I waited for either of them to respond. The silence as I waited to hear what their answers would be seemed to stretch on for hours. I drummed the fingers of one hand on my other arm and shifted my weight from foot to foot. I was getting impatient wondering why it was taking one of them so long to answer. When the silence was broken it was Angel that spoke.

“Close your eyes, reach out with your mind. What do you see?” she said. It wasn’t quite and order, but it felt like one. I was beginning to boil over, then remembered that they were supposed to be the ones to answer my questions. Drowning out my anger for the moment, I closed my eyes. After a couple of deep breaths, I just tried to be aware of what was around me. The earth, the terrain around me, the people around me. This ‘reach out with your mind’ bit was on the vague side of description.

The response in my head was impressive. It didn’t take long. I had a vague sense of everything around me and its position relative to me. I could feel the two women, but there was no other living thing within easily a thousand yards of me.

The vision though, with my eyes closed, I could still see everything I normally could. That and so much more. Beyond the more vivid coloration of everything, I could see wisps of…fog? There was nothing else I could have called it. Some of that fog was a bright white, some of that fog was a deep jet black.

“I see the strangest fog. They are like hazy ribbons of black and white fog drifting around,” I doubt I was able to keep my bewilderment out of my eyes.

“Turn around slowly. If you go too fast, you’ll get dizzy. Now what do you see? Angel spoke once more.

That turn took a long time to make. That first step I took though was a big one. It didn’t take me long to find out why I was told to go slow. The whole world started to spin and tilt, and I felt like I was going to vomit all over myself. I thrust my arms out to my side to help steady myself. No idea if it did anything because it still took a while for the world to stop moving. The rest of the turn was completed much slower than I started out. The dizziness became less violent with each tiny step.

Facing the two women I could see them clearly. Both looked apprehensive as they watched me. Surrounding each of them an aura of light. Angel’s aura was jet black, Vashti’s was as bright a white as the fog.

“I see your auras,” again that was the only word that fit.

Angel nodded at Vashti and they both started to draw on that fog. I was dumbfounded to see that it was Vashti drawing the black fog into herself, while Angel pulled the white fog to herself. My jaw must have dropped open because I saw the hint of a smile on their faces.

“There is no common name for that mist among the demons or angels. Neither do we know what it is, but it is connected to the cosmos somehow. We don’t need to be instructed on how to use it, its instinctive. Something to do with how we are born or created—whichever you prefer,” Vashti said. The speech wasn’t quite a lecture, but it still irked me.

“Now, look at yourself then draw on the power. Keep focused on what you are seeing too,” Angel said.

I brought my hand up in front of my face, damned fell over from shock. There was an aura around me as well. Mine was a grey, as if white and black had mixed together perfectly. Then I drew on the power around me. I kept looking at my hand as I pulled both the black and white fog into me. I was a dazzling, hypnotic mix of mist coming at me. The closer it got to me the faster it seemed to go. I could feel my well inside filling up, the grey around my hand got brighter.

“This is what you mean by hybrid?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Vashti. “Nothing like you has ever been encountered by an angel.”

“We demons also think you are a freak,” Angel said with an impish smile. I wanted to wipe that smile off her face. I wanted to teach her a lesson. The angrier I got with her, the more my inner vision faded. To be fair, I didn’t think of opening my eyes, but I did pull back that anger again. Again, these two women were bloody annoying when they wanted to be. I couldn’t wait to tell them to get away from me and go somewhere else. Part of me knew, that there would always be something of them in my head. Something of all ten of them.

“When I was condemned to die, this was not what I thought was going to happen to me.” It was an overstatement.

“Demons can’t draw on the black energy., or even see it. We need to draw on the white. It has something to do with the transformation from human to dead to dead. There is no explanation that we have found,” Angel explained.

“Angels have to draw on the black energy. We can’t see the white. Again, its not known why this is,” Vashti added.

In a strange way that made sense to me. Demons are angry, pain-inflicting jerks. Angels are the opposite. They already have the black or white energy they need. To do things with the power they need the opposite of their nature. I nodded my understanding of that line of reasoning. There didn’t need to be a ‘why’ to questions about it. In this case the answer was ‘it just is this way’.

“You are able to draw on both because you are a hybrid, you somehow have both the making of an angel and a demon in you,” Vashti said.

“I don’t know of anyone that can hold that much power in them with killing themselves,” Angel quickly added. I looked at myself and the power was still rushing towards me. My well was still filling up and I felt like I had a longways to go before I was full. I stopped drawing and just let go of all the energy I had gathered. It flew out of me in a whirlwind. Both of the women flinched back from that outwards burst of energy.

