by Lan Chan
A good point. I ignored it all the same.
“I’ll clean it up in the morning.”
It was still strange to be sleeping in a room that wasn’t my dorm at Bloodline. But I’d slept rough plenty of times. Still, there was a difference between sleeping somewhere for the sake of it and being forced to spend time in a place. Rachel sat on her bed in her underwear and a white singlet. She was sharpening one of her knives. It was disconcerting to say the least. I didn’t know what to do with myself. The room and indeed the whole house, felt like it was pressing in on me.
“Do you have any idea how a person would go about finding a lost deity?” I asked her.
She didn’t look up from where she was oiling her blade.
“Beats me,” she said. “If we knew that we’d have tried it already.”
“But surely there are common ways to call upon her.”
“We’ve tried it all. Summoning, searching circles—heck, we’ve even prayed on it.”
“How did they call upon her before she disappeared?”
“The same way your Nephilim call upon their seraphim.”
I scrunched up my nose. “First of all, they’re not my Nephilim. And second of all, the seraphim preside over all of us. Not just the supernaturals.”
A derisive sound came out of her throat. She shoved off her bed and proceeded to pick the spent leaves and flowers off the many indoor plants she had in here. That was the one saving grace of this room. The window ledge was stacked with hanging baskets filled with African violets, geraniums, and marigolds. Beside Rachel’s bed was a peace lily and next to our door was a fiddle leaf fig that was almost bursting out of its pot.
“Right,” Rachel said, in response to my correction. “Like that Nephilim doesn’t think he owns you. How come he never calls you by your actual name?”
The immediate answer on my tongue was that he was a jackass. But now that I thought about it, I couldn’t really come up with an answer. Rachel suspected as much. “It’s so that he can put a distinction between you,” she said. “They make you believe they’re close to human so that when they show their true forms, you’ll be less likely to resist.”
I could feel my face forming a frown. “Have you ever been around any of them?”
Something snapped. I wasn’t sure if she’d broken a plastic hanging pot or if she’d broken the actual ledge. “I’ve been around enough.”
When she turned and slid under the covers on her bed, the same look she’d given Sean when I’d first arrived was etched onto her face.
“What happened?” I asked, knowing for sure that this kind of hatred must have been a result of something horrific. Kind of like my terror of the ocean. If only I could bloody remember what that was actually about.
She grunted at me in the universal sign of not wanting to talk. A moment later she turned her back. I sighed and snuggled under my own covers. I heard her breath even out a little while later but it was still a long time before I could get to sleep myself.
In my dreams the ocean returned. I lay in bed paralysed as water rose all around me. Petrified, I tried to call out to Rachel only to see her bed was no longer there. It had been replaced by an outcrop of rocks that jutted from the surrounding water. I tried to take a huge gulp of air as something latched onto my ankle and pulled me under the surface of the water. My hands sat plastered to the side of my body. Unable to either kick or flail, I opened my mouth to scream. When I did, the water filled my lungs. It burned like no water on earth should have. Turning, I tried to get a glimpse of whatever had stolen me but all I could see was a shadow.
Once more the darkened depths of the ocean were pierced with a ray of resplendent light. Lucifer shot through the water like a golden harpoon, appearing before me unruffled by the sea. He reached out his hand to me. I shook my head frantically. A sardonic smile lifted at his lips. His head turned to regard the thing that had caught me. I was stuck between two ways to die. Lucifer’s eyes crinkled.
No, Alessia, he spoke in my mind. You are death.
His arm whipped out and snatched me around the bicep. He yanked me at the same time the thing that had me caught twined around me foot. I screamed once more.
Something pinned me by the shoulders. It was solid in the way everything else wasn’t. Someone shook me.
“Alessia!” Rachel’s voice was sharp.
I blinked awake. Rachel stood over me, her hands on either side of my shoulders. Groaning, I looked about. “What happened?”
