The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 3. Chapter 3

The man who was responsible for the capture of the Astorathian Butcher was nothing like the man who had appeared on the front pages of The Roc City Gazette. He thought of those long, sleepless nights when every Astorathian mother in the Slums had clutched onto their children with fear. Not just fear for their lives but for the fear that there was no justice to be had for their suffering. We're not a priority. The Theocracy doesn’t care. They don’t consider us human.

All except one agent whose voice became a guide through those long, dreadful nights, when the noise and lights of the city drove him to the brink of madness; when Bazzel simply wished his eternal existence would end. The magician's reassurances, the kindness he showed to the camera with his eyes, stirred something like hope within Bazzel.

The Butcher would meet his end, but the nightmare was not over for the Astorathian people in what was collectively known as the Slums. Another child had been snatched. An Astorathian girl named Hellen had been snatched from her home moments prior to the Butcher’s capture. The brief moment of elation felt by the families segregated to the Slums died a swift and ugly death. The news burst into a renewed frenzy; it was like something out of a badly written serial drama. Just when you thought the show was over there was another twist no one saw coming.

For the next month Roc City remained in a frenzy; this time it would not wait with bated breath. While interviews and new reels pasted the Butcher’s swift sentencing on one channel, the search for Hellen, led by Vanus Kaufman once more. For a month the search continued day after day with no sign of the missing Astorathian girl. The public speculated the Butcher must have had another hiding spot where he stashed the bodies; it could be anywhere. Everyone knew Hellen was already dead, the news simply hadn’t been announced yet.

When the body was at last found it was as if most of the city didn’t care. They were done with her. In the Slums memorials were held for Hellen in the street as her people lifted her name to the stars with Astorathian songs of grief. It wasn’t enough: Hellen’s body had been horribly mutilated in every way possible. She’d been starved, beaten, burned, and raped. Multiple times. As had the other victims. But then it had never taken them a month to be found either. What the unfortunate soul had endured within that amount of time could never truly be known.

Her life didn’t mean anything. Not really. She was just dust. That’s all my people are: dust. But she wasn’t just dust to us. She was so much more.

Vanus Kaufman was in the news twice more. The second time showed him attending the Butcher’s execution, which was of course televised.

Then he disappeared and did not resurface for almost a year. When he did return, disgraced among his colleagues now more than ever - not only for being a death magician, but for the fact that he’d let a child die on his watch - Bazzel had a Theocracy badge of his own. But by this time any hope Bazzel might have felt had been squashed by his own experiences with work discrimination in the department: “They’ll let anyone work for us these days, won’t they…?”

In truth, Vanus Kaufman was nothing like his TV counterpart. He was short and fine-boned, with long fingered hands, the nails clipped and manicured in a way that struck Bazzel as particularly effeminate. He wore his dark brown hair swept back so that the ends hung down just past the collar of his jacket. Wasn’t there that saying about never meeting your heroes?

“Well, there it is,” the magician said with a sigh, gazing through the windshield of the borrowed vehicle. The brackets around his mouth deepened considerably. His eyes searched the shattered windows within view, perhaps searching for signs of anything out of the ordinary. And when it came to working as an agent of the Theocracy “anything out of the ordinary” wasn’t so out of the ordinary. He glanced at the Astorathian briefly. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

Bazzel had a hard time getting out of the car. His horns kept getting in the way. This is why I always walk to work or take the train, he thought.

While he struggled to get his head out of the vehicle, Vanus popped open the trunk. He slid his arms through the leather straps of a holster that he wore on his back. Attached to it was a five-foot-long staff almost tall as he was. The natural weapon of the magicians (which like guns, they required a license to carry, another way in which the Theocracy tried to maintain control over its constituents), was made from steel. The symbols and runes on the side caught the sunlight.

At last, Bazzel drew up beside him. Standing next to the magician was like standing next to a child playing with sticks, who thought being a Theocracy agent was a game, a fantasy to share with friends.

“Ready when you are,” he rumbled. He glanced at the staff on Vanus’s back. “What are you bringing that for? Expecting squatters to attack?” His own words dripped with undisguised mockery. I used to look up to you. It turns out you’re nothing more than a coward.

“If the squatters were smart, they’d stay away from this place,” the magician said in a voice that brooked no further comment. Mocking or otherwise. “Whatever we encounter in there…and I get the feeling we will encounter something, you won’t be able to take it out with your sidearm. Hence, the staff. I take it you brought yours with you just in case? I doubt we’ll need it, but you never know.”

Bazzel snorted, drawing aside the flaps of his coat to reveal the sawed-off shotgun he kept tucked inside like the dirtiest secret. “Happy now?”

To his surprise, the death magician actually smiled. There was real humor in that smile, warm and a little witty. The sunlight touched his eyes, which glowed with the light of an overcast sky. The air shimmered around him, soft gray waves of light wriggling through the air like a gentle tide. The effect was strangely…soothing. Suddenly he didn’t look so ridiculous carrying a staff that was almost tall as he was long. Perhaps it was the long, skinny arms that allowed him to carry it with grace. “If there are any wayward squatters in there, I’m sure they’ll think twice about messing with you. Shall we?”

I still don’t like you.

Bazzel took the lead while the death magician fell behind him. He supposed it made sense. He was the bigger of the two and he had the shotgun. He kicked aside crumpled up beer cans and twisted cigarette packs. The smell of mildew and rotting wood curdled in his nostrils, making his eyes sting. When he wiped at his eyes, he found himself staring up at the artifact of a religion he’d never known existed. A man had been nailed to pieces of wood crossed together, his face contorted in agony. What kind of god lets his creations butcher his own son? the Astorathian thought disgustedly. He doesn’t sound like much of a god to me.

