by Dyrk Ashton
“Zeke, what the hell?” she asks quietly. “How did you get in here?”
He places his hand on the door. “It was unlocked,” and it looks like the wood of the door darkens a shade. Again, Fi writes it off as the strangeness of the place, darkness of the room, and the fact she just woke up.
Zeke approaches slowly. “I’m so sorry about Edgar. I can’t imagine...” He kneels at the side of the bed and takes her hand. His warmth flows up her arm, making her skin tingle. “Fi, let’s go away.”
“What?”
His eyes plead. “Let’s leave. Just get out of here. I can slip well now. I know I can find us someplace safe.”
Fi’s shocked, but also taken in by his concern for her, and his touch. “We can’t just go,” she says, though not sure she means it.
“Yes, we can. It isn’t safe here.”
“But...”
He moves closer until his face is only inches away. “Please.” He leans in to kiss her, and she lets him.
* * *
In the bedroom next door, Zeke sits on the edge of his bed, dumbfounded. Standing in front of him in a nightgown, Fi says, “We can go anywhere we want. We can be together, away from all this, and do anything we want.”
Zeke mumbles, “But... I...”
“Anything we want.” She pulls the nightgown down over her shoulders and lets it drop to the floor, then slinks forward, straddles his lap, grips his hair at the back of his head, and kisses him.
* * *
Zeke’s hands explore Fi’s body, over and beneath her nightgown. She moans at his touch. He breaks away long enough to tug off his shirt and slide his pants down, then leans in for another kiss.
But as their lips touch this time, Fi knows. She has no idea how, but there’s no doubt in her mind. He notices something’s wrong, pulls back to look in her eyes, and Fi looks into his. “You’re not Zeke.”
He says, “And we were having such a good time.”
* * *
Fi’s head bobs slowly in Zeke’s lap, his hands in her beautiful hair. He thinks he might be in Heaven, until he hears a muffled scream through the wall. Not the shriek of a frightened girl, but the rage of a woman fighting for her life. And the voice is Fi’s.
The Fi in his lap looks up, eyes all of black with pupils like embers. She hisses, mouth wide, revealing yellow pointed teeth.
Now Zeke screams. He shoves her, kicking at the same time, knocking her to the floor. Something slams into the wall between the two rooms. A landscape painting crashes to the floor, but Zeke doesn’t dare take his eyes off the creature rising before him.
Its skin is mottled, dark blue and black, covered in scars, ragged as if carved by claws, in the shape of symbols of some kind. Scrawny and gangling, hairless and devoid of sexual features, it has sharp nails on fingers and toes, and its forehead is elongated, bending back to a bulbous crown. A band of tarnished copper adorns an upper arm, embossed with squirming logograms. It bears its nasty teeth below two slits for nostrils. “You’re mine, Ezekiel Prisco. The Master gave you to me.” Breasts grow and its hips widen. “And me to you.”
* * *
The first scream was faint, but Kabir heard it nonetheless. He pounds on Fi’s door, tries the handle again, then attempts to tear the knob out entirely. He shouts, “Fiona!” No reply, only faint sounds of struggle. He throws his shoulder into the door, then backs up and runs at it, to no effect.
He hears Zeke shriek, leaps to his door and front kicks it with all his might. It doesn’t budge. “Wards,” he curses. He faces down the hall, takes a deep breath, clenching his fists, and roars as loud as he can.
* * *
Fi throws the Zeke-creature away from her. It smashes into the mirror, but stays on its feet.
Mottled blue and black, covered in glyph-like scars, it grins. “I will have you, Fiona Megan Patterson, and then you will die. Or the other way around. It matters not to me.”
“Not happening!” Fi shouts.
“Oh, yes, it is.” The creature’s shoulders broaden and a member sprouts and grows between its legs.
“What the fuck?!” Fi flings a vase, which shatters on the creature’s elongated skull. It laughs, and springs with lightning speed, tackling her to the floor and straddling her hips. Long fingers wrap her throat, and squeeze.
Barely able to breathe, Fi punches it in the face, then again, but its grip tightens. She scratches its face and it laughs as black blood drips on her cheek, and in her mouth. She gags, the blood tasting like bile.
