Invasion Day: Emily White
From the case files of Logan House Publishing's Urban Fantasy:
White and Dorchester's Magic Shop.
Logan House Publishing Presents
From the World of ‘We Were Heroes’
Invasion Day: Emily White
By J.R. Logan
The sign above the door said White and Dorchester's. Magic Spells, Occult Books, Potions, Herbs, Fortune Telling, and Gourmet Sea Salt.
Emily White was a practitioner of the occult and a vampire. She had natural gray hair, dyed white to match her name. Gray ran true in the vampires of her family. As did being a bit short. Her boyfriend, Kurt Dorchester, a human, studied to be a mage and had a good reputation as an occult researcher. He was tall, with light brown hair. He wore the hair long, pulled into a ponytail that he tucked under the back of his shirt. Kurt on any day could be mistaken for a bass player in a metal band.
As for magical skill, Kurt was more knowledgeable in the occult and mystic traditions. He had attended the Arcanum to study magic but needed to improve with spells. In contrast, Emily had extraordinary magical talent as part of being a vampire. But she needed to hit the books more often than she did.
They lived in an apartment above a store hidden on a side street in the Old West End of Toledo, Ohio. 'White and Dorchester's Magic Shop'. The apartment, over time, filled up with books and crystals. Magic gathered in the apartment, making it comfy for a vampire. During the day Emily would sleep in a small coffin in the back of the walk-in closet while Kurt ran the magic shop and studied. It saved on having blackout blinds in the bed room.
At night Kurt would sleep in the bed, when Emily ran the shop selling herbs and potions to other Children of the Night. Toledo's vampire and magic community was not the size of Cincinnati’s but it did allow the shop to stay open.
Both had Class B Hero licenses for convenience and the occasional consulting. About once a month they'd have to solve an occult mystery for the Great Lakes Hero Association or a private client.
To make extra money during the day Emily could get up to tell fortunes to clients by appointment. She wore a cloak of darkness that veiled her in shadow. The fabric was a mixed blend of wool and umbra. It was stuffy, but it was better than catching fire from the sunlight. During a reading, Emily would gaze into a crystal ball or use a water basin. Clients seeking fortune-telling tended to be ordinary people with little or no destiny. Learning this made some people mad, and they'd walk out. But a few paid and left with relief. They knew they were free of any fate they didn't create. Most could change a fated vision with a bit of action. The heroes never came for their fortunes.
As the sun set, Emily and Kurt would wait to have a late supper, or for Emily, it was breakfast. On Wednesday nights, their regular guest was the Good Reverend Malcolm Jones. He served the local Pentecostal Church. A tall black man who had given up on a head of hair long ago. Reverend Jones, at first, had come over to meet the new shop owner. Only to learn they were practitioners of the occult. He challenged them on their beliefs. To discover Kurt had a very mature and stable spiritual life. The three could talk for hours.
Also, Reverend Jones was a salt snob, like Emily. The shop made more money selling salt than anything else. The three would sit in the early evenings doing salt tastings. They cooked beef or pork on a small grill in spring and summer on the balcony. Over time it turned into a late supper. Reverend Jones always looked to up his BBQ game.
When the meat was waiting for the coals to heat up, Winged cats would fly down from the trees. They were fey creatures, attracted to the residual magic of the shop and the smell of meat. If there was an opening, a cat would drop to the balcony, grab a piece of meat and flutter away. Emily would use a spray bottle if they landed on the railing, the cats would hiss and fly away.
***
This week Kurt was out of town at an occult symposium. Reverend Jones fanned the coals on the grill.
"It's almost ready," Jones said. Emily sliced a pork shoulder into strips.
"Hows things with you and Kurt?" Jones said.
Emily set the knife down. "A mixed relation ship is hard enough, but Kurt spends so much time at school and then working the shop while the suns up. He sleeps through the night."
"You only see each other at dawn or dusk?" Jones said.
"Mostly," Emily said.
"Some people would see that as the perfect marriage," Jones said.
"We're not married," Emily said.
"Sorry, But it is something I encourage," Jones said.
"I not opposed to the idea but Kurt has been so busy the last few years," Emily said.
"If your not having fun living in sin your doing it wrong," Jones said.
"Reverend Jones!" Emily said hands on her hips.
"Everyone goes through a ruff patch wait it out and see," Jones said.
