Seventh

by Ray Chilensky

  “I can’t believe he isn’t answering his phone,” Christian observed. “I can understand being pissed because Evelyn and Eve disobeyed him. But if he doesn’t want to help us now, knowing what’s at stake, he’s a traitor to the Blessed and the Lord and angels. He’s turned his back on the Calling.”

  “He’s just upset because Evelyn and I rejected him,” Eve objected. “He’ll be here to help after he’s calmed down.”

  “There’s no time for that,” Christian retorted. “Besides, the Philadelphia Coreys have been pretty inactive in the Calling for years. Your brother lets your family fight when he absolutely can’t avoid it. Some say he only acts when Camuel demands it directly. I think that the Corey family needs a new patriarch.”

  Cai turned hard eyes to Christian. “That’s not for you to say,” he declared.

  “No,” Astrid agreed, “it isn’t. But Christian is right. Randal has been reluctant to allow his family to actively pursue the Calling. And he’s kept Evelyn, a Seventh, from answering the Calling. Sooner or later, there will be repercussions from his lack of commitment.”

  “They may have already been repercussions,” Eve confirmed. “When Evelyn embraced her blessing, just after Randal disowned her, the sigil of Camuel on her hand was replaced by Uriel’s sigil. I think that Camuel decided that the Corey family was not worthy to have a Seventh among them and Uriel took her into his service.”

  “Well,” Callum said, shrugging his shoulders, “Mister Corey did say that he wouldn’t even let his family train Evelyn or teach her anything about being a Blessed. He just abandoned her. The Lord and angels probably felt that she’d be safer in Uriel’s service. I mean, it looks like Evelyn will be with us for her training, and Uriel’s our patron angel.”

  “We need to get to work,” Cai said. “If Mister Randal comes around, that’s fine. If not, it’s for the Lord and the angels to judge him.” He turned to his mother. “Mom, can you give us a list of human practitioners that would be able to cast this spell?” he asked, pointing to Clive’s laptop. “We may be able to get to them before Blackwell does.”

  Astrid took up a pen and notebook from an end table. “I can only think ten or twelve that could pull it off; only three of them live anywhere near Boston. There is Edward Isles, but I doubt that Blackwell would want to deal with him.”

  “We’ll start with the ones in the area first,” Cai said. “When we find them, we can ask the Hidden to hide them.” He turned to Cadell and Callum. “Cadell, Callum, I want you to stay here. We paid Blackwell a visit; he may try to return the favor. We got by his wards, so I’m not going to assume that he can’t get by ours. Christian, Colm, pick a name off the list. Clive, see if you can give us locations for the names. The Lord has given us a little time; let’s not waste that gift.”

  Leo and Theo rose from where they lay at the foot of bed as Cadell and Evelyn entered the spare bedroom where

  Josh was recovering “Hey,” Cadell said, acknowledging the dogs with pats on the heads. “You’re not dead.”

  “I’m man enough to spare a pint of blood or two,” Josh replied, smiling weakly. “Mama Selkirk said I’ll be up and around in a day or two. Magic medicine is a wonderful thing. This would mean weeks in the hospital in the normal world,” he added, pointing at the thickly-bandaged wound on his stomach.

  “That was a demon’s blade that wounded you,” Cadell said. “Without magic, it wouldn’t have healed at all. You’d be up and around already if we had someone from the Healer Caste in the family, though,” Cadell said. “I think we were all hoping for Evelyn to be a Healer when she embraced her Blessing.”

  Evelyn reached down and touched Josh’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Josh. If I hadn’t lost it when I saw what Blackwell really looked like, you wouldn’t be all chopped up like this.”

  “Hey,” Josh said, waving his hand dismissively,

  “there was only one ‘chop’ and that was more of a slash,” he reassured her. “I freaked out when I saw my first demons, too, and those were just a few goblins. You got hit with a misshapen, first-generation Nephilim. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  “He’s right,” Cadell agreed. “The first time I saw a Nephilim without its glamour, I literally pissed myself. And that was after fourteen years of training and preparation. You went up against Blackwell less than a day after finding out about the Trueworld. You did great.”

