by T. S. Mann
“Yes, yes, yes. But since then, I’ve had chance to think about how rudely dismissive I was to young Bryce, and I am here now in repentance. Now, Mother Eagle, why don’t you explain the situation as you see it.”
She sneered at him. “I don’t trust you, Mammonite. Certainly not enough to seek your counsel.”
“Then permit me to give you a reason to do so. I swear on my Portfolio that I will conduct myself honestly and fairly in my discussions with and actions towards the Church of the Unity Blade for the remainder of this night or until any member of the Church threatens violent action towards me. So mote it be.”
As a soft wave of magic swept over the room sanctifying the lawyer’s oath, even Electra’s eyes shot up in surprise. When a Cultist of Mammon referred to his Portfolio, he wasn’t just referring to his stocks and bonds.
Rather, his Magical Portfolio referred to the sum-total of his existence as a Stranger. If Lionel Bartok, High Priest of Boston’s Cult of Mammon, acted against the Church in contravention of the vow he’d just sworn, Fate itself would strip him of everything he’d acquired through magic since the moment his strangeness began, from personal wealth to magical artifacts he’d obtained to influence over mortals and Strangers alike and possibly down to the clothes on his back.
For someone like Lionel Bartok, who’d spent decades as a Stranger using his powers to enrich himself, sacrificing his Portfolio by breaking an oath sworn on it would be one step short of suicide. Mother Eagle considered his words carefully, as if looking for a hidden loophole, before finally relenting with a loud sigh.
“Well, if nothing else, Bartok, perhaps you can persuade Ellington – by charisma or brute force, if need be – to stop risking all our lives just to protect his former friend.”
With that, she began a brief recounting of the events of the last three days from the perspective of the Church of the Unity Blade while Lionel Bartok, High Priest of the Cult of Mammon, paid her seemingly rapt attention.
“Lionel,” Doc sent telepathically to the other man. “What are you really doing here?”
“Bit daring, don’t you think? Carrying on a telepathic conversation right in front of all these gratuitously violent people?”
“I am quite confident that I can do so undetected at least for a few moments. Now, again, why are you here?”
“Two reasons, Ellington. First, I couldn’t help but sense that seismic shockwave of Fate-shaping that took place about an hour ago centered on Fisher College. Specifically, the one quite near where my people found the remnants of a portal that led here to the headquarters of your little Academic Decathalon team. St. Angel, perhaps? No matter. I decided that, whatever was happening, it would be worth it for me to be closer to the action regardless of the risks.”
Doc nodded while keeping his attention on Mother Eagle’s continued rants about his own recklessness. “And the other reason?”
Doc picked up a sudden flash of emotion from Bartok that, oddly, he interpreted as a sort psychic grin.
“Well, it was the oddest thing! I turned your man Caulfield down because I saw no profit to be made from inserting myself or my associates into a conflict between your little school and the Unity Blade. But later that night at dinner, just a few hours before the Fate-shaping I mentioned, the waiter at the restaurant happened to bring me a fortune cookie with the bill, and the fortune inside said:
Always be big enough to admit your mistakes,
smart enough to profit from them,
and brave enough to correct them.
“I decided that was auspicious enough to warrant checking things out personally after I detected the Fate-shaping.”
“A fortune cookie,” Doc thought-sent while giving Bartok the psychic equivalent of crooking an eyebrow. “And that was auspicious enough for you to reverse your earlier decision? A fortune cookie?”
“Well, it was a very auspicious cookie,” Bartok replied with an amused tone of thought. “For one thing, the waiter who brought me that Chinese fortune cookie did so in an Italian restaurant!”
At that remark, Doc immediately tamped down on his own thoughts to prevent his surprise at the revelation from being evident. He stayed silent for the remainder of Mother Eagle’s one-sided and somewhat histrionic tale of how her Church wanted only to protect the city and Reality itself from the Beyond and how his own sentimentality threatened everyone.
Doc shrugged his shoulders at that but remained unrepentant. Electra stood off to one side with a bored expression. After Mother Eagle completed her tale, Bartok stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“Hmm, well it’s obvious to me what our good friend Dr. Ellington has done to conceal St. Angel and the nephilim.”
Mother Eagle frowned. “How so? My people have searched the complex thoroughly.”
“Ah, but are any of them psychomancers? After all, if you want to find something a mind-mage has hidden, you need to think like a mind-mage: devious, overcomplicated, and tricksy.”
“Aren’t you a psychomancer?” Electra asked pointedly.
“Your point being?” Bartok replied blandly before returning his attention to Mother Eagle.
“The only way Ellington could have concealed the missing people from everyone in your order is to somehow put them out of mind for everyone in your order. Most likely by hiding them behind a veil that could only be penetrated by someone who was not hostile towards them.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Or at least not hostile towards St. Angel. I don’t think even the good doctor is soft-hearted enough to oppose the destruction of Miss Forrester.”
Mother Eagle considered the lawyer’s words. “A veil that can conceal someone exclusively and completely from those who wish him harm? Is that possible?”
