“The games are all the same,” Lance announces, dropping down low with bent knees, too low for a normal human to not break or fall. He swipes out with his clawed hands, and Lilja dances back and to the side.
She sees the trap and so remains silent, a skill well known to her. Questions and doubts sizzle and tangle in her mind, but she pushes them away. She has trained enough to know how to shove such things into their own compartment until the proper time to consider. For now, the fight.
She is distracted by a hissing noise, and she looks over to see that Pierce has wounded Skot. She makes to head there, but Lance shoots in, barely missing her.
“No, sister. I get this honor.”
Her eyes go wider as she pulls in a slow breath, sliding her lagging foot closer for better balance. Her fingers show a minor adjustment to the two-handed grip on her sword. Lance licks his lips, staying light on his feet, a distinct change from his lumbering gait before. His grin grows even more as he stares in Lilja’s eyes. That brilliant blue seems to shine, and it even hints at a different hue.
“I see you giving in to the embrace,” he says.
Just as his sentence is complete, Lilja propels herself forward. His own eyes go wide with shock, for he had not expected such speed. The motion of her blade is carried upon the brief glimpse of an amber-hued force, and when she passes Pierce, his right hand is disconnected from his body at the wrist. A putrescent, black ichor jets out for a split second then settles to a seeping ooze.
“Sister, you wound me.”
She looks toward the other fight, tired of hearing the same taunts. Skot and Zoe have gained some ground, though their opponents seem to show such an unnatural fortitude that doubt fills her mind as to the possibility of success.
Zoe sees naught but revenge, her anger growing when Skot is wounded. He continues as well, keeping up the barrage of distracting swordplay and unfurling of magicks. Pierce dodges down and away, missing Zoe’s machete by mere millimeters. He then just as quickly rights himself, smirking at Skot.
“You throw such powers at me? Do you not even realize who we are!” he demands, the layered chorus of his voice chiming forth with renewed intensity. “You are but a weak perversion, but we were born in the same land where this power was created!”
He lunges out with both hands, though he does not close the distance. Instead, an infernal energy erupts and shoots out with tremendous force, colliding with Skot and carrying him away some meters before he collapses in a heap.
“No!” The word is shouted by both women, and though they wish to go to him, they are pestered by their opponents.
Lilja dodges away from a lunge of Lance’s, the attacks wild like an animal. Skot gets himself up on an elbow, trying to breathe. The attack has left a weight on his chest, in it, and he feels a restriction to his respiration. He recalls these two mentioning they are ills and plagues, and he wonders what this magick has now done to him. But such concerns will have to wait, and he musters himself to his feet, rejoining the fray.
Zoe has renewed her press on Pierce, anger erupting on her features. She slashes out with her machete. Pierce keeps that half-smirk on his partially ruined face, but he is pushed back, stepping lightly on his feet until rock awaits him. Skot watches for but a moment, wondering what might happen if they managed to press either of their assailants out of this unfinished-seeming place. Is there something here that gives them power?
He comes in less blatantly than Zoe, striking high. Pierce sees it at the last second, raising both hands to block, uncaring if the blade cuts there. This is what Skot wants, and it leaves Pierce exposed. Zoe slashes out at the left side of his chest, dragging her blade up along his armpit.
Pierce emits something like a grunting growl that bubbles into a chuckle as he contorts and gyrates his way out of trouble. Skot and Zoe are left momentarily stunned, for such an attack should have at the very least, left their opponent without an arm. Pierce is wounded, slightly, and a fresh spray of the liquid foulness within him adds to his unworldly appearance. He is clearly able to continue the fight, and he lunges.
Lance is evincing his own preternatural abilities, and he ducks below a fast swing of Lilja’s, barely missing being beheaded. In doing so, he turns and slams his elbow against her nose. She stumbles back, though still keeps her feet, moving the sword to guard. Lance merely stands there.
“I won’t kill you, sister,” he says, giving forth a confusing aspect of seething and amusement.