  “I froze,” Evelyn said. “If Josh hadn’t slapped me, I would have just stood there screaming while Blackwell killed me.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble,” Josh said. “But getting slapped isn’t what snapped you out it. The slap got your attention, but you didn’t really start moving again until you realized that Cadell was in trouble. When you saw our boy here fighting that big, bad beastie all by himself, you went from scared shitless to mad-dog mean in half a second. You went after Blackwell and had no fear.” “He needed help,” Evelyn said, shrugging her shoulders. “I’d have pitched in and helped any of you against that monster.”

  “Sure you would,” Josh said with a wink of his right eye. “Just not as fast and with a little less enthusiasm.”

  “What do you mean?” Evelyn asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Josh said, laughing slightly. “A blind man can see you’re sweet on my battle buddy here,” he accused, pointing at Cadell.

  “I just met him yesterday,” Evelyn objected.

  “And the two of you have been through more shit together in the past day or so than most couples go through in a lifetime.” Josh countered.

  “I think we’ll let you rest,” Cadell said, leading Evelyn toward the door.

  Josh didn’t relent. “There’s so much chemistry between you two that you should both be wearing HAZMAT warning stickers on your foreheads,” he declared. “You’re emotional cowards, both of you,” Josh admonished as the couple left the room and closed the door. “Alright,” Josh continued, raising his voice. “But remember that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt!”

  “He’s not wrong, you know,” Evelyn admitted, as Cadell closed the bedroom’s door behind them. “There’s a lot of chemistry between us,” she went on. “I just wasn’t ready to have pointed out like that,”

  “Lack of candor has never been one of Josh’s problems,” Cadell agreed, as they descended the stairs. “Despite what Josh says, I don’t deny that you and I have chemistry between us. I felt it the moment I laid eyes on you. But we should concentrate on stopping Blackwell and getting to the ring before we start trying to figure things out between the two of us. If both of us are still alive after the next few days and a new hoard of greater demons hasn’t been loosed upon the world, we can go to know each other like normal people. You know, over beer and pizza.” Evelyn stopped walking at the bottom of the stairs and turned to face Cadell, standing very close to him. “Or we could just go to your room and jump each other’s bones,” she said, her lips curling in an impish smile and her Spockish eyebrow rising playfully.

  Cadell caressed her cheek. She leaned into his touch. “I’m very, very tempted,” he said, one hand still touching her cheek. “But I don’t think it would be a good idea right now. We’re still sort of on duty. Cai could be right. It’s unlikely, but Blackwell may try to attack us here. We got past his wards, and he may find a way past ours,” he explained. “Besides, I wouldn’t want our first time to be a half-crazed, stress-fueled quickie. If we’re going to do it, let’s take the time to get it right and make it mean something.”

  Evelyn took his hands in hers. “You really are old school, aren’t you?” she said, smiling in a way Cadell had not seen her smile before. “You’re not down for some casual, nerve-calming sex?”

  Cadell laughed and kissed the back of her right hand softly. “I haven’t known you long, Evelyn Corey,” he told her. “But there is one thing about you that I am absolutely sure of.”

  “What’s that?” Evelyn asked, stepping closer.

  Cadell grinned. “That sex wit
h you couldn’t possibly be casual,” he said.

  “Are you sure you want to do this now?” Cadell asked as he opened the door. “You haven’t slept in almost two days. I could get a room ready for you. I called the Homeward, and Sally is sending over the luggage that you and Eve left there,” he informed Evelyn. “In an hour or so, you could be sleeping in your own ‘jammies.’”

  Evelyn shook her head. “No. I should be dead tired, but I feel fine.”

  Cadell nodded and smiled. “That’s part of your Blessing. The Blessed can go for days without sleep and not feel it. In three or four days you’ll be ready for a nap, though.”