“For Ellington?” answered Bartok with a laugh. “Certainly! But now that I’m here to help, it would be a simple matter to instill a false belief in the mind of one of your paladins that he or she did not wish to kill St. Angel. One that would only last long enough to find the poor fellow, at which point the false belief would evaporate, and the paladin could end matters with a brief but impressive display of swordsmanship.”
“Lionel!” Doc exclaimed angrily, but Mother Eagle was already shaking her head.
“Absolutely not, Bartok,” she snapped. “You’re a fool if you think I’ll allow you to have access to the minds of any of my flock no matter what vows you’ve sworn. Still, your idea does have merit. If all we need is someone who wants to find St. Angel but not to harm him ….”
She looked up sharply in the direction of Dellamorte. “Electra, what is the status of St. Angel’s two sons?”
Electra glowered. “Yeah, about that.”
Elsewhere …
Luke gasped and sat up on the floor, grabbing at his chest as he did. To his surprise, there was no blood nor even any sign he’d been shot. To his even greater surprise, he was no longer in the Invisible College’s break room. In fact, he seemed to have returned to the ruined sanctuary of St. Mark’s where his strangeness had begun, a fact that was mildly alarming given everything that had happened since the last time he was here.
Luke climbed up to his feet and checked himself out. He was still wearing an MIT sweat-suit and flip-flops, but he also wore his lucky magic trench coat. He assumed (wrongly) that someone had put it on him before moving him to this place.
“Matt?!? Ethan? Anybody?” he called out.
Glancing around the church, the boy saw no signs of his brother or anyone else, but he did notice something odd about his surroundings: for some reason, the church looked even more ruined than when Lindsay’s cult had been making use of it two nights before. Several stained-glass windows were broken out to admit a bitterly cold draft from outside (which Luke thought strange considering the weather had been unusually warm for this time of year).
Moreover, those windows that were still intact seemed to have become altered to present more frightening images than before. For example, one depiction of Jesus on his cross looked noti
ceably different, with Christ’s body appearing even more gaunt and emaciated while the red glass that represented his stigmata had become more pronounced and somehow more realistic.
Except for those bloody flashes of color, however, everything else seemed drabber and more faded than he recalled, as if the world around him was a washed-out photograph brought to life.
Most curious of all was the fact that Luke could even notice such details – somehow, he could see everything around him clearly even though there was no visible source of light. Suddenly, he was reminded of his dream-visit to the Pit, where the environment had the same greyscale quality, and he found the comparison somewhat worrying.
That worry was perhaps the reason Luke uttered a sharp, high-pitched yelp when someone behind him spoke.
“Hey, Luke. Nice to see you again.”
He whirled about quickly and then gasped. To his astonishment, it was Meredith, the girl from Lindsay’s cult who had been paired off with Matt and who (according to Lindsay) should either be dead or insane instead of here in a church with Luke. She was also, for some inscrutable reason, wearing a Belmont Prep cheerleader uniform which he thought was highly inappropriate for the circumstances.
“… um, hey … Meredith,” he stammered. “So … how are things?”
She shrugged. “Well, I’m dead, which I assume you already knew. So that kinda sucks. On the other hand, I’m still around in some capacity. I didn’t cease to exist or get sent to hell or anything.”
She laughed. “My grandpa once told me I’d go to hell for being a ‘harlot,’ but then, he had Alzheimer’s by then, so I didn’t think much of it.”
“Uh-huh,” Luke said cautiously. “And the cheerleader outfit?”
She looked down at her attire and shrugged.
“When you die and come back as a ghost, you can change how you look, but the default appearance is usually how you most clearly pictured yourself at the time of death. In my case, that was as a high school cheerleader. Which is all kinds of embarrassing, I know, but the alternative was how I looked when I died, and I think being stuck in nothing but a push-up bra and black lacy panties for eternity is maybe the only thing even more embarrassing than the cheerleader outfit. Wait a sec.”
Meredith closed her eyes, and suddenly, her appearance blurred and shifted until she was once more in the purple blouse and skinny black jeans she’d been wearing on Halloween night before the orgy-turned-nightmare that led to her death.
Luke blinked at the transformation. Then, out of morbid curiosity, he looked down at his MIT sweats, and in response to a barely conscious desire, they too morphed back into the clothes he’d been wearing on Halloween night.
He nodded slowly at the change. “So, I guess this means … I’m a ghost too?”
Meredith looked at him as if he’d said something stupid. “You have to die to become a ghost, Luke. That hasn’t happened to you. Not yet, anyway.”
“Um … I’m pretty sure I got shot in the chest at point blank range. That usually does it.”
The blonde ghost shook her head.
“Nope. Trust me. You’re not dead yet. Magic, remember? But you did die just enough to come back here. You’re a necrotheurge, and you’ve got a spiritual connection to this church, just like me. So, when you entered a death-like state, that link brought you here. And if you really do die anytime soon, you’ll probably come back here indefinitely to haunt it with me.”
She paused and gave him a serious expression. “I should warn you that if that happens, I won’t be good company for eternity … or however long it will be before the building caves in or gets torn down. I should also warn you that things can get … unpleasant out there if you’re a ghost without a place to haunt.”
