by Marcus James
“They were good and bad. And Pazuzu had one very particular enemy... the Joker to his Batman so to speak.”
Kathryn took the cigarette back from her cousin. “And this was?”
“Lamashtu. Daughter of Anu, sister to those three assholes, and more than likely one of the Seven Judges. He kicks her ass three ways from Sunday and was invoked to protect babies and children from her bloodlust. He beat the divine shit out of her if invoked to make sure she couldn’t induce a still-birth.
“We invoke him. Summon his power. Have him stand with us and hopefully beat back their asses kicking and screaming. We then summon Ereshkigal-the Sumerian face of Hecate, and she hopefully keeps them locked in the underworld.”
Kathryn shook her head and directed her gaze to the sky, seeing past the darkened canopy of trees that were bowing in the wind and took in the stars-those pin-points of light in the darkened quilt.
The sun had sank so fast since they had left the Marmont, and Kathryn knew that this could very well be the last time she would ever get to stare up at those stars again.
“It’s a lot to ask. To invoke other deities to aid us-to fight against their own...”
“Which is why you have to go for the ones who have a bone to pick.”
Kathryn gave a chuckle. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Exactly.” Magdalene hugged her cousin tight and Kathryn closed her eyes, taking in the scent of her skin and her hair. She wanted to cry again. Her heart ached too much and she wished she could tell her cousin all of the things that she knew she needed to say.
But those words would never come-could never come-because if they did, then it would mean a goodbye.
“I’m going to go back in and check on Angelina.”
Kathryn took a breath and nodded. “I’m just going to finish my cigarette.”
They smiled at one another and Kathryn watched her cousin walk back inside the little temple. She took a step back, walking out into the darkness, looking through the windows at the sight of Sheffield, standing there laughing and talking with Richie, everyone celebrating Angelina’s recovery.
She would still need to go to the hospital and get checked out. She would need stitches more than likely, but she was alive and with her family, and that was the most important thing.
Kathryn swallowed her tears and walked back towards the car, not having bothered to take her purse or keys out of the vehicle on purpose. She had known she would be leaving them. They would be pissed when they realized she had gone, but she would deal with that if she survived, if not, well, then it wouldn’t really matter how angry they were with her.
Kathryn Blackmoore climbed into the car and peeled out of the drive. She saw Sheffield chasing after her with arms waving as he she backed away. This was her fight, and it was time she brought it to them.
Kathryn thought of all of those slasher films and all of the women who survived to beat the monster in the end. She thought of that night eight years ago when she put an end to the terror of the Campus Slasher, and she grinned.
I always wanted to be the Final Girl.
XIX
Sheffield stood there in the front yard, his heart thundering in his chest, as he watched Kathryn shoot out of the driveway. He had realized what she meant to do as soon as he looked out of the window of the backyard temple and saw that Kathryn had no longer been standing on the other side of the glass. The nightmare of her helpless on the cliff-side flooded his brain in vivid Technicolor and Surround Sound, and he ran after her like he was back on the soccer field rushing the ball to the opponent’s net to make a goal.
He was shaking and trying to catch his breath. He looked around the darkened streets and craned his neck to the heavens, looking up at the stars and cursing them for letting her go.
“Shit! Shit!” he turned around and ran back to the congregation, prepared to shatter the momentary joy everyone was feeling at Angelina’s recovery. The first person to notice him was Magdalene, who had been speaking with Angelina’s grandmother when she stopped mid-conversation and looked at him, instantly shaking her head in disbelief.
“No...”
Sheffield nodded frantically. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Richie asked. His eyes growing wide with panic.
“I mean she’s fucking gone. She left!”
“Where?” Angelina asked. She was steadying herself against her brothers. She was worn and tired, and still trying to regain balance, like a baby calf making its first shaky steps.
“She’s gone to face them...” Magdalene finished.
“Well, where, where is she going? To their house?” Richie asked.
Sheffield recalled the dream, the secluded darkness and empty desert wild and the city beyond her terrified face burning bright in the distance. “There were no houses...”
“What?” Magdalene asked.
“In my dream... there were no houses...”
Magdalene walked over to him, her steps quick and her eyes burned with urgency.
“I’ve been dreaming the same terrible dream for years. In it Kathryn is running for her life. The look on her face is like no look I’ve ever seen her have before. Something dark and terrible descending upon her and she’s has helpless as a little child.
“But there were no houses. It was like, on a mountain side or something, that overlooks the city-”
“The Pines.” Richie concluded.
They all looked at him and then Magdalene and Angelina looked to one another and Sheffield could see that a recognition passed between them, a knowing, as if whatever The Pines were held some sort of significance.
“Of course, the place where she had first seen them kill.” Angelina said.
“That’s where we summoned The Shade...” Magdalene brushed quickly passed Sheffield and made her way towards the door back out to the yard. “Well,” She said, stopping for just a moment and looking back at them. “Whoever’s coming... we need to move now!”
The three of them looked at each other and began to move. “Richie, help get me to the car.” Angelina said to her him.
