Fall From Grace, page 4
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
“How long have you been here?”
“I…” the woman began, reptilian eyes blinking rapidly in consternation as an internal struggle manifested in jerky tics.
“No!” the woman cried out, yanking her hand away from Lily’s and suddenly reaching for an old, beige desk phone.
Lily’s hand lifted to hover right in front of her surprised face. With a practiced precision perfected over a plethora of procedures, Lily dove into the woman’s mind.
Two things surprised her.
The demon was, or had been, human. A normal, even average-looking woman was strapped to a decrepit chair that could have belonged to a horror movie villain masquerading as a dentist. Her eyelids were permanently pried open as she faced the windows of her eyes, forced to watch an eternity of administrative work with no apparent breaks.
The other thing that Lily was not expecting was the fact the brain was fully formed and not just an incorporeal soul.
“Lilith…” a grotesque male voice hissed from the darkness of the woman’s mind where twin glowing orbs of crimson locked onto her.
“You know me?” Lily demanded, tilting her chin up in a sign of authority.
“I do,” the demon growled as it stepped forward into the light.
Where the physical body had been a mere suggestion of a reptile, this demon was an exaggeration.
Black, vertical slits bisected red orbs as a forked tongue flicked out from between scaled lips the color of mold. A snout extended like an artist’s best guess at a cross between a crocodile and a duck. Spindly arms seemed to shake like the tail of a rattlesnake while the torso twisted and bent like a slithering serpent.
“What have you done to her?” Lily demanded, gesturing with a quick jerk of her chin toward the restrained soul.
“Gave her a choice-sssss,” the demon hissed, glancing at the woman with an unreadable expression on its reptilian face.
“And what choice is that?” Lily harshly inquired, narrowing her eyes at the demon.
“Become the hunter…or remain the hunted…”
Lily placed a hand on her hip and rolled her eyes at the absurdity of the cliché.
“Really?”
For a reason she couldn’t put a finger on, Lily thought of John and how he would probably equate the situation to lazy, straight-to-VHS writing for a low budget horror movie.
“Why are you really doing this?” Lily asked as she began taking long, confident steps toward the restrained woman. “It must be extraordinarily boring for you, so it must be important.”
With a lift of his scaled hand tipped in dense claws, the demon shifted the inside of the woman’s mind. It was like a skilled tattoo artist covering up an old mistake with a new piece of art.
The space between Lily and the woman in the rusted chair began to stretch as the room inside the soul’s mind darkened.
Turning to the demon, Lily froze in place as an open field of countless, tightly packed rows of brown cornstalks sprang from the ground with a rumble that rattled her teeth.
“We were told you were off limitsssss. But you’re in my world now.”
There was rustling from several yards away as something smoothly approached Lily.
Peering through the thick cornstalks, Lily could make out an enormous thing curling up as if in preparation for a strike.
She sucked in a breath as both hands went up to her mouth at the sight of the giant snake.
The monster exploded forward, fangs flashing through the air as several rows of dead and dying corn were obliterated in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, Lily disappeared into the stretched gaping maw of the giant snake.
6
MAGNI
In the distance, Magni and Ludvig witnessed a rippling wave moving toward them with alarming speed. It was like standing on a beach and watching as a truly monstrous leviathan rushed toward the shore, displacing impossible amounts of water that swelled into city-destroying waves. Something terrifying was coming for the father and son.
Whirling to face Magni, Ludvig grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing the young man’s gaze from the approaching doom.
“I need you to trust me,” Ludvig instructed, urgency giving a sharp harshness to his words. “You can control de Effer, just as you made me. Do you understand?!”
A bestial rumble that reverberated in Magni’s chest, bones, and teeth stole his concentration, and widening eyes looked past Ludvig to the building wave of destruction. What was worse was that Magni knew there was something hidden in the blackness of the rushing tsunami…something made of nightmares.
A large hand slapped Magni’s cheek, and he yelped as his own hand went up to rest on skin that now felt hot.
Panicked eyes morphed into childlike pain as Magni’s gaze returned to Ludvig’s.
“Focus! Remember your training!”
At those words, something clicked inside Magni, and over a decade’s worth of consistent combat drills solidified into place, like a Spartan’s shield wall coming up on command. The fear inside the young man was swallowed by practiced determination.
Noticing this, Ludvig urgently pressed on.
“You made me from de Effer. You can control it!” Ludvig repeated, willing his words to permeate Magni’s mind. “Remember where we first met! Picture it in your head!”
Magni’s memories flooded with the mixed emotions of emptiness and joy at remembering the orphanage that Ludvig had adopted him from.
Behind him, Magni could hear the rustling of what sounded like viscous liquid sliding over itself.
Ludvig looked up with a stern look and nodded once before returning his eyes to Magni.
“Now hide!” he barked while giving the young man a push, almost knocking Magni over. All of a sudden, Ludvig was clad in his hunting gear, complete with trench coat, wide-brimmed hat, and breathing apparatus. “I’ll hold dem off.” His voice came through with a mechanical undertone, as if speaking through a walkie-talkie.
“No!” Magni cried out, taking a step forward with a hand outstretched as if to snatch his father away from certain death.
