She drinks her coffee, still sitting by the dinner table. Meanwhile, the host starts blaming the government for the city-wide chaos.
Angiolina listens attentively, until her anger takes over and she turns off the radio. "Stupido!" Something is coming towards Earth and she knows. The whole chain of events is interconnected.
"Do you want me to find you the girl?" Lucky asks.
"I don't know, it's so frustrating being unable to do anything. I feel like I have to do something, you know?" Angiolina complains to her spectral guide.
"Had Victor trusted in me and told what is happening..." She laments.
"Maybe he couldn't spill the beans like this. He could be protecting you, cousin."
"I want to help this girl, Luckly. Whatever it takes." A determined Angio says.
"May I send the boys, then?" Lucky asks.
"Yes, please. Figure out what you can. I need to know where to begin." She agrees thoughtfully.
Luciano slowly fades away, straightening his collar as he shouts " Let's go boys! Time to work!"
Chapter 10
The Sinister Flames
The cold rain still hits the city of São Paulo. Fog blocks vision, allowing only a few yards of visibility.
While the temperature drops dramatically, the crowd that roamed the streets now gathers in a cluster of desperate people. Some actu aggressively, pushing each other, screaming, trying to pin the blame on someone. Most give in to fear and hopelessness.
Andreas is feeling desolate and scaredly observing everything. The feeling of loneliness is overwhelming, the bodies and blood of people trampled right in front of him painting a horrible picture; the wounded who managed to escape the panic nursing their wounds, still trying to understand what happened.
This tragedy was not the only side effect of the metallic sound that came from the sky. Many people seemed to lose their minds after hearing it. They are overcome by madness, screaming, mumbling incomprehensible phrases or hurting themselves.
With time, this crazy crowd disperses towards downtown and causes mayhem wherever it roams by, looting, vandalizing and performing other acts of violence.
Andreas runs through the streets and tries to avoid the clusters of people. As he walks, he finds several signs of the destruction caused by the maddened crowd. Stores with broken windows, bodies strewn across the streets as if they were disposable.
All of Andreas' muscles are tense. His mind is foggy. Each step causes him terrible pain, his limbs tremble as if he had spent hours running. The feeling is overwhelming. Andreas if afraid of dying.
Right now Andreas wins over his panic e starts running without looking behind. Without thinkling, he heads downtown.
Still keeping to side streets, he meets several groups of people who have just ran away from the main streets to look for shelter; most of them under awning, sheltering themselves from cold and rain.
Andreas seats on the curb beside an old lady and tries to call Joseph one more time.
"Damn this voice mail!"
"Relax young man... don't worry. Have faith. Se is well." The old lady tries to comfort him.
Andreas looks at the old woman and sees her trembling with cold, hugging herself for warmth, which disarms him completely.
"It's a he, not a she."
"It doesn't matter, I'm sure he is safe. Is he smart?"
"The smartest man I've ever mat. He's a doctor, you know? I love him so much."
"And do you know where he is?"
"Saving lifes, of course, while I'm here, alone in the rain." Andreas bemoans as he looks at his cellphone. Still no service.
The nameless lady takes his hand and says, serenely.
" I'm sure that, wherever your doctor is, his love and thoughts are with you."
When he notices how cold she is, he takes off his jacket and puts it over her shoulders.
"Are they? Are they really?"
"Love lways wins." She taps his hand and squeezes it, trying to warm their cold fingers.
Some moments of tranquility go by, until Andreas notices a figure watching him from inside an alley. He forces his eyes and notices it's a man of jetset eyes and dressed in rags, crouching. Something else draws his attention, a dark aura that moves behind this figure, like colorless flame.
When he notices the beholder, the art director stands up, frightened, looking towards the stranger's jetset eyes as he approaches smiling. Now Andreas sees the flames clearly as they dance around the stranger, like they have free will, dark as the vastness of outer space.
Nine people come from the alley, following the stranger, as he walks towards Andreas.
"Go away, run, quickly!" He shouts to the old lady, who hides, in panic.
Misaligned. All of them, no exception, seem to walk mechanically, like they were suffering from uncontrollable spasms. It's possible to hear the sound of bones and tendons snapping from effort while their faces warp in a cry.
"You should not be seeing me, Ephemeral." The preador says curiously, while the dark flames thar surround his body envelop each one of its followers.
Andreas starts praying. Which makes the stranger halt. He watches attentively. For some reason he seems to know these words.
"She is coming, Ephemeral. This is notyour gods' age. The Scourge of the Void is about to fall upon this dimension and we, as its spawn, will feed on you vertebrates. The mother od Void is eternal."
As he listens to these words, an irrational fear takes over Andreas. It's like this information was kept in his bones, his genes, since time immemorial. Like the creature in front of him was explaining the reasons being humankind's primal fears. Fear of the dark, of the unknwon, of lightning and death. There really is a predator in the forest, stalking every human being. All convened in our subconscious.
