Fall From Grace, page 10
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
Lily recovered almost instantly, while Greg took a few extra seconds to mentally cast a spell that darkened his glamour-cutting glasses.
“I can see that,” Lily informed, lifting an index finger to the floating dark circles hovering in front of Greg’s eyes.
“Oh,” Greg responded as he concentrated on the lenses and waved a hand over his face. “Easy fix.”
The pair turned their attention to the bustling city of the damned, each experiencing their own personal new levels of anxiety.
Demons seemed to have the exclusive rights to the streets, while limitless souls meandered the crude sidewalks; all except for the poor humans who acted in place of horses, forever doomed to be nothing more than the flesh equivalent of an engine…if they were lucky.
“I need to start going to church,” Greg, the half-centaur shaman, half-human witch mused while awkwardly fumbling a vaguely cross-shaped motion over his chest.
“It doesn’t matter what religion you follow,” Lily corrected while staring at the damned souls of Tartarus. “How you behave in life is what determines your eternity.”
Still staring toward the never-ending city, Lily could see from the corner of her vision as Greg slightly shifted his gaze in her direction.
“That’s why I created my own eternity,” Lily answered his unspoken question. “I never really played well with others. Nor have I…” she tried to take in a breath, only to realize her chest had tightened like a vice over her lungs, “…aligned myself with righteous people.”
Greg thought for a moment, speeding through different things he could say to help reduce Lily’s evident regret and pain. Then it hit him.
“If it weren’t for your, um, connections…Faerie might be lost, and Midworld with it.”
Lily’s face warred with conflicting emotions. On one hand, her mouth curved into a smile, understanding what Greg was trying to do. On the other, her eyes drooped in what Greg could only surmise was exhaustion.
Lily had been trying to avoid her own mortality since the dawn of man, and now, she was risking everything—all the preparations she had made to avoid her eventual death—to save the world. If she were to be honest with herself, it felt good to do the right thing, even with the cost of failure hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles.
“I think we are here for a different reason,” Lily finally admitted to both Greg and herself.
Greg shifted his full attention to her as she continued to stare at the city.
“I couldn’t feel John before we went through the portal. I don’t think the priest could either, which is why he claimed Ulric is the only hope to save Faerie and Midworld.” Lily chewed on her next words for a moment before continuing.
“But I don’t think he believes John is gone. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent me into the lion’s den.”
Greg digested her words, but didn’t fully understand.
“I, ah, don’t get it.”
“When the last vampire walks the Earth, the gates of Hell will open…”
Playing back her words over and over in his mind, Greg eventually understood.
Turning his eyes to the city with a renewed sense of respect, he said, “If John is dead…then it’s just you and Ulric. Sata—I mean…he…could just kill one of you and open the gates.”
“The priest wouldn’t have sent me here if he thought John was dead. And I smelled the archangel on him, which is the only reason I agreed to such a foolish plan.”
“I see,” Greg mused, rubbing his glamoured chin. “They have ulterior motives for sending you to find Ulric.”
Lily nodded in agreement as a random soul was plucked from the sidewalk in front of them by a passing demon. No other soul did anything except give the demon a few feet of space as they continued their hunched travels.
The soul screamed as the demon began cutting into nonvital parts of its very corporeal body.
Fueling her sense of righteousness, Lily strode forward, a hand stretched behind her as she moved.
In the middle of a meal comprised of unimaginable suffering, the demon’s face went slack before its head began to slosh off its once connected neck.
In Lily’s hand was a curved, ancient Egyptian sword she manifested from her own blood.
As the demon toppled over, the soul slipped from its slacking grip. The average-looking man battled with confusion at the sudden freedom from a position it had probably been in tens of thousands of times before.
“Tha-tha-thank you!” the soul stammered in French, dropping to his knees and reaching for Lily’s glamoured fingers. To her surprise, the man began kissing the back of her hand, which was covered in thick demon skin.
The man’s eyes landed on the bloodsword, which dripped a single drop of the demon’s essence to the ground.
Lily followed his gaze and was surprised to see the weapon was formed once more of her blood and not the ice she had become accustomed to. It was a stark reminder that she no longer held the power from the Winter Crown.
It was funny how the very thing she had created from her own sheer will had somehow become more powerful than even her.
Then it hit her.
Samael was currently on Earth hunting deities to siphon the power brought by belief from their followers.
