by David Risen
When he reached the edge of the road, a few feet away from the woman who had convincingly pretended to be his wife for ten years, he raised his blade of red light to the night sky.
The clouds overhead parted in a perfect circle revealing the moon and stars beyond.
A pillar of pure energy shot up into infinity from his blade and danced about through the clouds. In a moment, multiple beams of violet lightning struck each of the sisters unconscious.
Once the deed was done, Rider lowered his blade and surveyed his work.
His fiery eyes locked on Lauren Fields-Rider curled in a fetal position by the gravel road.
He straightened his course and marched toward her with a new, dark resolve.
When he reached her, he held his blade of light with both hands like a dagger.
He cocked it high over his head and ground his teeth.
“Daddy?” Aurora cried.
“Daddy,” cries the pathos whimper of the dying little girl from the torn-off rear end of his Cadillac Escalade.
A bloody, little hand reaching for him through the rubble and past the hoards of paramedics and police blocking his view.
Rider snapped out of it.
The sword disappeared, and Rider turned in the direction of the voice.
Aurora Carcer charged toward him as quickly as her little legs could carry her.
He realized, almost too late, that he was stark naked and twirled sideways just as her little arms wrapped around his waist.
He pushed her away gently.
“Honey, I’m kinda not wearing any clothes.”
He surveyed the grassy clearing where all the sisters who accosted him lay in uncomfortable heaps in the tall reeds.
“What happened? Where’s Amelia?”
“Look,” Aurora cried pointing behind him.
He turned just in time to see her stumble out of the woods on the other side of the road.
She fell to her knees and then flat on her face.
Rider forgot all about Aurora and sprinted toward her. Five feet away from her, he dropped to his knees and skidded through the foliage coming to a rest inches from her head.
Something had done a number on her.
Amelia’s left arm hung on to her body by only a few strands of muscle and ligament. Dirt and dried weeds covered the torn flesh.
Something thick and jagged tore her right hand in half – split it between the middle and index fingers.
The black, women’s dress slacks that she obviously stole were soaked in blood and urine.
A large flap of skin folded down from her right cheek exposing the muscle and bone beneath.
Rider grasped her head in both hands and lifted it.
Her neck was as limp as a wet dish towel.
And for some reason, he saw himself through her eyes.
She looked at him through a distant and dark tunnel, and she saw only the black outline of his head against the cloudy, night sky.
“I’m going to die,” she said.
Her voice was faint and forced.
“Go to Skitts Mountain. Tear the heart out of this thing.”
A small, clean eight-year-old hand reached around Rider glowing blue in the moonlight.
The dainty fingernails painted bright pink that appeared almost silver in the night shade brushed the hair away from Amelia’s face and then touched her forehead with the gentle, little fingertips.
A white glow radiated from beneath his daughter’s fingers where they met with the smooth skin of Amelia’s head.
The fold of skin dangling from her right cheek laid back in place and the gash closed without the slightest mark.
The two halves of her right hand pulled back together and sealed.
Her left shoulder snapped back in place and healed over leaving only the through and through tears in the black blazer and white blouse as evidence.
The light lit behind Amelia’s eyes.
She snapped her head up and glared at Rider’s naked lap. Then she pointed her icy eyes at him.
“The next time you try to save me, put some bloody clothes on first!”
Rider, suddenly remembering his nudity, clutched his secrets with both hands.
Amelia stood and looked past him at the fallen Sisters of Divinity lying in the grown-up field beyond.
She looked at Rider who was just climbing clumsily to his feet while still covering his manhood with both hands.
“How did all of that come about?”
Rider shrugged. “I thought you did it.”
“It was Daddy,” Aurora blurted. “His eyes started glowing red and his skin turned bright white. Bolts of lightning shot from his arm and made this red sword like a lightsaber. He raised it to the sky like the old He-Man cartoon and sent this light up into the sky. It came back down and made Mommy and all of the bad women go to sleep.”
Amelia gave Rider a quizzical look.
He shook his head emphatically.
“I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
Amelia looked down at Aurora who suddenly sank.
“They’re not dead are they?”
Amelia looked back at the clearing and shook her head.
“No, but I suppose we should do something about that.”
She started toward the road, but Aurora grasped the left sleeve of her black blazer tugging it off.
Amelia stopped and eyed the child again.
“Don’t kill them or take their power away,” she pleaded. “They still have important stuff to do.”
Amelia glanced at Rider with uncertainty and then she crouched so that she was eye-level with the little girl.
“Rori, go down that road a bit and you’ll find a set of tire tracks going into the woods. Follow them and you’ll find a big, old truck covered in a camouflage tarp at the end. Pull the tarp off and wait on me and your dad inside.”
“But you’re not going to kill them, are you? They’re important, and we’ll be far, far away by the time they wake up.”
Amelia’s eyes softened.
“No, I won’t kill them or take their powers. Can you go find the car for me?”
“Okay,” she said.
And then she took off for the road with Rider and Amelia looking after her.
