by Lee Isserow
“Cheers,” she said, lifting her right foot into the air and crossing her hands back and forth in front of her whilst whispering under her breath before stamping back down, flicking her fingers forward.
The ground under Raven opened up, and she fell straight down, chin slamming into the edge of the concrete on her way through the hole in the floor, teeth making an ungodly crack before she disappeared into the depths of the villa's basement.
The wall behind them exploded, Isaiah Faith walking through the dust and debris with a vengeful expression carved into his brow. “Where is she?!” he shouted. “I will rip her damn head off and shove it up her arse!”
Shana pointed to the hole in the ground, behind which the two surviving mesmerised magickians were parrying, ready for the impending attack they knew was coming.
“Idiots,” Faith grunted. “Who faces a djinn without a damn counter-sigil for mesmerisings...” He opened his arms wide, digits pirouetting, and slammed his palms together. Gali and Talyn ripped from their positions, bodies slamming together with a crunch of bone. They fell to the ground, unconscious. “Those two okay?” he asked, indicating to Jacobian and Leopold. The brothers were motionless on the ground.
Sabre kneeled down by them to check. They were still breathing. She reached out to both of them, fingers tracing glyphs on their foreheads. Both of them gasped, eyes bursting wide open.
“A gentle wake up would have been nice...” Jacobian said.
“Sounds like a damn cuckoo clock is going off in my head!” Leopold shrieked.
“Serves you right for being cold-cocked.” Sabre spat, grabbing hold of their arms as she rose to her feet, lifting them both up in the process.
“Has anyone told you you're strong for a girl?
“Terrifyingly strong... Like, if I was going to sleep with you, I'd worry your vagina would rip my dick off...”
“Children!” Isaiah barked. “This is not the time for jokes.” He indicated to the door up ahead, certain that given it was guarded, it led directly to the djinn.
Jules tried to fight the reluctance to get involved, and forced himself to speak up. “Are you sure there are enough of us? If they were no match --”
“--We're fine.” Faith said, gruffly insistent. “These guys were unprepared for his magicks, assumed he was still weak from his escape. We know better, that's why we're going to kick his arse, and be back in time for tea.”
Jules lips parted to respond, but no words came out. Instead, he let out a scream that was louder than any sound he had ever heard himself make, as four claws penetrated his skin, digging deep into the flesh of his back, ripping through the meat as if each were a butcher's knife. As the claws tore through the musculature he went numb, legs giving out under him, body falling to the ground. An arctic chill pulsated over him, and all he could hear was the smacking of hungry lips, jaws clacking, and unholy groans of a myriad ravenous creatures.
25
Gnawed to excess
The villagers tore through the corridor, stamping heavy, clumsy feet past and on Jules as he lay on the ground. The djinn's mesmerising had not been kind to them. Their eyelids had burned off, reduced to gnarled stubs of scabrous flesh that framed dry, bulbous eyeballs. Their lips were ragged, torn down to the gums and bleeding, as if they had started chewing at them and hadn't known when to stop. Their bodies were thin, having been burning an inordinate amount of calories for days without sustenance. The pallid skin hung from their skeletons, making them look more like fleshy ghouls than the men and women they once were. The most monstrous thing about them was their fingers. What may have started with simple biting of nails had gone beyond too far, the skin and meat shred completely from their first phalanxes, bone gnawed to excess, turning the tips of each of their fingers into sharp, jagged claws.
Leopold and Jacobian gaily pounced into the fray, casting with glee, taking an unhealthy amount of joy from smashing faces and cracking limbs. Isaiah Faith was more regimented with his offensive strikes, trying to simply hold the horde back, intent on knocking the villagers out rather than leaving their bodies as nothing more than a mushy pulp. Behind them, Sabre cast enchantments and invocations to subdue the mob from afar before they could get near enough for close combat with her team members. The battle raged, heavy boots slammed on to Jules's spine, dislocating his every limb whilst bodies piled up around him in the hallway. Whilst this was happening, Shana did nothing. That decision was not of her making, this was more brutal and violent than anything she had ever been trained for. She tried with all her might to cast something – anything – to prove her worth, but even though she likely knew more disciplines of magick than the others, in the midst of the flying fluids and savagery of the attackers, she couldn't find the strength to move, let alone pull from her encyclopedic knowledge of the mystic.
Fortunately, despite the villagers being merciless and ferocious, they were mere mundanes, and no match for the skills of four magickians. The swarm of ravenous mesmerised was defeated without Shana having to raise a finger. Faith kneeled down over the battered, bloody mess of Jules and set about fixing his injuries, willing his bones back into place, repairing fractures and stitching wounds back together with a combination of sigils and muttered words that whispered to the very blood and skin itself, encouraging it to accelerate the healing process. Once the injuries were dealt with, he grabbed Jules's hand and pulled him back up to his feet.
“Need to get you trained up, son.”
“Not planning on being back 'in the field' after this rodeo...” Jules muttered.
“We'll see,” Faith said. “Could do with more adepts...”
Jules rolled his eyes. If there was ever a time for a recruitment drive, it didn't feel like the moments after his body had been torn and pummelled by zombies was it.