“Sorry,” I muttered. Wait, what? Why was I apologizing to them? I jerked my thoughts back to the present.

“I think that is why you were able to mark all of us. You can use both sides of the energy. Your energy is a perfect mix of that energy, both halves, so you can affect either group with it.” Angel said. Again, it made sense to me.

I opened my eyes and was disoriented with double vision. I could see with both my eyes and my inner eye at the same time. The two were not quite aligned correctly. They were off just enough from each other to create a blurriness where they merged. After a couple of minutes, the two visions aligned. It was still disorientating but I guessed that would settle down as I got used to it.

“So, I am a fulcrum between two natures. I am a balance. If no angel or demon has ever seen a balance before, am I THE balance?” It seemed like a weird question, but it made sense. The unpredictability of my thoughts fell into place. I had thoughts that would align with each of those natures. That left me wondering if I needed to learn to balance my thoughts. Angel and demon could only look at each other and shrug their shoulders. Maybe it was a question they hadn’t considered yet.

“Okay, so now that leads me to the ‘why’,” I asked. This time there was a reason why I became this mix. Something changed for it to have happened.

“What do you remember?” Vashti asked.

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“Well, I remember dying. Then I was in a void that seemed endless. There were two voices talking to me about something, then I’m not sure what happened then I found myself in a strange city. Apparently, I fed on some people. Angel and I had a talk, then Marchenko showed up,” I summed up my experience as this balance.

“The voices, do you remember anything about them?” Vashti asked, and it didn’t feel like she was being condescending about it. She legitimately wanted to know.

“They weren’t human, they were more…” my voice trailed off as I searched for the word. “Immense. Overpowering, everywhere all at once. One felt worse than Marchenko, the other one felt so inviting. I don’t remember what they said.”

Words failed me again. Then a thought occurred to me.

“Can either of you sense me in your head?” I had a train of thought, and it was pulling me along. Both nodded, they wondered about my dumb question. It was written all over their faces, but I let it go.

“From the moment I arrived in the city, I could feel a presence like that. I have no clue what it points to, but it feels different than an angel or demon. I don’t feel it right now though,” My wheels were turning trying to find the end of this thread, but I wasn’t sure I could. I was missing some pieces of the thread still.

“Just one presence?” this was from Angel. I nodded in response, as I tried to chase down the thought that was at the edge of my thinking.

“Well then, it doesn’t belong to one of the presences. If you are a hybrid, maybe what ever you are feeling is a hybrid too,” Angel said. That jogged my memory.

“Something was stolen. I get the impression I am to find it for some reason,” I blurted out as soon as I thought of it. I was like an excited kid in a candy store for a moment. Both of them looked at me in surprise. Not so much as what I had said as how I had said it. Up until this point the only emotion, I had shown anybody since I died was anger. Now I was excited about something. It was a different feeling for me, and there was something nice about it.

“Alright, that brings up two more questions. First, what was stolen? Second, who stole it?” Angel said. She seemed to be genuinely curious about all this now. The thoughtful look on her face teased at my memory. Angel stood there; arms crossed over her chest as she thought over everything that had been said. There was something familiar about her posture, about her face.

I stepped into her view. This needed to be brought into the open. Angel and I had met, we had known each other while I was a living human. The memories of our interactions stayed lost to me even as I looked at her.

“You knew me before I died, didn’t you?” I asked. There was no accusation in my tone. I wanted to know, more like I needed to know what that relationship was. There was a brief flicker of fear and guilt on her face that was gone as fast as it showed up. “I’d rather you tell me willingly; I think it might be connected to what is happening.”

Angel knew I could compel her to tell. She was the one that told me I could do that. Vashti was caught completely off guard as she looked between the two of us. The demon’s eyes dropped to the ground as I waited for her response. Was that guilt or regret on her face? Was she only feeling that way because I had found her out, or did she feel remorse not telling me sooner.

“Yes,” the answer didn’t surprise me, but it still rocked me. This was another piece of the puzzle that was my existence now. “I was sent to tempt you and cause your downfall. You knew me as Yvonne when you were alive.”

Now that sent shockwaves through my body. Vague memories of spending time with a red-haired beauty named Yvonne. A lot of time. I could remember doing things for her, little things at first. The first couple of tasks were simple and innocent looking. Now, though, I could see the path that led to me being sentenced to die for crimes I committed. The path that led me to being a demon.

