by JD Nixon
Although the hearing was over and Reverend Joshua’s comments about them were done and dusted, the Cybelians still congregated at the front of the courthouse. The atmosphere of the gathering had changed though, becoming more festive in nature, more of a celebration rather than a protest. A number of Cybelians had set up trestle tables selling various items such as jewellery, foodstuffs and ‘potions’.
Not particularly interested in buying anything, but with nothing better to do, I dawdled around looking at the wares on offer. The jewellery was unusual, rings, pendants and earrings featuring goddesses, astrological signs, trees and unfamiliar symbols. My eye was caught by an infinity ring and I tossed back and forth in my mind about buying it and forcing Heller to give it to me, as purchasing one for me himself wasn’t something he’d ever think of doing. I moved on in the end, not buying it, deciding it would be a sadly desperate gesture to buy it for myself.
One of the potions stalls was doing well, probably due to the stallholder being Liya. She was as commanding and beautiful as she’d been the other night, also proving to be a canny and charismatic retailer. She nodded at me with regal grace and I gave her a tight smile in return, not wanting to chat to anybody else dabbling in magic, whether good or bad.
I drifted on past a couple of other stalls that didn’t much hold my attention until I reached the last one. There were no customers in sight and the stallholder, a young woman with thick curly brown hair and enthusiastic features, brightened as I approached. I could almost smell her hopefulness that she might make a sale. It didn’t look as though she’d moved much of her stock so far.
“Hello!” she gushed. “My name’s Meredith.”
“Hello, Meredith. What are you selling?”
“Potions.”
“What kind of potions?”
“Oh gee! Potions for just about everything.”
“Have you sold much today?”
Her face fell. “No.” Then she brightened again. “But I’m positive the right person is going to come along and buy one from me.” The eager look she gave me would have done a puppy proud.
My heart sinking, but feeling sorry for her, I said, “Well, I suppose I could buy one.”
“Really? That would be super-duper! It would be my very first sale ever.”
Oh great! I thought, trying to maintain my smile. “So, you’re not very experienced at making potions then?”
“Nope. Not much experience at all. But don’t worry, I’ve been following the recipes really, really closely. I’m fairly confident I’ve got them right. Mostly confident.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice. “You see, I’ve just started being a Cybelian.”
“Why don’t you work under Liya for a while, to learn the . . . um . . . trade of potion-making? She looks as though she has a lot of experience.”
Her face fell again. “Oh, I’d just love to work under Liya. I think she’s wonderful. But I’m not in her coven. I’m not in any coven yet. I think people want to check me out first because I’m new. That’s why it’s so important that I get my potions right. I’ve been extra, extra careful, um . . . What’s your name? I want to remember my very first customer forever.”
Hopefully she wasn’t going to be remembering me for the wrong reasons. I introduced myself and we chatted for a while as she showed me her range. Nothing much excited me, but for a laugh I chose a love potion. It would be kind of fun to see if it had any effect on Heller.
“Oh, no, no, no!” exclaimed Meredith in alarm when I told her that. “It’s for you to take, not your partner. Otherwise you’ll end up making him more attractive to other women.”
“God! I have enough problems with that already. Thanks for the warning.”
“And remember, ten drops once a day. Taken in the beverage of your choice.”
I handed over a ludicrous amount of money and she popped the green vial into a small paper bag for me.
“Well, thanks Meredith. It’s been nice to chat to you.”
“Thanks, Tilly, for being my first customer. I hope the potion brings you the results you want.”
“Me too.” A bit of romance in my life would make a change from all the sex.
“And don’t forget me if you ever need another potion. Maybe you might tell your friends about me too.” She fished out a sparkling new business card.
Just as I’d decided to leave before I bought anything else that I would probably regret, the doors to the courthouse were thrown back. Malefic, his black cloak flapping behind him, strode down the stairs to the middle of the gathering. A silence fell on everyone as they watched him warily.
