by Riley Mason
I'm taken aback. “But that’s your purpose.”
“And what is yours, to find yourself. Tell me is it better to be bitter at your purpose or to forget that purpose entirely and spend the rest of your life to seek it out and try and repair what you feel you’ve lost.”
“But you know my purpose, don't you?”
“Of course I do, it’s the only purpose that really matters in this entire endeavor. The only one whose motives are listened to and respected by all sides.”
“That’s not because of me though,” I say, it can’t be. It’s because of what Gabriel did to me and what he made me do.
“It’s not because of the choices of a man who manipulated you,” she corrected my thought for me.
“Then what is it?”
“Think deeper, the time isn’t ripe yet for you to really understand and to understand before its time to do so throws off a balance that needs to remain steady.”
“So, you do know?”
“Everything,” she corrects me looking at the creatures wandering in the corner and then back to me.
I’m back in Central Park. My eyes don't move but I can feel the sensation of them opening like my lids have moved but they haven’t. Instead a single tear strings down my face like I’ve left my eyes open for too long. I need to find this Angel and not wait for her to find me.
I call Bash, right there from the bench. He answers by the third ring. “We have to find the third seal before Gabriel.”
Chapter 78
There’s a halfway point at this restaurant in White Plains New York, that’s where we meet. Time is growing short, I can feel it, I can almost see it cutting itself down as a moment grows closer that I don’t want to come.
There’s coffee in front of me that I’m drinking, Bash is still on liquor regardless of the time of day that it is right now.
“What do the scrolls say for where the third seal is?” I ask him.
“Unknown,” he says back to me. “The last known location was in the Midwest back in the 1800s does nothing for us now. No records of sale through antiques or auction. Last I knew it belonged to a family named Peterson but that trail goes dead just before the first world war. Supposedly the Angel is bound to some old artifact which is where she needs to be released from.” I know that’s not the truth, the conversation I just shared with her tells me as much but now I’m not entirely sure how much to tell Bash.
“That doesn’t give us a great starting point,” I argue.
“True Night also isn’t supposed to happen. A wraith is never supposed to get sprung let alone get enough strength to pull the dead up from their graves,” he says back to me, another drink gone and another one ordered.
I did want to tell him about the Angel, I wanted to tell him I’ve seen her but I felt in that moment that it was better kept with me stored inside my body for me to know.
That’s when everything freezes, Bash sitting there holds a drink in midair. The bar surrounded her stands still entirely as if none of them can move. “I’ve got a proposition for you,” a voice says it her in her ear. I can feel a hint of cool breath on my earlobe. I recognize the voice at once.
In one quick set of reflexes, I grab the small knife that’s hidden in my clothes and move to cut the thing talking to me in the throat. Despite the speed of the lunge it's not fast enough and he catches me at my wrist, less than three inches before the tip of the blade would’ve punctured his face, he slams my hand down so hard on the table most of the beers standing knock over and I can feel a bone crack in my hand. The hand that slammed me down caresses the broken bone until it mends and heals before it swells and bruises.
There’s so much anger inside of me I’m not entirely sure in which way it should come out. Everything inside of me is on fire right now but at the same time there's a helpless and overwhelming feeling drowning me. I know what he’s here for and there’s nothing that I can do to stop it. My mind is to open, it’s to suggestive and no matter how much I want to fight what’s coming I’m not going to be able to.
I look at Bash before I lose my cognitive controls to this thing that's sitting right next to me. The blackness inside of him is leaking out through his pores, I miss the days when they were unseen and you had to envision their evil rather than being forced to stare at it and to interact with it.
I stand up knowing that nothing is next to me. The voice that’s commanding me, the one that I’m being forced to listen to is being projected inside my head. That’s where the true source of the possession comes from, like a faucet that’s let run loose over time and it eventually falls over. Its stretched its control to the rest of my body. I’m no longer just a mind tasking my body, this thing is tasking me body for me but I’m still in here.
I can feel my body stand, sense as it leaves the bar, the weather that’s outside, the rain that’s falling in waves down from a sky that hasn’t shown sun in days. Everything about it is real and vivid and yet nothing is there, it’s like my mind is splicing together memories of these things but my eyes are watching it from behind glass.
It tells me it needs me. That there is another job to do. That there is more work to be done. That if I want to live, that if I feel that I want to survive that I need to do this. I don’t know why its speaking; my answer was yes from the moment it wanted it to be yes. The defense I’ve built in my mind shatters in the moments it takes for my brain to understand suggestion even before the impulse commands me to put it into practice.
The building it takes me to, through the streets barely filled with people, along alleyways to keep me out of the public eye, is one that’s somewhere in the eighties. A three story shit hole somewhere in the middle of apartment buildings that were all on their way to being abandoned sooner or later. This is where he needed me to kill someone else.
