by Clare Kauter
I could hear the others following me, and although we were only 200 metres from the edge it felt like 200 kilometres. (Because it was scary – not just because I’m terrifyingly unfit.) We reached the edge, gasping and doubled over but at least alive. I looked around to check everyone was there: Henry (who had done his usual trick of transforming into a cheetah so he could beat me), Daisy (who could have overtaken me rather easily, but kept pace, shouting what I assumed were words of encouragement although I hadn’t been able to hear her over the sound of my own inner terror), Ed (terrified and shaking, as per usual), and Hecate (looking surprisingly unruffled for a post-sprint octogenarian), who was sitting on the…
Oh. The magic carpet. I guess that’s what Daisy had been trying to tell me when she was running alongside me. I could have gotten out in half the time on that thing and then I wouldn’t currently be blinking away stars and trying not to vomit. But hey, at least I was safe. The ‘how’ wasn’t important.
“Where are the points?” Hecate asked. I stared back at her blankly. “The anchors? For the triangle? We need to find them.”
More blank staring from me. Anchors. Triangle. Blind terror. Death and destruction. My thoughts were a little jumbled – I blamed the exercise. Twice in 24 hours I’d had to run. TWICE. That couldn’t be natural.
“Nessa?” said Henry, looking concerned. His glasses were slightly askew, presumably from the running (yet ANOTHER danger of exercise). “Are you OK?”
They all seemed so calm – none of them knew how much danger we’d just been in. There was enough energy in that triangle to – well, to do a lot. Kill a billion bees, transform a tonne of lead into gold, summon Satan – it was a solid triangle. It must have had some decent anchors. Not just simple candles or crystals like your average conjuring – this shit was heavy duty.
Right, the anchors. Time to break it down. Break the triangle down, that is. Not ‘break it down’ as in ‘start dancing’. This was not the time to bust a move. (To be honest, when it came to my dancing, it was never the time.) It was time to remove the anchors and break the walls holding in all that energy so that it could just dissipate nicely into the air without killing any bees or humans or anything.
As long as we stayed outside the triangle, we would be safe from all the trapped, manipulable energy that the killer had held here. I sent out my feelers again and moved towards one of the points, taking immense care not to stray back inside the boundary. The others followed me wordlessly, making sure to keep to my left, away from the triangle, so as not to stumble back in. I wondered whether the others could feel the energy and were just testing me, or whether for some reason this energy detection thing fell outside the expertise of witches, faeries and shifters. And if it did, why could I do it? I’d always thought it was kind of a basic thing. It doesn’t seem like you’d need to be particularly skilful to say “Yarr, here be magicks”, but what did I know? My knowledge of magical lore wasn’t what it should be, much like my knowledge of magical law. I could ask the others, but I didn’t expect a straightforward answer. They were here to help me, sure, but they were also here to assess me, and hence I inherently distrusted them. Plus, they were keeping the whole bank robbery aspect a secret from me, which seemed kind of significant. If they suspected there was something special about my abilities and that’s what they were testing out, they weren’t going to tell me about it.
I was metres away from the point now – one metre, 50 centimetres – and I stopped short. The ground was bare. Nothing. No anchor. Just a lumpy patch of gravel. I was stumped. And so, apparently, was everyone else. It had to be here. I could feel it – we were right on top of it.
“Impressive,” said Ed, sounding not at all impressed.
“Are you – are you sure this is it, sweetie?” asked Daisy.
Hecate and Henry were looking at each other. She was mumbling to him. “Maybe we overestimated her –”
“No,” said Henry, firmly. “She detected a clouding spell last night. A clouding spell – designed to make things go undetected – and she could sense it. If she says it’s here, it’s here.”
Why thank you for that unexpected vote of confidence, Henry. I knelt on the ground and felt around with my hands. There was nothing there. I lay my hands flat on the earth. I could feel the energy of the object, but there wasn’t an object. What sorcery was this? It was like the energy was just coming from the ground.
