by KJ Robinson
They tried to develop their own Powers of Light. That was a crock of horse shit though. Members that had these powers were actually witches or other supernaturals that were brainwashed somehow to think that they could only use their powers in a church sanctioned manner.
As an adult, I knew that it was really jealousy. He wondered why God had forsaken him to make him a mere mortal, while He made others more powerful. When I wasn’t angry with him, I felt sorry for him. I wanted to think that he couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with Tyler’s disappearance, but as his influence in the religious community had grown, so had his irrational fervor against people like me.
I decided to suppress my powers rather than have my father use me in his church. It was easy for my father to believe I didn’t have my own magic since I wasn’t full witch, my father being a Norm who died soon after my birth. I kept my head down and counted the days until I turned eighteen.
Too bad I got pregnant at seventeen with Tyler. I couldn’t hide my growing powers once I was pregnant. Demetrius’ chemistry mixing with mine magnified my powers. I no longer needed spells or physical objects to do magic. I was magic.
All I had to do was think of what I wanted to do and I could do it. There were limits to my magic of course, but it was heads and tales above anything I could even dream of doing before. When I told my family that I was pregnant and my father started calling me everything, but a child of God.
I couldn’t help it, my magic attacked him. I accidentally set his hair on fire. I put it out quickly, but the damage had been done, literally and figuratively. My father is now bald and not by choice. Luckily, he had very little scarring, but the scarring he did receive he wears as a badge. It’s evidence to his congregation that he fought the Devil’s Whore and although scathed, ultimately triumphed.
Of course, I could have simply struck him dead had I thought about it hard enough, but he was my dad.
My phone rang snapping me out of my reverie. I angrily pushed the speaker button. “What’s up?”
“Where are you?” Chase’s voice came out low and angry on the other end.
“I went to go visit my parents.”
“I thought you hated your stepfather and you mother was dead?”
“I do and she is.” This kept him quiet for a second. He blew out his breath. I could imagine him running his hand down his face. The face I’d just kissed hours earlier.
“Is he with you?” I knew he was asking about Tyler, but I wanted to play dumb for as long as possible.
“Is who with me. You know you’re the only one for me,” I flirted.
“Don’t play games with me Tray, is Tyler with you?”
It wouldn’t do me any good to stall, I needed to know what the police knew so I could find Tyler myself. “Nah, Tyler’s not with me.”
“Level with me, what’s going on? Because we were just at the crime scene of his girlfriend that passed the line from gruesome to overkill a couple of ounces of blood ago and he was still in the wind.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to add more lies to the ones I’d already told him, but I couldn’t trust him enough to tell him everything. I started to speak, but was stopped short.
“You not asking me if was Tyler okay told me all I needed to know. A worried mother would have asked after her child unless she already knew he was safe. You need to tell Tyler to come to the station, not now, but right now.”
“I don’t know where Tyler is,” that was the truth. What I did know was that he was in danger somehow and needed my help and no matter how much I liked seeing Detective Chase naked, I wasn’t going to help the police find him first.
“Listen, if you’re protecting him, I understand…” At that I hung up on him. He didn’t understand, he thought he did because he’d lost a brother, but he couldn’t understand a mother’s love. Or at least the type of love I had as a mother. My own mother had her own brand of love. Poisonous, cloying, and ultimately deadly.
I knocked on the door to my parent’s house louder than I meant to. The door opened and instead of the face of my father I was greeted by a woman in a nurse uniform. “May I help you?” she asked.
“I’m here to see Robert Ford.”
“May I ask who’s calling on him?”
“Tell him it’s his daughter,” I said. She looked taken aback, no doubt he hadn’t spoken of me in the most glowing terms. She opened the door wider for me to enter, nonetheless.
Walking through the open floor plan I saw that not much had changed since the last time I’d been here, which was the day I gave birth to Tyler. It was one thing for their daughter to get pregnant out of wedlock by some dude that jetted soon after, but it was another to birth an actual demon. Or rather half-demon. It’s not like Tyler came out the womb with horns or anything, but that glowing green eye was Mom and Dad’s signal that something was up. Mom had attended a couple of dozen witch births and this was not something that happened, no matter how powerful a witch you were.
I could feel my own magic growing as Tyler grew inside me, but kept it tamped down for the most part. But this was not something that could be easily hid. Not to mention raising a Chimera of the demon variety came with a lot of, let’s say, excitement. I could channel my power and control it through my enchanted tattoos, but I couldn’t tattoo a toddler, even if I was his mother.
It took some research, but I found a spell to contain most of Tyler’s magic until he hit puberty. Puberty only intensified his magic and it was up to me to find a way for him to channel it without any magical ink. It would have been real nice to have a demon dad to show him the ropes, but no such luck.
At sixteen Tyler begged for his own ink and I gave in. By this time, I was even better at creating tatted conduits for those on the magical spectrum. I had better be, it was my bread and butter.