The other cross was on the floor, surrounded by security tape. What was with every deity's fascination with crests and symbols?

Abruptly he realized the death magician had stopped in his tracks. He looked down at the Blackened Cross with wide eyes. They flickered like a lightbulb threatening to plunge the world into darkness. The glowing sphere around him thinned, a bubble on the verge of fading out of existence. He stood on the outer edge of the tape, mere inches from where the corpse had lain. His back remained stiff. His shoulders folded inward as if he wanted to fold in on himself. Cold sweat sheened his forehead and cheeks.

His eyes were canted to the left.

Bazzel looked over the death magician’s shoulder. There was nothing there except the gloom, nothing his eyes could detect. But that doesn’t mean nothing isn’t there. He can see the things I can’t.

Something was there alright, standing behind death magician.

He just couldn’t see it.

…

The moment Bazzelthorpe and he entered the old Christian church, Vanus knew there was something wrong with the place; that the horrible act that had taken place here was more than just senseless brutality. It was in the walls. In the rotting floorboards beneath their feet. The presence of evil chilled the air itself.

It was good they had come here during the day, when the volatile energies inside would not be as active. However, this did not mean they were entirely safe. The passing of a soul from the mortal realm to the ones that existed beyond always left a doorway open in their wake. Depending on the nature of how the person died had a major influence on what kind of entity that might have been. In cases such as this, those things tended to be ancient nasty things that made death preferable to encountering them. On the rare occasions the hapless soul survived such an encounter, they were lucky if their sanity was intact by the end of it. It was the Theocracy’s job to keep such events from taking place, but it was a job that never ended.

If it wasn’t for the fact the Astorathian had accompanied him on this investigation, he would have run back to Gwen with his proverbial tail between his legs and insisted she find someone else for the assignment. And if she still refused, he would hand her his staff and badge and quit on the spot. But the Astorathian was there and while it was clear he did not like Vanus (the death magician was starting to get the hunch this reason was personal and had spent the drive here wondering what that reason could be), his towering presence was a small comfort. It gave him something to focus on other than the nausea growing in his belly.

Judging from the way his tail was coiled into a tight, round ball, it seemed to the death magician that Bazzelthorpe did not want to be here either, if for wholly different reasons. What is your problem? Vanus wanted to demand. I don’t even know you. But before the words could leave his mouth, a crawling sensation creeped over his flesh, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

A painful cramp began to build in his belly. It was then he realized that the shield of mana he protected himself with to keep the darkness had begun to fade in his distraction. He pushed all thoughts of his mysterious new partner aside. With a push of determination the shield solidified.

Cordoned off by yellow security tape, the Blackened Cross of Chokmah waited for them in between the altar and the pews. The shadows around it were so thick the light emanating from Van’s staff could not penetrate it. And yet he was sure the Eye of Chokmah winked at him from the center of the Cross. Winked at him as if to say, You didn’t think you could escape me forever, did you? You had to know I would find you one day.

The darkness surrounded them, closing in on all sides, stygian and alive.

Vanus looked down at the Blackened Cross and felt afraid.

A voice spoke from the shadows, low and bestial and hungry: “Vanusssss…”

The voice spoke from behind him. He tried to turn his head to Bazzelthorpe, to ask for help, but he was frozen, and cold. He tried to cling onto the fraying threads of his thoughts. It was futile. They seethed out of his grasp, slippery as snakes.

He knew if he turned he would see something standing behind him. Something monstrous. Something that would reach out with clawed hands and grab him. Take him. Those strong, clawed fingers would clamp around his torso and pick him up. A jaw would open up like a black, yawning cavern would open with stalagmites for teeth. A black tunnel which would swallow him whole.

And of course the fucking Astarothian can’t see it, he thought.

“I can smell your fear,” the beast said. “And it smells good…”

If you don’t pay attention to it, if you don’t turn around and look at it, if you don't acknowledge its existence then it won’t touch you.

“Don’t turn around, don’t turn around…”

Suddenly it dawned on him that the high-pitched sing-songy voice he heard was his own.

“Are you alright?”

It was Bazzelthorpe. The Astarothian hovered close by, tall as a brick wall and just as solid. His eyes glowed a solid yellow. Lamps, Vanus thought. They’re like lamps. In his mind he imagined himself running towards them the way he might towards a pair of headlights on a pitch-black night. At the moment that was enough. At the moment that was everything. “Are you alright?” His voice sounded like rocks rolling down a canyon. Vanus closed his eyes, focusing on it the way a composer might focus on a single note.

“It’s really loud in here,” he said. He was trapped, suffocating from the strain of keeping the darkness at bay.

“Deny me all you want,” said the beast. “Don’t look over your shoulder. Lie to yourself. But deep down inside you know I will always be with you, a whisper in the back of your mind as well as your ears…”

“This is not good,” he said, nodding his head towards the symbol burned into the wood. “That is the mark of the archon Chokmah. You know who that is?”

The Astorathian nodded his head stiffly, a single down and then back up motion. “Of course.”

“This is that guy. And if it’s not him then it’s one of his followers. And he has many.”

Bazzelthorpe’s deep set eyes narrowed in something that might have been curiosity. Or suspicion. “You’re familiar with him?”

I don’t have time to go into a long-drawn-out explanation with you right now! Vanus wanted to scream. A hot knife was twisting into his gut, burrowing in his intestines. The cramps were so bad he feared he would defecate himself on the spot. Then I truly will die. At this point it was turning into the more desirable encounter.

Dots formed in the back of his mind. An ache settled in his back, nestling in between his shoulder blades. The darkness was shredding his thoughts to pieces, tearing them into pieces just as quickly as he could stitch them back together. The shield he had around himself flickered in and out of darkness, on the verge of giving out.

“Meet you back at the car,” was all he could manage to say.