The soul, sensing something was amiss, slowly backed away from its savior, who was now lost in thought.
The followers of Faerie had fueled the crowns of Winter and Summer in precisely the same way as the humans had given power to their gods.
“Mistress?” Greg asked, breaking Lily from her trail of discovery and understanding.
Letting the sword flow back into her hand, Lily shook her head while quickly looking up and down the street.
“Right…we need to head toward the center to find Ulric.”
“I think we should probably hurry,” Greg suggested as he looked over at the growing group of demons that had stopped to witness the aftermath of the decapitation.
Neither could understand the hushed hellion speak they were using, but they could see the pointing fingers and scowling eyes that were fixed on Lily’s hand.
“I didn’t think to glamour your weapons and—”
“I know.”
“And I think they saw a demon use a vampire ability.”
“I know,” Lily reiterated in frustration.
An ocean of uncertainty churned in Lily’s mind as differing thoughts screamed to be heard over one another: fight…or flight…
“What do we do?” Greg urgently whispered, moving to stand just beside Lily and stare into her face.
Ocean waves crashed in opposite sides, like two different and powerful currents fighting for domination.
“What do we do?!” Greg repeated, grabbing her arm this time.
An idea surfaced in the churning waters like a persistent and determined fishing vessel caught out at sea.
Lily’s eyes flicked toward the center of town, imagining how far away Ulric was at that moment, before gliding back to the expanding pack of demons.
Then the ocean went still, smoothing over like a glass-top lake.
“We fight,” Lily growled as twin curved bloodswords formed in her fists, and she blurred toward the growing mass of demons.
15
MAGNI
Panicked eyes slammed open, expecting to witness a sea of writhing arms cloaked in a matte red glow, but there were none to be seen.
Magni’s own hands urgently patted up and down his body, searching for any signs of the countless arms that had pulled him under the wave.
When he understood there were no childlike fingers wrapped around him nor any faceless mannequins watching, Magni shifted his focus to his surroundings to attain situational awareness.
He was in the back seat of a car that he knew he recognized from somewhere.
“No,” he said in a voice that wasn’t his own as he recognized where he was, his words coming out way too high pitched.
Lifting a hand to his throat, something in it hit his neck, and he yanked his arm away to see what was in his grasp.
It was the action figure that he had seen a thousand times in his dreams. The superhero that had failed to save him from…
His mouth dropped open as his chin and the space between his eyebrows began to quiver in unison.
Tiny hands with delicate fingers covered his mouth in an attempt to stifle a building scream.
A feminine shriek snatched Magni’s attention like a hawk catching a hare in razor-sharp talons.
“Mom…” the child said.
Shooting his gaze outside, Magni saw it was just after dusk. He lifted himself to better see outside through the windows of the car, where white tombstones littered the area.
Then the scene that had polluted his thoughts and turned innocent dreams into toxic nightmares countless of times played out.
A wild monster leaped through the air, landing beside—and crashing into—the car with a deafening thud.
With a squeal of twisting metal, the passenger door was ripped off, and a hideous demon poked its head inside the cabin.
Red eyes grew rapidly in shallow sockets as sheets of gore sloshed off a burned, bearded face. A snarling mouth revealed crimson fangs that sought Magni’s blood. An arm grew from the end of a stub, hideous bone snaking with tendons, muscle, and veins, reaching…reaching…
Magni shrieked, holding the action figure out as if the superhero it depicted could somehow protect him.
Unable to reach his prey, the snarling vampire ripped the front passenger seat out to allow him direct access to Magni.
As the monster with red glowing eyes reached in, something clicked in the warrior Magni’s mind, and he let the action figure fall from his hands.
With an almost effortless focus of will, the toy burst to life, growing to the life size superhero in a millisecond and crashing into the nightmarish monster.
The top of the car was shredded like aluminum foil as the heavily muscled superhero somehow kicked the vampire to the ground while doing a cool flip in the air, landing on the car’s hood with a suspension-creaking thud.
In classic movie fashion, the superhero posed with his chest puffed out, fists planted on his hips, and chin tilted upward in victory.
The vampire stopped hissing and smoothly regained his feet. Intelligent eyes glided up the new hero who had burst from seemingly out of nowhere. Then his gaze flew to Magni, and an expressionless face tilted to the side.
“Magni!” a familiar and welcomed voice called out from somewhere to his left.