Once she was out of earshot, Amelia looked at him with her eyes shortly finding his crotch and then adjusting to his face.
“There’s much more to your daughter than meets the eye. She’s a very special child.”
Rider nodded. “And if any of the story she just gave us is true, I wonder what the hell I am.”
Amelia’s eyes gravitated toward his covered genitals, and then she gave him a frustrated look.
“This is neither art nor anatomy class. I’ll not have you traumatizing your daughter any further. Go find some clothes, nature boy.”
Three quarters of a day and a half-pound of Tylenol later, Lauren Fields-Rider the newly anointed Grand Arch Sorceress sat at the ornate conference table in the sisterhood’s sprawling underground compound deep below the city streets of Atlanta, Georgia listening to the translation of the Arch Sorceresses of every country lay out their arguments through her headphones.
“The trials are simply not enough,” the High Sorceress of Mexico proclaimed. “The Conciliator Matron has already proven that she can strip the Grand Arch Sorceress of power, and then banish a high host of creation. If we send more hosts, it does not matter how powerful they are, she will do the same. If we want to stop the end of the world, we must summon a much older and more volatile power.”
“We do nothing,” the High Sorceress of Russia stated. “All we must do to stop the end of the world is isolate one of the Celestial Shards. We were already successful in that endeavor. The Abysmal Matron is contained for all eternity in our City of Souls, and The Conciliator Matron unwittingly destroyed the only way in or out when she stripped our sister Claire Jacobs of her powers. They can do nothing. Let them go to Tennessee and beat their heads against a wall.”
> The most intelligent argument came from Liberia, of all places.
“Though her methods were harried and flawed, our former Grand Arch Sorceress, Poly Rider coined the most effective strategy. It is simply not enough to have only one of the six celestial shards imprisoned. We must take as many of them as we can and spread them out over the far corners of the earth so they cannot occur without all of them converging.”
Once the speakers had stated their cases, Lauren stood to deliver the same strategy she formulated on the road back to Darien partially revised.
She cleared her throat and pointed the thin, black microphone of the podium at her peach-painted lips.
“First, I wish to thank all of you in this meeting for your well-prepared and thoughtful comments. I realize there are many old scores in this room and bitterness among you, but you all strive for the same goal, and that goal is the preservation of Mortality from a very real Celestial threat.
“We cannot permanently put down the threat imposed by the Celestial Shards. God himself wrote the undoing of Mortality into the great wyrding that binds us. To try would have disastrous results, the end would come anyway, and our efforts against him would draw the wrath of divinity.
“None of us could ever hope to stand against that level of raw power.
“Having said that, it is our divine and sacred responsibility to oppose the end of mortality using all of the powers we have at our disposal. This decree comes through all accounts both mortal and divine.
“To that end, we will proceed with the trials as prescribed by the ancient prophets, but we will re-align our attack.
“The power of the Conciliator Matron is irrefutable and undeniable, and we cannot best this threat any longer with an attack directly into the strength of their coterie.
“The successful attack launched by the Abysmal Patron last night that nearly wiped out my entire entourage and killed the former Grand Arch Sorceress came as an odious surprise to all of us. It is unprecedented throughout the annuls of our history to see the Abysmal Patron wield spiritual power in corporeal form prior to death.
“However, it is my opinion and the opinion of many others in the Spirit World and without, that this phenomenon was an isolated incident. He cannot do it at will.
“Even at full strength, the Abysmal Patron wields only limited power against spiritual threats. For this reason, it will be the strategy of our order moving forward to concentrate all trials on the Abysmal Patron and redouble our efforts to separate him from the Conciliator Matron.
“I realize that this is not enough considering the unprecedented nature of this threat. I’ve sought out and located a physical vessel that will be compatible with the ultimate adversary of all mortal creation, Lucifer.
“If we project that the Conciliator Matron and the Abysmal Patron will reach the walls of our City of Souls, we will bind Lucifer to a mortal coil, and he will oppose the Celestial Shards himself.
“His goal will be to deflect them from the city, or at the very least, see to it that only the Abysmal Patron makes it inside the city.
“We will instruct all members of our order gathered here for this occasion to, beginning tomorrow, reinforce the spells of protection binding the city through incantation.
“Our goal is to ensure that if the Abysmal Patron does make it inside the city, he will do so as a disembodied spirit.
“The threats within our Skitts Mountain Spirit Prison are perilous even to a Celestial Shard in spirit form.
“I also recognize the need to immediately contain Lucifer whether he succeeds or fails, so I along with an entourage of our best Sorceresses will leave this night for Skitts Mountain, Tennessee with the vessel in tow, so that we may immediately contain Lucifer following his battle despite the outcome.
“Regardless of our success or failure here, we will descend upon and contain any other Celestial Shards following the end of this battle.
“I thank you all for your thoughtful input, and I will close by reminding all of you that we must all concentrate our efforts into defeating the Celestial Shards and not one another.
“This meeting is adjourned and blessed be.”
