by Callie Stone
“Well, well, well.” I smirked. “If it isn’t fae boy and angel girl. Here to save the day, I take it? It’s beyond saving.”
“You,” sputtered Troy the fae, with hilariously overwrought anger. “I should’ve known it was you behind all this.”
“It’s his father,” Natasha corrected him quietly.
“She’s still the smart one, I see,” I responded and laughed uproariously.
“Why are you doing this?” Natasha asked, finding her courage.
“Courageous, too, but maybe not quite as smart as I thought,” I quipped. “To not only think that I’d tell you, but tell you the truth? Tsk tsk.”
“You’re making a mockery of everything!”
“I thought you guys would appreciate that,” I responded.
“Why are you doing this?” Natasha repeated. “Whatever the congregation did to you, it doesn’t justify this!”
“The congregation didn’t do anything to me, sweetheart,” I explained. “Humanity did. And I will never forgive the disgusting conceit of grace, favoured by humans and angels alike, for its hindrance of the rightful chaos of nature.”
I was just making this shit up as I went along. Not bad, right?
“So, you kill, main, torture, destroy a world?” she responded. “You can’t scare me with your grand speeches about chaos.”
“It’s not humanity in general I object to,” I explained. “It’s individual humans. Take you and your friends, for instance. As soon as the opportunity is right, you would feast upon human blood, if you could.”
“That’s not true!”
“None of you are even real humans. You’re no more human than I. Yet you all insist on doing the humans’ work of destroying nature, hindering its rightful path.” There was no arguing with my contradictions or any of what I was spouting, and it was enough to start throwing them off from whatever tracks they may have been on.
“You’re wrong! We want nothing more than to live normal lives!”
“A normal life is an illusion, manufactured by the congregation to keep you compliant sheep. However, if you insist…” With my angel girl before me at last, my purest and easiest route to full demon-hood, I stepped towards Natasha to make my claim.
“Not so fast!” With that obnoxious uttering from the fae-boy’s mouth, Troy used seemingly every last gram of his pathetic strength and energy to block my path with an ugly-looking greyish-green forcefield.
Bad idea.
“How dare you stop me at the threshold of victory!” My fury exploded, and with that my demon strength found a fresh source of sustenance.
I tore through the forcefield with ease and the only thing left hindering me was the renewed feelings of strength and determination coursing through me.
Apparently not even thinking correctly, angel-girl Natasha threw a fist in my direction. Not even a blast of angelic energy, if she could even summon such a thing, but her first. I clawed it out of my way—leaving just a mild bit of a wound which covered her forearm in crimson blood.
With an unsteady step forward around Natasha, I staked towards Troy to dispense with insufferable fae once and for all. He was already becoming badly drained as I could see him summing any shreds of magic he had in him to create another forcefield—and it wasn’t even facing me!
“That’s the wrong direction,” I laughed before noticing it wasn’t a forcefield at all, but some sort of portal to what looked like a crummy little flat from what I could see through the haze.
“Come on!” the fae boy shouted, leaping in as the portal began to close on its own.
“Is that the place the congregation provided for you? What a dump.” I was having too much fun with the ridiculous display, regrettably not just grabbing the angel-girl as she stumbled around me, clutching her wound. “Mm, you sure, princess? I could still do some things to you that you might find objectionable… but in a good way.”
Plus, I wanted to see if I was up to the challenge of talking her into staying. But, my attempt just led to a swift kick in my crotch from her boot before she leapt into the portal, the last of her making it in before it closed entirely.
4
Fragments of a Nightmare
Natasha
I tumbled to the hardwood floor of the Paris flat’s main living area, straight back into the reality I knew best as if instead of being transported by some magical fairy circle portal, I was simply jumping from the bloody sofa.
I had long since abandoned the habit of falling on my bum in favor of a controlled slide, but I could’ve sworn that all these portals were getting harder to get through every time. My teammates were already gathering and turning their attention towards me.
“Are you okay?”
Speaking of bloody. “Yeah,” I responded automatically, clutching my arm and already seeing a maroon pool of my own blood growing on the living room floor.
“Natasha, didn’t you learn from last time?”
I had learned. It was why I was trying to keep the wound from bleeding out all over the place and looking like a butchered pig for my teammates to see. “It’s nothing that a bandage won’t fix.”
I had to admit, I was a bit surprised when the rest of the team immediately gathered around me and started asking if I needed help. It was a rare show of concern. “Let me see,” Alexander said with genuine worry in his voice.
“I’m fine,” I responded curtly, my cheeks turning red.
“Let me see.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“You’re bleeding,” he responded, grabbing my hand away from the wound and looking at it.
Alexander’s own existence had twice been saved by my own formidable healing powers, powers he’d seemed to have forgotten about. Yet, I could not find it within myself to be offended, as the concern he had in his heart may have very well been overriding some of the knowledge he had retained about me and our shared history in his head.
“It doesn’t even need stitches,” I responded angrily, snatching my hand away from him. “I’ll bandage it myself.”
“Natasha,” Alexander said. “We can’t just leave you alone. We’re supposed to be a team.”