There was an explosion from a few hundred yards away as the beast burst from the Ether with a roar that made the very air rattle.
Ludvig clenched his fists as he squared off with a ship-devouring kraken the color of midnight. Tentacles flailed as a beak clacked the air, ready to crunch on the tasty morsels that were almost within reach. A single eye the size of a wrecking ball used to demolish buildings stared with alarming intelligence, flicking between the two men.
“Hide!” Ludvig called over his shoulder just as he rushed toward the monster, unarmed.
Magni turned and faced the exact replica of the orphanage where Ludvig had found him, but unlike the monster, it was fully colored, just like Ludvig.
“Dad…” Magni said just under his breath as he closed his eyes and, without having to think about it, imagined Ludvig holding Mjolnir as he approached the kraken.
“Ha-HAAAAA!” Ludvig cried out victoriously. “Have at thee, draugr!”
Reaching the door to the orphanage, Magni yanked it open. As he was about to disappear inside, he dared a look behind him.
Thor was soaring upward by his magical hammer, which crackled with electricity. The tail of his trench flapped like a superhero’s cape, filling Magni’s heart with pride at the unconscious comparison.
The obsidian kraken reached up with powerful tentacles, appearing to Magni like a shadow or undead mimic of the mythical beast.
Hope bloomed in Magni’s chest, and while still positioned inside the open doorway, turned his body to watch his dad kick some Ether ass.
Without meaning to, Magni felt something in his hand, and he looked down to see a wand had appeared in response to his growing urge to fight alongside Thor.
Lightning cracked as a smaller tentacle was severed from the beast, falling to the ground with a wet thwack.
“Yeah!” Magni yelled as he took a step off the landing of the orphanage.
More lightning flashed, and the beast roared in rage as more limbs fell away.
“Look out!” Magni screamed as a huge arm swiped at where Ludvig was hovering.
Seeing the attack, the powerful god sliced the air in an upward arc, sending a huge boomerang of ice toward the tentacle at a blur. With a wet shlit, the arm fell away, but the beast didn’t roar this time, making a pit of unease form in Magni’s stomach like a tennis ball made of ice-cold lead.
Magni’s wand began to glow in preparation for battle as the kraken regarded Thor with its intelligent eye and then did something that would give Magni nightmares for however long the rest of his life was.
The kraken’s tentacles retracted into its oblong head as its single eye blinked once. When the lid opened again, two eyes regarded the floating God of Thunder. A nose separated the sockets as the beak shrunk and stretched into lips.
Magni could almost hear his dad gasp as he floated backward a few feet.
The ball of lead in Magni’s stomach sprouted spikes of anxiety that filled his entire torso, making it difficult to breathe.
An arm exploded from the Ether, which simultaneously acted like a liquid and a solid.
As a hand the size of a small mountain slammed into the ground, the head of the giant started to grow. Ripples danced across its face as more of the Ether poured into the impossibly large man that was pulling himself through the surface.
Turning to Magni, Ludvig screamed, “Hide!” right as Ymir swiped his other hand through the air, smashing into Thor as if he were nothing more than a pesky fruit fly.
Horror gripped Magni’s heart as the giant held a fist in front of him while pulling the rest of his body from the Ether.
He stood countless miles high, causing a wordless whimper to escape Magni’s suddenly dry throat.
“Magni,” Ymir rumbled with a voice that sounded like tectonic plates grinding against one another.
Having seen enough, the reptilian part of Magni’s brain took over and sent erratic signals to his feet to turn and run for his life.
The sound of displaced air made Magni think that a group of tornados was barreling toward him as he scrambled on slipping feet toward the open door of the orphanage.
He tripped, not daring to turn around as the deafening roar of wind drew closer and closer. The wand he held fell and rolled away as his open palms caught his fall.
Scrambling on hands and feet, Magni made it through the door, shot to his knees while turning, and gripped the door handle hard enough to make his tendons creak.
Wide eyes that seemed larger than their sockets snapped to the world outside.
A hand—which was more than big enough to crush the entire building—filled everything Magni could see, right as he slammed the door shut with a shriek of panic.
7
JOHN
Glancing down at my wrist, I saw my watch was charged. Selecting the landing pad we had designated, I pressed the teleport button and instantly arrived at the church of Father Thomes Philseep.
A strong wind tugged at my coat flaps and the loose black hair that spilled from my gray beanie.
Walking around the side of the church and toward the front entrance, I casually looked up, ready to flip off the stone guardians, when I paused.
Both of them had their gazes affixed to the sky, ignoring me completely.
This worried me, as those two had always kept their focus on me whenever I was within church grounds.
A clicking sound caught my attention, and I looked toward the front landing to see an old friend leaving the church, a look of concern etched into his face.
“Hey!” I called out, waving my hands excitedly. “Doc Jim!”
Doctor Jim Hunt jerked his head as if in surprise before bespectacled eyes registered who was walking up to him.
“Oh,” he let out, relieved, pressing a hand into his chest. “John. It’s…it’s good to see you.”
“Yeah, man. How long has it been this time?” I asked, looking him up and down. “You haven’t aged a day!”