Wait.
Face-palm.
I started to dig. The ground was soft from the rain, and also, I suspected, from being recently excavated. About 30cm below the surface, I hit something hard. I brushed the dust off the top and looked down to see a glowing blue orb filled with the same swirling mist of energy I’d sensed within the triangle.
I looked up at the others, not even trying to hide my smugness. Henry smiled. Ed looked dumbfounded. Daisy and Hecate looked surprised but impressed.
“Well, well,” said Hecate. She knelt down beside me and reached for the orb. “Time to break this party up.” As her hand neared the orb, I thought about the bonds tying Jon to the ground. Breaking those ties wasn’t going to be much use to him now that he was dead. Not like he was going anywhere. But…
“Wait!” I said, slapping her hand out of the way. Yes, I slapped an elderly woman, but now was not the time for guilt. “His spirit! If he was bound and killed in there, his ghost won’t have been able to leave the triangle – he’ll be trapped! But if we break the triangle now he’ll be pulled out with all the other magic and disappear. He knows who’s behind this. I have to talk to him.”
“Too dangerous,” said Henry.
“No,” said Hecate. “You can’t go in there. This is a time bomb.”
I glanced at Daisy. She looked sympathetic, but shook her head.
“You’re insane,” said Ed. “Destroy it.”
“If I talk to Jon, this ends now. Today.” I stepped back into the triangle. “If you touch that orb, you’ll kill me.”
“Get back out here,” said Henry, looking very unimpressed. Quite a feat for a cheetah.
What? I mouthed, gesturing to the orb as if the triangle was blocking out the noise. Henry wasn’t buying it. I turned, ignoring the group beckoning and calling me back angrily. I walked out to Jon’s body and sat beside it, watching the cords slither over him briefly before shutting my eyes and reaching out. Somewhere in this sludgy blue fog was Jon’s ghost. I could feel him dancing at the edges of my consciousness, but he didn’t seem to want to come closer. I felt for him, called for him aloud as well as with my mind, but he seemed oddly evasive. Something to do with the way he died, I thought. People who’ve had traumatic deaths could be tricky to calm down.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, trying to coax Jon out from the mist. What was happening to me? Yesterday I’d summoned a dog from the ether, and today I couldn’t even find a human who was trapped in a triangle. As I searched, I was vaguely aware that it was getting darker – it was night now. Exhausted from all my attempts to speak to Jon, at first I didn’t notice the colour creeping into the mist. I was snapped out of my tunnel vision by a sudden sharp shock of red flashing before my eyes, whipping and stinging my face. A warning. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. That was when I noticed a third colour – green mist wafting through the blue, seeping in at the edges. Something was headed this way. I opened my eyes and stood. The rest of the group was still sitting outside the triangle, now with a little campfire. No one looked injured – yet.
I ran towards the others. “On the carpet!” I yelled. “Something’s coming!” The smell of blood filled the air. I looked around, but no one appeared to be injured. So where was that charming scent coming from?
With a puff, two figures appeared.
“Well, well,” said one. “We meet again.”
“Which one of you creatures is responsible for that delicious smell?” asked the other.
Great. It was Jessie and James, the vampire duo. I looked at the ground and saw the
ir cat stalking around. Ah, good. They brought Meowth.
“The human? The shifter? The witch? Or the faery?” James glanced at Ed, looking him up and down with a look of disdain. “Probably not the ghost.”
I guess that answered the question about whether or not they could see Ed. But if they could see him, why couldn’t Daisy and Hecate? That was a question for another time, however, because right now I was out of garlic, and these vampires weren’t playing. We were dead. Were they the mist I’d seen rolling in? No, the mist was green; these guys cast in black smoke, not coloured. And the smell of blood – that was what had attracted the vampires to us. Whoever was after us had been responsible for baiting the vamps. They must have been watching us all this time. Did that mean they’d been watching us last night in the forest as well? Why not just kill us then? Why not kill us today while we were in the triangle? What was with this sick game? Did they want to see us mauled by vampires?