“You were sputtering in your sleep!” she said. Her eyes were two hard shards. “I thought you’d swallowed your tongue or something. You were making noises like you couldn’t breathe.” It was a close enough assessment. “What the hell were you dreaming about? It sounded like somebody was harvesting your soul.”
“I thought I was drowning,” I said. “But then he –”
That’s when the locking mechanism stole my voice. I clutched at my throat. Rachel had pushed upright but now she narrowed her eyes at me. “He did what? Which he are you referring to?”
My tongue felt like it had swollen in my mouth. I couldn’t get my jaw to unlock. The look of suspicion in Rachel’s eyes flared. “Is it that Nephilim?”
Alarm hit me. “No, of course not.”
“Then tell me what ‘he’ you were referring to.”
“I…” Nope. It wasn’t happening. My body refused to comply. She huffed at my continued lack of response.
“This is messed up,” she said.
“I told you it’s not Kai!”
The scathing look she gave me said she didn’t believe me. She marched over to her side of the room and started pulling on some sweats. The first golden light of dawn streamed through the window. My eyes were grainy. How could it be morning already? I felt as though I’d barely closed my eyes. My arms were weighted down like I was still pushing against the resistance of the water.
“How much do you know about hexes?” I asked her. Maybe I could get around the problem if I could be vague.
“The usual,” she huffed. I bit my bottom lip. Maybe this wasn’t a topic I should bring up with her. She had a prejudice against the supernaturals as it was. If I tried to pry it from her, she would just think Kai was doing something to me. I only noticed she was in running gear when she was about to open the door.
“Hang on,” I said. “Are you going running?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Can I tag along?”
I could see her trying to think up an excuse to say no. Trust me to second wheel it. “Never mind,” I said. “I think I might try to go back to sleep.”
She was out the door so fast I could still feel the breeze from it closing. Rubbing at my eyes, I didn’t dare go back to bed. Exercise did sound like the perfect way to exorcise the nightmare from my thoughts. Surely the place was big enough for the two of us. I got up and dressed. The sunlight was just breaking over the clouds when I reached Phoenix’s enclosure.
I reached for his leash but he lowered himself to the ground and growled. “Right,” I said. “Dunno what I was thinking.”
It was a Saturday which meant I was technically allowed to do whatever I wanted. I channelled all of the frustration into stamina as Phoenix and I stepped through the back gate behind the parking lot. It was a little risky to run along the road, but I figured Phoenix wasn’t the kind of dingo to cross the road without looking.
In less than two seconds, he was way in front of me. Every once in a while he’d turn his head back to make sure I was still there. I forced myself to concentrate on my breathing and the rhythm of my body as the exercise helped to purge the dream from my mind. We ran until I thought my lungs would burst. I wasn’t one for hitting the gym, but as a former street kid, cardio was important to me.
The number of times I’d had to haul ass out of a place was unmentionable. I tried to avoid any side streets that would lead me out onto the beach. But it was impossible here. Phoenix sprinted up the rise of a small hill and stopped. When I caugh
t up to him, I saw why. The street turned into a busy intersection. What caught my eye weren’t the stores that stood up on either side. It was the section of beach where the Evil Three had taken me. I could tell where we were because I’d seen the arched sign on top of the gas station from the beach.
There wasn’t a single bit of sand out of place. You would never know that anything had gone. The supernaturals were obviously well-practiced in covering their tracks. Or in this case, my tracks.
Goosebumps pricked my skin as I took in the sea air. “Let’s go back,” I said. Phoenix barked his agreement. As I turned, something flashed in the back of my mind. I could swear I heard that echoing voice whispering my name. I turned around but there was nothing there.
Great. On top of everything else, I was now hearing things.
Rachel was also back by the time I returned. After breakfast, I met her and Ashton in the parking lot. “You sure you want to come along?” he asked. He had traded in his coveralls for a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt with a heavy metal band logo on the front of it. He wore aviator sunglasses to keep the morning glare off his face.
“Yeah.”