He opened his grimoire and flipped some pages until he found the one he wanted. He commenced reading from it. “I am Asmodeus. I am Adras.”
An expression of pure panic on her face, Liya raced out from behind her stall towards him, her palms up. “No! Stop that!”
Chapter 21
“I am Vinea. I am Mastema,” Malefic intoned, his voice ringing around clearly.
“No!” demanded Liya. “You can’t do that here. Stop it now!”
“I am Agares. I am Paimon.”
“Stop it! You’re frightening everyone.”
“I am Leraje. I am Belial.”
“For the sake of the Great Magna Mater, our Goddess, stop this madness now. You know we don’t practice Goetia. It’s an affront to us for you to say these things,” she almost begged.
“What’s Goetia? What’s he doing?” I whispered to Meredith. She stood still, the colour in her face draining away.
“He’s summoning demons,” she whispered back, her voice trembling. “We don’t practice that kind of magic in Cybelia. He’s performing great evil right here in front of us. He’s mocking us.”
“I am Berith. I am Flauros.”
“Please stop this now, Malefic. You don’t know the harm you’re doing here. You are frightening my people.”
His voice grew louder. “I am Bael. I am Beelzebub.”
“Great Magna Mater, help us in our time of such blasphemy and evilness,” fervently prayed Liya.
“Out of my way, High Priestess.” Malefic pushed past her, moving forward, chanting in that strange language again. At his touch, Liya collapsed, barely holding herself up by leaning on a table.
As he walked and chanted, he touched every Cybelian he came across. They had different reactions, some fainting clear away, others rooted in place as if unable to move, others ran to cower behind the tables of the stalls or to Liya to join hands with her. It was awful, but also fascinating, to witness them scattering before him as he strode through. No wonder he had an ego larger than Heller’s.
He stopped at Meredith’s stall. She shrank away from him, visibly shaking.
“Please, please . . .” she begged, too afraid to articulate any further.
He put his head on one side and shot me a sideways glance where I stood as still as a statue, hardly daring to breathe myself.
“She says ‘please’ to me. I think she wants me to do it. Do you agree, Matilda?”
“N-no. Leave her alone. Leave all of us alone.”
He leaned over the table towards Meredith. “Boo!”
She screamed and stumbled her way up to where Liya huddled with her coven, leaving Malefic laughing cruelly in her wake.
“Stop being such a jerk,” I told him, hoping I sounded braver than I felt.
“A jerk?” He rounded on me with scorn. “You think I’m being a jerk? These people . . . these witches,” and he waved his arm towards the women, his voice full of contempt, “they offend me every day. Each breath they take, each prayer they make to their whore of a goddess, each pathetic ritual they perform, each useless potion they concoct – it all offends me.”
My vial of love potion sat heavily in my pocket as he stepped closer to me. I took a cautious step backwards.
“I spit on their so-called religion. I piss on their so-called holy sites. I burn their ritualistic instruments and scatter the ashes to the winds.” He looked ove
r at the women. “Do you hear that, witches? Only I worship the true gods. Only I have learned the dark secrets of the world and all who live there. One day, we will rise up and destroy you and there’s nothing you can do to stop us, because you witches do nothing but play-act at magic.” Spittle collected at the sides of his mouth. “It’s an offence to my gods for you to exist.”
“Heller’s right. You have a real talent for dramatics. You should be up on stage pulling rabbits out of hats.”
He laid his hands on my shoulders and began that bone chilling chanting again.
I fought the burning sensation of his touch, reciting to myself Heller’s words, “It’s just tricks and illusions. Tricks and illusions. Tricks and illusions.”
Despite this, I slowly succumbed to him messing with my mind, when a short, sharp crack sounded from nearby. Malefic looked at me in surprise for an instant, his eyes wide, before crumpling to the ground. Over his shoulder, Reverend Joshua approached us, holding up a handgun. People fled before him, screaming.