“Yeah…” he answered, glancing over his shoulder at the building behind before returning his attention to me.
My eyebrows lifted in a wordless question at seeing my supe-doc friend worriedly eyeballing the church of Father Thomes.
It took Doc Jim a second to understand what I was asking, and quickly said, “Oh, he…he’s fine.”
“Then what’s with the looks?” I gestured with my chin at the church’s front door.
“Well…uh…you, ah, know how you said I haven’t aged a day?”
I nodded.
“It’s my serum keeping my chromosomes from being shortened as the cells replicate.”
“O…kay?”
Doc Jim took a quick frustrated breath, as if he were trying to explain theoretical physics to a toddler.
“It’s preventing the telomeres positioned at the end of the chromosomes to decay, which otherwise would enable eventual—and inevitable—cell death.”
Doing a quick dive into my memory, I recalled our first conversation in relation to the serum.
“Hey, wait a sec. I thought you said the, um, Telemundo’s attack the Chromecasts.”
Doc Jim just stared at me with an open mouth before regaining his composure and saying, “I honestly can’t tell if you jumbled up the words on purpose. Surely you did, if you have an eidetic memory as you have mentioned.”
“I mean, I am funnier than that bone in your elbow.”
“That was an appropriate comparison, considering no one actually laughs when they hit their so-called funny bone.”
“Ouch! My pride!” I pretended to wince as I covered an invisible wound over my heart with both hands. “But seriously, I usually have to dive into my information city to have an actual eidetic memory. Most of the time, I just don’t wanna.”
“To answer your question, the example I had given before was adequate enough for you to have a basic understanding of the functions of the serum without having to dive into the details that only someone who reads scientific papers for fun would understand.”
A random scene manifested in my mind, and I barked out a quick laugh before moving my hands from my chest to cover my mouth.
Now it was Doc Jim’s turn to ask a question using only his eyebrows.
“Sorry, um…” I tried to determine if it was a good idea to be honest about what had popped into my head. Eh, screw it. “I just imagined you at home on the weekend, wearing a silk robe and lighting candles while sauntering to your antique record player and putting on that one George Michael song with the sexy saxophone. Heh, then…then you, like, make sure all the blinds are closed before settling into a bed covered in rose petals while going ‘oh yeah’ in a sensual voice and—” I almost lost control with building laughter, “and freaking pulling up that month’s copy of Scientific Journal or whatever the name is.”
I had to wipe a tear from my eye as I verbally explained the—to me—hilarious scene that had popped into my head when he’d mentioned people who read science papers for fun.
Unamused, Doc Jim half glared at me and said, “That’s preposterous.” His mouth betrayed the obvious directions from his brain to not smile, and added with perfect comedic timing, “They don’t make magazines anymore. Everything’s online.”
I. Lost. My. Shit.
Falling to the ground in a howling fit of laughter, I held my stomach with one hand while the other attempted to stifle the uncontrollable barks of mirth.
“That’s—” I tried to say between heaves of laughter, “That’s even better!”
“At least you don’t have to worry about sticky pages.”
“CHEESE AND RICE, BATMAN!” I howled while holding up one hand in a gesture that called for the torture to end. “Stop! I can’t take anymore!”
Even though it wasn’t even remotely the funniest thing I had ever heard, for some reason, coming from Doc Jim, it became an uproarious bit that demanded I laugh until I cry.
My abs hurt from the mirth, and it all of a sudden occurred to me that it was because I hadn’t laughed this hard in a long, long time.
Just as quickly as it had come, my hurricane of humor vanished, leaving me sitting on the ground. Tears of laughter were steadily cooling on my cheeks, and I quickly wiped them away, content to remember the brief warmth they had brought.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed myself to tears, and that sucked to think about.
My train of thought picked up speed as it headed toward the cliché bridge that was, for some reason, out of service, even though it was the only bridge available.
Sensing the impending plunge into the now all too familiar depression, I shook my head hard enough to the right that I think my beanie didn’t even move, much like a magician pulling the tablecloth and leaving all the crystal still standing.
Clearing my head of the thoughts that dared bring me below the surface of joy, I stood up and looked at my friend who had brought me a brief few moments of happiness.
My vision was filled with strands of black hair, and I comprehended that I had, in fact, moved my head fast enough that the beanie didn’t have time to catch up. In so doing, my hair had been twisted under the gray cloth.
Taking off the beanie my mother had made for me in Heaven, I glided the stray strands of black hair away from my face and put the gray memento back on to once again act as Hair Warden.
“Thanks, Doc. I…I needed that.”
“Me too.”
We looked at one another, trying to identify the wariness that pushed down on each other’s smiles, and became closer than ever at that moment. Funny how shared pain could do that.
Clearing my throat and shifting on my feet, I got the subject back on track and asked, “You were saying about the telomeres?”
“Ah, yes,” Doc Jim replied as he grabbed both hips and let his gaze rise to the darkened sky. After he remembered the conversational path, he lowered his eyes to me and continued. “My cells aren’t aging. Because of the serum, the telomeres do not shorten with replication. Thusly, they are, for all intents and purposes, immortal.”