I don’t look around me, I know that’s taken care of. Most of the people that were heading in this direction, if there were any, have turned away and started moving in a different direction entirely. I try to fight my own body as I use my bare hands to rid the doorway of the sheets of wood that are nailed into it to keep people out.
When I cross, I can see the salt barrier that’s on the inside of the doorway. My mind, at least some part of it screams out in protest. It’s nothing that my body wants to listen to or understand. It becomes compelled and addicted to making sure what its asked for is done. No amount of damage in my head, no number of pills is going to stop what this thing wants me to do.
Chapter 79
As I enter, breaking the barrier of salt with the point of my shoe, I look around. The water that’s hammering down outside has found its way through the creaks and cracks that are riddled throughout the building, cutting like small rivers through the warped and molded panels of wood that surround me.
There is someone here, I can almost hear the sound of their heartbeat in my ears. I pull out my dagger, it's more intimate and personal, it's what this thing inside of me wants me to use, I have no choice but to listen to it. I’m foolish enough still to think that there’s a choice in the matter.
I look around the lower level, it’s a kitchen that burned down and sent fire into the living space that was right next to it. Even with the water bathing the room and running down the walls I can still see the scorched skin of the wood, the bubbles that spread across the wall like blisters against the heat.
He’s not here, not on this level at least.
I look up at the ceiling and realize that I can hear the almost silent shuffling of feet from upstairs in places where misapplied pressure on the rotted wood sends whispers of shrieks through an apartment with no furniture to break up the sounds.
There he is I think to myself as I move and head to the stairwell.
I stand at the door that hiding the room where I heard the sounds coming from. The sounds of water leaking all around me now is almost louder than the sounds from the storm coming in from the outside. I touch the door with my fingertips, my body tells me it's in there, the dem
on in control of me knows he’s in there too.
I ball my hand into a fist and slam it hard on the door five times and then move out of the way. The part of my mind already weaving the guilt that's coming with this, already trying to manifest the composure that I’m going to need when this is done knows full well that this is a Chaser that’s on the other side of the door. Another Chaser that it wants dead.
Six bullets punch through the warped and swelling door, all of them spitting moist wood chips as they puncture through the panel, it’s not until I hear the clip smack down on the floor that I turn and kick the door as hard as I can which removes the rusted padlock that’s sealing the Chaser in.
I look at him there, young but his face is weathered and deteriorated, I can see the spoon, the lighter, and the needles beside him, his arm is still unraveled but the belt is on the floor too. At this point he’s aiming an empty gun at me.
Three times I count his finger squeezes that trigger, dry action comes out, the gun spits residue without a bullet waiting in the chamber. I take the dagger and throw it as hard as I can and it cuts through his right shoulder and pins him against the wall. A scream erupts around me.
I step to him faster, with more deliberate movements. No part of me is enjoying this but every part of the spirit grafted to my body is.
I move quick to him, grab him by the throat and lift him up, my muscle swelling in my arm as I do and I rip out the knife in his shoulder as forcefully as I can.
Something about the look in the green eyes that stare back at me. The innocence in them, somehow, he held onto them through his life as a Chaser, tighter when the heroine worked through his bloodstream. I reach out and touch his face, I place my head down, I’m not even sure what’s next.
Suddenly, he starts with a seizure, subtle at first but then it picks up intensity and then violence my body, my mind is being used to transmit something.
I try to break the grip that this demon has on me but it’s not working, I can see the Chaser’s eyes rolling to the back of his head, the foam and blood that’s spilling out of his mouth.
Chapter 80
I wake up still in the apartment but now I’m on the ground laying on the slick chubby wood on the ground, I fell unconscious on my arm. A small stream of water is leaking down from the ceiling on my foot I don’t know how it didn't’ wake me up sooner.
I see the body before I’m really reminded of where I am. The thin body lying there on the floor, the blood falling out of his back.
The reaction moves faster than my brain is capable of comprehending it. I quickly move to him, resting on my knees I check his pulse, I feel nothing touch my hand back.
His face is badly scarred, I can see nine puncture wounds that run right through his skull, most of the blood in his body has leaked over his hair and covered what skin isn’t to swollen on his face.
When I look down I see the rest of the damage. Sliding his shirt away, there are another fifteen markings in his thin boned midsection.
Chapter 81
“Shit,” I say but it's intermingled with the breathing coming out of me. I look down and can see dried blood on my hands, my knife, sitting there next to what I can almost guess is the last time I slid the blade inside of his body lying there on the floor, the sheet of metal still oozing with his blood.
Even through the panels of wood nailed into the wall where the windows are supposed to be a slight bit of light is creeping itself through.
Stepping up to the panel, I dig my fingers into the spacing the warped wood creates since it’s been lifting itself away from the screws that are pinning it to the wall and I tear with what strength I can throw behind my muscles. There sore, hard to lift, and heavier than I can remember them being in a long time.
After the board comes loose, I throw it to the side and trying to keep
myself preserved by what shadows are still in the abandoned apartment, I don’t want anyone to see me. I can see the cross street, eighty-eighth and 1st.