It tries to force itself between her legs. Fi feels a rage building inside her, even greater than what she felt when she killed the soldier to keep him from shooting her uncle. Her uncle who’s now dead, all because of the Asura.
The creature inhales sharply, because Fi’s eyes glow red.
She feels its grip weaken and sees the fear on its face. Forcing air through her constricted throat, she says, “Like I said, not happening.”
* * *
The Fi-creature has a sinewy arm around Zeke’s neck from behind. His lungs burn. Pressure builds behind his eyes. Pain stabs through his head as Bad Zeke, the one he defeated on the other world and has held deep inside, yowls in anger and fright, trying to get out. “No!” Zeke gasps, but his vision is fading. There’s nothing he can do. He’s going to die.
Then he hears other voices, soft and seductive. He glances to the oil lamp on a desk across the room, and the soles of his bare feet prickle on the stone floor.
The other in his mind screams again. Closer. Louder.
The warm glow of the lamp engulfs Zeke’s senses, and the flame speaks his name.
* * *
Fi sits atop her attacker, one hand on its neck, punching it with her fist. It shrieks, then groans and says, “Fiona, please”—in Edgar’s voice.
She gasps, staying her next blow. It is her uncle, dressed exactly as he was when he died, cringing, bleeding from his nose and split lips. He pleads, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Fi yanks her hand away from his neck, but with a growl, he latches onto her neck with both hands, changing back to the beast.
With renewed fury, Fi grabs the creature’s wrists and squeezes, gritting her teeth. It howls as the bones splinter in her grip. She snaps both arms, leaving them flopping with bones jutting through the skin.
“How dare you,” she spits, and proceeds to pummel it with both hands.
* * *
The Deva come running around the corner at the end of the hall, Peter and Pratha in the lead. The air of the hall flickers with color at Kabir’s side and Ganesh appears before the others arrive.
“Something attacks the young ones,” Kabir tells him, “but the doors are warded.”
Ganesh places his hands together in front of him and closes his eyes. He shimmers briefly, but it subsides. “I cannot get inside.”
Peter arrives in time to hear what Ganesh said. “I can.” He growls in front of Fi’s door, then front kicks it with a grunt. The door explodes. He rushes inside, but stops short.
Crazed and shrieking, Fi’s pounding on what used to be something’s head but is now black mush in a hollow of broken stone she’s beaten into the floor with her fists.
Mrs. Mirskaya pushes past Peter and goes to her, calming her until Fi looks up. The red fades from her eyes and she says, “Oh… hi.”
“Fiona, are you all right?” Mrs. Mirskaya asks in a frantic tone, holding Fi by the shoulders.
“I guess so,” Fi replies. She points at the soupy mess at the end of the creature’s neck. “Look, I killed it. Whatever it was.”
Mrs. Mirskaya laughs through her tears. “You certainly did Fiona.” She grabs Fi in a hug. “You certainly did.”
Next to Peter, Freyja gazes at Fi in thoughtful consideration.
* * *
Mumbling under her breath, Pratha finishes tracing a complex glyph on the door to Zeke’s room. She shouts one last word and the wood splinters. Smoke wafts out into the hall.
She and Kabir
step in quickly, Ganesh right behind them. In the middle of the floor, the creature flops and writhes, flames shooting from its eyes and mouth, its body burning from the inside out. Its limbs are broken and crushed, its chest caved in, but it screams a hiss of steam as it fights for its life. Then it lets out a last breath and lies still, nothing but a charred husk.
Sitting on the edge of the bed is Zeke, face slack, drool dripping from his lower lip. A patch of the quilted bedspread beside him is scorched. Sand and crushed rock lie piled at his feet. The stone floor is broken in a small crater and strewn about the room.
Pratha and Ganesh share a look of grave wonder. Pratha swiftly presses Kabir to the doorway. “Keep the others out.” Her voice is quiet but severe. “Say nothing of this for now, understand?”
Kabir has an inkling of what’s going on. “Of course, Pratha.” He places his broad shoulders in the doorway and begins calming the others crowded in the hall.