“I will slay all this evil!” he shouted. “It’s an affront to the one true God. Especially this man. I will slay him as he tried to slay me.”
Malefic writhed on the ground, screaming and clutching his stomach. Everyone else scattered in panic, also screaming. Malefic’s acolytes stood in stunned stupid silence, staring down at him, their hands over their mouths. Because of all his black attire, I wasn’t sure where the Reverend had shot him, but the spreading pool of blood beneath him suggested it was a fairly major wound. It soon became obvious to us all that the Reverend hadn’t finished with Malefic yet. I looked around desperately for some safe shelter for him and headed for the only place near us.
“Don’t just stand there! Help me move him,” I yelled at his two women. They stared at me mutely, immobilised by shock.
Giving up on them, I grabbed Malefic’s arms and dragged him over to Meredith’s stall, which she’d draped with a beautiful green silk throw, featuring the sun, moon and stars embroidered in silver, which hung to the ground.
I rolled him under the table, trying to hide him beneath the throw – a futile gesture as the Reverend had seen me do it and the smeared trail of blood across the light pavers acted as a virtual beacon pointing the way to him. With single-minded determination, the Reverend strode over to the table. Malefic’s two women gasped in terror, but stood there uselessly. I took up a sentry place in front of the table, barring his progress, hoping I didn’t get myself shot in the process.
“Don’t just stand there. Call an ambulance! Call the police!” I screeched at the women. They stared at me as if they didn’t understand English.
Without thinking, I kicked out at the Reverend’s hand, but his grip on the gun was zealously tight. All I managed to do with that action was to bring his attention closer to me, something Heller was not going to congratulate me for afterwards.
“Get away from me. This is a righteous man’s business, whore of Satan.”
“Call me that again and you’re going to regret it, buddy.”
“Who else except a whore of Satan would arrange an interview where this demon,” he kicked out in Malefic’s direction, eliciting an animal-like pained groaning from the wounded man, “was free to try to kill me on television?”
That was kind of a touchy subject for me, so I bristled immediately. “So now you think it’s okay to wave a gun around and shoot a man in public? Terrifying lots of innocent people? All because you over-reacted to some mumbo-jumbo sprouted at you by some guy playing dress-ups? And you call yourself a man of God.”
“I am a man of God, but he is no man. He is a demon.”
“Can’t you just give that demon shit a rest for a while? Don’t you see you’re just playing into his hands? That’s what he wants you to think about him. He’s merely a charlatan, using tricks and illusions. And you just shot him. He could die because of you. You’re the one who’ll be going to jail, buddy, not him, no matter what you think of him.”
“Young lady, it is my duty to exterminate demons. And you didn’t feel what I did last night when that thing spoke those words.” Well, that’s all he knew – I’d felt plenty when Malefic laid his hands on me, and none of it pleasant. “It was a mighty evil. It can’t be allowed to survive.”
“You people are all as crazy as each other. How about you all just ignore each other for once and concern yourselves more with your own lives.”
“Out of my way, demon whore. You pretend to talk reason, but I see the evil in your heart.”
“And I see the stupidity in your brain!” I snapped, abandoning any hope of arguing with this dogmatic man.
He barged past me and in a blink, lifted the table throw, stooped down and shot Malefic again at close-quarters. His renewed screaming definitely indicated he’d been hit for a second time.
When the Reverend had done that, he unemotionally stood and searched around until he found his next target.
“Meredith,” I yelled. “Call an ambulance, for God’s sake . . . or the Goddess’ sake, or whoever’s sake you want. Just hurry! And someone call the police.”
Still in a state of shock, she did as I instructed and pulled her phone from one of the pockets of her long, flowing dress. I shot the acolytes a look of contempt. For all their professed loved for their ‘master’, they were too drugged or intellectually vacant to actually help him when he needed them.