“I am not your sister,” she replies, feeling a trickle of blood from her nostril.
“Your ignorance changes nothing.”
“Then why send demons to kill me!” she challenges, her voice suddenly going to its authoritarian loudness.
Lance gives a sheepish shrug. “They are not always the most obedient of children.”
This startles her for a moment, then she feels the infusing surge of anger. She lunges, striking forward, then slashing mercilessly with follow-up attacks. Lance dodges them all, dancing about, moving much faster than anyone should.
Still, Hunters are not without their own abilities, and Lilja draws further upon hers. She had undergone years of training with never knowing of the Infernal. But now, it seems as though it had all been done in preparation for this true battle. She inhales, setting herself on planted feet and strikes out yet again. This time, her blade is bathed in the outré light, the color showing a deeper hue toward vermilion. And this strike is true.
She cries out at the end of it, accenting the power, and she whips the blade and herself back to forward, ready to continue as needed. A splattering of rich ichor indicates she has found purchase. Lance looks at her, his expression more one of emotional pain, and he topples, his form nearly sliced in twain at the belly.
He does not die immediately, if any true form of death even awaits him, but the vast leakage of viscera and flaccid state of his body indicates he is no longer a threat. She rushes to the other melee.
Lilja’s blinding speed is a shock to Skot. He registers her approach on some deep level, as if seeing it after it has happened. He wonders, briefly, if another of the Infernal has arrived, but then Pierce tenses, his body taut. A good portion of the katana has thrust through the back of his neck. Lilja twists the blade, then jerks it out in the new direction. Gore erupts from the hideous wound, and he falls.
The trio of Hunters stands there, breathing heavily, eyes all searching one another. Lilja drops her sword and quickly closes the distance to Skot, wrapping him in a hug. He returns it readily, the two of them showing relief and exhaustion. Zoe watches, a half-grin taking her lips against her will.
She looks at the two heaps on the ground, knowing the potency evinced by Lilja has proved something to her. The young woman is as good as they all thought, even better. Zoe’s doubts have gone. She finds herself distracted, though she is not sure why, and when she turns her focus away from the pair, she sees the light.
Skot notices it, too, and he looks up from hugging Lilja. She feels the change in posture, and she turns, gazing upon it with her piercing blue eyes. “What is that?”
“It’s the resting place of the Book.”
They all look to their guide, having given him little thought once the fight had begun. Lilja notes the man’s survival instinct.
The place waits there as if always having been, yet, until now, unseen. It is small, though its only barrier shows in a vague shimmering of the light. It bathes in the invisible, something that resonates on such a subconscious level that it requires no other declaration.
The trio walks toward it, their guide following. As she nears, Lilja makes out more, seeing a short pedestal upon which rests a closed book. She can make out the title from here, Ostia Tenebrosa. It has the look of the other two, but more than this, something palpable in the very air envelopes her as she nears, making it known to her that is indeed the Book.
“Lilja?”
She turns, seeing Skot and Zoe still off a short distance. They hold out their hand
s as if against the walls of a mime’s box. Her expression asks the unvocalized question.
“There’s some kind of barrier here. We can’t get through.”
“Is it another in-between place?” Lilja asks, moving back to them.
Skot looks at their guide. The man shrugs. “I did not make this place. I did as you demanded and brought you here.”
“Just get the Book,” Skot decides, turning to look back at his love.
“Do you think it’s safe?” she asks.
“You’ve come this far. Why stop now?” speaks a voice, but it does not belong to Skot.
Where the chorused utterings of Lance and Pierce held a deep resonance that threatened to clench one’s gut to the point of collapse, this voice holds a layered alien beauty. Zoe recognizes it as the voice she once overheard speaking surreptitiously to their guide, though that knowledge is within it, for now, the full scope of that sound comes forth.