Shooting his gaze toward the voice, Magni plastered adult-sized hands against the glass and let out a half sob, half laugh.
Magni felt a glimmer of control forming in his mind as his normal hand grabbed and opened the car door.
There was a wet slosh, followed by a grunt of pain, and Magni dared a glance over his shoulder to see the hero falling to the ground, a giant hole in his chest where a heart would be.
Without having to look at the vampire, Magni began sprinting toward where he heard Ludvig’s voice calling him.
“Dad!” Magni shouted with a young man’s voice he had learned to recognize as his own since he had turned fourteen.
From behind, the horrific sound of crunching metal sent Magni’s thudding heart up into his throat as if it were attempting to cut off his airway with its bulk.
“Magni!” Ludvig cried out again, closer this time.
Tombstones and trees littered everywhere he could see, making Magni’s sanity creep closer to the edge with how unnatural everything was. There was something about being in an area or room that was almost normal but something was drastically off. The tombstones weren’t following any pattern that a real cemetery would follow. Neither were the growing trees which began to thicken in number as a dense, sticky fog rolled in.
“Mag…ni…” Ludvig’s voice came from much further away, as if he were standing on a pier shouting at a boat that was speeding out to sea.
“Dad!” Magni shrieked, tap-dancing toward his threshold of insanity.
Skidding to a halt, Magni shifted his gaze all around and moaned when he only saw an unnaturally thick forest surrounding him. The tombstones were nowhere to be seen now, but the fog was becoming suffocating.
In the distance, instead of the hopeful voice of his adopted father, Magni heard something that made him gasp in terror.
Distorted music where none of the instruments were even close to being in key filled the air with a tune that was instantly recognizable to all, even with the eerie, off-key notes.
Circus music.
From the fog stepped a horror movie caricature of what resembled a clown. The one-piece suit had probably once been white, but it now was the color of dirt coated in blood. Even the frills at the ankles, wrists, and neckline were a shiny crimson that appeared almost black in the dim light.
Eyes locked onto a familiar face caked in white makeup and a perpetual red smile. But something was off. At the edges of the paint were rusted staples that Magni realized were holding the mask in place.
A squeak escaped from his gaping mouth as Magni recognized who the painted face belonged to.
“Dad…” Magni whimpered. The nightmare clown tilted its head to the side.
Empty sockets stared from beneath Ludvig’s detached face, smile held in place by staples.
The clown did something Magni couldn’t have anticipated and asked a simple question with a giddy voice that didn’t match the horrific body it came from.
“Are you scared?!”
16
JOHN
From the hallway, Locke and I could still hear Hayley’s cries of loss. The sobs tore at my heart more efficiently than any blade, scarring it further to the point of being nothing more than a mass of hardened, calloused pain.
“Did you notice she was holding her belly?” Locke asked softly as his remaining eye stared at nothing on the opposite wall.
“She lost it,” Isaac said from our right.
Locke and I turned to see the nurse leaning with his back against the wall, arms crossed, and head hung low.
“Why didn’t she say anyth—” I started to ask while thumbing over my shoulder toward her room.
Looking at Isaac, I took note that his head seemed to do the impossible and hang even lower. A feeling of dread crept up from the recesses of my guts and wrapped black tendrils around my throat, choking the words from me.
“No…” I exhaled, feeling a surge of light-headedness explode in my skull like a flash-bang. I had to grab the wall with my entire forearm before my legs gave out, but I still dropped to one knee.
“You haven’t told her yet…” Locke asked in a statement.
Nurse Isaac turned his face away from us, and I could see the struggle within him.
“Please, God…no…” I mouthed, my forearm still on the wall as my free hand cupped my gaping mouth. Wide eyes danced back and forth as my brain desperately sought a solution that wasn’t there.
“I have to tell her,” I finally said, dropping my hand away from my mouth as I attempted to build my resolve and do what must be done, no matter how hard it was.
“No. It must be me.”
A hand rested on my shoulder, and I raised my heavy head to see Hecate standing over me with a somber expression.
Climbing to my feet, I stared at her, letting my gaze flick between her steady eyes as I searched for any signs of hope.
There was none to be found.
“What—” I began to ask with a dry throat. Swallowing in an attempt to hydrate my vocal cords, I asked again, “What happened?”
“We can discuss the matter later, John,” Hecate said, both gently and with a degree of finality. “Right now, the entire world is counting on you to save the boy.”
