Morning light warmed my cheeks. The soft chime of the elevator near my room in the State Hospital repeated at intervals, soothing me with its repetition. Occasionally the muffled and high pitched voice of a candystriper added melodious lyrics to the slow musical interval of the elevator's interior.
"Mr. Briar?" My doctor greeted me. I only had to stay the night for observation from my concussion. I was handcuffed to the bed while the District Attorney decided what had happened in the diner. I myself did not understand. I had met demons with less power to possess someone. How had mere witches made those people into their puppets? It was impossible and my mind rejected the ability and the violent result. My doctor got my attention and explained I was being discharged. I had stitches from the scratches and cuts and bites and a crack in the side of my skull from the hammer blow.
When I was dressed I went to Agent Saint's room. Her right eye had a patch over it and there were three stitches on the upper cut on her cheek and two more on the lower one. I could see her scars would look handsome when they healed, and she still had her eyeball; just the socket was damaged. Her left arm was in a rigged up cast to prevent movement while it healed. Her arm's doctor had predicted that it would heal very quickly, she could have use of her arm in seven weeks.
"My partner is flying in. I want you to go with him and follow our leads out at Bell Creek." Agent Saint said with her voice slurred by dope. "Don't talk about magic and virgins and witches and stuff like that."
"What should I talk about then?" I asked softly of her as I sat beside her bed.
"Solving the case." She smiled like she was telling me an inside joke. I couldn't help but smile back. "I can see how handsome you were, when you smile at me like that."
"I wasn't always this good looking." I promised her. "Detective Winters and I stepped onto a patch of ground that is some kind of embassy of Death's. It quickly drained the life from us, taking decades of lifeforce from us both in just a minute. The poor fool we meant to collect had died from it. He is as dust now, his badge and gun only piles of rust among his crumbling bones. Officially he was never found; Officer Michael Sharon."
"Does he have family? You could tell them." She looked concerned. I shrugged, not knowing if he did or if I could. What would I say that would comfort them?
"I have family. I want off this case and to go back to them." I told her honestly.
"No, Lord. You cannot. This is your path now." She stared deep into my eyes with her one uncovered eye. She trembled slightly. Her eye became grey as she strained herself, after denying my wish, for her purpose. She spoke slowly and deeply, prophesying: "I see that you are meant to bridge two worlds that exist side by side. You are supposed to sow peace and understanding. Neither world can exist without the other and both are dying as the conflict between them escalates. I see you with two men of your bloodline by your side for the upcoming battle. If you do not lead them, they will not fight. If you run away now, great tragedies will plague humanity soon. The world of magic is almost entirely extinguished beneath the machines and ravages of the modern world. I see that when you die it will be one way or the other. The choice is yours, if I let you choose."
"Maia?" A baritone voice asked at the door to her room, knocking softly. I looked up and beheld a giant man with the royal features of a basalt statue. I guessed this person to be her partner. He introduced himself to me and shook my hand while I remained seated. "I am Agent Meroë."
"This is Gaylord Briar. He's our very special guest." Agent Saint introduced me to Agent Meroë.
"He should be a thirty-five twenty-one with the U.S. Marshals." Agent Meroë said with seriousness. "I listened to your report about what happened. This is not the time to do things your own way, Maia. The Bureau doesn't tolerate lack of protocol."
"Then why am I still here? Why am I the lead investigator?" Agent Saint frowned at her partner. I realized they were not friends, although he called her 'Maia'. He was chastising her and had no sympathy for her.
"I don't need his help. I am going up there today with the team I am putting together. You can have this." He made a piece of paper appear in his hand from his jacket like a card trick. I wondered if all FBI agents could perform such sleight of hand, as I'd seen Agent Saint do the same at the diner with a photo of our latest civilian victim. He left her there without her reading the copy of the signed document with and FBI seal on it.
"What is that?" I asked her. She looked away with shame in her eye.