  Evelyn eyebrow rose again. “Good. I need to start learning now. I’m pretty good with a knife, but I’m clueless about swords. It’ll be good to have some of my own clothes, though. I can’t keep borrowing Helen’s stuff,” she said, tugging at the front of the sweat pants she was wearing.

  “Actually, those were mine when I was twelve or thirteen,” Cadell corrected, tugging straight the dark blue sweatpants he was wearing. “Mom kept our old clothes around in anticipation of grandchildren.”

  “Are any of your brothers married?” Evelyn asked as she looked around the room that the Selkirks used as a gymnasium and training room. “No, but Cai has been seeing a really nice lady. Cady’s her name.” Cadell replied. “We’re all hoping for a wedding soon.”

  “Just hoping?” Evelyn inquired as she looked around the room. It was a thirty-by-twenty foot room that had once served as a dining hall in the days when the house was used as a boarding school. Now one side of the room was occupied by exercise equipment, including weight benches and treadmills. The other side was dedicated to martial arts training and had a large training mat on the floor. Three man-shaped striking dummies, a traditional heavy punching bag and a wooden striking target of the type used by Wing Chun kung-fu practitioners were positioned along one of the walls and an array of training weapons hung from a rack suspended on another. “Yeah,” Cadell confirmed. “Cady doesn’t know anything about the Trueworld or the Blessed. We’re not sure she’ll be able to handle knowing the truth.”

  Evelyn cocked her head and smiled playfully. “So just how do Blessed handle dating?” she inquired. Cadell began to stretch in anticipation of exercising.

  “Most of the time we get paired up with someone from the Hidden. They know about the Trueworld and they can usually protect themselves fairly well. Cady doesn’t know about the Trueworld at all. She’s a normal art student and thinks that Cai is, too.”

  “Cai’s an art student?” Evelyn asked. Her surprise was clear.

  Cadell nodded and laughed as rolled his head to stretch the muscles in his neck. “He has a BA in art history and is going for his Master’s degree. He’s also a really good sculptor,” he confirmed. “But he’s been lying to Cady for two years, and that’s no way to start a relationship. On the other hand, if he tells her what he really is and tells her about the Blessed and the Trueworld, he’s putting her in danger. And what if she started telling the world about us?

  She’d either be branded as crazy or put the family in a really vulnerable situation.”

  Evelyn examined a chart showing a practice drill for the military saber. “After two years, don’t you think he should either end it or roll the dice and tell her about the Blessed?”

  “He probably should,” Cadell agreed, swinging his arms in wide circles. “But he loves her and there’s a good chance that she’ll send him packing if he tells her the truth. Even if she doesn’t, she’ll have to adapt to the Blessed’s world. I’ve met her; she seems like a gentle soul. I’m not sure she could survive as part of a Blessed family.” “Do members of different Blessed families ever hook up?” Evelyn asked, looking closely at one of the well battered training dummies.

  Cadell smiled impishly. “Where are you going with this?” he asked her.

  She grinned back at him. “It’s a valid question,” she answered.

  Cadell laughed again. “Yes, it is,” he admitted. “And yes, the Blessed bloodlines have been known to intermarry. But it doesn’t happen very often. With only seven bloodlines, we have to be careful about inbreeding. When it does happen, it’s usually because the couples involved actually love each other. The marriages between the Blessed and the Hidden are usually at least partially arranged deals. There are a lot more of the Hidden that there are Blessed, so inbreeding isn’t a problem.” “What about the wedding itself?” Evelyn asked, studying the use-worn Wing Chun dummy. “I mean, you and your family don’t seem all that religious, considering you’re all probably Facebook friends with a real, literally honest-to-God Archangel.”

  “What were you expecting?” Cadell asked, rotating his hips as part of his warm-up.

  “I don’t know,” Evelyn said, slightly embarrassed. “Something like the exorcists on TV, I suppose, all grim and pious and with a ceremony for everything. There wasn’t even a ceremony when I accepted my Blessing.” Cadell chuckled and shook his head. “No, we’re not religious in that sense. When a Blessed couple gets married, they can have whatever kind of ceremony they want. It could be a big, traditional church wedding or they could go Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator.

