Exhausted from their trip and still bewildered by the happenings of the past few days, Phoebe and Demetrius bid farewell to Ella and returned home, assuring her that they would return tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Ella had pondered all she had heard, and by the time her friends were ready to go home, she had processed her thoughts and was highly excitable, firing a thousand questions at Phoebe and Demetrius which they had done their best to answer.
“I’m beat guys, it’s been a busy day,” Phoebe announced to no-one in particular as she sat in the living room with her parents and Demetrius. “Time to turn in I reckon. Goodnight everyone.”
“Me too. Goodnight folks.” Demetrius yawned as he arose and joined Phoebe as they ascended the stairs to their rooms. “Let’s see what tomorrow brings,” he said, before giving Phoebe a quick hug and disappearing into his bedroom.
Phoebe gazed absent mindedly at her own reflection as she brushed her teeth before bed. She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, then leaned it on the side of the sink and shook her head. ‘Why me?’ she wondered, then immediately, ‘Why not?’ Phoebe climbed gratefully into her cosy bed, and within a few seconds she was in a sound sleep, dreaming of angels with kind eyes and unrelenting swords.
Phoebe, Demetrius and Ella passed a relatively uneventful few days together, unpacking and putting away Phoebe and Demetrius’s belongings and helping Jack and Eva to get their home into some sort of order. Phoebe and Demetrius’s first week in Ireland had passed quickly, and since Uncle John and Aunty Kate had come over with the kids most days, the week was busy enough and breezed by fairly quickly. Today, the Wrens needed to arrange for the bulk of their goods to come out of storage, and had several meetings to attend. Neither Jack nor Eva had offered any further information as to what these meetings entailed, and in her own busyness Phoebe had not thought to ask. Eva had asked Phoebe if she and Demetrius would be happy enough to do their own thing while she and Jack saw to what needed to be done, and Phoebe had been glad to be afforded the opportunity to spend the day alone with her friends. As soon as Jack and Eva left the house, she and Demetrius called Ella, who came round straight away.
“Guys, I’ve been thinking – a lot – about everything you’ve told me the last few days, and I think we ought to pay a visit to Darken Abbey on Quagmire Hill. I mean, surely that’s the most obvious place for us to start? Shouldn’t we investigate a bit and see what it is that Cosain and the others have in store for us? What do you reckon? Are you up for it?”
Phoebe had been leafing through a magazine which was three weeks past its print date, and now she paused mid-leaf and frowned at Ella and Demetrius. She was hesitant, reluctant even, and something instinctively told her that they should wait for further and more precise instructions. “I don’t know, El,” she said slowly. “Don’t you think we need to wait until we hear from Cosain?”
Cosain… hmmm. It struck Phoebe as odd that a week had passed without any word from the Heavenly Host, but as Demetrius kept reminding her, they just had to trust that Cosain and the other angels knew what they were doing.
“No, it’ll be okay Phoebe. We’re not going to do anything, just have a look around. Oh come on Bird, I’m dying to see the place, a quick visit can’t hurt?” Demetrius was eager to get going, and his willingness to have a snoop around only served to make Ella all the more eager. Despite her gut instinct, Phoebe just couldn’t say no.
“Oh okay then,” Phoebe concurred reluctantly. “But we’re just gonna swing by, see it, and get straight back – agreed?”
Demetrius and Ella grinned excitedly at each other. “Agreed!” they said in unison, and the three friends pulled on their jackets as they set off in the direction of the old abandoned stone Abbey that stood still on the top of Quagmire Hill. It was a good twenty minute walk and despite the bright July day, there was a nip in the air and the teenagers were glad of the extra layer of clothing. Phoebe was certain that the temperature dropped as she and her friends approached the old wrought iron gates that guarded the walkway up to the Abbey, but Ella and Demetrius had laughed and told her that she was being entirely paranoid. The teenagers stopped outside the decrepit rusty gates, and Demetrius pulled at the heavy duty metal chain which had been wrapped several times around the closed edges of the two heavy gates and fastened with a very old fashioned rusty padlock.
“That’s not gonna budge,” he observed, although he grabbed the chain and tugged on it again as if to prove the point to himself.
“Well, we’ve been, we’ve seen it, we can’t get in,” remarked Phoebe with a not inaudible sigh of relief. “Let’s just get back home, my folks might be wondering where we are.”
“Your folks aren’t gonna be back for ages, Bird,” said Demetrius without looking in Phoebe’s direction as he was scanning the perimeter fence, obviously hoping for a way in.
“Dem, you promised. You said we’d only look…” Phoebe was getting nervous now; there was something about the blackness and the chill of the dilapidated old abbey that made her very uneasy. She was convinced now that the nip in the air was not just in her imagination, and was wary of the way in which the bright July sky seemed to darken and cloud over above the abbey’s arches and spires.
“We are only looking, Phoebs, no need to panic,” soothed Ella. “Although maybe we could look just a little closer. Like from inside this fence?”
“Dem, Ella. Please, no, let’s just go now.” Phoebe already knew that her pleas had fallen on deaf ears, and the sense of foreboding in her belly crescendoed until her she felt shaky and a bit nauseous. “Guys…” she tried once more to make Demetrius and Ella see sense, but her pleas were lost on her less cautious friends, who had both started off along the perimeter of the abbey in search of a broken post they could squeeze through or a suitable point to climb over.
“Come on Bird, just a quick look,” coaxed Demetrius, who had found a space in the fence was already squeezing through it sideways like an overgrown crab. Ella followed Demetrius through the gap, and the two stood grinning out at Phoebe, who furrowed her forehead and tutted her disapproval before she too shook her head and slipped through the space in the fence, joining her friends inside the grounds of the abbey.
“See?” Demetrius grinned his ‘I told you so’ at Phoebe. “We’re through, and we’re okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”
Phoebe could not bring herself to agree with her friend’s assessment of the situation as she reluctantly followed him and Ella along the overgrown path, which lead to the imposing front doors of Darken Abbey. The abbey had not been used since the early 1900s, and Phoebe had heard it said that its sudden closure was cloaked in scandal and mystery. If local people knew exactly what had happened back in 1909 when law enforcement had raided the building, no-one seemed to want to talk about it. ‘Must have been something dark going on up here,’ Phoebe mused. The thought flittered only briefly through Phoebe’s head, but it was enough to make her shudder and renew her appeal to Demetrius and Ella to make a U turn and head for home. There appeared to be no reasoning with them now however, so Phoebe pulled her jacket tightly around herself as if its flimsy fabric could somehow protect her from whatever lay ahead, then put an inch to her step to keep up with her adventuring friends.
From one of the broken windows of the abbey, two sets of orange eyes peered out and focused on the three friends as they made their excitable but cautious approach.
“Our waiting has paid off, brother,” hissed Graygor. “They are here. The idiotic mortals have walked right into our hands!”
“We must alert Schnither,” retorted Braygor, who was more intent on impressing his Dark Master than enjoying the moment. “He will be very happy to see these unfortunate humans.”
The wretched little demons’ faces wrinkled into laughter and they unfurled black leathery wings as they shot into the heart of the dank abbey where they would deliver the news that their heinous Captain had been awaiting.