Hail Mary Pass
Brethren of Angels. This was much worse than even I had been anticipating.
Melinoë stared in open horror—apparently all this hunting she’d done with Dev, she hadn’t gotten this close to one of them. I had been, but that didn’t shake the disturbingness of the creature’s presence.
The demons in our world were, for the most part, fairly acclimated. Or, rather, the earth had been acclimated to them over tens of thousands of years in preparation for an apocalypse that didn’t fully happen.
The Aanzhenii, though, did not come from those realms. They were entirely alien. The earth did not like their presence, like something existing here that should not. I wasn’t sure if they had the same reaction to being here as we did to them—if they did, they never showed it.
The spelling of this building to prevent magic did not apply to them because their power was so far the opposite of mine.
I said nothing, chewing on the inside of my mouth.
He watched us for seemingly endless moments, and then at last turned to his congregation. “And what have you brought me today?”
His voice rent the air and I winced, a pain starting behind my eyes as the atmosphere quivered.
Automatically one of the people rose, one from the nearest bench at the very end—a woman next to the man we’d toyed with at the motel, presumably his wife. “Witches, my lord.”
I knew they were worshipping him but “my lord” almost had my eyes rolling out of my head.
“I see. And thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?” He glanced at me, a smirk of all things passing his mouth. “Their words, not mine, little witch.”
I’d read about this, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner, but I’d never heard of a case in Canada. It was more of a south of the border kind of thing, but there was a whole contingent of humans who believed the Aanzhenii were “angels”. Like actual biblical ones.
Not surprising considering that’s where the name we called them came from—the Ojibwe-language word, from what I could recall, and whoever heard of these creatures gave them that label at some point in history. What they self-identified as, I couldn’t say. But great winged beings that tore their way from the sky, vaguely humanoid and capable of a whole host of “miraculous” powers—that read as angel to a lot of gullible people.
Never mind that they were alien monsters, although, having read the bible, I could concede that yes, that would match up with the traditional description even if people didn’t want to admit it.
Generally the Aanzhenii wanted nothing to do with humans. But this one seemed settled here, being worshipped. He—and I was assuming here, I wasn’t sure how gender worked and hadn’t asked in detail, but I would go with whatever I was directed to should we enter a conversation about pronouns—regarded his people.
Some of them were dead, I believed. No fresh flowers in the cemetery, no recent graves. Jim was alive after I’d killed him. This creature raised the dead, or at least animated them. No one had really studied their powers and there was no telling what actually inhabited the bodies before us, but it was enough of a trick to make these people his followers.
Creepy fucking town. Where the hell was Dev?
“I’ll speak to the witches,” he said and gave a dismissive wave. “Await me outside.”
They all stood silently but, before going, dropped to a bow. This amused the creature, if the flick of his thin lips was any indication, though I supposed it might’ve also been contempt. Then the humans filed out again just as they had entered, in an organized, rehearsed fashion. Back out the doors, which closed after the last person.
Leaving me and Melinoë alone with the creature.
He glanced at us and then gave a flick of his finger.
Energy seized us, like icy fingers wrapping around my hips, a coldness that seeped through my clothes and skin straight to my bones. The force jerked us up from the pit and five feet ahead to be before him, both of us suspended a foot off the ground. My heart hammered violently, and I could not think of a single way out of this—other than to maybe run my mouth off. I tried to angle my leg so he wouldn’t see the tattoo and made a show of looking at the floor—in my peripheral vision, it seemed the tear in my jeans still obstructed a view of what lay beyond it.
“You’ve got them worshipping you?” I said at last.
His white eyes narrowed. “They’re easily led.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“Whatever I desire.”
He could already take whatever he wanted, but I didn’t press. “They kill witches?”
A loose, easy shrug. “Humans. They have their rituals.”
So did they kill my brother? “Did they kill another witch the past week? More specifically a male one?”
That drew his curiosity, his head tilting to the side. “Is that what brings you to my little place?”
“Yes.”
His tongue darted out like a thin white worm and wet his lips. No one knew what they ate or drank, if they needed oxygen, whether they were carbon-based or anything even close to that, but I knew his teeth were sharp like a predator’s and I tried to focus on the rest of his face rather than that little fact. “No. They bring them to see me first. No other recent witch. Will you die easier knowing that?”
“I don’t intend to die.”
His smile was eerie, full of sharp teeth and purely predatory. Mine probably looked the same when I was about to kill someone. “They never do.”
Melinoë said nothing, glaring daggers that might’ve set him on fire had that power been in her arsenal—and if we weren’t both blocked.