"Forget it." Agent Saint's voice trembled slightly. I recalled that this was her entire life. Whatever Agent Meroë had just done to her was causing her terrible pain. On impulse I took her hand and held it. This made her cry one sincere tear down her cheek. "Those people at the diner are dead." Her voice was quiet and pained. It was what was on her mind. I nodded and said to her:
"I must go find Cory and find out why those people are dead. We were forced to defend ourselves suddenly and their deaths belong to those who made them attack us." I put great promise into my voice and she looked at me with surprise.
"You are right. How was this done?" She asked. I shrugged and then I let go of her hand and stood to go. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then departed. When I got outside I wanted a cigarette very badly and found Detective Winters's zippo in my pocket. I had never smoked before, the urge was his.
"It's too late for me to quit." Detective Winters could see through my eyes and knew I held his lighter.
"It's too late for me to start." I chuckled to myself. Cory flew from atop a parked ambulance and alighted on my shoulder.
"My Lord, we are not safe here. I have seen them take bodies from this place during the night." Cory advised me.
"It's the State Hospital. Dead bodies are just as likely to talk as they are to be taken from here at night." I put the lighter away, very glad that Cory had somehow found his way here. His wings had grown stronger and it seemed he could fly properly. I asked him: "Can you fly?"
"Yes my Lord. I have flown many times. Have you not noticed?" Cory laughed. His laughter was like a kind of grinding noise, like an engine trying to turn over.
"I mean can you fly any distance you want to? I have only seen you fly short distances. I thought you would never be able to really fly anymore." I explained.
"I followed you from above and waited out here for you. I flew, really, as I could before and had not yet done so." Cory clicked softly into my ear after he said this. He enjoyed telling me things I didn't know.
"When we were at the diner you knew something was wrong. How did you know?" I asked him.
"I could hear a voice screaming inside their skulls. Did you not hear it?" Cory wondered.
"Were they possessed by the witches?" I asked.
"Those women are not mere witches." Cory offered. "You have misunderstood how powerful they are. They are the embodiment of three of the four cardinal magics. They have nearly unlimited abilities and can use their spells with great cunning. You never asked me for their names, you have stopped asking questions, my Lord."
"I don't really wish to know such things." I realized to myself out loud. "Who are they then?"
"Serephiel, Liminiel and Ariel." Cory knew the names of many things, it was his specialty. "They use the names of the bodies they live in, of course. They are three of the four daughters of Lilith, before she was enslaved to Adam. They are older than the human race, but not by much." Cory told a very clear story. I had never heard him tell a story I understood so easily. I asked him to tell me as much as he could, but that was all he knew to say.
"I must know more. I believe that this small amount of information is only a warning of what we are dealing with." I spoke mostly to myself. Then I asked thoughtfully: "What are these four magics you mentioned? How does that correlate?"
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"They are described as the elements of wind, water, earth and fire. Those are one way to explain how they are different and the same; parts of a whole." Cory tried to explain to me. I realized that his understanding was limited. "Serephiel's direction is wind and Ariel's is earth. Liminiel would be water."
"What of the fourth, of fire?" I asked.
"I do not know. Does not fire belong to Man? Pheriel held a crown of fire before her head was cut from her body by a sword of flames. She turned and bore her breast at the guardian of Eden and her existence was extinguished. Now that crown of fire belongs to her cousins, you humans. Should her sisters die, such would be the fate of their magics."
"Is this Biblical stuff?" I asked. Cory clicked several times in thought. He had no idea what I meant. I began walking with Cory upon my shoulder. I pondered that none of his stories were from the Bible, as far as I knew. I hadn't read a Bible before. It wasn't hard to get my hands on one. The first church I came to was some kind of Methodist chapel. I went inside and sat and waited with my crow. I was greeted very politely and asked what I was doing there, in my rags and haggard appearance. I explained that I needed help with my Bible stories.
I was allowed to borrow a Bible and I sat and read Genesis. I gave it back when I was done and left. I contemplated the difference. There was no mention of daughters of Lilith or even of Lilith herself. There were two separate stories of how Man was created, and also of a hybrid race known as Nephelim, and I wondered if that was all that was left of the real stories from Dawn.