“Magni…” I exhaled, willing my mind to release its stranglehold on thoughts of Hayley and shift to the person whom I could actually save.
I took in a deep breath, lifted my chin, puffed out my chest slightly while rolling my shoulders, and nodded.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Locke mirroring my actions and preparing for the upcoming battle, though it was impossible to completely dispel it from our minds, like staring up at a solar eclipse and forever scarring your eyes. Regardless, we had to push our sympathies for Hayley aside, even though the action filled my heart with guilt.
“How do we fight the Ether?” Locke asked somberly, thankfully pulling me the rest of the way from the sorrow of knowing that Hayley had not only lost her husband but her unborn child as well.
The question fully grasped my attention, realizing how important it was to ask that of the knowledgeable Hecate. If it weren’t for Locke, I would have just gone in, guns blazing. Only the bullets would have been nonlethal because I didn’t want to kill Magni.
On that thought, my treacherous mind filled with the words from the prophetic books I had found in Hell.
I removed the breathing apparatus with the red goggles that had once belonged to his former master.
“I’m scared,” Magni whispered softly as he stared up at me with eyes that were slowly glazing over.
Those two words stole my breath and blurred my vision as they pierced my soul like the spear in Christ’s side. It wasn’t the first time I had borne witness to those closest to me as they uttered those very words with their dying breaths. More than once, I had felt the unimaginable horror of the unknown escape the mouths of those I cared for behind two…simple…words. I’m scared. First Dawson…then…
“I’m sorry. It has to be this way,” I said with a pained voice as Magni’s heart beat for the last time. Lachesis had been right. The boy was dead, and by my trembling hands.
No! I mentally screamed with eyes slammed shut and fists clenched by my side.
“John?” Locke asked, thankfully breaking me from my trance before I could tumble down the rabbit hole and into the pits of despair, not to be confused with the pits of sorrow.
“I’m good,” I said, clearing my throat and crossing my arms. “I’m good.”
“I hope so, dear boy, because you have quite the challenge ahead of you,” Hecate stated before taking a step closer to me, intentionally putting her within uncomfortable violation of my personal space. Knowing it was her, I decided to let it happen and stared into her eyes as she said, “You must use your head if you are to free Magni from the Ether.”
“I can see that,” Lily informed, lifting an index finger to the floating dark circles hovering in front of Greg’s eyes.
“Oh,” Greg responded as he concentrated on the lenses and waved a hand over his face. “Easy fix.”
The pair turned their attention to the bustling city of the damned, each experiencing their own personal new levels of anxiety.
Demons seemed to have the exclusive rights to the streets, while limitless souls meandered the crude sidewalks; all except for the poor humans who acted in place of horses, forever doomed to be nothing more than the flesh equivalent of an engine…if they were lucky.
“I need to start going to church,” Greg, the half-centaur shaman, half-human witch mused while awkwardly fumbling a vaguely cross-shaped motion over his chest.
“It doesn’t matter what religion you follow,” Lily corrected while staring at the damned souls of Tartarus. “How you behave in life is what determines your eternity.”
Still staring toward the never-ending city, Lily could see from the corner of her vision as Greg slightly shifted his gaze in her direction.
“That’s why I created my own eternity,” Lily answered his unspoken question. “I never really played well with others. Nor have I…” she tried to take in a breath, only to realize her chest had tightened like a vice over her lungs, “…aligned myself with righteous people.”
Greg thought for a moment, speeding through different things he could say to help reduce Lily’s evident regret and pain. Then it hit him.
“If it weren’t for your, um, connections…Faerie might be lost, and Midworld with it.”
Lily’s face warred with conflicting emotions. On one hand, her mouth curved into a smile, understanding what Greg was trying to do. On the other, her eyes drooped in what Greg could only surmise was exhaustion.
Lily had been trying to avoid her own mortality since the dawn of man, and now, she was risking everything—all the preparations she had made to avoid her eventual death—to save the world. If she were to be honest with herself, it felt good to do the right thing, even with the cost of failure hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles.
“I think we are here for a different reason,” Lily finally admitted to both Greg and herself.
Greg shifted his full attention to her as she continued to stare at the city.
“I couldn’t feel John before we went through the portal. I don’t think the priest could either, which is why he claimed Ulric is the only hope to save Faerie and Midworld.” Lily chewed on her next words for a moment before continuing.