As sunlight waned on the evening following Rider’s strange defeat of the sisters and Amelia’s near-death experience and defeat of Belial, Amelia’s current vehicle, a faded, black 1991 Pathfinder, pulled off the main road in Northern South Carolina and bumped along a gravel road beneath a sign that read “The Viracocha Ranch” that hung from a wooden arch supported by two rusty, metal posts.
Rider, slouching in his seat on the passenger’s side, sat up and peered out the windshield with a long, low crack from the driver’s side all the way to the passenger’s side.
Slowly, the trees peeled back away from the gravel trail revealing a white, wood-sided two-story with a long front porch extending across the front façade.
The house was very old and very large with four tall dormers peeking up from the roof. It sat atop squarish stone pillars at spaced intervals consistent with a house built in the mid to late 1800s.
The dingy, black SUV had not yet grumped to a halt when the thick front door of the ranch house opened and a tall and pudgy Native American wearing a black Stetson with a black suede vest over a white dress shirt accented by a silver bolo tie sauntered out – his wooden sole boots clopping against the thick floorboards of the porch.
Amelia, now with died-brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, wearing a black tank top, killed the engine and thrust the generic looking gearshift of the old Nissan into first, and yanked the parking brake lever up.
The Native American man trotted down the four wooden steps and crunched his way around the oxidized hood.
Amelia opened her door, hopped out of the car, and slammed the door so hard that the vehicle shook.
“Hello, Mother Justice,” the Native American said without the slightest accent.
Amelia didn’t hesitate.
She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard. Then she kissed him on the left cheek.
Rider grunted to himself with jealousy over the fact that he did not seem to inspire the same kind of affection from this woman with whom he shared so much adversity.
He swung his door open and climbed out.
The Native American cast a dark-eyed look upon Rider.
“And I see that you’ve brought along a very powerful and dangerous friend.”
Rider gave him an apologetic grimace.
“Yeah, if you take out the powerful, dangerous, and friend part. I’m just some guy who’s riding shotgun with Amelia.”
The Native American waddled around the hood and met him at the passenger’s side thrusting out his hand.
Rider shook his hand noting the roughness of his palm.
“Relax, Father Fury. You’ll find no judgement here, just three squares and a bed. I’m Ben Viracocha, and I’m honored to have you.”
Rider furled his brow.
“Father Fury?”
“That’s who you are, isn’t it? The Father of War, Vengeance, Wrath, Chaos, and Destruction?”
Rider gave him a screwed-up look.
“According to the Maligned Sisters of the Blah, Blah Sisterhood, but I’m really just an investigative journalist.”
“Your meaty eyes blind you to the deeper supernatural undercurrent that surrounds you. Don’t worry, Father Fury, I know that you are just. The great thing about destruction is that even though it carries times of sorrow and suffering, it always paves the way for much more beautiful creation – just as a volcano is always surrounded by beautiful life.”
Rider gave him an interrogative look.
“So you believe the witches?”
He gave Rider a sidelong look.
“I don’t care what the broomsticks believe, but I know you’re Father Fury.”
He pointed at Rider’s eyes.
“It’s written right there on your spirit.”
Rider retreated into his own thoughts.
Ben Viracocha
looked across the hood of the Pathfinder at Amelia.
“Where’s the exciting, new talent that you’ve brought?”
Right on cue, the passenger’s side rear door opened and a sleepy-eyed Aurora climbed out.
Ben squatted and hugged her then drew back and inspected her face with his intense eyes.
“She didn’t tell me how beautiful you are, little healer.”
“I’ve met you before,” Aurora said. “In a dream.”
Ben laughed and eyed Rider.
“And she’s sharp as a tack, too.”
He looked back at her.
“My home is a special, safe place for extraordinary kids like you.”
She nodded. “I know, and I’ll be staying with you for a long time.”
His eyebrows spiked. He eyed Amelia.
“She’s clairvoyant, too.”
Ben Viracocha smiled and looked into Aurora’s eyes.
“I believe that you and I will be best buddies.”
Aurora gave him a confused look.
“No,” she said. “I am a host and you are the child, so I am here to make you safe.”
Ben Viracocha laughed and stood as if her discourse embarrassed him. He pointed his sharp eyes at Rider again.
“You understand why your having a child like that should be reassuring to you?’
Rider shook his head. He felt like everyone around him was privy to information that he didn’t have.
“You’re the father of wrath, destruction, and retribution. Your offspring is a clairvoyant and healer. What always follows righteous destruction and atonement is healing, love, and hope. You’re not evil, Father Fury – not as they have told you. You are a surgical tool that removes bad branches from the tree of life. You’re exalted.”
Rider wasn’t sure what the crackpot was saying, but he smiled anyway at the complement.”
“Bianka?” Ben Viracocha called.
The front door opened again, and a short, pale girl with a Hispanic face stepped out.
“Show Miss Aurora here to the girl’s wing.”
The girl smiled and extended her hands.
Aurora smiled at Rider and then hugged Ben Viracocha hard. Then she crunched through the gravel driveway and trotted up the steps to meet the girl.