He tries to run, but those human puppets surround him. Suffering from the horrors of having their mind invaded, of not having control of their own body.
Outside of the circle they form, the creature who controls them observes its prey.
"Vajra Nixus! " The void spawn scream gutturally.
As it screams, the dark flames spread through the bodies of the puppets, pain so intense their eyeballs start bleeding.
"No, please..." Andreas implores. He is on his knees. Begging for his life.
One of them, a punk girl with pink hair, jumps towards him and breaks his leg with a baseball bat. Andreas cries and thrashes about in pain. Another rushes in and bites the wound in his leg, tearing skin, flesh and bone apart, causing howls of pain.
"For the love of God, no... Please" Andreas keeps begging for his life. He tries to keep his leg away from the aggressor's bites, an effort that becomes meaningless when others join the feast, eating him alive.
"Please. I can't die like this!"
Andreas does not pass out, but he can't scream anymore, while they destroy his body with axe and club strikes. Some devour the lower parts of his body. He feels the pain of each bite, each hit, each cut and only a whimper escapes his throat. Bones are crushed to bits. Skin and muscles are chewed by human teeth. The pain is unbearable.
He takes a while to die, his body instinctively floudering in spams, until his life ebbs away slowly and the animals that were once human finish devouring him.
Andreas is dead.
Chapter 11
Accident at 23 de Maio Avenue
Joseph is working, focused. With his help, one of officers managed to set up a makeshift marquee with a tarp and a car's trunk to protect patient's fromt the weather.
He is still in the rain, hunched over an old lady who broke her legs in several places, trying to make her a splint from a seatbelt. The woman has passed out a while ago, which allows Joseph to treat her without worrying about complaints. She is his third patient.
His loyal nurse in this endeavor, officer August, stands by his side. The twenty-one-year-old young man stands firm under pressure. Nimbly, he finishes setting the makeshift apparatus.
The doctor is tired. He
gets up to stretch his back. He is drenched and smeared with blood. He looks back to the crash sire, to the dead on the ground, to his sudden helpers, trying to accomplish his difficilt tasks in the best possible way.
Rain finally starts to die down, leaving behing a cold drizzle. He takes a moment to breathe better, walking outside his improvised clinic, cleaning sweat from his brow with a diaper found in one of the cars.
He steps away the mess, just a little. His thoughts away from the crash site, Joseph decides to lean against one of the cars in the dark. He picks up his cell phone to get some news from Andreas. No service.
He hears the steps of someone running in the shadows, but keeps his head down, focused on his smartphone. Maybe it's one of his makeshift nurses, he thinks.
A man in rags, armes with a piece of rusted metal, revals himself from behind one of the cars and freezes when he sees Joseph. His red eyes attract the doctor's attentions.
"Are you okay? Were you in the crash?" He asks, aproaching carefully towards the man. Psychosis cases are very common around tragedies.
"Please, focus on my voice and tell me what you're feeling, sir." Joseph says, one step away from the wheezing man.
The stranger's reaction is both fast and violent. With an inhuman movement he hits Joseph's head with the piece of rusted metal, pushing him behind. The doctor falls to the ground and stays there. The pain he is feeling and the lack of ar surely mean he broke a rib. He tries to move his should unsuccessfully. Dislocated. Joseph is defenseless, incapable of fighting back.
The aggressor aproaches slowly and, despite the pain, the doctor can hear his wheezing breathing aproaching. The man raises his metal weapon to deal another blow. To Joseph, this brief motion drags itself in slow motion. No memories, no selfless thoughts. Just a void of emotion.
The sound of metal against metal breaks the silence.
Yura was faster. Startled by the noise, Joseph opens his eyes and sees her between him and his attacker.
She parried the aggressor's blow with an old axe. His savior looks at him with a disturbing smile, ignoring the effort she is making to stop the doctor from being hurt.
Yura twists her wrist, using her axe, sending the piece of metal stuck to her weapon away, shattering a car's windshield in the process. Before her opponente can recover, she hits his chest with a palm strike, leaving him breathless.
After her adversary leans forward with the strike, Yura sees the opportunity to finish the combat, launching a precise attack with her axe on the back of ther opponent's head. Yura's eyes are completely red.
"Thank you" Joseph says, as Yura helps him stand up. He looks at the corpse of the man who attacked him, frightened. "I can't understand what happened, he seemed out of his mind. I have never seen a reaction such as this." The doctor concludes, nursing his own head wound, still astonished.
"It's because he was possessed, and there was definitely nothing else to do but put and end to his misery as fast as possible. Believe me, there is nothing worse than not having control over what happens to your own body." The Ukranian says, coldly, staring at the corpse in front of her.