“But I don’t think he believes John is gone. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent me into the lion’s den.”
Greg digested her words, but didn’t fully understand.
“I, ah, don’t get it.”
“When the last vampire walks the Earth, the gates of Hell will open…”
Playing back her words over and over in his mind, Greg eventually understood.
Turning his eyes to the city with a renewed sense of respect, he said, “If John is dead…then it’s just you and Ulric. Sata—I mean…he…could just kill one of you and open the gates.”
“The priest wouldn’t have sent me here if he thought John was dead. And I smelled the archangel on him, which is the only reason I agreed to such a foolish plan.”
“I see,” Greg mused, rubbing his glamoured chin. “They have ulterior motives for sending you to find Ulric.”
Lily nodded in agreement as a random soul was plucked from the sidewalk in front of them by a passing demon. No other soul did anything except give the demon a few feet of space as they continued their hunched travels.
The soul screamed as the demon began cutting into nonvital parts of its very corporeal body.
Fueling her sense of righteousness, Lily strode forward, a hand stretched behind her as she moved.
In the middle of a meal comprised of unimaginable suffering, the demon’s face went slack before its head began to slosh off its once connected neck.
In Lily’s hand was a curved, ancient Egyptian sword she manifested from her own blood.
As the demon toppled over, the soul slipped from its slacking grip. The average-looking man battled with confusion at the sudden freedom from a position it had probably been in tens of thousands of times before.
“Tha-tha-thank you!” the soul stammered in French, dropping to his knees and reaching for Lily’s glamoured fingers. To her surprise, the man began kissing the back of her hand, which was covered in thick demon skin.
The man’s eyes landed on the bloodsword, which dripped a single drop of the demon’s essence to the ground.
Lily followed his gaze and was surprised to see the weapon was formed once more of her blood and not the ice she had become accustomed to. It was a stark reminder that she no longer held the power from the Winter Crown.
It was funny how the very thing she had created from her own sheer will had somehow become more powerful than even her.
Then it hit her.
Samael was currently on Earth hunting deities to siphon the power brought by belief from their followers.
The soul, sensing something was amiss, slowly backed away from its savior, who was now lost in thought.
The followers of Faerie had fueled the crowns of Winter and Summer in precisely the same way as the humans had given power to their gods.
“Mistress?” Greg asked, breaking Lily from her trail of discovery and understanding.
Letting the sword flow back into her hand, Lily shook her head while quickly looking up and down the street.
“Right…we need to head toward the center to find Ulric.”
“I think we should probably hurry,” Greg suggested as he looked over at the growing group of demons that had stopped to witness the aftermath of the decapitation.
Neither could understand the hushed hellion speak they were using, but they could see the pointing fingers and scowling eyes that were fixed on Lily’s hand.
“I didn’t think to glamour your weapons and—”
“I know.”
“And I think they saw a demon use a vampire ability.”
“I know,” Lily reiterated in frustration.
An ocean of uncertainty churned in Lily’s mind as differing thoughts screamed to be heard over one another: fight…or flight…
“What do we do?” Greg urgently whispered, moving to stand just beside Lily and stare into her face.
Ocean waves crashed in opposite sides, like two different and powerful currents fighting for domination.
“What do we do?!” Greg repeated, grabbing her arm this time.
An idea surfaced in the churning waters like a persistent and determined fishing vessel caught out at sea.
Lily’s eyes flicked toward the center of town, imagining how far away Ulric was at that moment, before gliding back to the expanding pack of demons.
Then the ocean went still, smoothing over like a glass-top lake.
“We fight,” Lily growled as twin curved bloodswords formed in her fists, and she blurred toward the growing mass of demons.
15
MAGNI
Panicked eyes slammed open, expecting to witness a sea of writhing arms cloaked in a matte red glow, but there were none to be seen.
Magni’s own hands urgently patted up and down his body, searching for any signs of the countless arms that had pulled him under the wave.
When he understood there were no childlike fingers wrapped around him nor any faceless mannequins watching, Magni shifted his focus to his surroundings to attain situational awareness.
He was in the back seat of a car that he knew he recognized from somewhere.
“No,” he said in a voice that wasn’t his own as he recognized where he was, his words coming out way too high pitched.
Lifting a hand to his throat, something in it hit his neck, and he yanked his arm away to see what was in his grasp.
