The Circle

by Val St. Crowe

  “It just doesn’t sound like Enid,” I said. “There’s no way she would do something like that.” But I had to admit the thing about exclusivity threw me. It sure made it seem like what Lev was saying was true, didn’t it?

  “Drink,” said Lev.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “Look, I know you want your sister to be, like, this really sweet and innocent girl, but maybe she simply wasn’t. Maybe she was afraid to show you, because she was afraid you wouldn’t approve of her.”

  “I would have loved her no matter what!”

  “Okay,” said Lev. “Then don’t judge her now, either. You still want to find the people who hurt her, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “More than anything.”

  “That’s what we need to focus on.”

  I nodded. He was right. “Okay, well… Abbadon’s involved. There’s the connection with Naomi, the fact he’s got no scruples about having sex with students, and there’s a possibility he was with Enid. So, whatever’s going on, Abbadon is part of it.”

  “Sure sounds like it,” said Lev.

  “He lives on campus, right?”

  “What?” said Lev.

  “I’m pretty sure that someone was saying to me that he lives in that old house out near the woods, the one you see on your way driving in.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s his house, but why are you bringing that up?”

  “We have to go there,” I said.

  “No, we don’t,” said Lev. “That’s a stupid idea.”

  “I know, but… he knows something, and I need to find out what.”

  “Well, he’s probably not even there. You said you left him making out with Tess in his office. They’re probably doing it on his desk as we speak.”

  “Even better,” I said. “We can look around, see if there’s anything incriminating. Maybe personal effects of Naomi or Enid or something.”

  “I just don’t see how that’s really going to help anything. Besides, he’ll probably come home and discover us at exactly the wrong moment, and we’ll get in so much trouble, it’s not even funny.”

  I chewed on my lip.

  “It’s stupid, you have to see that.”

  “I do,” I said, sighing. “I see that it’s stupid.” I started for Lev’s door.

  “Wait, you’re going anyway, aren’t you?” He tossed aside a pair of jeans he was folding and came after me.

  “I have to,” I said. “I can’t sit in my dorm room and pretend this isn’t going on. It’ll drive me insane. I’ll end up going out there anyway. You don’t have to come. You stay here. You’re right. It’s an idiot move to make.”

  “Oh, hell, I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

  * * *

  Abbadon’s house was far enough away that we could have driven there, but then my car would have been sitting in his driveway, and I didn’t want to advertise I was there.

  So, Lev and I walked, and it was a good twenty-five minute walk, long enough for Lev to try to talk me out of this eight more times.

  I tried to allow myself to be talked out of it, I really did. But Lev didn’t get it. I’d come to this school, thrown away what was left of my life, because I needed to find out what happened to my sister. If there was a chance that Abaddon knew something, I had to find out, and I couldn’t handle waiting.

  When we arrived, the house was empty. It was a small house, one story with a wraparound porch. It sat right on the edge of the woods, and there was a little stream in the front lawn. We had to climb over a stone bridge to get to the front door. Even though it was small, it still managed to look stately and antique. It didn’t seem cozy at all.

  There was a ramshackle shed under a gnarled apple tree that had grown knotted green apples which fell on the ground all around it, rotting there in the grass.

  In the back, the stream wound around the house and there was an old wheel that Lev explained was there because this used to be a mill back in the 1700s or something. Now the old mill was defunct, but it was still there, kept painted and looking pretty for the historical aspect.

  We saw the stream and the wheel because we had to go around back to get into the house. The front door was locked, but there was a door in the back off the deck. We had to climb the deck’s gate to get onto the deck, but it wasn’t too hard. The sliding glass doors that opened onto the deck weren’t locked.

  We entered into a massive great room. It seemed that most of the house was taken up with an open floor plan, containing the kitchen, living room, and dining room. All the appliances were new and modern, and the decor was understated and sleek.

  Not sure what we were looking for, we went through the bookshelf in the living room, looking to see if there was anything tucked between Abbadon’s books, but most of the books were just legal thrillers, ala John Grisham, and there was nothing there.

  There were two small rooms tucked at the back of the house. One was a bedroom and the other was a bathroom. Both of these were sparsely decorated.

  I went through his dresser and closet, looking for anything that might tie him to Enid or Naomi, but all I found were clothes.

  “This wasn’t stupid,” I said. “It was just pointless.”

  “Look at this,” said Lev. He was back in the kitchen.

  “What?” I said, coming back out of the bedroom.

  “This door,” he said.

  I had assumed it went to a pantry, but now I realized it had a padlock on it.

  Lev tugged on it. “If you’re hiding something, you lock it up, right?”

  “True,” I said. “How are we going to get in there?”

  “Maybe he’s got bolt cutters or something in that shed out by the house,” said Lev. “Let’s go look.”

  We went out the front door, unlocking it and leaving it open so that we could come back in, and went out to the shed, carefully avoiding stepping on the apples under the tree.

  There weren’t bolt cutters in the shed, but there was a key hanging on a pegboard on the wall. The key had a little label on it that said, Basement backup.

  “You think that door leads to the basement?” I said.