“They’re a suspicious lot. I’ve called ahead to let them know we’ll have someone new with us, but it’d be best if you kept a low profile. Let Rach and me do the talking.”
Rachel was already in the front seat. The drive to Melbourne took over an hour. I breathed a sigh of relief as the urban sprawl blocked out the water. Yeah, I was a weirdo. Most people loved the beach. I could get used to the country lifestyle, but there was just no way I wanted to be near the water any more than I had to be. We crossed over the freeway and drove into the city proper.
You would think the city would be less busy on a weekend. In a way, it was. The usual business people who worked in their office jobs were blessedly absent. In their place were the families and people out shopping and meeting up with friends.
Ashton drove up towards the underpass where the Crown Casino and the Docklands met. I shuddered thinking about the rats I’d encountered in my exams for the first semester. This had been the background.
By some miracle we found parking on the street a couple of blocks away and walked to a really dodgy-looking store that was directly under the railway bridge. The sound of the train speeding by above intermingled with the noise of traffic and seagulls squawking. I was hit with a pang of nostalgia. How odd to miss this place when I was standing right here. One thing I didn’t miss was the stench of urine everywhere we walked.
A warm breeze brushed across my cheek. Rachel swiped the back of her hand across her brow. She glanced up at the orange tinge in the sky. “What the heck kind of weather is this?”
“It’s Melbourne,” Ashton reminded her. “Four seasons in one day remember?”
I bit my lip. The leaves on the plane trees growing through the pavement felt like they were curling. Through my hedge magic, I sensed the roots in the compacted soil trying to weave deeper. It felt as though they were battening down the hatches. Pollen floated in the air. I coughed to dislodge it from my throat.
Rachel glanced around uneasily. I understood. My hedge magic – our hedge magic – was firing on all cylinders. The bauble of the sun hanging in the clear blue sky contradicted the feeling in my gut. It was as though my insides were twisting around themselves.
Ashton led us to a place that could have moonlighted as a nightclub. It was a rundown two-storey building with a façade now covered in graffiti. It looked to be boarded up from the outside, but when Ashton knocked, somebody opened the door. I tried to breathe through my mouth as the bald guy on the other side waved us through. He looked like a retired bouncer but there was something in his sluggish movements that had me drawing a circle around myself.
Just to be sure, I did the same for Rachel and Ashton. Her head whipped around to regard me when I felt the edge of her hedge magic brush up against the circle. The inside of the dilapidated building was much tidier than the outside. Thick brocade curtains blocked out the light from the windows. We went up two short flights of stairs to be confronted by another corridor. Ashton approached the door to the left. It would have seemed perfectly ordinary if a layer of dread hadn’t started to slime its way down my spine. It replaced the earlier feeling of anticipation. I wished then that I had the demon blade with me.
I still wasn’t great at using it, but suddenly the thought of having something sharp at my disposal was very enticing.
“Can you feel that?” I asked Rachel.
“Shhh,” she hissed. Right. I took that as a yes and that it was the normal way of things. It didn’t help knowing that. I wrapped my arms around myself. We stepped through another door on the other side of the courtyard and I almost tripped. The threshold held a repellent spell like the one outside Terran Academy. Halfway through the magic snagged onto me. It whipped around my body, wanting to understand what I was. It would have to get in line.
When the barrier finally spat me out, Rachel and Ashton stood in front of a black wooden service desk with a stranger. All three of them were watching me. The bouncer was now looming at my back. He was so close I could feel the sweaty heat coming off his barely restrained gut. I took a shuddering step forward.
“What is she?” the stranger at the desk asked. It was difficult to parse out his words because the bottom half of his face was covered in a surgical mask with a Rorschach inkblot on it. My attention was split between the strangers and the heavy smell of chemicals burning in the air. They hadn’t been prevalent outside, but once past the barrier, they hung around us like a cloud of smog.
“She’s human,” Rachel said.
The gutty bouncer appeared on my left. He inhaled deeply. Something akin to electricity danced over my shoulders. “She’s got Nephilim stink on her,” he said. It was impossible for my eyes to have bugged out any farther.