It was the action figure that he had seen a thousand times in his dreams. The superhero that had failed to save him from…
His mouth dropped open as his chin and the space between his eyebrows began to quiver in unison.
Tiny hands with delicate fingers covered his mouth in an attempt to stifle a building scream.
A feminine shriek snatched Magni’s attention like a hawk catching a hare in razor-sharp talons.
“Mom…” the child said.
Shooting his gaze outside, Magni saw it was just after dusk. He lifted himself to better see outside through the windows of the car, where white tombstones littered the area.
Then the scene that had polluted his thoughts and turned innocent dreams into toxic nightmares countless of times played out.
A wild monster leaped through the air, landing beside—and crashing into—the car with a deafening thud.
With a squeal of twisting metal, the passenger door was ripped off, and a hideous demon poked its head inside the cabin.
Red eyes grew rapidly in shallow sockets as sheets of gore sloshed off a burned, bearded face. A snarling mouth revealed crimson fangs that sought Magni’s blood. An arm grew from the end of a stub, hideous bone snaking with tendons, muscle, and veins, reaching…reaching…
Magni shrieked, holding the action figure out as if the superhero it depicted could somehow protect him.
Unable to reach his prey, the snarling vampire ripped the front passenger seat out to allow him direct access to Magni.
As the monster with red glowing eyes reached in, something clicked in the warrior Magni’s mind, and he let the action figure fall from his hands.
With an almost effortless focus of will, the toy burst to life, growing to the life size superhero in a millisecond and crashing into the nightmarish monster.
The top of the car was shredded like aluminum foil as the heavily muscled superhero somehow kicked the vampire to the ground while doing a cool flip in the air, landing on the car’s hood with a suspension-creaking thud.
In classic movie fashion, the superhero posed with his chest puffed out, fists planted on his hips, and chin tilted upward in victory.
The vampire stopped hissing and smoothly regained his feet. Intelligent eyes glided up the new hero who had burst from seemingly out of nowhere. Then his gaze flew to Magni, and an expressionless face tilted to the side.
“Magni!” a familiar and welcomed voice called out from somewhere to his left.
Shooting his gaze toward the voice, Magni plastered adult-sized hands against the glass and let out a half sob, half laugh.
Magni felt a glimmer of control forming in his mind as his normal hand grabbed and opened the car door.
There was a wet slosh, followed by a grunt of pain, and Magni dared a glance over his shoulder to see the hero falling to the ground, a giant hole in his chest where a heart would be.
Without having to look at the vampire, Magni began sprinting toward where he heard Ludvig’s voice calling him.
“Dad!” Magni shouted with a young man’s voice he had learned to recognize as his own since he had turned fourteen.
From behind, the horrific sound of crunching metal sent Magni’s thudding heart up into his throat as if it were attempting to cut off his airway with its bulk.
“Magni!” Ludvig cried out again, closer this time.
Tombstones and trees littered everywhere he could see, making Magni’s sanity creep closer to the edge with how unnatural everything was. There was something about being in an area or room that was almost normal but something was drastically off. The tombstones weren’t following any pattern that a real cemetery would follow. Neither were the growing trees which began to thicken in number as a dense, sticky fog rolled in.
“Mag…ni…” Ludvig’s voice came from much further away, as if he were standing on a pier shouting at a boat that was speeding out to sea.
“Dad!” Magni shrieked, tap-dancing toward his threshold of insanity.
Skidding to a halt, Magni shifted his gaze all around and moaned when he only saw an unnaturally thick forest surrounding him. The tombstones were nowhere to be seen now, but the fog was becoming suffocating.
In the distance, instead of the hopeful voice of his adopted father, Magni heard something that made him gasp in terror.
Distorted music where none of the instruments were even close to being in key filled the air with a tune that was instantly recognizable to all, even with the eerie, off-key notes.
Circus music.
From the fog stepped a horror movie caricature of what resembled a clown. The one-piece suit had probably once been white, but it now was the color of dirt coated in blood. Even the frills at the ankles, wrists, and neckline were a shiny crimson that appeared almost black in the dim light.
Eyes locked onto a familiar face caked in white makeup and a perpetual red smile. But something was off. At the edges of the paint were rusted staples that Magni realized were holding the mask in place.
A squeak escaped from his gaping mouth as Magni recognized who the painted face belonged to.
“Dad…” Magni whimpered. The nightmare clown tilted its head to the side.