  “It would have to. There aren’t any other doors,” said Lev.

  We took the key back inside and tried it in the padlock.

  The lock sprang open. We removed it, set it on the marble counter in the kitchen, and opened the door. There were bare wooden steps descending down into the basement. Above the steps, it was dark, but there was a dim, green light down at the bottom. We could see an illuminated circle of concrete floor and a wall made of stones sandwiched together with cement.

  Lev and I looked at each other.

  That was creepy as fuck, and I almost said it aloud, but it was so creepy, it had stolen my voice. I reached inside, feeling around for a light switch. The walls were smooth.

  I swallowed and started down the steps.

  Lev came behind me. They were so narrow we had to go single file.

  The steps creaked underneath my feet. I clung to the railing as tightly as I could, descending one foot at a time toward that eerie green light.

  Finally, I could peer under the railing and see the basement around us.

  What I saw surprised me. There were people in the room. Women. Six of them. Some of them were sitting on beds which lined the walls, but most were on their feet, staring at us coming down the steps. At least three of them were very noticeably pregnant, their bellies swelling under their clingy shirts. They looked dirty and frightened. Two of them clung to each other as they watched us.

  And then I recognized one of the women.

  Lev did too. “Naomi!” he breathed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I hurried down the rest of the steps, Lev at my heels.

  Naomi, who had been sitting on a bed, hugging herself, almost steeling herself for some fresh horror, was on her feet now, backed up against the wall, her eyes wide with fright. “What do want with me? What do you want with me?” she was saying.


  “What the hell is this?” I said, looking around. “He keeps women in his basement and they’re all pregnant? I think I saw this on the news once. Some guy captured women and kept them prisoner for years. Abbadon’s a real psycho.”

  “What do you want from me?” said Naomi again.

  Lev pushed past me, going to Naomi. “Hey, we’re not here to hurt you. We thought you were dead.”

  Naomi shied away from Lev.

  “Hey,” I said, catching Lev by the shoulder.

  He looked back at me.

  “Come on,” I said to the women, “let’s get you guys out of here.”

  “No,” said one of the women, one with brown hair and a very large belly. “We don’t know what you’re going to do with us.”

  “We’re here to rescue you,” said Lev. He considered. “I mean, we didn’t know you were here when we came, so it’s not as if we came here with the express purpose of rescuing you, but now that we’re here, and you’re here, it seems like the best course of action.”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “You look familiar,” said Brown Hair. “You remind me of that Enid girl who used to come down here.”

  “You knew my sister?” I said. “She came down here with you guys? Why? What was she doing?”

  “Oh, she played nice,” said Naomi. “But she was on their side. It just made her feel better if she was making sure we were being fed and stuff like that. A comfortable prison is still a prison.”

  I licked my lips. Enid had helped keep these women captive? “No.” I shook my head. “Look, I can believe a lot of things, but this is too far. There’s no way that Enid helped Abbadon keep his sex slaves in the basement of his house. Even that would be—”

  “We’re not Abbadon’s sex slaves,” spoke up another woman, who had red hair. She was sitting on another of the beds. “These aren’t his children we’re carrying.”

  “They’re demonspawn,” said Brown Hair. “At least that’s what they called those things that they set on us. Demons. I never thought anything like that existed, but—”

  “You’re all pregnant with demonborn,” I said. “Abbadon’s breeding demonborn!” I looked at Lev, horrified.

  “Yeah,” said Lev, nodding. “This is nuts.”

  “Very nuts,” I said. “We have to get them out of here.”

  “Where are you going to take us?” said Brown Hair.

  “Anywhere but here,” I said. “Wherever you want to go. Come on, there’s no time to lose.”

  “But who are you?” said Naomi. “How do you know my name?”

  “We saw your posts on social media,” I said. “You were having a beer with Abbadon, and then you were at a party at the Black Circle house—” I put my hand to my forehead. “Oh, it’s so much more fucked up than I even thought. No wonder Abbadon was furious at Tyler and the others for having sex with her. What if they knocked her up instead of the demons? Her womb would have been totally wasted.”

  “Gross,” said Lev. “This shit is insane.”

  I turned on Naomi. “You said their side. So there’s more people involved than Abbadon?”

  Naomi nodded.

  “There’s quite a few of them,” said Red Hair. “When they brought the demons to us, there had to have been twenty. Men, women… some old, and some looked like they were barely into their twenties. They were all chanting and they had…” She lifted her fingers. “Glowing hands.”

  These women didn’t know anything about magic. They’d been captured and bred with demons and it was all part of some insane conspiracy that involved more than Abbadon and more than the Black Circle. And, oh yeah, Enid had been involved.

  Hell, what had she gotten herself mixed up in?

  I looked around at the women, who were all in various stages of pregnancy. That meant that they were captured at different times and impregnated, and it probably meant that other women had been here and given birth. “What happens after the babies are born?” I said, my voice full of dread.

  “We don’t know,” said Brown Hair. “Women leave when they’re in labor and they never come back.”

  I grimaced.

  “Maybe they just do a memory wipe spell on them,” said Lev quietly. “Let them go.”

