Athena-

It took hours of investigating the crime scene and the “Cult” site. The guys aren’t too bad but the local cops are more blasé about the whole thing. Miami…One of the worst cities for murder than any other in the United States.

I go through the motions as I seem to be stringing together mumbo-jumbo from a lot of occult sources. Most humans won’t know the difference in what I’m talking about. The one’s that do. Are players either on one side or the other.

Rapture’s walking the earth again. He’s a nightmare, a true demon and he’s violent, psychotic and very, very old. He was killing those of us from the light since well before the one god religions were about.

Once every one has left I’m sitting in my truck thinking.

The guys come over as they’re leaving. “Andrea get outta here this shit will drive you crazy.” “Yeah, Andi, get some sleep.”

I nod and smile a little at the two of them. “Thanks for worrying guys but I’m a big girl I can take care of myself.”

They leave and I wait until I’m alone. I take the cremation urn from my glove box. “C’mon Father Patrick, let’s go to work.” I get out of the truck and walk to the bar then shake the former roman catholic priests ashes out over the ground. As the fall they only fall on Rapture’s footprints. It’s one of the things that the ashes of a holy man can do, reveal the tracks of any foul supernatural being. Pat’s a good Irishman, he’s helped me find a few nasty things in my time. Still doing his job long after death.

The tracks lead to where a car would’ve been parked. Dammit he’s in synch with his host. I can only track him like this if his feet are on the ground. He’s got a vehicle and he’ll get out of here. He knows a hunter will come for him.

I drive around, looking in the worst shit holes in town. He’s going to need to feed and he does that on the power of the blood. The sheer terror of the kill and pain and suffering.

3AM and nothing. I’ve been at it all day, most of the night. I head to my last chance.

It’s a run down old trailer in the midst of run down old trailers in the middle of nowhere. There’s candles lit and as I get out of my truck I can smell some kind of jerk spiced stew cooking along with several noxious potions. There are locals out looking at me and looking at me like I’m a victim, like I’m fresh meat. It’s a neighborhood filled with illegal’s, those from Cuba and Central America and Africa as well as the Caribbean little Haiti is dangerous. They don’t run yelling la migra or les federales. No here they get ready to hurt me. That is until they see where I’m headed and who I’m going to see.

She’s playing “Black Magic Woman.” By Santana of her Stratocaster guitar. Her long brown hair bouncing in the night air with these square framed glasses that set off her look. She’s not Hispanic or black but a white girl and she would stand out here if she wasn’t a powerful voodoo practitioner. The locals both fear and respect her. I take out a vial of the tainted blood and wait until she’s done playing. It’s best not to aggravate a source like this. She finishes the sets her guitar down and looks at me through the rims of their glasses.

“Athena…”

“Actually it’s Andrea this time around. Andrea DiMaggio FBI.”

“DiMaggio?”

“What can I say, I love baseball.”

“You don’t traffic with my kind often Andrea. What do you want?”

“I need some help Jonelle, Rapture has landed into the world again.”

She looks pissed, really pissed at hearing that.

“Why, why now and who let his ass out of hell?”

“It was some schizo junkie, I think He’s wearing the douche-bag but I don’t know who or what was whispering to him.”

“I’ll look into it. What do you have?”

“This.” I toss her the vial. “He did a communion.”

She catches it and several of her charm bracelets she wears flare to life and I can see protective glyphs orbiting her hand. Invisible to the mortal eye there’s enough power in them she can fight the unnatural barehanded. Jonelle is a powerful worker of majik. One of the most potent in hundreds of years, a crafter of her own spells.

She kneels moving things aside clearing a space on the floor. I watch her draw a circle of both power and protection. She’s gathering herbs and other components. This stuff has innate powers anything used in ritual over time sort of gets the majikal rep of being something or doing something. Jonelle like others use this to boost her powers and lessen the strain of what they do.

It takes about an hour then she sits in the circle and drinks down the vial of demon majik tainted blood. I nearly throw up just knowing what essences touched that. She cries out instantly and her eyes are solid red like the blood and she starts to twist and turn and convulse as far as I can tell riding the evil and infection of the dark power.