“Mija, no...” her grandmother said to her and they began to argue in Spanish.
“Abuela, I have to go. The whole reason they took me-to wherever it was that they took me-I don’t even know if it was a real physical place or if I was locked somewhere inside my mind-and the reason they kept me alive and returned me was to bait Kathryn into going to them.
“She’s not just a friend-though that wouldn’t make a difference-she’s a sister witch. She’s one of us!”
“And the Blackmoores are none of your concern!” the old woman turned her eyes on Magdalene. There was no malice in her gaze, just a simple regrettable indifference.
“I’m sorry. But this is not our fate. This is not our doing. You Blackmoores have broken laws and tipped the balance. You have put all witches the world over in the position of having to one day pick sides. To stand against a god or with it, or even simply just to stand back and honor its divine will.”
“That god,” Magdalene began her voice stern and commanding attention like Kathryn, like Annaline, like only any Blackmoore could, seemed to shake the earth itself. “That god was murderous and evil. If any deity could be pure evil without any sense of divine balance or method to its malice, then the Dark God of the Wood is it.
“Think about it. We have names for even the most ancient deities in mankind’s history, but the Dark God of the Wood? No one knows his name. It was forgotten by us thousands of years ago; for the very purpose of keeping mankind safe from it. It uses witches. It was a god who never bothered to approach regular people, never bothered to answer the prayers or take in the bloodletting of clan chiefs and war lords. All it has ever wanted was witches.
“You all blame us and shun us, and keep us separate. But be glad it was us, and not some other coven... they may have never walked away and by now, had he gotten whatever it was he was seeking in the moors that night so long
ago, the world could be a completely different and terrible place!”
Magdalene vanished into the darkness and Sheffield could feel the weight of her words, and another layer was peeled from the mystery that was Kathryn Blackmoore, a woman who had always been mystery, and it made him admire the woman he loved even more.
“Richie, help me.” Angelina said to him and refusing to even look her grandmother in the eye.
“Let’s go save our friend.” He said as he slipped her arm over his shoulder and placed his hand on her hip to guide her out.
Sheffield had no words for Angelina’s grandmother. He could understand her reservations. She had just gotten her granddaughter back, and now she was faced with the possibility of losing her again, this time for good. But, he figured, the more witches the better. He had wished her family had offered to go with them. Perhaps it would take an army of witches to bring these things down, but they had to work with what they had, and right now it was the three of them, and that would have to do.
XX
Kathryn stood in front of the battered fence with its no trespassing sign, and the complete desert darkness beyond it. There were no sounds, no animals, no scurrying feet in the shadows, no bats in the night sky, and no signs of life.
Her knees threated to buckle with each step, threated to bring her to the ground and make her immobile, but she persisted. Kathryn moved under the opening in the metal, and began her ascent up the abandoned path, paying no attention to the spirits of dead that seemed to gather from all over the city. Every murder, every suicide; every wandering phantom that hovered in the dark corners seemed to be gathering, like some terrifying congregation, moving behind her and alongside of her, as if to bear witness to this death walk.
She bent down and picked up a jagged piece of stone and brought it hard across the surface of her skin, dragging it down her forearm. Kathryn winced in pain as it stung and sent a fire up her arm as she forced the blood out, letting it drip to the earth like Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs to find her way back home.
But this was not a trail, this was not a marker to lead her home, this was a sacrifice-this spilling of blood and power-a magical trail to lead the Anunnaki to her.
“Anu-Anu-Anu-Ki,” she chanted over and over again as she made her way further and further up The Pines, seeing the distant glow of the city and the sparse ruins of Errol Flynn’s house become more and more clear in the night, as the dead continued to gather.
She reached the base. Her heart was pounding and the blood was dripping down and tapping the earth. “Anu-Anu-Anu-Ki!” she shouted. She could feel the winds begin to gather; she could feel the earth beneath her feet as if it were rocked by a tremor, and in the distance she heard their familiar screech grow closer.
It was blowing hard now-that wind-hot and filled with dust and whipping her hair all over her face.
Kathryn turned and brushed the hair away from her eyes, just in time to see three great and terrible forms appear in the sky above her, making their way to her fast. They were no longer shrouded in darkness; there was nothing to conceal their monstrous forms.
The three of them-Arish, Niiq, and Kuri-the leaders of the seven judges-the great Anunnaki, barreling down on her, their fierce wings beating against those powerful winds and their midnight-covered eagle heads screeching loudly in the night.
“That’s right you sons of bitches! Come at me!” She stood her ground, spreading her legs apart to steady herself firmly in place, her right hand poised at her side as if she were about to pull a pistol from a holster at her hip.
“Claim your prize!” They were on her, coming closer and closer, the distance between them vanishing where she stood, those talon-hands spread open, ready to rip into her flesh.
“Fuck you!” Kathryn summoned her witchcraft, pulling in the energy from the earth-calling on all of the power that it had, drawing it through her legs and letting it fill every part of her body. She flung her arm up fast in the air, and that power rushed out of her.