“Okay, no more delays,” Faith said, addressing the whole team. We deal, we seal, then we're home free. Everyone ready?” He turned and glared. Jacobian and Leopold were preening one another, wiping viscera out of each other's hair. “I said, everyone ready?!”
They ceased their beauty regime and nodded. All six approached the doors under the grand archway, careful to step over the hole in the floor that had consumed Raven.
“I can't do this...” Shana whispered to Jules.
He took hold of her arm. “You can,” he insisted. “You know magick better than anyone here. You know all the damn adepts. If anyone can do this, it's you.”
She nodded, appreciative of the encouragement, but not entirely convinced that his belief in her was warranted.
Faith led the way, placing a palm against each of the doors and throwing them open with a hefty push. The hinges squealed, as if in agony, as the massive doors swung in an arc, slamming into the walls behind them with an explosive shunt that echoed around the room. Ahead of the six team members was a majestic ballroom, or at least a formerly majestic ballroom. It had not been truly majestic for some time. As with the rest of the building, it was long abandoned, archaic resplendence still present, under heavy layers of dust, peeled paint and cracked brickwork. The entire room was pungent with decay, not from the building itself, but from the scattered remains of corpses, animals large and small devoured and left to rot on the marble floor. The death did not end there. At the very end of the room lay a throne constructed of flesh and bone, bound together with organs and hair matted thick with blood. Upon it, sat an amorphous form. In some ways, very much a man; it had discernible limbs, a ribcage and head. However, its skin was a dark blue smoke with gold glimmers that whisked through it, as if following the route of a circulatory system. In the appendage that acted as its head, the thing had deep, dark eye sockets that lay empty. Below that, a protuberance that was intended to emulate the shape of a nose, and beneath that, a mouth that was wide and gaping. The opening was full of teeth, more teeth than any one creature should have, four layers of them, each crooked and misshapen, like wild shards of glass from a thousand broken windows.
The mouth curled into a twi
sted smile, gaping eyeholes widening with gleeful surprise. “Oh!” it said, in a raspy whisper. “What a surprise!” It was a voice that elongated speech sounds, making them sound like they were spoken by a heavy wind. “I'm so glad you could make it!”
26
Whispers
“I am truly impressed,” the djinn said. The words seemed to emanate from somewhere deep within its core, rather than the hole that functioned as its mouth. “I thought my puppets would have ripped your fragile meat sacks limb from limb. It is a joy to discover you have survived... now that pleasure will be mine...” It raised its hand, dark eye holes widening yet further and becoming blacker. “Protected from mesmerising are we? Oh well, I'll have to deal with you myself...”
“Are you going to talk us to death? Because I've got other things I could be getting on with...” Faith said, his fingers circumnavigating the air under his palms whilst he distracted the creature with words.
“Oh, I have much planned for you before your deaths...” the creature said with an excitable growl.
“Do you have that written down in an itemised list? It'd be good to know in advance what we can expect.”
“Wouldn't that ruin the surprise?”
“I'm not much for surprises. Although, that said...” Faith sealed the sigils and threw his hands out towards the djinn. The beast's smoky form solidified into a solid, glassy texture, bound to the realm to keep him from escaping.
The fiend opened his massive jaws, teeth seeming all that much sharper, now that his entire form was comprised of a reflective sapphire sheen.
“Binding me to this realm?” it cackled, finding amusement in the spell cast. The voice from its lips no longer sounded as though it was on the wind, as if it had been solidified along with its texture. “As if there's anywhere else I'd rather be...”
The glass of its body cracked as it raised its arm, splinters forking through the azure glaze, sealing as quickly as they formed. It waved its hand in their direction. “Be a good dear and do some damage, would you?”
Isaiah Faith was thrown across the ballroom, his face impacting with the hard marble floor, scraping along it, leaving a snail trail of skin and blood behind him. The others turned to the door, Raven Shaffec-Argo standing behind them, her body a twisted mess of fractured bones and torn skin, jaw hanging loose from dislocation and front teeth missing. Her upper lip attempted a smile that was reciprocated by wide, lustful eyes. She was looking forward to hurting her former colleagues. Taking a step towards them, her nose hit a barrier. Sabre had cast a wall of protection around them. Raven laughed, until Sabre sent the signal for the barrier to pop open, bursting with a mystical force that sent her flying into the wall, crunching yet more of her bones.
“Well that was disappointing...” the djinn said, rolling his vacant sockets theatrically as if eyes were there.
The remaining three mesmerised magickians came into the ballroom, tracing sigils in the air, but they too were injured, and no match for Leopold and Jacobian, who beat them down with barely a thought of them being former friends.
“Is that all you got?” Leopold spat at the djinn.
The echo of shattered glass rang across the ballroom as the creature rose to its feet, cracks in its body healing as soon as they formed. “Oh, that's just the beginning...” it said, with a wide toothy smile. Before the infiltrators could react, it had raised its hand up, revealing a large, ancient stone in its clutches.
Shana gasped. She knew what it was and began casting a protection glyph. Light burst forth from the carvings on the artefact. There wouldn't be time to protect all of them, and she knew it, sealing the sigil before it was too late and holding her hands up in front of her and Jules.
