The next morning I awoke to find myself surrounded by Eden, Aponi, Annie, Audrey, and now even the Tremble reporter Sylvia. Annie seems to want to stay around Eden while Sylvia seems to want to be around Aponi for some reason. Meanwhile, Eden and Aponi want to be near me. Then finally you have Audrey who asked to sleep at my feet like some kind of animal, I don’t understand Audrey at all. 

I stare at Audrey, ‘Maybe she and the staff captain got in a fight? They were getting along pretty well last I saw.’

Anyway, this continually leads to my large sleeping area being reduced to a small sliver of the pallet I make for myself every night. Every day I wake up curled up in the fetal position while they’re all sprawled out, taking up as much room as possible.

‘Is it so wrong that I like my space when I sleep? Particularly when none of them have had the opportunity to shower for the past few days. I at least clean myself up with hot towels after all I need to maintain my cuteness.’

Sighing, I remove some of Aponi’s hair from my mouth that I apparently nearly inhaled and then push Audrey away with my foot. My foot pushes against her face, but somehow she doesn’t wake up and just rolls over instead. Stretching my arm out this time, I reach for the cellphone I’ve been keeping nearby in case the Shadow Demon calls.

‘Still nothing. This is going to be a problem; I can feel it. Well, at least we’re making progress here at the hospital.’

We set up three different sessions or services in the hospital's chapel. It may sound excessive, but that place is only big enough to hold around a hundred people at once; besides, this is an excellent opportunity for me to test the parameters of Eden’s abilities. 

Yawning, I remove a second phone from my storage ring along with a SIM card. I slip the SIM card into the phone, and I’m surprised to find a text message from Congressman Miles.

‘He’s a few days early. Wonder what he wants.’

I open the message.

“I have the man you requested, and the Alaskan Senator Jacobs is with me as well. We will be flying to Camp B by 8:00 PM today. I’ve heard some soldiers vanished and you’re suspected to be somewhere in the area.”

I text back, “Not even a hello? Also, you’re a bit early. 😓 What if I’m on the other side of the city or even another state?”

The congressman texts back immediately, “Hi. I have a good feeling you’re near the hospital. In exchange for the man as well as bringing the Senator, I want my children.”

I roll my eyes, “Oh, dear. I’m sorry, but we’ve gotten pretty attached. They’re almost like my own children 💕. I could never bring myself to part with both.”

‘That’s a lie I could definitely part with the boy without much thought.’

“Please, just give me my daughter for now. She’s got to be so scared.”

I glance up to see Annie drooling on Eden's pajamas.

Chuckling, I type back, “Yes, she is quite terrified. Fine. Join us at our service we’ll be holding for the hospital refugees in the chapel at midnight. Tell anyone I’m there, and I’ll bring this building down with everyone in it. You know I’ll do it. 😉”

‘This is a bluff obviously. I don’t have anything like that setup.’

Turning off the phone, I remove the SIM card and store them away again. 

‘Storing the phone with the SIM still in it would probably be good enough, but I’m a bit paranoid about being tracked.’

My gaze turns toward Eden who is laying face down with her arm thrown over my leg. I sink my finger into her cheek causing her to stir. I keep poking until her eyes flicker open slowly. She yawns and turns over with a stupefied look.

I thump her forehead lightly, “Let’s get up. We have our scheduled service at noon, another at 2:00 PM, and one more at 5 PM. However, something came up, so I had to move some things forward, so now we have a fourth one at midnight.”

Eden looks at me, confused, “Midnight? Who’d possibly show up for a service at midnight?”

“Well, I’ll admit it’s subject to cancellation if things don’t work out, but if things do work out, the only people that will show at midnight are the exact people we’d want to show up.”

“Oh, yeah. Is that how it is?... Eira, I’m a bit nervous about the services.” Eden says.

“Don’t be the Goddess has acknowledged you in the past, which means she knows you can handle something like this.”

“Ye-yeah, I guess so. I think I’ll just imagine how my mother would handle this.”

I pat Eden on the head, “Just do that then. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”

Eden smiles, but instead of smiling back, I frown.

“Eh? What’s wrong?” Eden follows my gaze.

There Audrey has turned back over, and she has one of my toes in her mouth! 

“You!” I whisper fiercely.

I kick my foot, shoving the toe deeper into her mouth. Expecting her to wake up I’m surprised when instead she bites my foot in her sleep! I jerk my foot from her mouth and look at her with shock. 

“What is wrong with you?!” I nearly shouted before noticing a spider crawling across Audrey’s face.

I gently grab it using my nails and stare at the pitiful girl realizing this is why she turned back over in the first place. Still, my eyes glance at the bite marks on my foot as well as Audrey’s open mouth. A devilish smile floats across my face as I promptly launch the spider into the back of Audrey’s throat.

**KUUUUUUU!**

Audrey’s eyes shoot open, and she starts gagging loudly, nearly vomiting. She flails around inadvertently whacking Aponi in the chest causing Aponi’s eyes to shoot open and reactively slap at the one who assaulted her. The slap lands right on Audreys right cheek with a loud noise. Audrey places her hand on her cheek and stares at Aponi and then me in disbelief.