Empty sockets stared from beneath Ludvig’s detached face, smile held in place by staples.
The clown did something Magni couldn’t have anticipated and asked a simple question with a giddy voice that didn’t match the horrific body it came from.
“Are you scared?!”
16
JOHN
From the hallway, Locke and I could still hear Hayley’s cries of loss. The sobs tore at my heart more efficiently than any blade, scarring it further to the point of being nothing more than a mass of hardened, calloused pain.
“Did you notice she was holding her belly?” Locke asked softly as his remaining eye stared at nothing on the opposite wall.
“She lost it,” Isaac said from our right.
Locke and I turned to see the nurse leaning with his back against the wall, arms crossed, and head hung low.
“Why didn’t she say anyth—” I started to ask while thumbing over my shoulder toward her room.
Looking at Isaac, I took note that his head seemed to do the impossible and hang even lower. A feeling of dread crept up from the recesses of my guts and wrapped black tendrils around my throat, choking the words from me.
“No…” I exhaled, feeling a surge of light-headedness explode in my skull like a flash-bang. I had to grab the wall with my entire forearm before my legs gave out, but I still dropped to one knee.
“You haven’t told her yet…” Locke asked in a statement.
Nurse Isaac turned his face away from us, and I could see the struggle within him.
“Please, God…no…” I mouthed, my forearm still on the wall as my free hand cupped my gaping mouth. Wide eyes danced back and forth as my brain desperately sought a solution that wasn’t there.
“I have to tell her,” I finally said, dropping my hand away from my mouth as I attempted to build my resolve and do what must be done, no matter how hard it was.
“No. It must be me.”
A hand rested on my shoulder, and I raised my heavy head to see Hecate standing over me with a somber expression.
Climbing to my feet, I stared at her, letting my gaze flick between her steady eyes as I searched for any signs of hope.
There was none to be found.
“What—” I began to ask with a dry throat. Swallowing in an attempt to hydrate my vocal cords, I asked again, “What happened?”
“We can discuss the matter later, John,” Hecate said, both gently and with a degree of finality. “Right now, the entire world is counting on you to save the boy.”
“Magni…” I exhaled, willing my mind to release its stranglehold on thoughts of Hayley and shift to the person whom I could actually save.
I took in a deep breath, lifted my chin, puffed out my chest slightly while rolling my shoulders, and nodded.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Locke mirroring my actions and preparing for the upcoming battle, though it was impossible to completely dispel it from our minds, like staring up at a solar eclipse and forever scarring your eyes. Regardless, we had to push our sympathies for Hayley aside, even though the action filled my heart with guilt.
“How do we fight the Ether?” Locke asked somberly, thankfully pulling me the rest of the way from the sorrow of knowing that Hayley had not only lost her husband but her unborn child as well.
The question fully grasped my attention, realizing how important it was to ask that of the knowledgeable Hecate. If it weren’t for Locke, I would have just gone in, guns blazing. Only the bullets would have been nonlethal because I didn’t want to kill Magni.
On that thought, my treacherous mind filled with the words from the prophetic books I had found in Hell.
I removed the breathing apparatus with the red goggles that had once belonged to his former master.
“I’m scared,” Magni whispered softly as he stared up at me with eyes that were slowly glazing over.
Those two words stole my breath and blurred my vision as they pierced my soul like the spear in Christ’s side. It wasn’t the first time I had borne witness to those closest to me as they uttered those very words with their dying breaths. More than once, I had felt the unimaginable horror of the unknown escape the mouths of those I cared for behind two…simple…words. I’m scared. First Dawson…then…
“I’m sorry. It has to be this way,” I said with a pained voice as Magni’s heart beat for the last time. Lachesis had been right. The boy was dead, and by my trembling hands.
No! I mentally screamed with eyes slammed shut and fists clenched by my side.
“John?” Locke asked, thankfully breaking me from my trance before I could tumble down the rabbit hole and into the pits of despair, not to be confused with the pits of sorrow.
“I’m good,” I said, clearing my throat and crossing my arms. “I’m good.”
“I hope so, dear boy, because you have quite the challenge ahead of you,” Hecate stated before taking a step closer to me, intentionally putting her within uncomfortable violation of my personal space. Knowing it was her, I decided to let it happen and stared into her eyes as she said, “You must use your head if you are to free Magni from the Ether.”