They finished the evening paring a ground Sumatrin black peppercorn with a pinch of gray salt. It went well with roasted pork. As the moon came up, Emily reopened the shop. Between customers, she read at the counter from her dark tomes.
***
Before sunrise, a client called asking for a morning reading. Ms. Kelly had been seeing Emily for years. Back when Emily did fortune-telling out of her Mom's basement. Emily couldn't make an excuse to turn Ms. Kelly down. She would come in when feeling anxious. Emily would read the fortunes to set her mind at ease.
Kurt had once sat in on a reading. He felt Ms. Kelly had a latent prophetic talent. Latent prophecy was dangerous for accuracy. Emily’s past readings had never involved Ms. Kelly's fate. Always someone else. Now for the last two days, she couldn't sleep at night.
Ms. Kelly showed up at nine, and the reading took an hour. Emily looked into the pool. She used sea salts from a small pouch under her cloak to get a better vision. It held a cloudy aura. Then pain, fire, and death. It ended with a vision of the lovers' card and the death card from the Tarot. Ms. Kelly had no concept of the Tarot. Emily did and knew it was her interpretation of the vision that evoked the cards into the fortune. The vision ended with the city in flames. But not the cartoon flames of a symbolic vision. Actual buildings in a clear vision burned. Both had seen the clear vision in the basin.
Ms. Kelly staggered out of her chair. "I…I should go," she said.
Emily looked back into the basin at her reflection. Nothing more came to her. Something was wrong. She went to the phone and looked through a list of numbers; She found the Hero Control Hotline. It rang busy, then disconnected. Emily called again a minute later, and the line disconnected. She tried the Great Lakes United Sybil office, no answer. Then she remembered. No one ever called the Sibyls. They called you. She hung up the phone as the sounds of explosions started outside.
***
Anytime Kurt went out of town, he left a list of spells for emergencies. Along with the spells, he included components, if any, and instructions. Now it looked like an emergency with giant monster ants running wild in the city. The magic circle Emily had set up had nested glyphs of a hexagon, octagon, pentagram, pentacle, square, and last in the center, a triangle.
The magic circle glowed with azure lightning as a black hole opened inside. Air about the room cooled. Horns came out of the blackness bent and twisted, dripping with sickly pus. The head was a large human skull with tatters of flesh clinging to the pale white bone. Two eyes of hot ash looked at Emily. She smiled under the robes of shadow.
"Agathoth. I summon you. Serve me Demon. Take my enemies as sacrifice," Emily said.
She didn’t even need to look at the notes. The hunched body of bruised, mottled flesh pulled itself from the circle. Deformed shoulders and arms twice as long forced it to elbow walk along the ground. It said nothing in response. Then with a speed that would surprise, it ran for the door.
Agathoth ran amuck in the neighborhood to smash the ant creatures with its fists. The Demon grabbed one ripping the jaws apart, sending it skittering back. Agathoth pressed forward as the Aliens surged. Bile dripping claws tore open the chitin armor like paper. Emily followed behind, wrapped in darkness. The creatures seemed to not notice her.
Over the next three hours, the city burned. Emily and Agathoth worked their way through the residential neighborhood. Lake Force Toledo unleashed long-constrained elemental powers. In the distance, plumes of smoke over the city blocked out the sun. There were far-off claps of thunder Emily knew to be punches thrown by heavies, the more powerful Heroes in Toledo. Alien ships flew overhead, dropping ant creatures.
The Demon grew in power as it killed. Every few dozen feet, it would stop to devour an ant. With its claws, the Demon pealed the front plate from the head. It then scooped out the brains to eat them like an oyster.
They had gone three blocks from the magic shop. Aliens swarmed around the New Hope Pentecostal Church. Conflict pulled more Aliens where there was fighting. Emily had seen people from the neighborhood run into the building. A swarm had gathered on the steps of the Church.
"Defend the church," Emily pointed.
The Demon snorted but shuffled over to the steps. It took one Alien by the mandibles, with a twist the head came off. Agathoth used it as a club. It kept going until foul yellow bile and blue gore covered the church steps. The Demon chuckled.
***
"Get in the church!" Reverend Jones said as Ms. Kelly ran past him into the building.
People had run inside. He was at a loss. Mrs. Reverend led the women and children to the basement. The Reverend and two ushers waited at the doors. Small groups of ant creatures moved from house to house. The three men watched the alien creatures raid homes. It went on for hours.