I pull my phone out of my pocket, it's nearly five in the morning now. The body is fresh, the last thing that I can remember about meeting with Bash put me at close to eleven.
Sliding my fingers through the phone I call him. Ignoring that there are fifty-nine missed calls there already.
“Where the fuck are you?” he asks me the second the call connects.
I want to tell him everything but it's not the time, I don't trust the phone and I know that we don’t have the time to spare. I give him the address and hang up the phone and I start to pace the room, my eyes stuck in the corpse on the floor.
When Bash get there I’m already too eager to get to work. “Jesus Christ,” Bash says. “What the fuck is this?”
“Azrael,” I say back to him. “He came to the bar in another vessel,” I say to him as I look down at the dried craftsmanship of the possessions work. “He wanted another deal.”
Bash goes silent for a moment. “It’s not still in me,” I tell him.
“How do you know?” he asks me.
For a second, I see a glaze pass over his eyes and I squint mine to see if I can reproduce what I just saw but it doesn’t come. Now I’m not entirely sure that I can dispute if I am or not. “I don’t,” I have to concede.
“Arinna, this how many times is this going to happen?” he asks me. I feel sick the second he asks it. It’s like there is something sliding through my stomach.
“Are you going to help me clean up this body or not,” I ask him and my patience has all but vanished from my voice. “That’s what I need to figure out what you want to do.”
We don't share much as we go outside to the car that he has parked in front of the apartment. Bash pops his trunk and we share a duffel bag as we bring it upstairs to where the body is on the floor.
When the gasoline is dumped on the body, I try to tie off and leash the shock that’s passing through my head. It’s killing me on the inside and moving out and I don't know what to do with it anymore.
I watch as Bash lights his match and tosses it on the slick combustible liquid that’s soaked the body.
Chapter 82
We don't wait long until the fire catches into the rest of the building. It's just starting to traverse floors by the time we’re turning around the corner.
“How many more people are they going to use you to kill?” he asked after we had gone about six or seven blocks. I wasn’t paying much attention.
“Listen,” I say to him, I’m picking my tone more carefully then I feel like I should be. “They want something from me and as much as they’re going to bullshit me, they know something. I need to know they know. Between dangling my memories in front of me and knowing every move that Gabriel is trying to make with this wraith, if I have to let them in to do it then so be it.”
“FUCK!” Bash said as he slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “Are you fucking listening to yourself. You’re willingly letting them in your head, you don’t know what they’re doing in there.”
“It’s more than I know now. So what they want Identicals killed, it's not like Gabriel didn't want the same thing when he was running me.”
“You’re not talking about Identicals anymore Arinna, you’re talking about Chasers. These people were us for a long time. They were people that we knew and people we loved. They were our family.”
“And now they’re killing themselves off faster than the demons ever did it for them.”
I see red moving up Bash pale face. “This isn’t you.”
“What do you know about who I am after Gabriel molested my fucking head.”
“I can’t see you as being this poisoned now,” he yells.
“What you know about my head,” I snap back at him. “You weren’t there, what you do know you’re not saying so why the hell should I believe you.”
The car stops hard. The sound of the tires screeching spill into my ears and the scent of scorched rubber from being scraped on the road finds its way into my nose.
“Wh
at are you doing?” I ask.
“I told you that you told me not tell you even if this was what we became, I couldn't tell you shit.”
“Why would I say that?” I ask him.
I watch as he digs his fingers in his mouth and moves his lip out of the way. The second he moves it, I can see the set of fangs that are there. “How else do you think I can fight that telepathy or heal as fast as I can.”
I pull my gun out, it's an instinct that's years in the making from practice that I can’t remember ever happening. I aim the gun, silencer and all at his chest. “This is what you didn’t want to know,” he tells me. “This was the secret that you asked me to keep.”
“Why would you do this to save me?”
Bash puts the car back into gear and then I can hear the rattle of the motor coughing out of the tailpipe as the tires screech again and we start moving.
“Why would you do that?” I hear come out of me again but the voice sounds strained and upset.
Another five minutes and then car stops again, this time Bash gets out of it.
He opens my door and tells me to get out. I look up to see the tall gothic architecture of the church that we’re at.
Chapter 83
I’m standing there in front of this church, that look of soothing that Bash gave me for a time has burned off and I see nothing but hatred left inside of him. Since I’ve seen the fangs, it's hard to see him as anything more than a target, something that needs to be executed, my mind might betray me most times but it’s well trained to know that demons and vampires and the occult need to be extinguished when they’re exposed.
“Come with me,” he says, patience is lost in his voice.
“Tell me where the fuck we are,” I argue back with him. I looked once at the building when he held the door open but I don’t recognize it.
“Arinna let’s fucking go,” he says again, this time I can almost see the fangs protrude from their flap of skin as his lips peel back over his teeth. It’s something that I can’t just un-see.