Lilja turns quickly, and all of them gaze upon the figure. Just as with this place that holds the Book, the woman stands there as if having been there all this time, patiently waiting. She is on the other side from where they are, the curiously-lit space of the Book between them, and the ground she stands on holds such lack of visibility that she appears to be floating. It reminds Skot of his sister, and he shakes the thought from his head.
Lilja does recognize the woman. It is the one who approached her those few times so seeming long ago, the one who appeared as if from nowhere then cast an unsettling aspect in her congenial, unassuming tone. Though she does not look exactly the same, for here she wears a wrapped outfit that leaves to more ethereal hangings at her hands and feet. Her expression is one of benevolence, but her piercing eyes show a potency unknown to any of them.
“You,” Lilja says, and the woman gives a single, slow dip of her head.
“You know this … woman?” Skot asks, he and the others still stuck on their side of the barrier.
“You are correct to hesitate,” she intones, putting her eyes on Skot. He feels a discomfort from the direct focus. “You speak the word ‘woman’, and within it, you mean ‘human’. I am not.”
“Infernal,” he says, whispering the word.
“I am the Mother,” the woman continues, letting the illusion of a warm smile curl upon her full lips. “Where the others debase themselves within their appetites for destruction, I long only to create. I am Loviatar.”
“The blind daughter of Tuoni?”
That expression increases, and it conveys a weighty condescension.
“Have you not now seen enough to know the falsity of such myths?”
Lilja merely stares, saying nothing more.
“Lilja? Lilja?” Skot speaks, his voice no longer a whisper but still carried on such breaths. “Come back. We need to get out of here.”
Loviatar slowly shifts her eyes to Skot.
“You are stuck there, as I am here.” She gently expands her arms, hands referencing the immediate area. “There,” she continues, pointing at the Book, “is the final place created by the Guardians. They did their job very well. They made a place even they could not enter. They did not wish humans or … Infernal to be able to get the Book.”
Lilja looks from Skot to Loviatar.
“You wonder what you are, then, if you are able to be where you are?”
Lilja nods, mutely.
“Don’t listen to her, Lilja. She is a deceiver,” Skot says.
Loviatar chuckles.
“Sometimes we deceive. Sometimes you deceive. Deception was a lesson you took so well.” So said, she looks back at Lilja, the redhead still silently waiting. The expression on Loviatar’s face changes, subtly, something more sincere. “The barriers around the book seek signs of humanity or signs of the Infernal. You, Lilja, you are the true in-between.”
“What?” She barely vocalizes the word. “I’m … I’m human.” The declarative comes out with little force.
Loviatar merely perks her eyebrows. The evidence of where Lilja stands is all needed.
Lilja looks back at Skot. They lock eyes, both pleading.
“Get the Book and come here,” Skot says. “We need to get away from her.”
“Yes,” Loviatar says. “Get the Book, but come to me.”
“What?” The word arises from Lilja as though of its own accord. When she looks back at Loviatar, the benevolent expression has returned. It holds a great power, a monumental patience.
“It is time for you to come home, child.”
“What do you mean? Home?” Lilja continues in a whisper, having trouble even forcing this. Skot can barely hear her words, but Loviatar’s attunement is far greater.
“Do you not yet feel it?” Loviatar replies. “You are my daughter.”
“What? No.” Lilja says, shaking her head the barest bit.
“Lilja, come back,” Skot begs, the Book no longer a concern to him.
“I know my mother,” Lilja says, walking toward Loviatar, a sudden defiance on her features. “You are not her.”
“We see things with a longer view than do you,” Loviatar replies. “True birth is a rare thing for us. We are able to mold some clay and breathe life into it, but true offspring are exceedingly rare.
“As you know,” she continues, eyes settling momentarily on Skot, “We seek to create children not only amongst ourselves but also with you. It was our folly, truly, but once done, we could not go back. Thus, we sought refinement.” Her eyes shift back to Lilja.
No one speaks, an audience held in thrall.