The light shot out across the room, striking Leopold, Jacobian and Sabre. They screamed, as the blinding glare encompassed them.
“What happened? What is that?” Jules asked, as he watched their teammates' agony. “Why isn't it affecting us?”
“It...” Shana was concentrating on keeping the barrier around them in tact. The light from the stone forked out, trying to probe at the barrier, punch its way through. “It's the Karmec Rune.” she said, between short, deep breaths. “Meteor... naturally formed with inscriptions... siphons magick...”
The light ceased its attempt to break through the barrier, and split to devour the magick from the five unconscious magickians it hadn't yet struck.
“How do we stop it?”
“We can't...”
“There must be a way, you've got to have read something!”
“I don't know... Uh... maybe it won't work in another realm?”
Jules huffed. The 'maybe' wasn't very reassuring. Plus, his stomach had already been tossed and turned twice in one day. He took a deep breath, gathered shadows beneath him and flipped into the Shadow Realm.
On the other side, he saw the djinn as he was in the Natural World, glassy sheen binding him in every realm. The rock in his hand was still shooting light at the shadow representations of all the other magickians, a light that penetrated even the darkness, even though their screams did not. He felt a pit in his gut, as the djinn turned in his direction. Light burst out of the Rune, heading right for him. He grabbed all the shadows beneath him and flipped back.
He found himself on the floor behind Shana, completely out of breath, and queasier than he had felt since leaving Comstock's office.
“No luck...' he said.
“We need an evac!” Shana shouted, hoping with every fibre of her being that somehow, Three could hear her from the other side of the barrier around the villa.
There was no response. The light tried once more to burst through the barrier, pushing hard against its surface, bending the light around Jules and Shana as if they were spiders trapped under a wine glass.
Jules looked around the room, there had to be something they could do. He forced himself to his feet, putting a shoulder behind Shana's back. She was being physically pushed by the force of the light, heels scraping on the ground. His shoulder did little good, they were being forced against the wall, and if this kept up, the barrier would squash them there, like bugs.
“It's going... to crush us...” she said.
Throwing his hand up, Jules gathered the shadows from beneath the throne, making them leap up through the air and encase the djinn's hand and the Rune like a thick, black glove. The creature tried to shake the darkness off, but it would not disperse.
“This is most inconvenient...” it said, clawing at the shadows with its other hand, tearing through them only to have them reform.
“You okay?” Jules asked Shana.
She nodded, and let the barrier down, catching her breath.
“Check on the others!” Jules instructed, as he held his hands in the air, sending more shadows to cover the Rune.
Shana did as she was told. They were all alive, but weak. She glanced over to Jules. He was doing his best to control the light, but she knew too well that light was stronger than shadow, no matter how many he could find in the room, it wasn't going to last long. She grabbed Faith's ankles, and pulled him across the floor behind Jules, trying to ignore the sound his raw jawbone made against the marble. Not wasting a second, she ran back and did the same with Sabre, then Jacobian.
The light hit her before she saw it. Jules fell to his knees, sweat dripping from his brow as it struck her, the magick being sapped from her blood with every passing second.
Jules saw something in his periphery, a flicker, as if someone walked by him. He knew he should keep his attention on the djinn, grab more shadows to help Shana, put up a barrier before the light came for him next, but he felt compelled to turn. There was nobody there. But there was a voice that whispered around him.
“Oiad d Mad Oali ol Page,” it said.
“What?”
“Oiad d Mad Oali ol Page.”
“I don't understand! What does that mean?”
“Go into your place of rest,” the whispers translated.
; “What am I meant to do with that? What place of rest?”
The voice said nothing. Jules looked around wildly, trying to find the source of the whisper, but he was alone. The only one of their group still conscience, still able to cast. He took a breath, turned back towards the djinn, and realised he knew exactly what it meant.
Closing his eyes, he recalled memories from childhood, his grandmother sitting him at the table, teaching him her favourite magicks outside of their adept. And her very favourite of all, was transubstantiation.
“Jesus made it famous, but our folk been doing it for long before he were around,” she told him, as she turned a teapot into a tray into a loaf of bread into a bird that jumped across the table for a few hops, before she turned it back into a teapot. She filled a cup, sniffed the brew, then took the lid off the pot.
“Oh, this won't do at all...” she said, taking it to the sink and pouring out a green liquid full of crumbs and feathers. “Must be getting rusty in my old age!” she said with a wink.
Jules raised his hands and interlocked his thumbs, as he remembered her doing in that memory. The tips of his little fingers met, middle three fingers folding in between his palms, hands rotating to come together as if he were praying. He muttered old words he had long forgotten under his breath, pushed his hands out flat ahead of him, throwing the top hand out towards the djinn.
The creature turned, as it felt magick sent his way. But it was not meant for him. The throne behind him contorted, bone and flesh contracting, coming in on itself, sucked into a centre mass that was amorphous at first, but quickly took on the shape Jules intended. Materials warped, molecules shifting out of one another's way to make new elements, ripping apart and reconvening to take on a new form, one that the djinn was horrified to see.
