by Riley Mason
It’s over, I did what he wanted, I know I should be horrified at the disgusting kill I just made but I’m not, I find that I’m more pleased, surprised, happy that I was able to please. That’s all I want, nothing more, nothing less.
Chapter 65
He’s there when I go outside. The head still in my hand. I bring it up to him like it’s a gift, almost like its chocolates and as I present it to him, it vanishes as it touches his palm.
I want to go, I know enough to know that the cops are going to be very interested in the sick maniac that performed that act in that house. The investigation is going to take hours if not days. There never going to entirely figure out what the motivation was for all of it. When I insist that I want to leave, Azrael tells me that he wants to stay. “Let’s enjoy your work,” he says to me and it's consoling and all the anxiety that's built up inside of me stops at once.
We stand near a curb, I reach out ahead of me with a bloodied hand but it touches something that makes the open scene swim like it's trapped underwater.
He’s in a suit now, black with a well tied Windsor knot and the suit is well tailored. I’m in the same. My long-backed olive-green jacket which is doing its best to hide the weapons in my back. A mid drift white shirt, large and loose joggers and low running shoes. The blood is drying to my hand but I barely notice it.
As the cops start to pull up, he looks at me, I keep my eyes on the house and he kisses me forehead. “You can’t see anything can you?” he asks me.
“I can see this,” I tell him.
“I mean from your past,” he clears up for me.
“Not as much as I want to, I know there’s more.”
“A lot more. Your from Schenectady New York, moved to Manhattan when you were nine after you were bounced around in orphanages for a time. You had three foster parents, you killed one of them because you said that he was possessed.”
“How do you know that,” I ask.
“I don’t want you interrupting me when I’m giving you what you want.”
I immediately go quiet again, I need to hear this, I may not ever hear this again.
“You were possessed by a demon at the age of four, a woman your original mother was additionally possessed by a demon when you were born. The demon lost its control of your mother, your mother also lost control of her mind and her body in the process. During that time, the demon sought you out, same genes, same person as far as it was concerned. It’s still in you somewhere, a demon older than most of us. One that wanted to outrun Lucifer and all the shit that goes on down there long before the rest of us did.”
He looks at me and his eyes stare into mine. “Kiss me,” he says and I feel my lips press and gently rub against his.
When I back off, neither of us are in front of that house anymore. The memory of Damien stuck in my head but no part of me cared about it. Not now at least. Instead we were at a noodle restaurant. Outside I could see an army of yellow cabs, I know were back in the city and I can recognize the place after a few minutes, it’s one of my favorites.
The noodle dish is already steaming in front of me, I have no idea how long we’ve been here or can I remember how we got here at all. As I eat, Azrael is watching me, there is something in his head. I want to know what it is but I know I can’t see into him just as easily as he can see into me. I want to ask but I know that he could shut me up and delete the motive from my head before I can even get it off my chest.
“You know I’m torn Arinna,” he says to me. “I want you by my side. You’re going to be a real value to whatever side you pick in this war that's coming but it's sad to say that your side isn’t written in blood yet. If I let you go, what you did tonight is going to haunt you for a long time. Your hatred for Gabriel might find a way to mask it especially once you realize what the next step of his plan is. I could come and go, that is always a possibility, I doubt that you’d ever refuse me now that I’ve been inside that head of yours and seen so vividly what you want to know.”
He waits, I don’t eat but I watch him. “I don’t want you killing any demons, I don’t want you hunting the supernatural. For now, your flesh and blood with an affinity for killing hunters. I want the occult left alone is that understood.”
“Of course,” I say back to him.
I’m sent back, sitting in the small hotel room that I met him in. There is one single light on and I go to lay in the bed. I have absolutely no intentions of moving but I do have an anger inside of me and I want to find a Chaser. I want to make on suffer. Then the breaking news streams across my phone. The masterpiece that I orchestrated tonight with Damien has finally touched the news. At least I’ll be able to enjoy this for a time.
Chapter 66
Gabriel stood there with the wraith. It had teleported him here and now and had desires for him to watch. To watch the progression of the True Night as he moved his agenda along. While he still had some control over the wraith.
The creature had spilled blood, at least ten had been killed by it. Simultaneously hunting the ones that are part of that bitch’s family. All of them except the cop, he wasn’t entirely sure where he was even though he had a handful of people searching for her, the wraith seemed to have lost interest. It wanted more. There was a hunger to it that couldn't quite be satiated by simply killing. There was more to it. Gabriel wasn’t even entirely sure what it wanted but knew that in coming here tonight, the wraith had intentions of amassing more than one plot into motion.
It stood there, skin cold and pale, its eyes had become a glowing blue even while its hood sat over its head. They were the only two allowed to see this. The only ones that it wanted to see.
They had come to a cemetery; a place called Our Open Arms in upstate Westchester just outside of the city. It didn't’ want them near the city. For one reason or another it wanted them to wait, to have patience before it used them. This was it though. Gabriel had read the volumes that pertained to the True Night, the servant had the control when it came to the second task.