"Possession? This is impossible..." A still astonished Joseph says.
"You don't think humankind rules over the Universe alone, do you?" Yura asks, having fun with the doctor's awe. "We are ants compared to the ancient horrors that inhabit the dark corners of reality."
Joseph keeps paying attention to each of Yuna's words. He tries to find a reasonable explanation for what happened.
"It's too much for the doctor to process, Yura. Let's go! We're not safe here." Aaron interrupts, hand in his sheathed saber's hilt, totally alert.
The Ukranian shrugs and starts heading back towards the car lights. Joseph follows her and is followed by Aaron, who looks around the darkness searching for what's bothering him. He is sure this is the calm before the storm.
While Aaron scrutinizes the dark area from where the attacker came with his arcane-enhanced eyes, Yura and Joseph are already at the makeshift clinic. The Ukranian's red eyes, as well as her blood-stained axe, cause a commotion among patients and police officers.
"What happened, doc?" Augusto asks, worried about the doctor and the recently arrived.
Joseph takes his time breathing before he explains what happened. Yura puts her hands on his back, encouraginly.
"I went out for some air. Ended up slipping and hitting my head on the ground. Luckily this young lady and her partnet where around and managed to help me." Joseph justifies, omitting any information about axe blows and possessed people attacking.
Same as he omitted finding the mangled bodies of mother and child before. The doctor still looks for logical explanation for the recent events.
"Her name is Yura. That one is Aaron."
"We were just passing by when we saw the doctor in trouble." She explains calmly.
"And what's that axe for?" The cop asks, embodying law and order.
"A family heirloom. My grandmother left it for me." Yura answers, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
"Well, Augusto, I don't really think this is the best moment nor the best time for a police investigation, right?" Joseph argues, trying to nudge the officers towards more important matters.
"Ok, doc, you're right. We are almost done getting the patients ready for you to examine them." Augusto says, focusing back to the wounded and the task Joseph gave him.
"Do you need anything, doctor? I know anatomy and first aid." Yura offers.
"No doubt about that." Joseph answers, thinking back to his savior's skill in separating a head from a body with an axe so efficiently. "But unless you have a first aid kit in yout bike it won't help much."
Yura takes a bundle of cloth from one of her overcoat's pockets and puts it on a car's hood. As he opens the bundle, Josephe sees several surgery tools, held by rubber bands. Aside from the surgical objects, her "kit" includes sutre line, two syringes and some labeled vials.
Joseph is in awe of the find. He takes one of the vials from the kit. It has a classic bio hazard symbol and a white liquid inside.
Yura takes the vial from the doctor's hands and pockets it. "You're better off not knowing what this one is, dear."
The doctor takes what he needs from the kit and returns it to Yura. "Come, follow me with this kit. I might need your help." And they move back to the next patient.
Aaron is looking at the crash site, where the car's lights won't reach. His eyes, adapted to darkness, scan throughly for any any threat.
He manages to distinguish several still individuals, observindo the area near the crash, where Joseph, the police offficers and the patients are. The people there seem to be in a state similar to the man who attacked the doctor. Jetset eyes as if they are in some kind of trance. Jumbled or ragged clothes.
On top of a car he sees a woman wearing work clothes, crouching, scratching the hood with her nails obssessively, like an animal digging the floor. Next to her, standing up, a man dressed in a ripped running outfit seems to be babbling, his eyes red and jetset.
Aaron manages to count more than twenty figures in the shadow with his arcane sight, with the same glazed eyes, ragged clothes and animalistic traits.
There people's eyes have something that catches the agent's attention. Shadow seem to walk though their scleras, webbed black streaks dancing as if they were alive.
Little by little, as they walk towards the med camp, they arm themselves with objects laying around the wreckage.
They walk as if they are being forced do it, an expressin of pain flashing through their faces at each step, some of them with their limbs twisted in unnatural positions. Another sounds energes from behind the mass of people. A howl, like a female cry, takes over the crash site.
This old song fills the heart of all who hear it with melancholy thoughts, reviving the saddest memories of their pasts. The melody, long forgotten by men, has an immediate effect in the advancing puppets. Those that were crawling are now running desperately in search of new vi
ctims.
Aaron draws his enchanted saber deflty, revealing a blue spark in its blade. The swordsman hurries back to the med camp.
Yura and Joseph take care of a young woman who had her arm broken. Up to now, eight patients have been treated and rest inside cars or in dumpcarts. Joseph is exhausted, but Yura's presence has renewed his strenghts. The Ukranian's sarcasm has won the epidemiologist over and filled him with joy.
He's not thinking about the attack he suffered, putting shocking events aside is something he developed working in the world's most miserable and inhospitable regions.
The Star Eater Page 6