“Get over here and help stem his bleeding.” They looked at me without any sign of comprehension. Exasperated, I dropped to my knees and pulled Malefic’s cloak out from under him, holding it over one of the patches on his clothes damp with blood. It seems he’d been hit somewhere in the abdomen and also in his thigh. “Come here,” I demanded. “Come and do this.” They drifted over. “You, press his cloak down over his abdomen like this. And you, use your hands to press down on his thigh, there.”
And it finally seemed as though I’d broken through the miasma of otherworldliness that surrounded them and they did what I asked. I stood up and surveyed the area, wiping my bloodied hands on my trousers. The Reverend headed for the group of women with determination in his stride.
“Liya! Run! Hide! He’s coming after you too,” I shouted.
Stupidly, even though she’d just seen how Meredith’s table had offered no shelter to Malefic, she crawled under hers. She should have sprinted towards the courthouse instead. The security officers there may not have been terribly interested in what happened outside those glass doors, but inside, they knew what they were doing.
Looking around for some sort of weapon, I scooped up a handful of Meredith’s vials and ran after the Reverend. I pegged the first vial, missing him completely. It exploded on the pavers, glass and liquid flying everywhere. My next shot was better, hitting him in the middle of his back. He didn’t even turn around. My third shot was on target, cracking into the back of his head with an ugly thump. I quickly followed with the fourth vial, my last, giving it everything I had. It also hit him in the skull with even greater impact, knocking the gun from his hand when he howled in pain.
I skidded up to him and dived for the gun, flinging it under the table where Liya hid and into what I hoped would be her safe custody. As the Reverend was rather an elderly gentleman, it didn’t take much to subdue him, especially when some of the Cybelians helped me struggle with him to force him to the ground.
Fortunately for us, two bike cops pedalled towards us furiously just as the first faint wails of the ambulance could be heard trying to battle its way through the afternoon city traffic.
An hour later we’d given preliminary statements to the uniformed cops and Reverend Joshua had been taken into custody. I approached Meredith and held out some more money to her.
“Sorry about wasting your potions like that.”
She shrugged philosophically, but still took my money. “At least they were useful in the end. I guess that’s all I can ask for. I hope your love potion is too.”
I said goodbye to her and Liya, looking forwa
rd to return to my car and far away from anything to do with magic. Meredith’s love potion would probably sit on a shelf unused and gathering dust forever more.
The paramedics stabilised Malefic, and prepared to place him in the ambulance. Lying on the gurney, paler than usual, he appeared very young, frail and oh-so human, his aura of malevolence dissipated by his pained expression.
“Matilda,” he said weakly, wincing as the paramedic adjusted his oxygen tube. “You saved my life. I owe you a great favour. Name any ritual you’d like me to perform. Any enemy you want to smite, I will do it for you. It would be my honour.”
I stared down at him, unsmiling. “Don’t ever speak to me again or try to contact me. Don’t come near me or anyone I know. And most of all, stay away from Heller if you value your life.”
Not waiting for his response I stalked away. But back in my car, I sat unmoving for a while, still shaken by the recent events, my hands still stained with Malefic’s blood. This city had its crime problems, sure, but it was rare for someone to be shot during the day on a busy street. With trembling hands, I started the car, feeling something in my pocket knocking against the centre console. My hand closed around Meredith’s vial.
I took it from my pocket and stared at it for a moment. I should have just tipped the contents on to the concrete floor of the parking station, thrown the bottle in the nearby bin and never thought about this ‘adventure’ again. But for some reason I couldn’t explain, I placed it gently in the console’s drink holder and reversed out of the park, on my way home.
I climbed the stairs wearily to the main office and went straight to Heller’s office. He looked up at my arrival with a smile on his lips that faded when he saw my face.
“Matilda, what happened? You have blood on you.” He sprang up and strode over taking my bloodied hands in his.
I looked down at them, almost in a daze. “He shot Malefic. That crazy Reverend did. In front of all of us. He was going to shoot one of the Cybelians too. He wanted to kill them both.”
