by David Risen
The seer gave her a look of mild frustration.
“Yes,” she said – her Italian accent thick.
“I need you to meditate on something.”
The seer sighed.
“I need you to find a suitable living vessel in close proximity for the adversary.”
The seer’s eyes bulged.
“Are you estupid? – We can do limited invoke, but put that one here? No one can control.”
Lauren bunched her lips.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Maybe the normal trials will be enough to stop the shards.”
“He no play by the rules. Then we have sevena spirits on realm we no control, and he hate the world of men.”
Lauren frowned. “We have no choice. If they defeat the hosts, the only spirit that would stop this nightmare who even comes close to having the power to thwart this adversary is him.”
Miss nosey High Priestess leaned forward.
“Mind telling me who we’re talking about?”
Lauren spun around to tell her to sit back and shut up, and let Mommy and Daddy tend to the adult stuff.
Before she could open her mouth, the seer blurted it.
“Diablo,” she shuddered.
Lauren’s face tightened into a look of stern disapproval.
“Find the vessel. We’ll put him back where he belongs afterward.”
Cleanup time at the Carcer house and still no Dena.
Rider masked his concern to his vicarious daughter, Aurora. He plugged his I-phone in to the T.V. and the phone cycled through the music in the playlist simply titled “Aurora.”
The speakers blasted Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood.”
Rider wasn’t much for cookie-cutter pop music.
He was more a Classic Rock, Alternative, or singer-songwriter type. He mostly liked to yank Aurora’s chain by making up silly lyrics to her favorite songs.
He finished loading the dishwasher and made his way to the den where Aurora was in the process of re-packing her book bag for the next day.
Aurora’s face suddenly lit. She stood erect and yelled, “Mommy!”
She trotted over to the archway of the den, which led into the hallway, but a few steps before, she stopped in her tracks and stared at her mommy as if she were a poisonous spider.
Rider stepped around the suede couch to see what Aurora was staring at with such a look of foreboding.
Dena stepped through the archway and held her left palm up as if she were signaling a car to stop.
“Sleep,” she said.
Aurora fell to the floor in a heap.
“What the fuck?” Rider said stepping toward her.
She flung the same hand through the air, and some unseen force ripped him off his feet, threw him through the air, and pinned him – immobile against the Livingroom wall.
Dena squared herself before him and glared at him with a level of spitefulness he hadn’t seen since the last time he was crouched at the line of scrimmage in a college football game.
“It’s time you and I had a little talk,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact.
“Did you forget to take your anti-psycho-bitch meds?”
She thrust her right hand out, and the back of Rider’s head slammed into the wall.
“I’m going to ask all the questions, and you’re going to answer truthfully. If I feel that you’re not, I’m going to break something. Why is the sisterhood so interested in you?”
“I don’t goddamn know. They’re all fucking bat shit crazy!”
Rider heard a loud crunch. A white-hot blast of pain shot through his arm from the pinky finger on his right hand.
He screamed.
He couldn’t see down there, but he was certain bone was protruding through muscle and skin.
A sticky film of sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Let’s try that again, shall we? Why does the sisterhood believe you’re a threat?”
“Fuck you!”
She closed her left hand into a fist.
Rider shrieked as all the bones in his toes on his right foot snapped.
Hot tears rolled down his cheeks.
He felt his right sock filling with blood.
“What do they think you are?”
Rider shivered.
“I only know what is what was on your High Priestess’ computer.”
“What was it called?”
“I don’t fucking remember. It sounded arcane. Compendium of Something or Other.”
“Compendium of Maleficent Spirits?”
Rider swallowed hard. His mouth was as dry as a desert.
“That’s it.”
She gave him a stern, intellectual look.
“Only the Grand Arch Sorceress herself can read all of it. Which pages were in your file?”
Rider released a deep, shuddering breath. He felt as though he were looking at the world through a tunnel.
She slapped him so hard that a pins-and-needles sensation spread throughout the left side of his face and into his neck.
“What pages?”
“Something about Heavenly Shards or some bullshit.”
She gave him a screwed-up look, but then he saw recognition dawn behind her eyes. She looked as though someone stabbed her.
“Celestial Shards?”
“Yeah,” he moaned breathlessly. “There were six of them.”
“Male and Female Creation, Male and Female Balance, and Male and Female Wrath,” she said almost to herself.
“It used much more flowery language.”
She glowered at him with sudden urgency.
“What do you have to do with the Celestial Shards?”
He tried to shake his head, but found it immobile.
“Do you see a pointy hat and a broomstick, here?”
Her eyes bulged.
“Which one?”
Rider felt himself passing out again.
Dena pinched his jaw with her right hand hard enough to pucker his lips.
“Which of the Celestial Shards do they think you are?”
“The Abysmal Patron,” he muttered.