My next stop was further into town at an occult bookstore. They were even less helpful as they had no Bibles and the books that they had about Lilith were fictional. She was supposed to be a demon or something. When I asked the book seller about her opinion she told me that there was a story about Lilith being married to Adam before he met Eve. Then they got divorced. I asked if this arranged marriage had humiliated her or even if Adam had met his four step daughters, an older species apparently. There was no mention of Lilith's daughters, only of her offspring with human men: creatures called Lilim. Then I was told of her hunger for the flesh of human babies.
I felt a deep foreboding as I left. All the knowledge we had on these things was tainted and unreliable. Neither the Bible nor the occultists I could easily read from had any idea what I was dealing with. Even Cory had almost useless information. All that I had learned was that these were not mortal witches. They were spiritual entities that could transfer themselves from one person to another somehow. I presumed that they lived in the bodies I had met and also that they could leave those bodies and borrow others at will. I asked Cory what he thought of this presumption and he stated:
"Perhaps they can only live in one body. Perhaps a new body must have some of the blood of the body they inhabit. A feather from the old nest makes the new nest the same." Cory speculated. It was rare for him to gamble with information, but he was almost certain of this limitation, or he would not have said anything.
"They infiltrated blood into those people to control them?" I wondered.
"That is what I believe. I do not know. I didn't see it happen. How else would they possess them?" Cory questioned my question. It was his way of arguing.
Fear rose up inside me as I realized we might be attacked by those kind of assassins at any time. I had killed three people already and didn't want to ever harm another. The weight of murder was a burden I could not carry, it was crushing my soul. I kept thinking about the cashier, Kim. I sat down on a park bench and cried for her, whoever she was. It was quite horrible to recall her death, how unfair and wasteful it seemed. She had apologized with her dying breath, even though it was to her that an apology was owed.
"I am going to avenge them. I will stop them." I sobbed with some anger rising in me to motivate me to take action.
"If they die then the order they provide will be as chaos. Only death can stop their activities." Cory complained. "Chaos is bad. Chaos came before order and from order it can rise again. Already one pillar has fallen and look what you people have done to the world. You don't even regard fire as magic, you think it is a reaction of your hands and your will."
"It is strange to hear you speak down to me." I muttered absently.
"My Lord, I meant Mankind. It is the way Mankind is seen by Nature. Placing himself above it and not as part of it. Without fire this could not be, and without Pheriel's death: there could not be fire from the hands of Man."
"I think I understand that the others should not be slain, even if they could be killed." I agreed. Cory clicked once his approval and said:
"My Lord is wise, then."
We sat silently in the park and some other crows were upon a branch. I counted them and noted that there were four: a boy. Crows find numbers to hold significance and will only sit in an amount that communicates an appropriate idea. To understand their way of thinking requires one of their minds. This is also true of humans, as Cory rarely comprehends human motives accurately.
I heard a terrified scream from the midst of the scarce trees. Jenny's Park is quite large and the mowed grass carpets a lush soil where numerous trees grow far apart. From any angle however, one cannot see very far as the scattering of trees becomes an obstacle when viewed all together. We investigated and found a woman beside her stroller, near a picnic. She was crying and calling for help and looking around frantically and then back at the stroller.
"That's not my baby. Where is my baby?" She asked me, pointing and wild eyed. A man was with her and he blundered around the picnic site with even more confusion. Both of them seemed disoriented and confused and terrified.
I looked into the stroller and terror gripped my heart. What lay there was no child. Its teeth were rotten and its eyes held the malice of the ages. It wore an old rag for a diaper and its long pointed nose exhaled a mist that made my right hand ache. It became blurry as I watched and for a moment it appeared as a normal baby boy. He even had his mother's eyes, although with far less fear in them.
"He is right here." The man said stupidly, lifting a pile of leaves from the ground into his arms. Then he dropped the leaves in confusion and began circumambulating again. He muttered that the bugs were not pretty, that their lights had hurt his eyes. He described that as he walked but not so coherently. The last bug I had seen was not a bug at all and I recalled this suddenly.