Alexander stepped away for a moment, at first I thought from anger, but that notion was put to rest as he almost immediately began rifling through the linen closet for some short of sheet or blanket for me and my wound.
Michael, trying to hide the modicum of earnest concern in his eyes, tried to query us the best way he knew how. “So, Troy, you gonna tell us what the hell happened or did some unearthly cat get your tongue?”
It must have been a bewildering sight indeed to see that magical fairy portal forming in the midst of the flat before Troy and I had tumbled back in. As far as the rest of the team knew we’d just been out grocery shopping!
“Uh...” It was not common to hear Troy hesitate like that—the man did not typically speak until he was sure he had something to say—but he was probably a bit taken aback at his own ability to use his spritely powers to transport us from the fairy kingdom realm back to the team’s flat in Paris.
I clutched my arm, trying not to dig into the wound Zavier had left as Michael tried in his way to lighten the mood. The wound felt warm and wet, but I didn’t want to look at it. I just wanted to get the first aid kit and disinfect it and bandage it up before it started bleeding through the shirt.
“It looks pretty nasty there, Natasha, not exactly a scratch,” Alexander said, pointing to my wound as he set the pile of sheets on the coffee table.
Kieran, gazing upon me as the rest were, wasn’t the only one to remain silent thus far. While each of my teammate’s belied some degree of concern in their face, Kieran seemed to be breathing noticeably heavier, his face growing flush with what I could only assume to be anger.
Kieran remained wordless as Troy continued to attempt explaining what we’d just been through. “You...uh, you might want to sit down for this. It’s a little strange. Uh, we were in the store and then there was a portal
in the produce section…”
“Portal in the produce section?” Michael asked, wearing an attempt at a mischievous grin on his trickster face which came across as of a pained simper.
“It was more of a hellish magic filling the supermarket,” I breathed as Alexander wrapped my wound.
“I thought I’d heard screaming from somewhere nearby,” Alexander commented. “It awoke me from my slumber.”
Kieran, who seemed to be wearing a scowl on his face, still silently fuming, gave me a mild when I looked to him to confirm Alexander’s observation. After all, he had the keenest hearing of all of us, and would likely have sensed such a commotion even from a few blocks away.
“Well, that clears everything right up,” Michael quipped, causing me to shoot a dirty look in his direction. As I caught Michael’s eyes I noticed a degree of softness I hardly ever noticed there. Rather than trying to bury the situation in ironic attachment, he seemed, just maybe, to be more interested in cheering me the best way he knew how.
Alexander left my arm wrapped tightly in a queen-sized sheet printed with powder blue tulips. “That’s curious,” he observed, looking down at the sheet which had yet to be stained by more than a drop of two of blood.
“What is?” I asked Alexander, my eyes wide, trying not to laugh.
“I’m off to make some tea,” was all he replied. I was still not sure about my angelic healing powers, or had forgotten, or was still ignorant of the scope of my capabilities.
At any rate, I decided not to question the wisdom behind his actions. Troy then tried to explain our mysterious, unplanned sojourn to the devastated Kingdom of the Fae and our run-ins with both Kalgin and Zavier.
“We were close to the produce,” Troy began as I lifted myself up to the sofa, causing Alexander to stop dead in his tracks as he carried the fresh mug of tea back from the kitchenette. I was using my injured arm after all.
“We were just picking up ingredients, cooking supplies, having a bit of a laugh at all the French signs...” As Troy continued, I felt myself blush mildly at that detail.
“Well, it was chaos, out of nowhere, like a massive earthquake, horrid visions, then endless falling for Natasha and I until we ended up in my old home. The kingdom. Now war-torn, devastated.”
Troy’s voice started to break at the recent remembrance of the horrors we’d both been witness to, and my own eyes began to cloud with tears. I gently lifted my bandaged arm to place a hand on Troy’s shoulder.
“Natasha!” Alexander cried as he saw me moving the arm. I smiled lightly at him and pulled the bandage off with a single tug, revealing that it had healed that point to a mere scratch, if that.
The others seemed amazed, but my attention was drawn to trying to finish the story as Troy could not go on.
“We’ve seen certain...things, I’m aware,” I began. “But the way they’d left Troy’s old kingdom, I never thought I’d see something like...” I almost found myself unable to continue. Seeing all that gore, the remains of the fairy folk scattered in front of the castle, I’d just felt numbness seeing it, but the awfulness was just starting to hit me.
“They?” Kieran snarled, speaking at last as his furor grew.
“Zavier,” I answered softly, almost whispering.
“It was not just him.” Troy had gotten it together, sitting upright as my hand slid off his back. “It was Kalgin.”
“Real demons.” Alexander’s voice was booming, suddenly, as the realization hit him that our team had, for one reason or number, drawn the attention of demon legions which made Zavier’s hobbled-together army look like a band of misfit amateurs.
“I remember seeing the symbols,” Troy continued. “I didn’t know who had left them, I thought they were certain fairies that worked for similar means as the demons.” Troy went on to describe these markings he was referring to, which I was not sure I had noticed myself.