She released him and backed away – gaping at him as if he were a hairy monster.
“No, this can’t be true,” she almost begged to herself.
She eyed him with renewed fear.
“What about Subject B? The girl you’ve been skulking around with?”
“The Conciliatory Matron.”
She shook her head slowly. “I should have listened to them. That’s like mixing gas and fire.”
She eyed him.
“We’re going for a ride. You’re too dangerous. You can’t be here.”
“Says who?” a female voice said from the archway.
Dena’s head followed the sound.
Amelia Long stood in the doorway wearing an office getup that looked to be a size too big. Her eyes glowed red.
Dena flew off the hardwood and slammed into the adjacent wall so hard that the drywall cracked in her shape.
“I’ve had enough of all of you. What have we ever done to you?”
“Please don’t kill me,” Dena whimpered.
She smirked.
Dena looked terrified, and something inside Rider broke. He felt sorry for her.
“What were you planning to do with my friend, Rider?”
“You’re going to destroy the world.”
“You don’t have the power or the right!”
The timbers inside the wall behind Dena began to pop and crack.
The entire wall bowed away from her as if something were pushing it with terrific force.
The skin on Dena’s face stretched ten times tighter than it should have. Her cheeks and abdomen sucked in as if she were imploding. She gagged for breath.
Her nose bone cracked and her eardrums ruptured. A stream of dark blood poured from her nostrils and her ears.
She unintelligibly pleaded for her life.
“Let her go, Amelia!” Rider screamed.
But Amelia couldn’t hear him.
She was laser focused on putting an end to this woman and everything she stood for.
And now Amelia felt the other woman’s raw emotion.
Hatred for her own order.
Self-reproach at having prostituted herself – let alone to a man she barely knew.
Fear – of death – the unknown – her own order.
Sadness for her inability to substantially connect with another person emotionally.
And then she saw the thing itself – the events that made her who she was.
The twelve-year-old Delilah Powers lays in her closet of a bedroom in her twin-sized bed that stands with its right side against the pink wall pretending to sleep.
She hears soft footfalls in the carpeted hallway outside her room.
She knows who the rhythm of that walk belongs to.
She rolls over on her right side facing the wall and clamps her eyes shut.
The rattle of her brass doorknob.
The light from the hallway spilling in as the door swings open.
“Delilah?” the rough voice says.
Delilah lay deathly still.
The man pads across the red carpet. His hand touches her shoulder, and he rolls her over to face him.
The moonlight streams from the double windows on the wall behind her making his naked skin appear blue.
His hairy beer belly bulges over his junk. A mass of thick, gnarled pubic hair explodes like a mane around his genitals.
The gray hairs in his dark beard shimmered in the moonlight.
“I was about to get in the shower, and I thought I heard you cry.”
“Where’s Mommy?” she says.
Her stepfather gives her a soft, paternal look.
“She’s at work. She won’t be home until morning.”
He stares at her for an indeterminate amount of time.
“Scoot over, and I’ll lay with you a while."
Delilah cries as he pushes her over and slips under the blankets.
Amelia released Dena gasping.
Dena fell to the floor in a heap. She still drew breath, but not for much longer.
Amelia waved her hand, dispelled all of Dena’s magic, and bound her from ever invoking more.
To her left, Rider fell straight down from the wall and grunted unconsciously.
Amelia knelt before Dena and touched her face. The broken nose healed instantly as did the damaged organs and ruptured eardrums, and the woman slept peacefully.
The sensation of a small hand on her shoulder caused Amelia to turn and look.
And she found herself face-to-face with the little girl Rider called Aurora.
“What did you do to Mommy?” Aurora said.
Amelia offered the little girl her most genuine smile.
“She’s just sleeping.”
“She’s a bad person, isn’t she?”
Amelia gave the little girl a perplexed look.
“No. She’s just lost.”
Aurora gave her an uncomfortable look.
“What’re you gonna do to her?”
Amelia smiled to herself.
“I’m going to set her free.”
Aurora hugged her hard, and when she drew back, she touched Amelia’s face.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Aurora said.
Amelia gave her a puzzled look.
“You’re unique, like Daddy, and you have something very important to do.”
Amelia’s mouth fell open.
“Where did you hear that?”
“In a dream.”
Amelia went inside herself for a moment, and then she looked back up to the little girl.
“There’s a cool, red car outside. Why don’t you go out there and wait for me and your father in the back seat?”
Aurora smiled. “What’s your name?”
She considered her answer for a moment and then ran her fingers through aurora’s thick, brown hair.
“Amelia Long,” she said.
Aurora blinked.
“I like you, Amelia. My dream was right. You’re a very good person.”
Amelia smiles.
“Please wait for us in the car,” she repeated, biting her lip and looking down at the walnut-stained baseboards of the wall.
