Shadow Guardians: The Key

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the religion,” said Katherine as she stared at her notes with her chin in her hand behind the desk. “Most of those gothic chapels were all used for Christianity purposes.”

“The preacher of the first one that got hit, Alejandro, knew the priest that got hit with the second one though,” Ophelia said, while swinging Amielle back and forth in her baby swing. She was sleeping with one leg hanging out of it, cuddled up to one of her father’s shirts. The males had gone out hunting. “So their leaders definitely seem to be connected.”

Katherine nodded in agreement, “And the leaders spread the virus of Father Darkness down to the followers. But why though? What’s the lure? I mean, maybe we can curb the spread if we found out what drives people to seek them out.”

Ophelia shrugged a shoulder. “Could be a great many things. All men with power want more power. That’s always a big driver. Money, misfortune…”

Katherine examined the churches they had marked on their corkboard that had been hit. They’d drawn big red lines between them, trying to see if they were nearly in the same area. But some were far out. They were simply too spotty to be linked to a specific location. Perhaps if they found the motive for wanting to summon the likes of the big bad bastard, they would be able to curb the spread of his insanity.

Ophelia’s eyes swept across the room to the fourth desk that had been brought out of the storage area, where Uriah was hunched over in front of a computer and a bunch of papers himself. He was summarizing his notes on Demonology History by drawing a neat flowchart to memorize. “What do you think, Uriah?”

Katherine focused on him too. He was actually, there was no other word for it, a brilliant research assistant. He’d caught up to everything they were doing like Speedy Gonzales over the last two days.

Uriah was lost in his own thoughts as he was drawing. His mind wasn’t so much focused on the work as it was on a strange bunch of images in his head; green boards with street names on them, wet with rain droplets and glowing with the light of a nearby street lamp. He was trying to focus in on the name of the street without really understanding what he was doing. So when he heard his name, he blinked and looked up with confusion, and silently scolded himself for daydreaming.

“Sorry, would you say that again?” he asked.

Katherine frowned at his eyes. The gold seemed slightly illuminated for a moment, and she thought she saw a ring of black around his iris. But then, they looked normal now so she must still be a little twitchy from all the coffee she’d been throwing back. She hadn’t been sleeping great. She was up way too often in dreamtime, and was considering taking a nap after this little research session. “What do you think about the churches that have been hit? Do you think motive could be a connection between them?”

He ‘o’-ed his mouth, then pressed his lips together and pulled out a bunch of papers from underneath his books. Draven had printed them for the females. He’d hacked into the public information about the priests that run the establishments. Uriah’s eyes scanned over them, but much as he tried to concentrate, he kept seeing that green street name sign, and ultimately, he didn’t comprehend a thing he was trying to read, only bits and pieces. But it was enough for him to dismiss the theory.

“I don’t think so,” he said finally after the females had been waiting for an awkward five minutes for an answer. “I mean, this guy had financial problems, so his’ could’ve been money. The other one was getting a divorce, the third one had allegations of drug addiction against him. They’re all potentially reasons to seek out help from the dark side if pushed far enough.”

“Shoot,” Ophelia sighed.

“Well, there goes that theory. Back to square one,” Katherine said. She crossed out Motive on the whiteboard that they had wheeled in next to the corkboards. They’d already crossed out Location, and Religion. Yeah, they were fast running out of ways to connect the events, and ultimately, finding a way of stopping them before they happened.

She sat back down and pulled closer Chronicle book number eighteen, and opened the massive tomb to where she had been reading, or trying to, last. Except when she saw the funky letters, her mind went into instant numb mode. She bemoaned the difficulty of it and leaned her head in her palm as if her brain had just rolled over. Sleep deprivation and concentration was akin to the combination of socks and sandals, it didn’t mix.

“Can I see?” Uriah asked, seeing that she was having difficulty.

Katherine looked surprised for a sec. “Do you guys learn this in training downstairs? This language?”

Uriah smiled. Gods, his face seemed so childlike sometimes she had to remind herself often that he was actually an adult. “No,”

He came over and around the desk, and pulled the heavy book over to his side. He tried palming the desk and leaning his weight into the hand, but his knee joints felt like giving in, so he pulled closer a chair and sat down next to Katherine. He studied the page in the ancient book. She watched him with amazement. He was mouthing something silently, clearly reading the words, even though he’d never actually learned their alphabet before. She wondered if it was something transferred down through genetics?

When his eyes travelled to a washed-out passage that was written in the oldest of languages, the one even Magnus couldn’t read, she had her hopes up. But, he floundered and frowned.

“I’m guessing you can’t read that?” she asked.

He shook his head and slumped back in his chair, rubbing his temples and closing his eyes. For a minute, she was concerned, and she cast a glance at Ophelia, but she shook her head. So it wasn’t his change that was the problem.

“The oldies giving you a headache?” she asked, trying to keep concern out of her voice.

The image in Uriah’s mind was fuzzy. Brown brick building in the background, that green sign. Rainy. It was rainy outside now. What was the name of the street? He felt like the name was important. Behind his closed eyelids, he tried to focus on the name…the name-.