He stood there, breath chilled and steam as it vented out of him. He wasn’t entirely shaken, there was a certain amount of confidence that had been constructed for a night like this. There was also the fact that he had something else that has burrowed inside of him. Something that he himself had requested be placed in there. The touch of demon that was moving around in parts of his mind. It kept him safe, it kept his mind operating as one unit rather than being pulled. It made sure that he had a control over the wraith knowing full well that flesh and blood can’t operate the wraith for long before it turns on the one that pulled it from the depths.
Gabriel stood there arms behind him as he monitored the scene. Watching as the long-cloaked wraith walked, stretching out its hand as the barred iron gates to the cemetery ripped themselves off the hinges and links that bound them and then threw themselves aside. He watched as the creature took its first steps onto the hallowed ground that it was supposed to be forbidden from ever entering.
It held its hand out, long stretching out the cold pale fingers as whatever he was putting out there moved across the rolling hills of granite tombstones and mausoleums. Gabriel could feel it, it was around him like something that he could reach out and take hold of. Something that his fingers could sense, that his tongue could taste. There was something alive that was spreading through the air like a disease.
He waited as the tombstones began to tremble, not all of them. Only some of them began to quiver in the ground that rooted them. That was until the first creature crawled up and out of the dirt that had been packed over its resting place. A long skeleton, missing the skin that hung over its body. Cold blue eyes that matched the one that had called it from the afterlife and dragged it with him into the world that waited on the other side.
More of them followed. All of them at varying stages of decomposition, rotted corpses reaching up and out of the ground to serve someone that had touched them.
Gabriel stood there as small beads seemed to fall from
the sky. At first he thought it was snow, trickling down from a sky that was months off from being able to hold and operate something that was so fragile. Then in the seconds that followed that it fell on his skin, scabs of ash streaked on his flesh. He realized that it wasn’t snow that was falling. It was the charcoaled skin of a fire that was burning somewhere and venting scraps into the sky that were being carried down to him.
There were hundreds ahead of him, all of them standing over their graves as the wraith lowered the hand that had pulled them. They all stood there, solitary, patient, as if they hadn’t been disturbed at all but rather were waiting for this to happen. Soon the wall started moving forward, dragging the weight of bodies that shouldn't exist with them as they moved towards the ones that they now served.
Chapter 67
My eyes open with a start and I have to run to the bathroom. Whatever I ate, whatever was sitting in my stomach suddenly doesn't’ want to be there anymore. After I’m finished puking it all up, I flush it down, I don't want to look at it. I can taste sour blood still somewhere in between my teeth and I brush it out and spit what’s left into the sink under running water.
I run my hand through my hair, I’m still wearing what I wore last night. It takes a second to realize that I still have that brownish hue on my skin and its covering my hands and up to my arms and my shirt. I know what it is but I don’t want to realize it. I killed another Chaser and I suddenly fight back something in my stomach again.
I see the staff on my bed, it was lying next to me as I slept. I walked up to it and spring it to life and I can see the markings just as they are on my skin still staining the blade that was used to do it. I had killed a flesh and blood, that was something that I had promised myself would never happen. What was worse was that I did it without even realizing that it wasn’t me behind my head. It wasn’t my mind that was instructing the idea. It was Azrael that had been the one that made me do it.
Stepping over to it, I don’t want to touch it. It’s like the skin of the metal is going to burn me if I even go near it. It’s not until I snap both blades open that I can still see blood and muscle tissues leftover that’s glued to the twin sheets of metal. The blade falls out of my grip and everything inside my stomach makes a run for it up through my throat. I try to cover my mouth before it escapes, making a run for the toilet, but the vomit comes out of the dam that my palm tried to make.
My hand clutches the corner of my bed as I let all of it out, it doesn’t matter that it’s on the bare floor, it has to come out of me. That whole in the pit of my stomach is ripping every organ in its path wide open as it passes.
I didn't cry but it was hard to keep it distant. Everything that Bash had told me about what Gabriel had done to me and I let another thing step inside of my head and use my body how it saw fit to be used. It gave me no choice in the matter, I surrendered who and what I was for nothing. All I did was carve another piece of my soul out of me and toss it to the demons to do with it as they pleased.
My hands cradled my stomach, I’m on my knees on the floor in front of the vomit that is resting on the floor in front of me. The tears came regardless of what I did to stop them. They came like a hurricane pouring out of my eyes, they came with screams of pain and panic and horror as the memories twisted into visions and the scenes replayed themselves in a mind that was scraped to raw to receive them.
I struggle to inhale, I struggle harder to manage it once its inside of my chest. That panicked breathing starts to flood my throat and lock my hands and arms in place as all my mind tries to focus on allowing me to breath. It’s a panic attack married to an anxiety attack. Even a damaged, calloused mind isn’t immune to it. I crawl on the floor to my bag that’s at the edge of my bed and tear everything inside of it apart until I find the bottle in there. After the lid was untied and thrown, I put my mouth to the pill bottle like it's the neck of a liquor bottle and grind my teeth against the capsules while the powder sinks into my saliva.