“Many … many generations back,” she carries on, nodding in recollection. “We found a family. There was a young man in this family, and within him, we sensed great potential. We slaughtered the others, but him, we took. I used him to create a very potent child. She also became a mother. And thus did I observe.
“I have always watched you. I have overseen as the souls move and new lives are born and born again. I have waited, patiently, for this moment, but you have naught to fear from me. Just as with all of us, you have free will.”
“You’ve tried to kill me!” Lilja suddenly finds her voice.
“Necessity, child,” Loviatar answers, unperturbed. “All of your ancestors were so tested. If any one of them had failed, you’d not be here.”
“You play games with our lives,” Skot joins the conversation. “You are monsters. Lilja, come back. Let us leave.”
“Monsters,” Loviatar says, contemplating the word, tasting it. “You are locusts.
My sons-” She gestures with a hand, vaguely, in the direction of the putrid remains of Lance and Pierce. “-claim to be the plagues, but humanity is the true plague. Your prolificness is proof of this. My people, and more other species than you realize, have been around much longer, but we don’t destroy our land. Humans are like piranhas stuck in a small aquarium.
“With that book.” She points. “They will have all three and be able to traverse new gateways and find new worlds. Do not let them have it. Let them fill to burst and eat each other, but do not release them unto the universe entire.”
“Lilja?” Skot says after a time of silence, ignoring the wry hint of a smirk that takes Loviatar’s lips. “Please, come back.” Lilja turns her head to look at him, her expression showing the pinch of worry and turmoil. “The Book is safe here. We only wanted to make sure it was safe. Come back. Let’s go home.”
“That is not you,” is all Loviatar says to Lilja.
Lilja again looks from Loviatar to Skot then back to the Book. She brings her hands to her chest, fingers curling into fists and holds them there at the bottom of her throat. Though no one speaks, she feels a tumult of voices, as though she stands in the maelstrom.
When she finally looks back, her eyes show a shimmer of burgeoning tears, forehead wrinkled over a trembling frown. Skot sees this, sees it directed at him, and he feels a crushing pressure envelope him.
“No,” is all he manages, the word barely uttered, caught on its tail by a quiver
in his lungs.
Lilja picks up the Book and chooses, going to Loviatar.
The two disappear.
Epilogue
She ought to feel free.
She had not fully realized how close she’d become to Duilio until he was gone. Murdered in front of her. Even the death of his killer did not much assuage her. She wakes nights, sweaty and afraid, sometimes even jerking from sleep due to her own cries. She expects that man, Denman Malkuth, to be there, lurking over her, with that terrible grin, and then her throat would be sliced open.
She still wonders about Lilja and the vigilante, but in a way, that all seems so small now. How could any of it be related? And the doubts still scratch at her. Maybe Lilja does know. Maybe Lilja is the vigilante, and it’s all tied together. Maybe there really are demons out there, waiting to savage us.
It’s all too much, and she feels her hold slipping.
She decides to seek strength, not solace, and she rides to the university. As usual, she doesn’t have too much trouble finding a parking space for her motorbike, and she plods to the gym where Lilja holds her self-defense classes.
She’s seen the signs before, the precisely printed and laminated things that announce the delay of classes until a certain date. But this one catches her off guard, feels like a punch in her gut. This sign says the classes are suspended indefinitely.
She just stands there, looking at it, for a few minutes. It seems she’s lost in it, but the voice finally wakes her.
“Therese?”
She turns, slowly, not her usual guarded reaction to having her name suddenly called when she does not expect it. She sees the security guard.
“Billy,” she says, her voice holding little volume.
Both sound like they are in mourning, and she is so deeply there that she gives no thought to why he might sound that way.
“Uhm, hi,” he says when she remains silent. “I guess … I guess you didn’t know.” He gestures to the sign.
She shakes her head.
“Yeah, it was a real shock to us all.”
“What do you mean?” Therese asks, furrowing her brow, squaring herself more firmly in front of him.
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