“Uh, sorry… I just kinda slapped reflexively.” Aponi says.

I stand and step over the formerly sleeping people while making my way toward the sink to wash my feet, “We should get up.” I say with a mix of annoyance and amusement.

Sylvia who apparently awoke at some point and saw everything, looks at Audrey with a pitiful expression, “You know they say you eat eight spiders in your sleep a year. I didn’t think it was true, but it seems there’s at least some truth to it.”

I look back to see Audrey staring at Sylvia seemingly oblivious to what she’s referring to.

Audrey rubs her throat, “Spider?” I hear her whisper confused.

Sylvia gazes at me and I shake my head.

“Oh, yeah. It was nothing. Just a random fact.” Sylvia responds.

Meanwhile, Eden chuckles and lays back down while Aponi eyes me suspiciously.

———————

It’s noon, and the first service is starting in about fifteen minutes. Around three hundred people showed up for the noon service, but we turned away over half of them due to space. Eden stands at the front welcoming everyone to the service. Her facial expression hardly changes the whole time, making some people feel a little uncomfortable. This is exacerbated by the fact Aponi, Jimmy, and I are wearing the eyeless masks that the Night Demon husks were wearing.

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I originally took these things because I noticed they had a couple of simple magical abilities attached. The first being scent suppression, while the second has to do with vision. Even though it appears you’d be unable to see with no eye holes, that’s simply not true. The mask allows you to see normally. This ability's purpose is to avoid an opponent from watching your eye movements and using that to read your actions. In our case it’s just good to block our bright red eyes. 

As for the scent suppression, it has that ability because husks tend to smell like corpses. After all, that’s pretty much what they are. I ended up passing one of these out to all the vampires. Sam was extremely excited while the others were more amused or merely interested in it. I don’t know if the others fully comprehended that it was magic, though.

Watching the door, I notice a group of soldiers walking in and gazing at the situation suspiciously. Spotting Aponi first, they approach and ask her to remove the mask. 

Seeing where things might be going, I take the opportunity to leave the room. However, I continue to watch from the hallway. Aponi removes her mask and gives the soldier a closed mouth smile with her eyes shut like some kind of old man anime character. It was funny, I'm not going to lie. Aponi quickly slips the mask back on to the great annoyance of the soldier. 

He suppresses a sigh before speaking, “Ma’am, we didn’t ask you to put the mask back on.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll keep that in mind for future reference.”

The soldier's eye twitches, “Why are you wearing a mask anyway? Especially one you can’t see out of?”

Aponi thinks for a second before responding, “It’s in support of my blind sister. I want to show her just because she can’t see she can still go through life normally.”

Aponi makes sure to say it loudly, garnering the attention of everyone in the room.

“Then what about the other two?”

I dip behind the wall and continue to listen.

“There’s only one, and he’s my brother. Can’t siblings show support for one another? You’ve all already trapped us in the hospital, and now we can’t even do things like this?”

I peek back around the corner and find the room full of people staring at the soldiers with blatant hate.

The soldier notices this as well and continues, “Just so everyone is aware we’ve evacuated two hundred people over the last 13 hours. We’re doing what we can. Everyone’s on edge, so take off the mask.”

“Just let the girl wear the mask!” An old lady shouts.

“Yeah, they aren’t hurting anybody. Aren’t there monsters outside you should be worried about?”

“That’s right!” Another old lady shouts.

‘Oh, hey. It’s the three old ladies from the other day.’

The crowd joins the three old ladies in yelling insults and condescending words toward the soldiers. The soldiers look around the room obviously uncomfortable with the sudden developments.

The soldier frowns, and simply takes out his radio asking a superior how to proceed. I tune my ears to listen to the radio only to hear a barrage of curse words flying toward the soldier. He turns pale and responds apologetically.

“Se-sergeant said if it's obviously not the girl then it’s obviously not our responsibility… also we get to do stiff duty for wasting the sergeant’s time.”

‘Stiff duty? Like body disposal?’

Aponi nods happily at their words, but the soldiers just ignore her; they instead take one last look around the room. Not finding what they’re looking for (probably me), they leave. I watch from around a corner until they are out of sight. Re-entering the room, I continue observing the situation.

The room is packed full of people; if there were some kind of pandemic going on right now, everyone in this room would catch it. I flip all the switches on the wall turning on the overhead lights. My goal is to drown out any glowing of Eden’s eyes. I even brought an extra light stand from the building's basement to increase the brightness further. 

Eden begins to speak, “I’d like to welcome everyone to this sanctuary of worship. My name is Eden, a young worshipper. I know a few of you are probably wondering why someone so young is leading these services, but I’d like to assure everyone I am more than capable of leading these kinds of events.”

A few people glance at one another but turn back toward the front.

Eden continues, “Here we can all feel safe from the atrocities and monsters outside the hospital.”