“Who sent you? Was it Marchenko?” I demanded. There was only a little bit of heat in my words. Surprisingly I wasn’t all that angry with her. Either as the Yvonne I could barely remember or the Angel I barely knew. No, I wasn’t angry, but I was unnerved. With what she had said already somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to get me to this point. Was me putting my mark on her part of the plan? This had to have been in the works for a long time. I spent a decade on death row, after the trial and more before that before I was arrested.

“No. Marchenko knew nothing about it. Meeting him when we did was bad luck. I was compelled to do it, but I am not sure who did the compelling,” Angel said, she was still avoiding my gaze. That didn’t tell me much, although I did get the sense that she wasn’t lying about it.

“I was Bangkok, hiding out from Marchenko when I had a vision. That’s the only word that fits. It was like looking at images that you only see for a second or so. I didn’t remember anything afterwards, but I had a need to go search for somebody. I knew roughly where to find you, but I didn’t know until I saw you who you were. Once I saw you, the compulsion made me tempt you.”

“So, someone chose you to seek him out and make him fall?” Vashti summed it up nicely. Angel nodded in response.

“If you were the one that made me into a demon, why didn’t you find me in the in-between and complete the job?” I asked the next logical question that came to my mind.

“I didn’t know you had actually died. I wasn’t able to track you once you were condemned.” Now she was looking at me. “My compulsion was dissolved when you were condemned. Normally, there is a connection between a demon or angel and the person that they have chosen. That is how they know that their target has died and that they can go collect the soul. That connection wasn’t there between us. Meeting you in the trees back in the city was just luck like I told you before.”

Again, I got the feeling she wasn’t lying about this. That left still more unanswered questions that we needed to find the answers for. This thread that I was part of was getting more tangled by the minute.

“Do you think the owners of the voices that you heard in the in-between were the ones that laid the compulsion on her?” Vashti asked. She had given voice to the question I had been thinking off.

“That makes sense. I can’t prove it, but I think they were waiting for me to appear there. That tells me that they were the ones to have created me as a hybrid. Was it some sort of super demon and a super angel working together?” I asked dubiously. Angels and demons don’t work together. I looked from Vashti to Angel and back again. Angels and demons don’t work together under normal circumstances. This situation was anything but normal.

“I know of nothing like that in the lore that angels. I’d have to do some research, maybe there is some hints in the lore that I haven’t found,” Vashti said. She looked like she wanted to leave and start that research right this moment.

Getting the research done was okay with me, but I didn’t trust myself to be alone with Angel. There was an added tension there now, and I didn’t want to take it out on her. She said she was compelled, and I believed her. She didn’t have a choice in what happened. I did though. I had agreed to commit the crimes she asked me to. That much I knew, so if there was fault to be had, my current situation was all on me. There was no regret, no remorse. The acts had been done and I had carried on as if nothing had happened.

“Do you know of anything like that among the demons?” I asked. For some reason I didn’t think that was something that demons would share willingly but I had to ask the question.

“I haven’t heard of anything like a demon overlord.” Her response was somewhat expected. “I know a couple of people I can ask though.”

Angel had a thoughtful look on her face. I still didn’t know how much demons cooperated with other demons. Any bit of knowledge was worth checking into.

“Alright. You two go see what information you can find out. Will it be hard for you to find me if you learn something?” The first part of that came out as an order, and I wasn’t sure if I meant it that way or not.

“Not at all,” Angel smiled. It was a devilish smile I had seen quite often.

Both Angel and Vashti disappeared. The sense of them faded in my head, but a quick test told me I could pick them out from the background noise of the all the others. Surprisingly, it was quite easy for me to be able to focus on one specific angel or demon. There was no emotion transferred in whatever bond that was between me and all of them. That was something I was grateful for; my own emotions were giving me enough trouble currently.

I cursed out loud when I realized that I had sent away my sources of knowledge on my abilities before learning how or if I could go to another location. Maybe it was time for me to do some testing on my own. This way I would be the only one here if something went way off the rails. It wasn’t so much as not wanting others to get hurt, it was more about not wanting others to see my mistakes and failures.

So, I chose the first place that came to mind, and focused on it. I focused on being in that place I wanted to be. There was a pulse of energy. A weird numbness all over me. Pins and needles like my whole body had gone to sleep. I could see the place I had selected start to materialize around me and the barren hills I had been in started to fade away. I jerked backwards and bounced a couple of times. There was no description for what I was bouncing between, I was a yo-yo on a string.

I rolled across the ground. I vomited as I got to all fours. This yo-yo was all sorts of messed up. Then the realization hit me. Something or someone was keeping me from getting to where I wanted to go. Couldn’t one thing be easy in this afterlife of mine?