Jones looked at the three-eighty pistol in his hand. His dad had ‘found it’ in the seventies and the Reverend had never fired it. No one else had brought a gun.
What am I going to do? Jones thought.
The ants that didn't look right bunched up at a house and then turned to the Church.
"Get inside," Jones said.
The ushers slammed the doors closed. Tables and chairs braced the old hardwood. He winced with the first hit on the doors. He could hear claws scrape into the stone door frame.
"Go down stairs," Jones said.
"Reverend?" The usher said.
"Go down stairs."
The ushers and Ms. Kelly ran down to the basement. They looked back at the Reverend.
I can't watch this happen. It's not suicide if I die fighting, Jones thought.
The doors rattled, and the wood shuttered with a bang. Then it stopped. A moment later came a knock at the door, shave-and-a-hair-cut. Then a second knock. Jones moved the table away. And he opened the door.
"Hi," Emily said from under the cloak of darkness. A demon stood behind her. Yellow gore pooled on the steps of the Church. Bits of aliens lay scattered about the parking lot.
"What?…What did you do?" Jones said.
"I got us some help," Emily said.
"Emily. At what cost?" Jones said.
The Demon lifted an alien head, snapping it off the body. With sharp claws, it sliced open the skull to slurp down the brains.
"He works for food," Emily said.
A flight of scarab-shaped ships flew over the Church. They landed a block away, dropping more ants.
"This is never going to end," Jones said.
"Agathoth. Go demon defeat my enemies," Emily said.
It ran off. The slaughter continued. Over time nearing late afternoon, something changed. The Ants stood around and then turned back into the landers.
Agathoth ran up a ship's ramp, slashing Aliens as they scrambled to get aboard; he reached in, pulled one out, snapped the neck, or gouged the eyes, then repeated. Once inside, Agathoth ran his claws along the sides of the inner bug. Deep gashes ripped open muscle and connective tissue.
In the front, behind the clear eyes at what looked like a brain stem, an ant ran its antenna over the brain. The Demon slashed it aside and drove its fist deep into the stem. The wings stopped, and the body relaxed to the ground. The other two ships flew off, crowded with aliens. Many hanging off the sides.
"Did we win?" Jones said, with Emily walking behind.
"Good job Agathoth. I'll send you back now," Emily said.
The Demon sat on the edge of the ramp, slurping down the brains of the ant creatures.
Emily focused her mind and said the ritual words of banishing. Agathoth popped open another skull and chuckled. He raised the brains in a toast to her efforts. Reverend Jones next to Emily. He looked at the Demon and then back at Emily. Nothing happened.
"You said you could banish him," Jones said.
"That should have worked," Emily said.
"This is why you don't mess with the occult," Jones said.
"Let me try again," Emily said.
"Hold on. Let me…Demon in the name of Jesus Christ, I cast you out. I order you back to hell," Jones said. The Demon stopped eating.
Its voice was deep and rolled with a growl. "I have knowledge of the Word. Not mere faith like you Priest. I knew the Word before time. And I don't like him," Agathoth said. The Demon returned to eating dead aliens.
"Oh.” Jones said turning to Emily. “What's going to happen? What is he going to do?"
"If it eats enough, Agathoth will have a material body and stay forever," Emily said. The Demon laughed.
"Emily!" Kurt called out. The Reverend and Emily looked to see Kurt walk from the Church.
"Kurt!"
Emily ran over to him. Kurt grabbed her, pulled back the hood to see her face, and kissed her. Agathoth walked off the ruined alien ship. “You have business with me mage?"
Kurt reached into Emily's cloak. “Uhm Hey,” Emily said.
He tossed a handful of salt at Agathoth. The Demon screamed and blinked away.
"Ah?" Emily said, pulling the hood back over her face. Her skin had flushed with the sunlight and started to smoke.
"I missed you. Good work with the Demon," Kurt said.
"Good work? That sketchy shit ran out of control," Jones said.
Kurt reached under the hood to touch Emily's cheek.
"Rev, a pinch of salt banishes Agathoth. I left Emily a note with the summon instructions," Kurt said.
"I…skimmed it?" Emily said.
"Skimmed? No more summoning demons," Jones said.
"How did you get back from Florida?" Emily said.
"We stopped our landings by noon. The Arcanum teleported everyone home after. I'm the youngest so I went last," Kurt said.
The End
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