Again, a question for another time.
“What are we going to do with you?” asked Jessie.
My heart rate sped up and I started to feel sick. I didn’t want to know the answer to that question.
Luckily, I didn’t find out, because at that moment a red flash engulfed us.
Chapter 9
The red energy that surrounded us was the same kind that had first jerked me out of my pursuit of Jon, warning me that the vampires were coming. This flash, however, didn’t sting like the whip of energy had. One second we were in the gravel wasteland, about to be mauled by vampires, and the next we were standing in a long, black room illuminated only by the flames running down the length of its walls.
Pleasantly warm flames, of course, not burning hot ones. Hell was nothing if not pleasant.
I say ‘walls’, but of course there weren’t really any walls here – the room just sort of… faded out into blackness. We stood on the shiny obsidian floor as all the seats had already been taken by spirits waiting for admission. No one here I recognised.
I reached out to see if maybe Jon had been brought here with us, but there was no hint of his flighty, ethereal consciousness. This room was full of boring, adjusted ghosts. Except Ed, of course, who was not at all adjusted. He looked terrified, eyes darting around to the flames and the other ghosts sitting down reading old magazines and finally to the door at the other end of the long room.
The door to her office.
I didn’t know why Ed was so scared. It was me she was angry with.
“Is this…” Henry began to ask, but trailed off, unable to form the words.
Wow, I’d thought these guys were tough supernatural law enforcement and yet here they were, having a little breakdown over a trip down under. Down under as in Hell, not Australia. Not that they were that different, really. Hell had a better system of government, though.
Speaking of which…
The door at the end of the corridor slammed open and out stalked Satan. She was wearing a black skirt-suit and red heels, and with the extra height probably hit about 6 ft tall. Her skin glowed, though I wasn’t sure if that was from her personally-tailored-by-a-nutritionist diet or from the demonic force within. She looked impeccable, of course. She always did. Her legs, that suit… When I wasn’t around Satan I was about 90% sure I was hetero. Right now, though? Not so much.
I dragged my eyes up to her face. She strode towards our party looking more than a little peeved. Gulp, came the sound from the four people behind me (OK, the ghost, shifter, witch and fae behind me – from now on I’m just going to refer to them as ‘people’ though) as they simultaneously tried to suppress panic attacks. I didn’t know what they were worried about. She wasn’t going to hurt us. She wouldn’t want to get blood on those shoes. Besides, like I already said, it was me she was angry with.
“Why must you always get yourself into trouble? You’re no good to me dead, Nessa,” she said. She was trying to hide her anger, but the flames running the length of the room flared up with her every word.
“I’m not much good to you alive, either,” I said. It was true. What on earth could I do that Satan couldn’t? In what possible category of life skills did I outweigh the devil?
“And on today of all days! I’ve just had to cut short a meeting with my marketing team. You could not possibly have picked a worse time to get attacked.”
No point in mentioning that I hadn’t actually chosen to be attacked at that particular time. Or to be attacked at all. She was mid-rant. Logic would have been lost on her. Besides, there were more interesting things to discuss.
“Marketing team?” I questioned, a little concerned about what was happening. What exactly was she planning on selling? Face cream, to keep you looking thirty when you were really a few million years old? A new line of barbeques – the fire that will never go out? Medieval torture devices? (Or maybe she’d finally gotten around to doing a campaign for PETA – she’d always liked animals).
“Yes, my marketing team! We were in the middle of coming up with the campaign slogan when you and your ridiculous little troupe decided to get mauled by those pathetic vamp conjurers.” Ooh, wow. She’d dropped the ‘c’ bomb. She must have thought very little of those vampires. Calling someone a ‘conjurer’ is the magical equivalent of patting them on the head and saying how precious they look playing with their little toys. I would never dare use that word.