Pratha scans the room. She snatches up the lamp, which still burns with a low flame on the dresser, and flings it to smash on the remains of the beast, oil splashing on a standing wardrobe and igniting it as well. Letting the wardrobe burn, she looks to Ganesh. “You have seen his aura, looked into his heart…”
Ganesh gazes at Zeke, a look of sadness, but also fondness and understanding on his elephantine features. “Yes.”
“Let us keep this between us.”
“He could be a danger to all.” His statement is a thoughtful observation, not a warning.
“Yes, he could,” says Pratha. After a moment, Ganesh places his palms together and nods.
Pratha holds a hand toward the flames. With a few words, the fire sizzles, doused with a coating of frost and ice. She closes her eyes, palms toward the floor, and speaks to the stone. It flows and repairs itself.
Peter enters, the one person Kabir would not detain, and notices something amiss.
Another wave of Pratha’s hand and the smoke dissolves away. She looks to Peter. “It has come to pass.” A silent acknowledgment passes between them.
Peter calls softly to Zeke, who jolts as if startled awake. Confusion squirms on his face at seeing the three of them. He wipes the drool from his chin, wondering how it got there. “What’s going on?” he asks. Then he bolts up and away from the remains of the creature. “Jesus fuck!” He points at the thing. “What the hell is that?”
* * *
Zeke and Fi exit their respective rooms at the same time, he with a blanket hung on his shoulders, she in a bathrobe over her nightgown. Both say a meek, “Hi,” but neither hold the other’s gaze. Even though it wasn’t really them, they did just see each other naked.
A collective sigh of relief rises from the Deva crowded along the hall.
Thoth, the Ibis scribe, presses forward, quill and notepad in his hands. “What was it?” he asks.
“Shadow Blues,” says Peter. A tangible sense of loathing spreads through the group.
“Jinn,” Freyja spits the distasteful word.
“Not all Jinn were foul,” Peter replies, then says to Fi and Zeke, “but Shadow Blues are some of the most dangerous. A variety of Blues, the worst of the bhutas and ganas, but different, half-in and half-out of the dark between, where nothing much dwells but The Wendigo.”
Zeke cringes. “Wendigo?” He’s read horror stories of the creature from Native American folklore. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. The Shadow Blues were once called incubi and succubi, depending on what form they took, and they served me, long before the Holocausts. Then they strayed into the between and became acolytes of Wendigo.” Peter holds up the arm band worn by the creature in Zeke’s room. “This belonged to a succubus named Baigujing.”
Freyja says, “But Sun Wukong caught her trying to seduce and murder a monk and killed her with his staff. Three times, if I recall.
“They are quite resilient,” says Pratha
“These are quite dead now,” says Peter.
Even after his ordeal, Zeke’s curiosity is not diminished. “Sun Wukong was a Chinese monkey-god.”
“Not a monkey, or necessarily Chinese. You’ve heard us speak of him. His Truename is Quon Kiang.”
Fi speaks up. “How did they get in? I thought nothing bad could get through The Buffalo Woman’s protective barrier.”
“They couldn’t have,” says Freyja. “Not possible. They must have been here already. Probably arrived when the valley was first attacked. We did a thorough search after, but these demons hide where we cannot look.” She wrinkles her nose. “Disgusting vermin, creeping around my house.”
“We must remain on high alert,” says Sekhmet from the crowd. “There could be more.”
Anubis asks, “Why did they attack these two, do you think?”
“They couldn’t harm an elder Firstborn, as you know,” Peter replies, “but I’m more convinced with each attack that Kleron and Khagan wish to demoralize us as much as anything, if not more.” His voice grows softer. “I’m sure it’s why Edgar was targeted as well.”
Fi’s voice is barely a whisper. “It turned into Edgar for a little while, trying to get me to stop.” She looks up, tears in her eyes. “Is that what attacked him?”
“Shadow Blues can take many forms, but they cannot possess someone,” says Peter. “It was doppels that took Edgar. Other Galahads, spawned in doublings of the world, recruited and turned by the Asura.”
The group grows quiet. Peter takes a slow deep breath. “Fi, for your own safety, you’re staying with Mrs. Mirskaya tonight. Zeke, with Pratha.”
Pratha smirks, Zeke gulps, and Fi frowns.