  “Or maybe they don’t,” I said. I looked out at the women. “You can’t risk it. You don’t know who we are, but you have to trust us. We have to get out of here. Now.”

  “I think they’re right,” said Red Hair. “We have to take the chance. Anything is better than living in this basement.”

  “Come on,” I said, gesturing for them to come.

  Red Hair led the way, and Lev ushered them up the steps.

  I brought up the rear, behind Brown Hair, who seemed to be a little too pregnant to go up the steps easily. She puffed a lot.

  But eventually, we all made it upstairs. I shut the basement door behind us. “Hell,” I said. “I really wish we’d brought my car.”

  “True,” said Lev. “Sorry ladies, we’re going to have to walk.”

  “Walk them through campus?” I said. “Someone will see, and we don’t know how deep this whole conspiracy goes.”

  “Good point,” said Lev. “Anyway, they wouldn’t all fit in your car.”

  “Also a good point,” I said. I clenched my hands into fists. “Okay, think, Suther. Think.”

  But at that moment, the front door opened, and we all froze.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We all watched as Abbadon stepped inside. He was easy to see, because everything was a big great room, and the only obstacle between us and the front door was a breakfast bar that jutted out into the middle of the room.

  He had a leather briefcase with a strap slung over his shoulder. As soon as he saw us, he tossed it on the floor and he raised his hands over his head. They crackled with red sparks.

  I summoned all my magic, a big burst of it, everything I could manage. I had a feeling that I was only going to get one shot at Abbadon, and I needed to make it good.

  He threw magic at me.

  I threw mine at the same time.

  His magic hit me, and I was alight with pain, every part of me in agony.

  But my magic hit him at the same time, and I cringed and watched, struggling to breathe.

  He stumbled backward, colliding with the door he’d just come through.

  Yes, good. I fell to my knees, still in pain.

  Abbadon straightened and got up.

  No! I didn’t have anything in me, nothing left, nothing to counter this magic that was working through me. I gasped, slumping to the ground.

  Abaddon’s hands were still full of red sparks. He turned on Lev.

  Lev held up both his hands. “Um… Dr. Abbadon, what a surprise. How are you? What are you up to?”

  “Seriously, Lev?” I grunted.

  “Don’t kill me,” said Lev, laughing a little. “I’m really too young to die.”

  Abbadon let his hands fall, the sparks going out. “What’s going on here, Mr. Belial?”

  “Nothing,” said Lev. “Little game of truth or dare is all. We got dared to, uh, come into your house, and then we saw the padlock and found the key, and… just a fun little afternoon. You got pregnant chicks in your basement, you know? Totally cool with us.”

  “Really?” Abbadon advanced on Lev.

  “Really,” said Lev.

  “A game of truth or dare,” Abbadon said softly, to himself. “But Suther here, she and I had a little conversation—”

  “Totally unrelated,” said Lev, and opened his palm. Power shot out of it, bright blue and smoking.

  “Oh, Lev, I knew you weren’t a coward!” I shouted.

  The power caught Abbadon in the chest, and he made a funny choking noise, going down on one knee, clutching his throat.

  “Out, now!” Lev screamed at the women. “Go for the door!”

  The women started to run.

  Lev hurried to me and held out his hand.

  I barely had the energy to grab onto
him. When he tried to pull me to my feet, I couldn’t stand.

  And Abbadon was recovering. He pointed at the door and it slammed in the face of the first of the women. He let out a roar, turning to us. Black, inky power rushed out of his mouth. It flew through the air and hit me in the face.

  Everything went dark.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I woke up to my stomach growling. I felt like death. I had used all my magic and in order to do that, I’d depleted my body’s reserves of energy. The only reason I was even conscious now was because I’d slept, which had recharged me a little bit.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d slept. When I opened my eyes, I was back down in the basement along with all the other women. They had beds, but I was lying at the foot of the steps.

  Lev was sitting on the steps, looking up at the ceiling, muttering to himself.

  I groaned.

  He snapped his head down. “Suther! You’re awake.”

  I struggled to sit up. “I’m no match magically for Abbadon.”

  “Oh, you’re just figuring this out?”

  “I mean, what was that?” I said. “I made it two seconds in a fight with him. Lev, how the hell am I supposed to get revenge for my sister’s death when I’m completely worthless?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re screwed. But, looking on the bright side, that’s a problem you won’t have to worry about because Abbadon will probably kill us both before you get a chance to get revenge.”

  I groaned again. My stomach growled, turning over painfully. “Is there food?”

  “No,” said Lev.

  I licked my lips. “If Abbadon was going to kill us, why aren’t we already dead?”

  “Who knows,” said Lev.

  “Maybe he’s not going to kill us.”

  “Maybe he’s just going to torture us first, find out what we know.”

  I grimaced. That could be true. I peered out at the women. “Sorry about this, guys. Not a great rescue. I realize that.”

  Lev hugged his knees. “I really am too young to die.”

  I climbed up on the steps next to him and put my arm around him. “I’m sorry. You got into this because of me. I should never have let you come along. This isn’t your fight.”