The little girl lingered for a moment, and then she trotted out of the den, through the hallway, and out the front door.
Amelia stood, passed over to Rider, and touched his forehead.
His right pinky finger, which was bent at a perpendicular angle away from his hand snapped back in place, and a muffled crunch sounded as the bones in his foot repositioned themselves and fused back together.
Rider opened his hazel eyes, and gaped at her blankly.
“What happened?” he asked.
Amelia gave him a pale smile.
“The right thing.”
“Is Dena dead?”
She shook her head, and then she stood and stepped back over to where Dena – Delilah – lay in the floor.
“Wake up,” she said.
Dena’s feral eyes popped open. She gasped and skittered like a frightened bug to the nearest corner and drew her legs up to her chest.
Everything about Dena’s body. She was a blond now with delicate features. Even her fingerprints and DNA wouldn’t match with Delilah Powers.
“I’ve bound your powers. You won’t need them again. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”
Dena looked at her hands and stared back at Amelia.
“Why?”
Amelia nodded. “You’re not like the rest of them. You’re just wounded and frightened. Leave now, and don’t ever look back. They won’t be able to find you.”
Dena’s new, blue eyes lit with hope.
“Really?”
Amelia nodded.
Dena stood.
“Are you really the Conciliator Matron?”
Amelia huffed.
“Who knows?”
Dena eyed Rider.
“Don’t let him die around you, and make sure you don’t do the same.”
Amelia squinted at her.
“Okay?”
“And keep him away from the Abysmal Matron. They’re a little too good of a match.”
Once they were outside Rider gaped dumbly at the side of Amelia’s face as she looked back up at the towering residence The Sisters of Divinity had given Rider and his fake wife.
She squinted and frowned as if concentrating hard, and the house wadded up like a piece of paper.
She looked at Rider as he stared at the spectacle. He shook his head tightly.
“What do you have against my houses?” he snarked.
Then he climbed into the red Dodge, Avenger.
Rider was lost.
He didn’t recall sitting in the car.
He had no idea how long they’d been on the road or where they were going.
He was vaguely cognizant of a conversation between Aurora and Amelia at the beginning of the ride, but he had no opinions. In fact, he wasn’t thinking about much at all.
Amelia nudged him, and he looked at her without really seeing her.
“We’ll be making a stop in a few moments,” she said.
He nodded and sank back inside his head.
The car fell back into silence.
“How are you?” she said.
Rider looked at her. His eyes welled, and then he looked down at the console.
She glanced at him.
“I need you to pull it together. When we stop, we will have a rather stern conversation with Ms. Grand Arch Sorceress.”
That snapped him out of it. He sat up straight.
“You know where she is?”
Amelia gave him a Mona Lisa smile and nodded.
“She’s in the boot. They tried, unsuccessfully to kidnap me and throw me in the slammer with the other girl.”
Rider lit up.
“So you found out something new?”
H
er eyebrows spiked.
“The sisterhood, although they were originally balance keepers and protectors of humanity from real things that go bump in the night, are now megalomaniacs drunk on power.”
“Am I supposed to understand that?”
“They don’t really believe that I am a threat to them. They just want to steal whatever power I have so that they can improve their own. They wanted to do that to you, too.”
Rider shook his head. “Well, they would have been sorely disappointed. I have as much power as an average McDonald’s employee.”
Amelia shook her head.
“Not true. You just can’t use it.”
Rider gave her a hurt look. “The Abysmal Patron, really? It sounds horrible.”
Amelia smiled.
“It’s also a misnomer. I couldn’t read the Grand Arch Sorceress as well as most, but I did notice some things from others. You should have been called The Father of Fury.”
Rider gave her a pale look.
“It sounds like something evil.”
She shook her head.
Amelia pulled off the freeway, took a left off the ramp, and then she turned down a deserted road surrounded on both sides by woods.
The Avenger bumped along the rough, paved road a few moments before she turned right onto a dirt road.
Several miles and volumes of silence down the road, she pulled the car to a stop, unbuckled her seatbelt and eyed him.
“Are you ready for some real answers?”
Before he could answer, she climbed out of the car. The gravel crunched beneath her feet as she rounded the car.
Rider unbuckled, opened the car door, and forced himself out into the hot night.
He met her by the boot where she waited.
“I should warn you that this may be a bit shocking.”
He laughed, and at the same time, tears rolled down his cheek. It was the strangest storm of emotions.
Amelia started toward the hatch with her key and then stopped and looked at him with an out of place look of compassion on her face.
“Not everything in your life is a lie, by the way.”
He laughed again and wiped the tear away just as another dripped down the opposite cheek.
“Ya think?”
She nodded toward the car.
“Aurora is really your daughter.”
Rider’s chin twitched. He felt himself about to crumble.
“How the fuck is that possible?”
She smiled.