“Of course she does,” Ashton said. “We’ve been hunting them.” With that lie, he turned smoothly back to the counter. In my periphery, I could see the bouncer still eyeing me warily. The stranger at the counter was engrossed in conversation with Ashton. Not wanting to be sniffed again, I drew closer to them. There was another door behind the counter. It was a solid wooden one with a gilded pattern to the frame. It didn’t fit with the ramshackle appearance of the rest of the place. Something told me it had been replaced recently. The small window on the left side of the room was covered in newspaper. Why did people think that was okay?
“Same amount as before?” the stranger asked. The mask obscured too much of his face for me to make out anything but deep lines around his brown eyes. He had the kind of leathery skin that spoke of long hours spent in the sun.
“We’ll take everything you’ve got, George,” Ashton said.
“No can do. We’ve got orders backed up. Best I can do is a double dose.”
The wad of cash Ashton produced from his back pocket had me stilling. He set the spools of hundreds on the counter. “We’ll pay cash now.”
George didn’t take his eyes from Ashton’s face. It was like the money was insubstantial.
“You know the rules. We gotta have enough to go around.” He traced his palm along an opaque glass panel. I watched as ochre light glowed around his fingers. I could feel my brows knitting into a frown. Rachel noticed my disapproval and pressed her lips together. A reminder for me to keep my mouth shut.
It was hard. I wanted to know why an earth wizard would be caught up in an organisation like this. Earth magic and hedge magic were synonymous. It hadn’t been more than ten minutes and I felt like my lungs were being squeezed shut. How could he stand being in this confined space with the stench of those chemicals? I tried to breathe through my mouth. Something bitter and dark coated my tongue. It caused my lips to draw back from my teeth in a very shifter reaction. I bit my tongue and tried to scrape the taste away with my teeth.
“When will you have more?” Ashton pressed him palms on the counter and leaned forward. Until now he’d seemed like the easy-going on
e at Terran. But I’d been around enough addicts in my time on the streets to recognize the fervour in his voice. In the way he tracked George’s every movement. Terran wanted this stuff really bad.
“We’ll have more when we have more.”
A vein in Ashton’s jaw jumped. Rachel placed her hand on his forearm. “You’ve got our contact details,” she said. “Let us know as soon as you’re in stock.”
“Don’t I always? At least you’ve got other ways to protect yourselves.”
A thumping sound came from the door at his back. A low groaning that reminded me of something I’d heard recently. George was unperturbed by it. Nobody else seemed to pay it any heed either. But now that it had claimed my attention, I couldn’t help straining to figure it out.
I was standing there with my neck almost out of joint when the keening noise was overridden by a rumble in the sky. “What in the world –” Rachel said. As she did a half-turn the air boomed again. “Is that thunder?”
The bouncer strode to the window. He tore a small section of newspaper from the corner and squinted out. His sharp inhale was not a good sign. “It’s bucketing down outside,” he announced.
“We’ll be fine in here,” George said with the authority of somebody who didn’t have a care in the world. “It’s just a bit of rain.” It was that kind of certainty that I had learned not to trust. The tightening in my gut had reached a pinnacle. Like the tree roots, I had an inexplicable urge to burrow into the earth.
When Rachel’s hand went to her side where she usually kept her knife belt, I strengthened the circle around me. No sooner had the circle completed than the building rocked with the sound of a thousand jet engines roaring around us. Light flashed behind my eyes. It created an image residue that captured the moment Rachel’s eyes went wide. The lightning was a precursor to the thunder that spiralled down around us.
“Shit!” the bouncer screamed. He jumped clear of the window just as the glass exploded. The frame of the room buckled. Cracks began to appear in the ceiling. I tracked a line that raced down the wall in a zigzag pattern. It joined several others as the room shook anew. We were being hit by lightning. I opened my mouth to scream but it was drowned out by the roar of thunder.