I looked down at my hands, saw the brown on my skin like paint before I shed everything that I was wearing and went into the shower. Dousing myself with water that was so hot that the bathroom was baked with steam within seconds, I used the scalding hot water to try and shed the skin that had done what it did last night. It didn’t help. As I dry myself off I realized that it didn’t help at all, I still felt the filth of what I had done.
I left the apartment, I had to and made my way to a coffee shop a few blocks down from the apartment. Once I get the coffee, I storm down into the subway terminal and wait for the train to take me uptown. I can’t be around the Kitchen, I can’t be around the Motel, I need something different. I need a change of scenery and right now anything will do to get me there.
I can’t trust my own mind. Instinct, conscious, subconscious, all of it is acting and working against me now. I feel dirty and disgusting, that clean that just won’t be shed off my skin no matter how many showers I take. What’s worse is that I feel damaged, almost as if I’m broken with no way to repair myself. Like with everything that’s been done to me, everything that my mind and my body has been through, all of it has left me scarred and disfigured and even if I wanted to leave the life that I created, that a normal regular life that I used to long for just won’t have me. That in the end, I’m too spoiled to ever tarnish something that beautiful.
It's not until I get off the subway and back up onto the main surface streets of the city, back into the endless swarms of crowds, back into the never-ending reservoir of control that Gabriel can take if he chose too, the paranoia that begins to settle into my skin all over again. I’m pale and I’m hot and sweating and that sensation of churning fire in my stomach is back and it send a venomous acid up to the back of my throat. When my phone goes off it doesn't shake me or startle me but it sends my heart rate into a frenzy.
It's not a call. It's not a text message. It’s an alert from one of the news sites that I enrolled the number into. A massive grave robbery in upstate New York happened. Forty-seven graves have been exhumed and hollowed.
Chapter 68
The car is already off but by the time I see the second pair of headlights come through I exit the car and close the door gently. Ever since the cars ignition was killed I’ve been sitting there in the front seat, pills diluting themselves into my bloodstream with another small handful still in my palm. In my free hand is my Desert Eagle tied to a suppressor as I linger down in the shadows that the interior of the car is casting, I don’t want that metal go, for now, it provides a comfort and a control that I’m longing for.
There are more than a few cops still investigating the scene on the main entrance of the cemetery. Something big happened and I won’t allow myself to believe it from the small view that I got of it as I drove by. I need to see it for myself.
Bash get out of the truck that he’s in, it’s an old hot rod matte black truck I can hear the transmission being silenced as he shifts it into gear and turns the block off. As he gets out I see that he’s alone.
“Where’s the girl?” I ask.
“Safe for now,” he tells me. He has a flashlight in his hand and a gun in his other. I don't know what he knows but I know it's going to come out one way or another tonight. I don’t need a flashlight, my eyes always did well at adapting to the dark which everyone always told me was strange for eyes as blue as mine are.
We come close to one another to keep our voices to a whisper. I spot his gun and he spots mine and it forces each of us to keep a respectable distance with one another. “It wants its army,” Bash say’s to me.
“Looks like he’s starting to build it,” I reply. It's the most even and level that I can expect out of my voice, I have to put a lot of events and memories behind the wall, it's a shame that I have so few and I have to force myself to forget the ones that I have.
“If the wraith has that much power, I don’t think we can afford to wait that much longer. This is the second seal, the third would give it way too much power. After this on
e, we’ll need to find the Angle to put the wraith down.”
He throws himself up on the ledge, I in a quick sprint run up the wall, three feet planted before I’m crouched at the top with his hand waiting there. He forgets who I am. We look out over the rolling hills of the cemetery. “This was one night?” I ask him.
“That’s what the news said. Cops have taken a serious interest,” he says, pointing.
I can see the parade of blue and red lighting wash over the hills and illuminate the fresh dirt that was peeled out like an old scab so that these things could lift themselves up.
“It doesn’t look man-made. It looks like they were clawed out from the inside out,” I say to him.
“What the estimate?” I ask.
“Ninety-seven,” Bash says to me. “News is reporting a third of that.” My eyes move ahead and I do a quick count. I count seventy, there’s more beyond what the wall is hiding.
I jump down and so does he. We both walk carefully watching not to unsettle the disturbed dirt or leave foot impressions, I know the cops will cast anything pressed into the soft earth. I look at him and I can see his footing. Knowing full well that when some bodies are pulled it disturbs the others and could cause more to leave the underworld. Assuming that it was the supernatural that pulled them out in the first place.
I kneel down by a pile and look at the tombstone that stares back at me. Its cracked and its chipped, whatever came out did the damage as it did. The name on it was Richard Stoke with a date of passing as nineteen thirty-five, the stone was weathered and old.
I move my hand close to the dirt, not close enough to touch it but close and I can feel heat bathing the bottom of my hand, almost as if I’m moving my hand through the small flames of a fire.
Closing my hand and pulling it back close to me I look up to see Bash, he’s standing over a grave and looking down at it with some interest. Then I see him look up at me. There’s something different, his eyes are a sickening white and black and cracks in his skin spread all over his face.