I finally made my way to my dad’s bedroom with his caretaker in the lead. She silently reached out her arm towards his large four poster bed. I walked towards him and heard the door close. He looked so small in the humongous bed. Next to him was a machine that was monitoring his vitals along with a tank of oxygen. I had no idea he was this bad off, but how would I have known. It’s not like he ever called.
“You don’t have to stand so far away, I’m not contagious,” he said after taking his oxygen mask away from his face. “Not like you’d catch anything I had if I was, though,” he then said sneering. I could see that illness hadn’t made him any less of an asshole.
“How long have you,” I gestured towards all the medical equipment, “been like this?”
“About a year,” he answered voice as raspy and thin as parchment. I walked closer to the bed. His face was gaunt, he was never a very large man, but his illness had shrunk him further. He didn’t look like my dad any longer and no matter how much of a bastard he was it still made me want to cry.
“I could help,” I offered.
His laugh was loud and cruel and then lead to a coughing fit. If he was going to rebuff my help, there was no other reason to talk to him. I turned my back and headed to the doorway of his bedroom.
“You don’t know, do you?” he asked my retreating figure. His tone was mocking and knowing. I turned back around to glare at him. It would make sense he’d know more about what was shaking in the supernatural underground than I. I tried to avoid all of that for my son's sake.
A lot of good that’s done me, but my father as much as he was repelled by our world, he was enamored by it. I knew deep down he just felt that God had forsaken him somehow by not giving him powers because as much as he tried to make it seem like my kind were curses or abominations, he really felt we were blessed.
“Know what?” I asked.
“The Devil always wants his due.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Hell’s missing a demon and that demon is your son. You think they’d just let you guys live a normal life? Tyler finish college and get some boring job as a professor or something?” He hacked out another
nasty laugh mixed with venom and phlegm. “No dear, he’s eighteen now, a grown man. He’s got to do what a demon’s got to do.”
“And what’s that Dad?”
“Raise Hell.”
Chapter Nine
If my father were to be believed there was some kind of demon apocalypse coming. Not the one foretold in the Bible, but a Halfling who would bring down both God and Satan by proclaiming his allegiance to another fallen angel. A fallen angel who wanted to rule the world instead of serve in hell.
Where had I heard that before? In Sunday school, they taught us that the Morning Star revolted against God because he’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. So, we have another Satan in the making and he wants my son to help him make Earth his playground. Over my dead body.
Before I left my father’s house I made sure to walk through his expansive library. I knew that somewhere in there he had a copy of the Lesser Key of Solomon. I needed to try and figure out where Tyler was being held. And thought maybe this book could give me a clue.
My father was a tireless biblical researcher or a scholar as he liked to proclaim himself. I knew that his copy would have copious notes on the text and somehow point me in the right direction. Plus, there was something about my dad’s condition that was strange. I had seen him on TV just last week and he looks like the picture of health. How could he have deteriorated so fast?
I told Demetrius to meet me at my house, But I was surprised to see Chase's car parked in my driveway instead. I hit my head against the steering well, this was not the time to be interrogated. I need to find Tyler and fast.
Every moment that we didn’t have him was one moment closer to Tyler being corrupted by this fallen angel. I didn’t want to think that Tyler would go along with a planned to enslave demons and the Jinn, but I didn’t know what type of torture they were putting him through. I also didn’t know how his demon nature would play out and the situation. I should’ve tried harder for him to maintain a connection with this father so that he would know more about himself.
I got out the car and slammed the door. I took measured steps as I walked up to my front porch where Chase sat. I sat on the porch next to him.
“Are going to let me in?” He asked.
“I don’t have time for this Chase.”
“Let me get this straight your son’s missing, his girlfriend’s been murdered, and you suddenly don’t have time to talk to me about it? Trey, if you were anyone else I would’ve hauled your ass into the station hours ago. Tell me what’s going on? Let me help.”
I thought about it for a moment. Should I endanger Chase and let him help me? He wasn’t Supe like us. There were places that Demetrius and I could go that Chase just couldn’t, no matter how good of a cop he was. It would be way too dangerous for him. Truthfully, other than his safety I was most worried about him seeing a part of me that he didn’t like.
What if he couldn’t handle me being a real Supe. Sure, he knew that I had powers but he’d never actually seen me use them. For all intents and purposes I was just a hot chick with an impressive tatt sleeve. How would he feel having his girlfriend go full on sorceress? I shook my head, making my decision.
“You can’t help me Chase,” I said.” Why don’t you just do what you’re good at and solve Jacinda’s murder?” He reacted like he had been punched. It was the effect that I wanted. I thought if I hurt his pride, he’d leave me alone.
“I thought you trusted me more than that,” he said as he stood up. “If you need my help, you know where to look. And I’ll try and keep the brass off Tyler for as long as possible, but you know they always look to the boyfriend.”
I watched Chase walk away, cursing myself for not opening up to him. Inside, I knew it was too big a risk and I wasn’t going to risk my son for him. I wouldn’t risk my son for anyone.