Luke looked at the girl as if she’d grown a second head. He’d known Meredith for a few months before the Halloween disaster, and he’d never pegged her as being this well-spoken … or this intelligent.
“How do you know all this?” he asked distrustfully.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m dead. Dead people know things. Well, those of us who stick around as ghosts after we die, which usually means we’re people who would have gone strange from whatever killed us except we died before we got to make the choice.”
She tapped her chest with her finger. “In my case, I had a minor heart defect that I never even knew about. It killed me from the stress of that wax-thing Lindsay summoned slobbering all over me before I could prcess what was happening enough to go strange over it.
“So, I became a ghost instead and woke up here alone but somehow full of ghostly knowledge that got pumped into my head. It’s just another part of the magic. Like I said, you’re a necrotheurge now, and this is all death-related crap. You’ll understand it all eventually.”
She gave him what was probably meant to be a friendly smile.
“But in the meantime, as a ghost, I can help you. I’ve got very useful information. Annoyingly cryptic information, but still useful. I know things I can tell you right now that will help you out when you come back to life in a little while.”
“Come … back … to life,” he said slowly. “Every time I think I’ve encountered the weirdest damned thing that ever happened …. Okay, from the way you phrased that, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you want something in exchange?”
She nodded eagerly. “Got it in one! I’ve got spiritual connections to you and your brother, but my strongest one’s to this church. But I really don’t want to be stuck haunting this shithole. It’s bad enough being trapped forever in an abandoned building for God knows how long. But I’ve got a strong hunch that the actual church in the real world is gonna get torn down soonish, and when it does, this echo of it will probably disappear and I’ll be forced to go … out there!”
She pointed towards the foyer of the church and shuddered. Luke closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers.
“Okay, let me break this down. We’re not in the real world. We’re in some sort of dark spiritual reflection of it where the ghosts of should-have-been Strangers reside in haunts that are echoes of places important to them in life. And if the corresponding building gets destroyed in the physical world, you lose your haunt.”
“Right!” Meredith said firmly.
“Okay, then. I just have one question.” He opened his eyes and glared at the ghost. “How does any of that affect me?”
She sneered at him. “God, Luke, you’re actually an even bigger prick now that you’ve got magic than you were before.”
She stormed past him towards the entryway to the church where the doors were hanging off their hinges from when Electra blasted through them.
“This affects you because if you screw up tonight in Liveworld, you’ll come back here just long enough to regret your mistakes before you end up out there … in Deadworld.”
She pointed angrily out the doorway. Shaking his head over the implications of place names like Liveworld and Deadworld, Luke walked past her to see what things were like outside St. Mark’s. He gasped in horror. As far as he could see, the Boston skyline was blasted and ruined as if the city had been nuked.
There were strange fires in the distance that gave off a sickly gray-green glow somehow made the shadows seem darker and thicker without providing any meaningful illumination. There were no stars in the heavens, and bizarrely, the moon seemed to have been cracked into two large pieces with smaller fragments orbiting around them. In short, it looked like every post-apocalyptic hellscape he’d ever imagined from every dystopian novel he’d ever read all crammed into a single image
Then, he stepped back in surprise as several dark figures darted out of nearby alleyways towards the church. They seemed to be human but were running on all fours like animals, and as they drew near, the shadows that concealed them receded to reveal horribly scarred and misshapen faces and mouths that had rows of jagged teeth.
“… shit!” Luke muttered. Meredith leaned over his shoulder and whispered.
�
��They’re called shades, Luke. And they basically want to eat us alive. Well, not alive in my case, but you know what I mean. Do you see now why I’d really like to get out of here?”
Back among the living in Doc’s office …
After a brief report on the status of Matt, Luke, and Ethan, Brother Falcon had been summoned to the office as well, and a plan of action had been hastily put together. Doc played no part in the deliberations of the Church members (which were improbably assisted by Lionel Bartok who, in theory at least, should have existed at the opposite end of the universe from the Unity Blade when it came to ethics and agendas).
Instead, the older man simply remained quiet and studied the group and especially Electra. Once their course of action had been decided and she was headed for the door, he finally spoke up.
“Daniela!” he called out. Her head snapped around in shock. As with “Helen” and “Joe,” Electra’s True Name was one that had not been used to address her in a long time.
“Before you go,” he continued. “I just wanted to say … I’m sorry. I should have been more trusting towards you and worked harder to integrate you into the Invisible College. I’m sorry my decisions and failings made you feel as though you had no choice but to return to the Unity Blade.
“I do hope it’s not a permanent return and that, however the events of tonight play out, you can find a way to achieve your own destiny free of,” he glanced towards Mother Eagle, “the machinations of bitter, manipulative old people who can’t let go of the past.”
“You wound me, Ellington,” Mother Eagle quipped sarcastically. “Or were you talking about yourself?”
“Both of us, actually … Helen,” he replied before turning back to Electra who looked at him uncertainly.
“I don’t know if this is another of your games,” she replied slowly, “or if after everything else has failed, you’ve finally decided to try sincerity. I’ll be generous and assume the latter, in which case, for whatever it’s worth, I accept your apology. As for the rest of it, we’ll see how it goes … once Lindsay and St. Angel are dealt with.”