Her screams hurt me, the sounds of the agony that she’s putting herself through…she’s letting both that thing Rapture and it’s Master touch her…Then the trailer in dropped in darkness. Every candle blazes brightly and the stench of sulfur…brimstone fills the air.

She screams and it’s inhuman, then she’s convulsing speaking in tongues that if there where not for the circles would have killed plants and small creatures by the dark power of those words. It lasts maybe twenty minutes and she stops, she stops…she stops breathing.

***

Raine….

I’m driving home after being at Shaun’s. I need space, I need air and to just get my head about how I’m feeling before our date tonight.

I’m going on a date with Shaun.

Holee crap.

I’m or I think I was pulling to the turn to my place when everything turns red. Bloody red light fills the air this place. I see this girl, skirt, blouse, dark hair and glasses in a mystical circle and there are things, darkness itself given form pulling themselves free of her and taking her life with them. The circle keeps them in. She’s in trouble. I see her go down…

I reach out to her…I’m the Evanescence, I’m this for a reason and if this…saving her isn’t what I’m here for it is now. I see her fall. I reach out to her…I can make light. If these dark swirls are killing her then…

Light…light equals life…gather the life, like gathering the light together…I…

The bike slides out from under me as I miss the corner. I’m tossed over the pavement, then the gravel and hit the ditch…

This, this is far more than me…I can’t let the pain take me away from here…with this girl…

Gather the light, gather the life and to ….That song, My song runs through my consciousness…I sing it to her as I push what I’ve gathered to her…

***

Athena…

I see Jonelle fall, the darkness around her, us too much. I’ve killed her…

Light…

Light brighter than I’ve ever seen fills the circle.

Fills Jonelle until it streams from her eyes, nose, mouth and ears…something touching her, burning the darkness away in that circle.

I hear music a popular song, the one I woke up to yesterday.

It comes through the light and cuts through that darkness.

~How can you see into my eyes like open doors.~
~Leading you down into my core.~
~Where I’ve become so numb without a soul, my spirit sleeping somewhere cold.~
~Until you find it there and lead it home.~

~Wake me up!~
~Wake me up inside…~
~I can’t wake up!~
~Wake my up inside…~
~Save Me!…~

Jonelle screams it out along with the light as the things are burned apart, destroyed by that light that brought her back from death.

The world brings itself back to normal.

Jonelle is steaming from the power and the energy used, coughing out smoke like vapors.

She looks at me hers eyes still holding a bit of shine of that power.

“She…The Evanescence…she saved me…(Coughs) I seen where he went…We have to go…Rapture’s on the hunt…”

“Where?!”

“I don’t know, but I’ll recognize it…take me.”

“Fuck! Alright, let’s go.”

I have to carry her to the truck and she directs me north to the interstate. I hit the lights and step on the gas. If he’s hunting I can’t waste any time.

***

Raine…

The girl awake…the darkness gone I drift back towards my form.

I end up in that darkness of being unconscious.

Until I here the crying…

The sobs of a little girl…too little, too young. I run, I run to her.

I have to save her.

Because I can feel it getting closer and closer.

Then I’m shorter and lying on the ground. There’s a skinny junkie covered in ink with a really long hunting knife stalking a young boy. I get up, I’m in, I’m with the little girl.

“Leave him alone.”

He turns to look at me.

It.

It’s not human. I see this shadow thing pulse and push out under the skin of who he’s wearing.

“You…” He hisses. “I’m coming for you.”

“I’m right here.”

He turns from the little boy and the two other kids and I run. He chases me. There’s a couple of times he gets close to me. That knife slicing and scraping the walls and the crates and he cuts me once on the shoulder. I push light into his face with both hands like I’m pushing water at him. It burns and singes him…it. He backhands me twenty feet away and I feel my/her left arm break.

He’s really pissed off now. He comes at us with the knife ready to stab me.

***

Athena….

I’m speeding as fast as the damned Escalade will go. The light’s on flashing and I’m nearly sick with fear as Jonelle’s babbling about the pretty little ones. How he wants them so much.

How he likes hearing the sounds of them laughing and playing.

She laughs and cries at the same time too much.

She’s driving herself crazy by tracking him through his eyes.