Well, I probably wouldn’t. Often.
“We –”
“How am I going to be ready in time for the photoshoot now? I’m going to have grey hair by then. You’re sending my hair grey.” She looked over at Ed, Henry, Daisy and Hecate. “Am I going grey?”
They stared back at her in terror.
“Of course you’re not going gr–”
“Don’t compliment me when I’m chastising you!”
I sighed and rolled my eyes internally. By which I mean I did not roll my eyes at all, but rather thought of doing it and then didn’t because I was too scared of the consequences. (Yes, I’d known her a long time, but she was still Satan.)
“What are you marketing, exactly?”
“I just want people to know their options.”
“Options?”
“For the afterlife,” she said exasperatedly.
Ah. Of course.
“You’re running an ad campaign to get more people to come to hell?”
“We’ll discuss that later,” she said. She glanced at the others before asking, “What have you brought with you?”
She already knew, of course. She’d once told me she could smell what species people were, which I had chosen to interpret as metaphorical because the alternative was too creepy. Besides, I was fairly sure that she was telepathic or psychic or something. The devil always knew what was going down. That was the reason she’d been able to magic us away from those vampires. And how she got people in gardens to eat fruit they shouldn’t. (Delicious, delicious fruit…)
There was a moment of silence before Henry spoke. “I’m–”
“A shifter, yes, working for The Department, or Association or Book Club or whatever it is they’re calling themselves these days. A bunch of pathetic bureaucrats tracking down anyone with abilities and imposing your rules upon them. Licensing that which ought not be regulated.” The flames around the room grew larger and began crackling loudly as her voice rose. Satan had problems with authority. “Forcing them to perform for you like monkeys.”
At that word, Henry transformed into a small rhesus and looked down at himself in shock. From the look of utter disbelief on his little monkey face, it seemed that no one had ever forced him to shift before. Satan giggled at the sight of him (confused monkeys do look pretty funny), clapping her hands in delight, and the flames died down to a normal crackle. Suddenly her laughter stopped and she grew serious. “I’ve always wanted a pet.”
Even though he was still in monkey form, I swear I saw Henry pale.
Then Satan cackled again. “Got you!” she said, although I thought that was rather an ambiguou
s statement to make in this particular context.
Finished with Henry, Satan turned to Hecate to continue her inquisition into my companions’ intentions.
“Dawn Witch,” said Satan. “I do not believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
“N-no, I don’t believe so,” Hecate answered, looking far less confident than I’d have expected from her. The devil has an uncanny ability to make people stutter.
“Tell me, how is the necromancy going for you?”
Hecate paled. Another of Satan’s skills. “I will stop it at once if it displeases you, Your Excellency.”
Satan looked pleased at the title. I could tell exactly what she was thinking. Why yes, I am excellent. Thank you for noticing. “Displeases me? Oh, not at all. There should be more dark magic in the world. At the moment there seems to be something of an imbalance. Too much light isn’t good for anyone, is it? The night sky is so much prettier than the day. The darkness makes the stars shine brighter. Plus, dark magic is so much more fun.”
When Satan looked to Daisy she placed her hand over her chest, as if she needed to hold her heart in place from all the cuteness. Which, given how adorable Daisy was, was fair enough. Faery-nough, some would say. Anybody? No? OK, back to the story. Although I think you’re being a bit unfaery.
“And a little faery, how sweet. How old are you? Five, six hundred? Just a baby. Still, you have much promise, from what I’ve seen. You’re a nymph, correct?”
Daisy nodded. “Y-yes.”
“I’ve always liked nymphs. They have a little streak of naughtiness that the other fae lack. A temper. Not like those boring elves. What is the point of living forever if all you ever do is be good?”
Now it was Ed’s turn. He stood there, visibly shaking as Satan looked him up and down in disgust. “I don’t like you,” she said. “I don’t like you at all.”
“B-but –” Ed began.