Peter shoots Pratha a serious look. “Make sure he gets his rest. He’s going to need it.”
Freyja eyes Fi for a moment. “You rest too, child.” She pokes Fi in the chest. “I’d say you have what it takes.”
Still stunned by all that's happened, Fi manages to mumble out from beneath Mrs. Mirskaya’s protective embrace. “To be a Valkyrie?”
Freyja’s laugh is sharp and curt. “Yes, to be a Valkyrie. Your fight has just begun.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
NORWAY
PATERNA
Drums beat beneath a bleak gray sky, the newly risen sun a bleached stain on the gloomy horizon. On their shoulders, four pallbearers carry the litter upon which Edgar is laid, stepping in cadence to beats played by Brygun on snare and Trejgun on tenor, their drums slung in front of them on baldrics.
When Peter asked Fi to be a pallbearer, she refused at first. She didn’t think she could.
Even now, at the back of the litter next to Mrs. Mirskaya, she fears her legs will give out from grief. She keeps her eyes on the ground, unable to look up and see once again her uncle laid out with flowers around him, coins upon his eyes, his fingers curled on the haft of his broken sword. Dead.
The Deva lining their path each clap fist to shoulder in time with the march as the procession passes. Then Peter, at the front with Myrddin Wyllt, gives the word and they lift the litter onto one of two pyres erected in the meadow. Cù Sìth has already been placed on the other.
Peter also asked Fi if she’d like the honor of lighting Edgar’s pyre. That she did refuse. She couldn’t see any honor in setting her uncle on fire.
In a daze, she goes to the front of the gathering Deva, barely feeling Mrs. Mirskaya’s ample arm on her shoulder. Barely feeling anything.
She can’t meet Zeke’s sorrowful gaze, see the tears she knows are there. She’s sure she would lose it then, crumple to the ground, a blubbering, broken mess.
Freyja leans on her cane nearby, watching over the proceedings. Myrddin Wyllt moves to her side, his face stricken with woe. He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing out tears, clasps his hands in front of his face, and with a shaking voice, recites in Latin, “And Jesus said unto her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believeth in Me, though he may die, yet shall live.’”
A brazier burns between the pyres. In lockstep, Peter approaches from Edgar’s pyre,
Kabir from Cù Sìth’s. They each light a torch and return to the pyres, where they wait until the drumming stops. No words are spoken. No fancy eulogies. In unison, the Deva clap fists to shoulders again, and the torches are laid on woodpiles beneath the deceased. Peter and Kabir repeat the fist-to-shoulder salute, then join the others.
Fi doesn’t acknowledge Peter when he takes a place at her side, though he tries to catch her eye, to show her he’s grieving too, and comfort her in any way he can. She watches the flames rise to an inferno, choking as Edgar’s clothes ignite, tearing up at the black smoke rising in the windless, joyless air.
Mac Gallus, in human cloak and dressed in tartan kilt, jacket, and Glengarry bonnet, places the mouthpiece of bagpipes borrowed from Freyja’s collection to his lips and begins to play. Mournful and slow, the notes sound out “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
Fi’s chin quivers. She chokes on a sob but holds on, focusing on the flames. Peter’s hand rests on her shoulder, gentle and warm, but she ignores it. In fact, to her surprise, it makes her angry. Angry at all the horror and death, at being ripped away from her life, but overriding all, that her beloved uncle has been taken from her.
In a soft voice, Peter says, “It’s impossible to believe now, Fi, but the grief will lessen with time.”
She knows he’s trying to help, but to her it sounds trite, and she snaps. Her voice seething with anger, she says, “Do you know?” Peter removes his hand, taken aback. “Do you?” Fists clenched, face red, she trembles with fury. “Have you ever lost a father? Watched him die, right in front of you?”
The Deva fidget behind them. Mrs. Mirskaya says “Fiona...”
But Fi’s blood pounds in her ears, her heart beating so hard it feels like it will burst. All the terrible things that have happened, including the living nightmare of last night with the Jinn or whatever it was, and beating it to death with her own fists—every emotion she’s ever held in overtakes her like the conflagration that consumes her uncle now. Edgar. Galahad. The Perfect Knight.