The three of them were ripped from formation and thrown back into the sky several yards from where they had just been. They screeched out again. A terrible screech that brought those winds fast and fierce and the gusts took her off of her feet and blew her several feet backwards; closer to the very edge of the canyon itself.
“Don’t let them win!” she commanded herself. Kathryn got back to her feet and stood her ground once again as those horrid monsters-those demigod demons-came in for the kill.
“In the name of Hecate I subjugate thee! In the name of Inanna-Ereshkigal I subjugate thee!” Kathryn threw her arm up in the air and brought it back down swiftly to her side, and as she did, Arish, Niiq, and Kuri were brought down hard into the concrete ruins of the swimming pool.
Their great bodies hit the bottom of the pool with a resounding crack, and she was certain that the weight of their giant bodies had broken the cement.
She looked at the dark pit, waiting for them to emerge again, but there was nothing. The night was silent, though the winds continued to rage against the night, and the ghosts lingered like the audience in an arena to watch the fight.
Kathryn stepped cautiously towards the pool, trying to just get close enough to get a clear view of the inside of the empty pool.
She was so close now. It was right there. The pool’s edge and the slide of cement that made the pool’s walls, it was just a step or to more and then she’d have a view of the pool’s base.
Just a step closer.
Their large forms burst out. Back into that sky, and now they were larger than before, at least ten feet in height, and each wing was larger than a grown man’s body, and their screeching was so loud and so vicious that it forced Kathryn to cover her ears.
The sky filled quickly with clouds, and those clouds sparked with lightening and cried out with thunder, as if it were the drums of war, and this time, the earth really did shake beneath her feet.
“What the fuck was that?!” Richie asked as they ran up the hill.
“They’re here!” Magdalene answered back.
“Kathryn!” Sheffield shouted. His nightmare was coming to life. that was obvious and everything that he had seen, everything that had plagued him for the past eight years was all coming to life. He was seeing it exactly how he had seen it in his nightmares. And Magdalene could tell that Sheffield knew where he would find her and that he knew that they were running out of time.
They got to the base, and just as he had described, there was Kathryn on the ground, close to the edge, and those giant winged monsters high above her, hovering like vultures.
“Kathryn!” they turned to look at them. Those bird-monsters-and for a moment they all stopped. Frozen in their tracks.
“Hey assholes!” Angelina shouted. “Your music fucking sucks and you were lousy lays!”
Two of those things turned towards them, screeching out into the night and bearing down on them. Magdalene and Angelina quickly clasped hands and closed their eyes, and just as those creatures were about to take hold of Sheffield, the sky once again cracked with lightning and to his obvious amazement, a bolt came down from that black sky and struck one of them in the face.
“Holy shit!” Richie let out.
“Kathryn!” Sheffield called again, not wasting any time to race to her, that third beast still there, hovering over her.
Kathryn got closer and closer to the edge-dangerously close-and she knew she risked falling over the side. The one above her was Kuri. She was certain of it. Of all of them, of course it would be Kuri. They one who got so close, the one who had gotten inside of her and showed her the creation of witches themselves.
It was Kuri who would be the one to deal the final blow. It would always be Kuri. On some level she had always known that. She had felt it deep inside her heart. That type of passion, that suffocating desire could only lead to death.
Lust could kill and sex could render someone helpless. With all that they had shared, the intimacy and the journey of that sex
, she had wondered how he could bring himself to kill her.
Maybe a part of her had hoped that knowing her-being with her-would somehow steer him away from his mission, but that was a human idea. A human mistake and impulse. These three were not human and never had been. They had no connection or remorse. They simply were.
They are what they are...
“Kathryn!” Sheffield’s voice brought her out. Sheffield who moved quickly and gazelle-like, jumping over loose stone and sliding under Kuri. He quickly pulled her body close and clung tightly to her hand.
“Sheffield.” His heart thundered against her and his breath was rapid.
“I told you I was never going to leave your side again!” he looked up at the terrible face and the jewel-like eyes of Kuri and then back at her. “You die, I die.”
He kissed her hard, and for a moment nothing existed. Nothing was real. There were no Anunnaki, no Legacy, and no child of prophet yet to be born. There was just this kiss and the spark of life that came from his lips.
“Die witch!” Kuri screeched and came towards them both, those razor-sharp talons closing in and those giant wings beating loud and deafening every other sound around them.
“Pazuzu!” Kathryn screamed and the fierce name of the demon-god forced Kuri back. Kathryn struggled back to her feet, pulling Sheffield up with her. “Pazuzu, wither the earth, bringer of the famine winds and the scourge of Lamashtu-daughter of Anu and sister to the Anunnaki-I summon you!”
The winds came harder, from a different direction entirely and the dried brush began to tear from the earth. “Tear them apart!”
The sky lit again, and that lightning struck the earth and from that strike, the ground began to blaze; quickly spreading around them.
“Witch!” Kuri shrieked again, regrouping with the other two. Magdalene, Angelina, and Richie all raced quickly to their side, just as the earth trembled and began to break apart, and from those cracks, more of those talon hands emerged, struggling to get out.