As Chase was getting into his car, Demetrius pulled up on his motorcycle. Both men gave each other a look that was far from friendly, but each one let the other go on their way.
Demetrius dismounted from his bike and walked up to the porch. “Is everything good?” He asked.
“Everything’s fine,” I lied. “Let’s go in and take a look at this.”
I laid the book out on the coffee table. Sheba seemed to take a great interest in it and jumped up on the table as well as if she were reading it. From where Demetrius was sitting it was upside down to him, so I read it aloud.
The first book, or part, which is a Book concerning Spirits of Evil, and which is termed THE GOETIA OF SOLOMON, sheweth forth his manner of binding these Spirits for use in things divers. And hereby did he acquire great renown.
Demetrius nodded for me to go on. “Okay, scribbled in the margin are some notes. They’re hard to make out.” My stepfather’s handwriting was always more like a doctor’s than the Bible scholar he considered himself. Sheba nudged my hand with her head and meowed. Seemed like she wanted me to go on. She placed her paw on a passage of the book and I looked to see what was written.
DEFINITION OF MAGIC: Magic is the highest most absolute and divine knowledge of natural philosophy advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things, so that true agents being applied to proper patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced; whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into nature, they because of their skill know how to anticipate an effect which to the vulgar shall seem a miracle.
That certainly wasn’t how my stepfather viewed my and my mother’s magic. He treated us like outcasts because of it. How could something that was natural be an abomination? If God created Norms and Supes alike, what made us the abomination versus humans? Seemed to me like Norms had made a huge mess of their own world without much help from us in the supernatural world.
I looked at Demetrius to see his reaction and he just shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve never had to question the origin of my magic, I just am. I know that your human nature is different than what my nature is.”
I nodded my head, “But, since I’ve become a sorceress, it’s different. It’s hard to explain, though.”
“How would you know it’s different if you’ve been fighting against your knew nature all this time? This may be harsh to hear, but you’re not half of what you could be.”
I scrunched my face up in confusion, “What do you mean?”
Demetrius grabbed my hand and traipsed his finger up my arms tracing my tattoos lightly. I shivered at his touch, not wanting to feel the sexual energy that his hand on my skin brought out in me. This was not the time to be getting caught up in my unresolved feelings for him. He was my first love and I’d never gotten over him leaving. I never even knew why until just this week.
“These tattoos, you think they block your power, temper it. But I can sense your power and the ink hasn’t done anything to it. It’s only dormant because you want it to be. It’s the equivalent of a very pretty and artistic sugar pill. It’s a placebo.”
I snatched my arm away from him. The sexual tension had now dissipated. If what he was saying was true, my whole life’s work was a lie. I put my head down not wanting to look at him.
Demetrius took his finger and lifted my chin so that my eyes were meeting his. He gently brushed back the errant curls that had fallen into my face. “Tray, I’m not saying this to hurt you. I’m saying this because you’re going to need every ounce of power you have to fight whoever took Tyler. What did they say in The Wizard of Oz? You've always had the power, my dear. You've had it all along.”
Chapter Ten
After talking to Demetrius, I started to wonder if he was right. Was there power that I had that I was purposely not tapping into? I would never know unless I tried.
I walked over to my closet and threw open the doors. I had to rummage around, but finally found what I was looking for. It was my mother’s old grimoire. Although my mother had renounced her magic, she had given me this as a reminder of who she was.
I ran my hands over the well-worn tan leather. Etched into it was her maiden name, Truly Heart. She wanted me to have a name with a T as well. Little did she know that the man she would later marry would make my name sound like a joke. In middle school people called me the Ford Traylor instead of Traylor Ford.
Nevertheless, I continued the tradition and named my son Tyler. I smiled thinking of how happy she was the first time she saw his face. Only to have my stepfather rip him out of her arms. I grimaced at the memory.
I opened up the grimoire and ran my fingers lightly over the pages touching her handwriting. Just that action made me feel a bit closer to her. Her handwriting was large and looping. The way she wrote reminded me of my own penmanship.
As a sorceress, I didn’t need a grimoire like my mother. I could call magic to me without a spell. Having her spell book near me gave me the confidence that I needed.
I continue to flip through the pages and found that even when she had supposedly stopped doing magic, she hadn’t. There were spells dated all the way up to the date that she mailed this to me. Tears threatened to fall from my eyes, I should’ve taken her sending me this as a warning. No sooner had I received in the mail, I received word of her death.
I blame myself for not trying harder to come and see her. Her obituary stated that she had a long-suffering illness that she finally succumbed to. I wanted to accept that is truth. I needed to. Now I wasn’t so sure.
I took a deep breath and knew what I needed to do. Once I was afraid that calling on my magic would attract the wrong attention in the supernatural world. With Tyler gone I didn’t care. I needed to find out where he was. And I knew just how.