"That isn't a human baby." Cory told me. I looked again and saw that he was right. The monster in the stroller was not a human baby.
"Where is the child?" I asked out loud. I heard the merriment and laughter of the four crows that had watched all of this happen. They found it to be very funny, as though the kidnapping were merely a joke. I looked up at them and they scolded me and Cory and flew away.
"They said the child is nearby and unseen." Cory revealed their jest. I thanked him with an affirmative click and went around to each tree nearby and knocked four times on each one, asking for the boy, I hoped.
When an acorn struck my forehead I looked up and saw the child's face in darkness of the hollow above. At first I thought it a squirrel that harassed me with the acorn and then did a double take. It was like a miniature warrior wearing the pelt of the squirrel. I stared wide eyed and frightened by his fearsome countenance. Whatever advantage he had meant danger for me and the child and my feet felt rooted in an instant of panic. Then I knew why as I looked around and a thousand more small brown warriors stood upon the branches holding spears barbed with glistening poison. It was clear I could not escape without their needles raining down on me from above.
"My Lord, we cannot escape!" Cory had noticed the ambush as well.
"Enter and parley." A soft voice commanded from the radiant light of the entrance in the tree. It looked too small for me and I had to stoop to go inside. There, seated upon an alabaster throne was a brilliantly shining creature that was shaped like a woman and wore a gown of shimmering golden silk. Her crown was of ivy and flowers and her face shone like a light upon me. I could not stand to look at her for very long.
"I want the boy." I told her, boldly. I realized I had fallen to my knees as I arrived.
"Wilst thou share this meal?" She clapped and a succulent feast of all kinds of sliced fruits and strange vegetables appeared before me. Equal to these delicate blossoms and herbs, as none of them could I identify, were silver and wooden cups, each with a fine smelling wine poured.
"Don't touch any of that." Cory clicked rapidly in alarm. As he spoke the warriors I had seen presented themselves. Now they stood taller than I did, in their own world. I looked up to notice their glowing queen was now as a giant looming above me. It seemed that I had shrank to their size when they entered my world. This was their world and the reverse was true of my size. I looked to see that the doorway back to Jenny's Park was closing slowly.
"If I eat some of this will you give me the boy?"
"The boy belongs to me now. Eat and be my guest." She serenely commanded.
I fumbled nervously in my pockets, my fear clouding my mind. Would I be trapped here? I found the lighter and on an absurd impulse I drew it forth and ignited it. I remembered how to speak in my own words while under the pressure and horror I felt at being threatened with poisonous needles, child abduction and being trapped in an alien world forever: "I have brought fire to your realm and it belongs to the boy as it does to me. Fire belongs to all of my kind and if we stay here, fire shall be yours. All of its malignancy and destructive power shall be yours. Will your beauty remain, if you accept such a corruption?"
The queen's face dimmed as she frowned. She thought I was bluffing and yet she was almost convinced. Then Cory spoke to her:
"We are here because your magic is already weakening outside. The boy's parents saw through the illusion after they broke free of your charms. They will not raise that creature as their own. Even the crows that saw your futile attempt to steal a human child are laughing at you. How will this day be remembered? What songs will be sung about her majesty, if she insists upon such folly?" Cory chastised her with boldness.
She considered this for a moment and then spoke a single word of power and expelled all three of us from her realm. Leaves blew past the tree behind me. With slight apprehension I glanced up and saw that the little warriors were gone from the branches above.
I lifted the baby boy from the cool grass I stood on and Cory was reflected in his eyes. When we found his parents he started to cry suddenly and his mother took him from me. The father glared at me, thinking I had tried to take the child. He was relieved and confused and angry. I decided to just leave them there. I glanced at the stroller and then away as I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Some horrid little creature with the long tail of a donkey retreated out of sight, making nasty little grunting noises as it vanished.
As I left them behind I heard the boy's mother call out in the direction she thought we had disappeared:
"Thank you!"