“It was an upside down pentagram,” he said, raising his hand as if to draw it in the air. “But it had three points, not five. It was also red and black, with what I think was blood at the tip of each.”
“Oh my god...” It was only then that I saw it. “But, some of them were…”
“Pentagrams,” Troy continued. “Just straight demonic markings.”
It was only in my mind’s eye, in some memory of the worst of the horrors that seemed even more vivid than it was at the time. There were etchings of the tri-pointed star left on the ground, in the remains of the market stalls, and even carved into the palace walls. It was like some nightmare, fragments of it coming to me as if for the first time.
“Did…” I breathed softly, trying to think of the right way to even answer all the questions.
“I don’t remember,” answered Troy. “Or I’m not sure, but, it’s clear to me now that it was the dark fairy symbol.”
“Demons,” Alexander repeated, standing up and raising his hands to the ceiling. “Don’t let them deceive.”
There was only one thing for this, I realised. “Emilio,” I stated simply.
It would be necessary for us to inform him of everything regardless, but we all knew Director Emilio Hask would surely be able to provide some answers where our own knowledge and speculation had failed.
The flat’s landline telephone sat next to the official ‘business’ laptop provided by the congregation on the coffee table near where we all happened to be gathered in the main living space.
Without another word, I switched the phone to speaker mode and dialled Emilio Hask. My teammates and I sat in silence as we listened to the phone ring. Emilio was currently in Rome, and while he was still very much working there, that knowledge added to the tense uncertainty that he would answer, a tension I could feel as soon as I heard the dial tone.
“What is it?” Emilio answered after two rings. “I’m on speaker, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” I began immediately. “Do you have any idea what just happened to Troy and me?”
There was a long pause as we could barely hear Emilio take in a deep breath through the phone.
He was putting something together, and not surprisingly he was working with a breathtaking quickness.
“I heard about some strangeness in Paris on the news here,” the Director stated, finally. “Just a minute.” There was some shuffling as he presumably picked up another phone, followed shortly by a muffled yet audible voice in the background.
“Do you think, uh, it was a...attack?” the other voice asked.
What kind of attack? I wondered, as there seemed to be a rather crucial word we could not hear.
“I don’t know. Um... I need you to look something up for me. In the records. The very old ones. back from... what’s the date?”
“It was the twenty-first of December, year unclear,” the other man said. “Why?”
The sound of Emilio furiously scribbling something down filled the phone speaker, and a small hitch in his breath told us all that he’d made a connection.
“Demons,” he said.
“But, I was in the old kingdom,” Troy began.
“Demons,” Emilio interrupted, seeming to somehow know the story already, or at least the important bits.
“That’s what they want with the human souls in Paris, and other points in Western Europe.”
“We need to stop this,” I uttered, my voice hoarse and raw as the snowballing of the day’s event started to catch up with me..
“This could be the start of an invasion,” Alexander surmised. While that much was obvious, Alexander stating it aloud put an emphasis on the dreadful urgency of the apparent, emergent events.
“That’s not the worst part,” Emilio answered dryly. “It wouldn’t just be an invasion,” he continued. “It would be... permanent. Unencumbered transit for the demonic hordes. They want to make all realms their own. They want to bring hell to Earth. It’s an invasion, no doubt about that, but that word is nowhere near enough to describe what would be in store. What seems like... may already be in sto
re.
“What do we do?” I asked as a tidal wave of nausea and acute physical panic rolled through me.
There was more pen scribbling through the phone line as Emilio was clearly on his way to trying to continue figuring this out.
“Stay one step ahead of them,” is all he said.
“How?” To even my ears my voice was sounding desperately, almost mindlessly pleading, but self-consciousness was not exactly at the top of my list of concerns at that moment.
“I don’t know. Maybe that won’t be a problem.”
“What do you mean?” Alexander was processing the news similarly, his voice snarling with uneasy wrath. “It sounds like pretty fucking big problem.”
The disquiet of Alexander’s guttural outburst hung in the still air of the flat as we heard Emilio sighed on the other end of the line.
“I’ll need to get back to you on that one,” Emilio said, at last. “Trust me, I won’t take long.”
My teammates and I looked at each other. We did indeed trust that it wouldn't take long, but it would still be one hell of a suspenseful wait before we knew what to do next. As if reading our minds, Emilio then added, “Start packing your bags, all of you,” before hanging up on us.
We were all used to Emilio’s cryptic messages by now, though this one was more cryptic than the rest.
“What do you think he meant by that?” I ask the rest of the group.
“Maybe he wants us to go on a trip,” said Troy, half joking.
It had been a trip so far that day for sure.
Before any of my teammates could speculate or crack wise in their way, the congregation-owned laptop sitting next to the phone came out of sleep mode with a massage from Emilio. He was right, it did not take him long to start figuring it out. The message was an image, a map of Europe, and underneath was the text:
‘Current Fairy Circle/Portal Locations’
“We need to ring him again,” I heard myself saying, still trying to grasp some sense of logic or purpose from the entire mess. “That map is not enough to go off of, why did he bother? We need to know...”