“Oh Goddess, Andrea…! He thinks the innocent laughter of chil…of …of kids is like the sound of frying…steaks…”

“Just hold on Jonelle, hold on please…”

“Athena!, turn!, turn here!”

“Where?!”

“Down there!” She points over the side of the overpass I’m taking an exit off of Fort Lauderdale’s older industrial area.

I see a sigil in majikal power over one building…Thirty feet tall and calling to anything of the light to come. To help whoever is there.

…I can feel the fear now of the children.

I can feel the evil there.

Jonelle coughs. “Give me your gun.”

I pass her my Berretta. She starts speaking over the gun in Latin, in church latin. Blessing it.

I pull through the streets. Taking corners as hard and as fast as I can. I see the place. I cut the wheel at the alley and again partway down it as Jonelle’s giving me a play by play of the battle between The Evanescence and Rapture…If he kills her he’ll kill more than the child she’s bonded with.

I take my truck right through the slide down metal door. I see him coming at her with the knife. He looks like a wild freak, messy long hair, unshaven for days, Methe-head tweeker skinny and covered in tattoos. He’s in a hoody and jeans. The little girl’s about nine, her clothes are torn and dirty, she’s bleeding but over her like an aura of power is the image of this girl, a young woman. She’s just a spectral image, but injured, hurt from something else.

I bail out of the truck and yell. “FBI!”

Rapture laughs at me.

I open fire.

He does majik and blocks the bullets I fire with his knife. Nothing human can do that.

But Rapture is far from human.

He pulls a piece of his own and opens fire on us.

Jonelle’s crazy and runs into the gunfire.

The only way I can try to save her is to keep shooting, keep him busy, throw off his aim.

Jonelle gets one in the leg.

I get one in the chest. The vest catches it and I wasn’t what I am it’d have taken me off of my feet.

Jonelle hits him in the face with Patrick. Father Patrick O’Conner a damned good man, a fine priest and once a pillar of the community of Newark New Jersey gets to take one more swing at the fences. From the inhuman shriek of pain He did good.

Go with God Patty-Boy, I’m glad I knew ye.

I empty the rest of my clip into him. Seven old blessed rounds, an old blessing from the crusades with Jonelle’s power behind it. I can see the power puncture into the demon. It screams in pain and rage. I see it swing at the little girl with the knife. I heard Jonelle scream. “No!” I see the overlaid image of the young girl, The Evanescence block the knife with the image…He’s cutting into her forearm and not the little girls.

I pull one round, solid silver from my jacket pocket charging it with my own power. Then I chamber the round as he’s trying to cut the girl again. The Evanescence takes another hit, getting cut over her right hand.

He goes for another stab attempt.

I scream. “Rapture!”

He turns hissing, blood spurting from the mouth of the tweeker he’s wearing. “Athenaaaaa”

I fire.

He goes to block me again. Jonelle grabs his arm with the knife.

I blow the back of his skull off.

The place shakes and trembles and the lights all blow when he leaves. His essence sent back to hell. Kind of like when you see a demon leaving it’s host on that TV show Supernatural. Black ink like smoke pouring out of the body and literally into the floor. The light show is much like on Highlander. Sometimes life and art you know.

The girl, the image stares at us for just a moment and then dissipates away turning to motes of vanishing light.

Jonelle’s holding the little girl and the others that rushed to her.

I call it in and call for extra units and ambulance’s. I lean back and sit on the bumper of my truck.

***

Raine….

I hurt all over.

I see HER there smiling down on me.

Wow, SHE’s so shiny.

SHE’s crying, but smiling down at me. “I’m so proud of you honey, I’m so proud. There’s help on the way.”

SHE cradles me into her lap and she sings to me.

“When I find myself in times of trouble.”
“Daughter Mary comes to me.”
“Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
“And In my hour of darkness.”
“She is standing right in front of me.”
“Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”

“Let it be, let it be, let it be, oh… let it be.”
“Sing those words of wisdom let it be…”

Yeah SHE changed the words right…I still love the song and I’ll touching my ex-slave self and singing it like a slaves gospel. As the police pull up and SHE fades from my sight smiling at me.

I think I’m going to pass out again.

Dammit my date!