“Why are you fucking with humans?” I asked. “What is the point of this?”
“You’ve never been worshipped, child. There’s nothing like it.”
Motherfucking right-wing fundamentalist cults worshiping actual monsters who would as soon blow their heads off. A few years ago there was a rumour of a Brethren cult trying to form out west but it never got off the ground, and there’d never been one here. This had to be an American influence. Huge swathes of the US were walled off now, the almost-apocalypse not going over well down there. No one I knew ever stepped foot in the country even with good reason.
I supposed that was something sort of human about the Aanzhenii—they were seduced the same way people were by perceived power.
“You die at dawn,” he said plainly. “The humans have their rituals, as I said—they will bring you clothes, cleanse you, offer to save your soul if you confess. You can swear allegiance to me—many have tried—but you will never be without your powers and cannot repent enough. They will hang you both. There will be a fire. That will be quick, but your torture will not.”
With a flick of his hand, we were thrust back to the pit. The floor beneath it gave way and dumped us into the darkness below.
*
Ten feet, that was all we fell, but without warning we landed in a muddy heap in the blackness.
The air stank, a deep dankness of old shit and piss and blood. Probably a torture chamber.
We were also in total blackness, which meant I couldn’t see my tattoo.
“Okay what the fuck,” Melinoë hissed.
“You haven’t seen these cults before?”
“Not up close and personal.” She shuffled beside me.
“Hold still, I need you to get my phone from my back pocket.”
Awkwardly we shifted around until my back was to her front. I bit back a joke about her getting fresh with me as she felt around for the phone stuck next to my ass, but at last she got it. Passed it to me, and I thumbed it on by memory, switching to flashlight mode.
Now this was a proper pit. Or dungeon, take your pick.
It was round, the walls weathered stone. About sixteen feet diameter. There were chains, both hanging from the ceiling and the walls, and a bloody wooden chair in the middle.
The floor was thick with god knows what—excrement and old blood was still my guess, caked on deep and dark that stained my and Melinoë’s jeans. There was a single arched door of thick wood panels and we both rushed for it guided by the light of my phone.
No handle. No hinges. Melinoë gave it a kick with the flat of her foot and but it didn’t budge.
She paced, boots clomping on the ground. “Are we at the Hail Mary pass yet?”
I thought we might very well be but didn’t reply. I set my phone down carefully, balanced on my boot rather than that filthy ground, and gestured her over. We worked to get the rope off our wrists, the light shining from below making the process that much more arduous.
At least the ropes weren’t tied too tightly and within a few moments we were free.
“They’re going to torture us,” she said.
“Looks like,” I said as I lifted my phone again.
“No magic still?”
“None. This must be an Aanzhenii thing, to saturate the whole building and even the ground in something that’ll damper like this.” I lifted my hand and worked the nail out of my sleeve, then stared down at the tip.
There was no taking this back if I did it. He might not even help. He might extract favours I did not want to give if he did decide to assist us. But we didn’t have any other choice.
“Maybe Dev figured out what they were doing and that’s why he took off,” Melinoë said as she paced. “So he’s out there. Maybe he’ll...I don’t know, find us.”
My brother, I suspected, was long gone. “I’m going to do something, and I need you to stay near me. And please don’t say anything.”
“Is this magic?”
I sat in the chair and peeled back the ripped flap on my jeans, passing her the phone to hold over my leg. “Sort of. But if the Aanzhenii is free to use his power, this should work.”
“Should?”
“Good time to pray.”
“I’m an atheist.”
I snorted. “Probably just as effective. Here we go.” I pressed the edge of the nail to the flesh of my thigh and took a deep breath, gaze tracing the lines of the Enochian tattoo. I didn’t want to, I wanted to do anything but.
I let out a shuddering breath and took the plunge, digging in with the nail and drawing two lines on my skin to connect the tattoo.
The blood welled, rolled, and started to whirl in circles, winding out to follow the lines of the branding.
Pain pulsed in my leg, a deep agony that ripped a scream from my throat. Melinoë crouched at my side, reaching for the wound, but I batted her hand back. Noise filled my ears, that and the pain making it impossible to even form thoughts.
Then the air before us rent in half, reality screeching. Melinoë locked onto my arm with a death grip as light played across our faces. A figure stepped through, his wings folded against his back. He looked similar to the one above, though dressed in black leather, his thin fine hair pulled back in a tail at the nape of his neck. His irises were pale gray, almost no distinguishing between them and the whites of his eyes as he peered down at me.
A slow, wicked smile played across his lips.
No turning back now.