  For the Blessed, it’s the commitment a man and a woman have to each other that matters, not the ceremony. Our ceremonies are for casting spells, when the words spoken have real power.

  The Blessed don’t have a sacred book or a bunch of sacraments that only elite class of oligarchs can perform. We don’t have a pope or deacons or saints. There are no councils or conclaves. We do what’s right and we answer to our own conscience and to God and his angels. We worship in our own way and interpret the Holy Word for ourselves without middle men or bureaucracies to get between us and God. The Blessed deliberately avoid organization and making the Blessed into an institution.

  Everything works around the family unit.”

  Evelyn began her own pre-workout stretching. “Why? Wouldn’t organization make you more effective?” Cadell took a training broadsword from the rack and used it to make a figure-eight in front of him. “At first, maybe,” he replied. “But as soon as you make an institution out of anything and start giving people titles and authority, the institution almost always becomes more important than the reason for its existence — more important than the mission. People start jockeying for position and influence within the institution and forget about what the institution is supposed to be doing. All of that gets even worse as soon as money gets involved.”

  Evelyn’s Vulcan eyebrow arched. “That would be a pretty bitter pill for many Catholics, Mormons, Scientologists and most Southern Baptists to swallow,” she observed.

  “Look at the Vatican, though,” Cadell retorted, exchanging a series of sword-strikes with an imaginary foe. “There’s proof that the Vatican knew about the Jewish Holocaust during World War Two and did nothing. It made a deal with Mussolini’s gang of Fascists so he would leave the Pope and his cronies alone. And let’s not forget that the Vatican, as an institution, covered up the fact that a good many of its priests were molesting children for decades. All of that was to preserve the institution and keep its reputation clean.

  “The Vatican is just an easy example, though,”

  Cadell continued. “How many of the mega-churches that you see begging for money on TV have had the same types of corruption and used their institutional apparatus to cover it up? For that matter, just look at the governments of the world. How many crimes have been committed by government officials and covered up so as not to tarnish the reputation of some government agency? Institutions are all really just bureaucracies, and bureaucracies always wind up doing nothing but finding ways to justify their own existence.”

  Evelyn had lowered herself into a forward split as she stretched. “With an attitude like that, how did you survive in the military?” she asked, touching her nose to her knee.

  “I joined the Corps to give Cai a break from my uncles and the other patriarchs pressur
ing him to step down as the family’s leader and to pick up some new skills. I never intended to make it a career.” Cadell explained. “But the situation with my uncles proves my point. Even though the Blessed avoid becoming more organized, my uncles still tried to gain more influence within the Blessed families by replacing Cai and making me the head of our family. They thought that they’d be able to manipulate me because I was so young. They wanted to control a Seventh and use me to gain more prestige for themselves. They worried more about the internal politics of the Blessed families than they did about the Blesseds’ Calling.”

  Sensing that she had stumbled onto a subject that irritated Cadell, Evelyn changed the subject. She stepped closer to the weapons rack and examined the various types of training weapons. “I didn’t know there were so many kinds of swords,” Evelyn admitted, picking up one of the trainers and testing its weight.

  “Yeah,” Cadell agreed, welcoming the subject change. “There are a lot of different types. A historian named Oakeshott classified swords in thirteen general types and a bunch of sub-types but that was just for medieval

  European blades.”

  “And you had to learn how to use all of these?” Evelyn asked, testing another training sword.

  Cadell nodded as he whirled the training sword in mock combat. “Yeah, but the basic principles are pretty much the same. There are differences, but if you get the balance, range and timing right, the mechanics of technique are easy to learn.”

  Evelyn had selected a nylon analog to an early medieval period longsword and was swinging it tentatively with two hands. It was double-edged with a broad blade that was just under three feet long. “I like this one,” she declared.

  Cadell was now on the floor, his legs stretched out in a full split. “Dad had that made to train me and my brothers when we were little kids,” Cadell said. “It’s a small version of a European longsword. Helen trains with it sometimes.”