His eyes popped open. “What’s on Tenth Avenue?” he asked the females. Time was important. The road’s name and the time. He glanced at the clock, 03:06AM. Hunting time was almost over. There was a clock ticking in his own body, he could almost see it between his eyebrows. 03:17AM. That’s when they needed to be there.

When he got out of his head, he noticed that the females were only staring at him. “What?”

Katherine was rocking a shockasm next to him, mouth agape, eyebrow raised. “Holy moly…”

He glanced to Ophelia, who looked at him just the same. “What?” he asked again, a little panicky.

Katherine took a compact mirror out of her bag of shit she usually hauled in here when they were working and turned it to Uriah. He took the mirror and his breath left him. His eyes were solid black. No gold, no iris, no white. Just deep black pits.

Tenth Avenue. 03:17AM. Tick. Tock.

He blinked a couple of times, and they slowly returned back to normal, while the piercing needle between his eyebrows receded.

“Well that was pulling an E.T…” Ophelia mumbled across from him.

“Tenth Avenue, what’s there?” he asked again. There was a rising sense of urgency that went with it.

“Couple of clubs, some restaurants, why?”

Phone. He needed a phone. “Can I borrow your cell?”

“Sure,” she handed it over and he pressed the speed dial on Magnus’ number.

He stood up and went to the window, too agitated now to sit down even if his limbs ached, he stared out over the lawns, tapped his foot, but his toes cramped up so he stopped that.

“Meeran? Everything alright?”

“It’s Uriah. Listen, how far are you guys from Tenth Avenue?”

“Ah, hey kid. Why?”

Uriah lightly fisted the windowpane. Hell, he didn’t know the why of it. “Just…it’s important okay? I can’t say why. But is it possible that you guys could get there before 03:17?”

Silence for a sec.

“Did something happen?”

Uriah bit his lower lip. “Ah, no. At least I don’t think so. Look please? I can’t explain why this feels so urgent.”

He heard Draven and Z say something in the background. “Well sure. We were about to head out, but we can check it out quick.”

The vampire brothers poofed their way to Tenth Avenue at precisely 03:14.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Draven asked. He was pissed off that the night wasn’t longer. But as much as he wanted to continue hunting to keep his little emotional buzz going, part of that buzz was probably concern for the kid back home.

“Dunno,” Magnus said as they hung around the street, three big males in black leather and sunglasses. “Let’s just wait until 03:17, see what goes down.”

Zachiel eyed Draven. His brother was twitchy, and he wish he knew why. Every time he tried to snoop, the guy just clammed up on him.

As the seconds ticked down, they were beginning to think Uriah was just having an episode of nerves. And then, at precisely 03:17, there was a bright flash of light on the other side of the light brick apartment building.

“No way…” Zachiel murmured, just before all three of them poofed over there.

The portal was wide open for only a second more, and a demon leapt from it. Two sharp antlers atop its head, desolate eyes staring out of a long skeletal face. It was pale, more blue than white, and had four powerful limbs with a whip tail, but it wasn’t much larger than a human. The portal closed behind it.

“Hell, the kid actually predicted were a demon would emerge…” Magnus said, unsheathing his weapons.

The creature howled at them, its breath creating a wispy cloud of black that permeated Magnus skin, and created the illusion of cracks on his face. A dull pulsing pain crept through him, but he knew his biology would sort out the poison within seconds. It stormed them.

With a vicious lunge, Zachiel leapt forward first, and swung his dagger in an arc, clipping the demon right across the front of its horrifying face at eye level. Instantly, the creature brought up its claws, bending in half, howling in pain—and Zachiel took advantage of that, hauling back his right boot and spinning it around, kicking the skull, sending the thing flying off its feet to the side.

Leaping high into the air, Draven landed on the demon, rolled it over, and trapped its arms over its head with a plunge of his dagger through both wrists. The creature shrieked. The stench of brimstone triggered his kill reflex.

The adrenaline high of the hunt hummed and tingled in his otherwise numb body. He curled his dominant hand into a fist and smashed it into the horrifying face of the monster over and over, until the features were all but mush under the beating, bones smashing in, jaw hinging loose, black tar-like blood splattering everywhere and all over him. He brought his arm up with each inhale and smashed his fist down with each exhale, his constant rate of breathing driving the hits, craving for the destruction to continue so he could continue to feel. Fight back, damnit!

“Finish it,” Magnus demanded. Draven didn’t usually go after the demons so brutally, which worried him.

Snarling at the thing, Draven yanked his blade from its wrist and stabbed it to death in the chest. The light was so intense that the flash blinded him, his retinas rebelling at the brightness.

When he stood, both his brothers stared at him with the clear look of concern on their faces.

He wiped the demon blood from his dagger and sheathed it. “We going home or what?” he asked, only slightly breathless. The high was already fading again. And he wished the night was longer.

There was a pause.

“What’s the matter with you, D?” Zachiel asked evenly.

“Leave it.” The brother turned around and dematerialized, leaving Magnus and Z behind.