, we broke it down. Our navigation was occasionally aided by a distant clamor ahead of us. That may have made getting lost less terrifying but it made meeting our leader even more so. In the pit of my stomach, I knew it was Nick. He must have had his own scheme in mind. I reached behind me for Bryant’s hand. Soon, I could tell we were deep under the city. The air was thin and hot. The subways that had once deafened us were reduced to merely a hum.
“Why do these tunnels exist?” I asked.
“C
onstruction. Abandoned train lines. Who knows. This city is practically resting on a block of Swiss cheese,” he whispered. “Shine your light over here. I felt something.”
He guided my hand towards the wall and found wiring. “There must be electric running through here,” I squealed. My hands searched for a switch.
A voice whispered behind us.
“That’s the Sacred Language,” Bryant declared in a hush.
“It is,” said the voice. I shone my phone in its direction and found Nick. “The Demon has been summoned.”
“Run!” commanded Bryant. I ran forward, barely allowing my miniscule light to illuminate what lay before me. I slid in the muck and lost my headdress to the tunnels below.
The air became cooler and the Earth itself grumbled. The clicking of nails and muffled grumbles from my dreams barreled toward us. I hysterically scratched at the wall for light. I found success. With a loud clunk, electric buzzed and illuminated one dim bulb after another. The chain reaction started with the fixture above my head and continued down the hallway, revealing the horrific surprise at the end of the corridor.
Garth crouched in front of the Demon as it slowly approached him. Bryant and I raced to meet him as Nick stood behind and cackled.
We’d barely taken three steps when the Demon lifted its talons and ripped open a mouth of razor teeth. Inky blood poured from the crevice it roared through, “Who calls me?”
“It is I,” replied Garth.
I tried to stop him but Bryant took me in his arms as the Demon let out another roar.
“I am Garth, Guardian of Mortals and Challenger of the Way of Things,” he announced like an ordained title.
“Yes,” growled the Demon. “I remember you, conjurer of Deep Magic. Those powers are all but forgotten.”
“I am here to restore balance.”
“With what soul, Guardian? I ate it, I did. It rots deep in the hollows of the Earth. You have nothing left.” It laughed. Nick heightened his own snickers to meet the thing’s volume.
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