For the first service, I decided Eden would just speak to everyone’s faith while avoiding any mentions of what God this faith should be directed toward. However, I’ve still instructed Eden to make vague references to the Goddess, if possible.

“We must always hold our faith in the one who watches over the world above all. Your faith in the one above can be just as important as the very blood that flows within our veins.”

As Eden continues, I glance around the room, looking for certain signs. Most people look a bit confused by Eden’s strange wording, but among them are people who are literally leaning in closer.

Things like this continue, and some people are so confused by the vagueness that they just get up and leave. In a way, it’s a good thing because it means Eden’s ability wasn’t getting through to them.

“There was a time when I myself was lost, but someone reached out their hand and showed me the truth of the world.”

I glance back toward Eden to find the more enamored people all staring at me. 

“But that is the nature of the one above and their worshippers. Always stretching a hand to those that are their lowest.”

I start feeling a bit uncomfortable because if she hadn’t been an angel, I don’t know what I would have done to her. I have a tiny tendency to act on impulse sometimes. It's a common trait for God’s or, in my case, someone with the memories of one.

Eden continues allowing some emotion to slip into her words. Oddly more people begin to become enamored as Eden’s speech becomes more passionate.

“Then, one night, as I went to watch the moon, I saw someone who changed my life. Gave me a purpose. Gave me a reason to continue living. Gave me something to believe in.”

‘Uh, okay. This is starting to seem like something that should be said after a few drinks…’

“I believe that the one above arranged for us to meet that night.”

After that, Eden finally moves on to my relief.  Finally, the service ends, and Eden makes her closing remarks.

“Remember always to have faith in the one above. Lastly, for the guests that seemed to enjoy the service the most, we’d like to offer another service tonight at 11:30 PM. We know it’s late, but with the monsters attacking, we feel those people would enjoy the service and comfort. As you leave, you may be stopped by one of the people in the white masks. They’ll give you a red ‘X’ which would allow you to attend tonight's service. Thank you.”

Some people stand and leave in a hurry. These people are not who we are after. Others walk up to Eden and tell her how amazing she did. While some come directly to Aponi, Jimmy, or myself asking for the red ‘X.’ After those people left, we went around to all the people that seemed the most enamored and offered them an X.

Once everyone was gone, I walk up to Eden, “Good job. Now you get two more practice sessions before the more important one tonight.”

Eden looks at me with tired eyes and sits down without saying anything.

I pat her on the head and remove a plate of steak and platelets from the storage ring. 

Eden stares at the setup, “Is that Sam’s steak?”

I laugh, “Yeah, I hear it might be delicious with platelets, so let’s try it together.”

———————

It’s now 5:00 PM, and the final practice service is taking place. 

‘Man, that steak was amazing. I’m craving another one, but I need to focus.’

The final service is my most anticipated. The reason I wanted to try this one last is that I have the highest hopes for it. My expectations are high because of something Eden once told me back on the Moonlight, so I’m excited to see if my hunch is right. Plus, this is something I think I’ll get some enjoyment out of this as well.

Anyhow this time, Aponi, Terry, Sam, and Jimmy are here while I stand at the front next to Eden. Around four hundred people showed up for the 2:00 PM service and again for this one. We only took slightly over 100 people each time. Some people tried to come to multiple services, but we’d turn them away when we noticed the X on their hand.

Thus far, every service has been just a bit different as I’ve been testing the effects of Eden’s ability. The noon service was just about encouraging faith. The 2:00 PM service I had her recite religious poetry along with her encouragement of faith. I’ve noted around 25% of people in the first group were enamored by Eden words while around 30% were enamored in the second group, so the poetry seemed to help a bit. As for why I use percentages, I simply like percentages, a quirk I got from Robert I suppose.

Eden looks at me with nervousness, “Eira, do I really have to do this? Teaching and talking about religion is one thing I’m good at thanks to mother, but this is different.”

“Yes, you do, and I’m sure you’ll do fine,” I reply.

With those words, I make my way to the back of the room toward a keyboard. This isn’t the computer kind, but the instrument.

Eden gives her introductions, and welcomes everyone as before. However, things diverge with her last sentence, “Now I’d like to start this service with a hymn.”

I gaze at Eden as she opens her mouth to begin. I notice the back of her neck is tinged blue and red with a faint glow running along her spinal cord. It moves across the back of her head toward her eyes. 

‘Has it always done that? Regardless, Banshees Wail seems to be playing some part.’

Suddenly a sound that could only be described as angelic fills the room. My jaw almost hits the floor, and so does everyone else’s in the room. Speaking of the people in the room, something like half have already become enamored. 

‘This has to have something to do with the reason Eden’s mother was so adamant about her taking singing lessons. I knew it.’

I notice Eden's eyes turned in my direction. 

‘Oops. Better start playing.’

I loosen up my fingers and close my eyes to listen to where I should pick up. Once I match Eden’s vocals, a tinge of excitement builds. 

A smile creeps across my face, ‘I’m excited for tonight’s show. I do hope he brings the senator with him. Maybe, I should text him.’