It’s inevitable. The people that got away. The ones who are trying to forget; the ones convincing themselves that they drank too much. That it was a hallucination. Those people aren’t prepared for what is hunting them now.

I wish I could tell you that there is some kind of group that watches for this kind of thing, but the so called Age of Reason, the inquisition brought on by a misinterpretation of a single line in the Christian Bible, and that same inquisition used to eradicate rivals.

Fuck it… Suffice it to say that humanity, for a bunch of idiotic reasons killed off most knowledgeable practitioners. So now we have these newbs with a smidge of ability and a bunch of youth summoning up demons and ghosts. Me, I’d let it run its course. It’s a damn shame but they brought it on themselves.

Sounds harsh, right. I’ve tried teaching, I’ve tried intervening but nothing teaches these kids. Their lives are too easy. Sounds like sour grapes and maybe it is. Maybe I should have found these kids before they started the ritual, before they got it into their heads that it would be a hoot. But then what, watch them every minute? Take them on as apprentices? What if they choose to walk? Then what they do is my responsibility, after all I could have stopped it…

Screw it, enough of this pity party. Somewhere there’s a barstool and a Jack Blue waiting for me.

I wipe the phone down after calling the local precinct. Caution is more useful than bullets. Hopefully, they’ll get the girl buried. Bring a little peace to her parents.
The bartender slips me a ounce of weed. It’s nice to see commerce is alive and well. It’s not for me, too mild a high, but now he’s complicit in a crime and less likely to describe the guy who used the phone.

I swing out of the parking lot and drive down the road, lots of medical clinics in this area. I drop the weed off at a friend’s shop, she is provides hospice to cancer patients. While I idle in the parking lot waiting for her to send someone to collect, I clear out the clingers and remora. Bottom feeders of the spirit world. The look like mouths with razor sharp teeth and long eel bodies. She’s paid up to the end of the month, it’s all part of the service.

Most successful recovery rate in the area, you’d think they’d be pounding on my door but I’m not theatrical enough, not enough chanting and sage smudging. That shit is either window dressing or a focus for a lazy mind.

Maybe I’ve just been doing this too long, or maybe I don’t want to think about the next dead kid.

I’ve seen the darkest parts of humanity. I’ve watched civilizations drink their greatness down and burn themselves on the altar of their pride. But I’ve seen selflessness and generosity. Love. Everytime I give up on them, everytime I think they just aren’t worth it, they surprise me.

Why 5

Sometimes when a spirit comes through to our world it’s disoriented. It lashes out at whoever opened the way. This is not that. I don’t know what this is. I walk out to my car and get in.

If this were a decade ago, I would have called the police from a pay phone. As it is I’ll need to figure something else out. I can’t just leave her all alone in there. Her family deserves to know.

There is a restaurant near here. Restaurants tucked into neighborhoods, what’s old is new again. They specialize in crepes. Pretty delicious and they have a landline. I think it’s meant to be ironic. But it’ll do.

They say that love conquers all.
And for the most part they’re right. I’ve seen it topple kingdoms and cause the slaughter of thousands. But true love, true love conquers truth. I’ve seen it destroy gods, lay waste to hope, and infect populations. There is nothing more destructive than love. Nothing more despicable than those that cast aside duty for love.

Why 4

You know, standing over the corpse of a dead girl isn’t as sexy as all those cop shows make it out to be. It’s not the smell, it’s all the hungry ghosts. They swirl around drinking the essence of the dead. Waiting for the mourners, waiting for their pain. I’m not saying that there aren’t happy spirits carousing in playgrounds, but I’ve never met them. Maybe it’s the company I keep.

Time to get to work.
I can feel her ghost, hovering and hiding.
She’s in the first aetheric.
To start, I spin a spool of energy out, life force distilled. Then I shape a window from this world to that. It forms and the chaos of the recently dead, the small elements and weak attachments comes into focus. Through it all I see her form. More solid, but missing peices. A surge of power and I force the clutter away, another and I open the window, a third and she stands before me. Confused and afraid, no god to claim her. The white gods detritus all over her, as it clouds all these young fools.

She’s missing chunks, something has taken bites out of this poor girl. She’s missing her tongue, her heart and liver. Lots of nutrients in the liver but I’m proper fucked. No tongue, no info.

But this is confirmation, no mortal killer did this. With a mortal, there may be bits missing from the body, but the spirit is another matter entire. She should be intact. This wasn’t just desecration, this was hunger.

Do you know why gods have priesthoods? It’s so that they can tell their followers the shape of the god. So that the god can maintain identity in a shifting mortal world. Without it, the god becomes shaped by the majority will of its followers. Which in turn twists the god from the shape they desires. It is symbiosis, and can be destructive both for the god and for the followers. Like a turbine spinning out of control.

Chapter 3

There is a central circle that has been destroyed. Whatever significance the individual sigils represented has been swept clear. The body of a young woman is closest to the circle and the others are either around the circle or it appears that they are running from it. Not that doing so did much good. Twelve children cut down, their blood marring the peaceful river bed. Flys have started on the bodies already. This part sucks.

I reach into their pockets. Ignoring the soft sqish, rigor having come and gone, I rifle through their ID. College students it looks like. Fine ASU students out for a little rub and tickle away from their roommates. I pocket the cash. Hey, they’ll never miss it. This gig doesn’t have health insurance and by the time this is through I think I may need whatever cushion I can get. Better than fixing a horse race, that shit always comes at a price. Even if it is just convincing the local criminals you’re not cutting in on their action.

There is a trail of blood leading away. Spatters every few feet, leading up to where a car was parked. Someone walked away from this place.

Normally I’d do a little magic and track this thing down. But this well has sucked down all traces. Instead, I get to wait for the first body to show up.
I should never have answered my phone.

There are times, weeks, when I forget what I am. Torn between the working persona and the family persona. Between the good guy, good date persona and who I really am. When I’m alone in the world for awhile, those masks fall away. They disappear like the temporary illusions they are and all that is left is me. I move with purpose, seeing it all, moving as I will, free from all constraint. Social moores float to the background and the only rules are thin and self imposed. The world dances and I dance with it. Not in counterpoint but as I will it. Every step, every second a brilliant diamond of clarity. Then the power ebbs, flowing away as all power must. And I come crashing down into this mortal meat body. You want to know what it feels like? It is indescribable, what I’ve written here is the description of quantum physics to a chimpanzee. Unless you wield it, become it. How could you ever know.

Chapter 2
2 days ago

My phone rang in the quiet hour before dawn. A voice, solemn and deep, describes a place in the desert. Then it’s gone. Some messenger spirits positively delight in technology, even if they don’t quite grasp that it needs to be turned on to work. I get dressed in cool clothes, the suns up soon and I’d rather not melt. 112 today, a nice normal July day. Looking through the dresser full of odds and ends I find and clip my knife to my pocket. Out my front door and into the cool predawn. I drive an old Chevy truck. What can I say, it was cheap. It’s not like this gig pays much.

I drive east to the Bee line Highway until I’m right near the casino, right on the edge of the place of power, either built there on purpose or someone was lucky or stupid. All that hope and excitement. All that desperation and grinding down of the human spirit. Normally these places seethe with little spirits feeding on the bits and pieces of hope and misery. But this place just tips it all over into the wellspring a couple of miles north. The magical equivalent of dumping chemical runoff into a lake.

Past the casino I turn down a rock strewn road. It twists and turns back beyond the point where civilization mars the landscape. Down into a dry riverbed. Deep gravel lines the sides, you can almost feel the weight of years and water pressing down. In the middle is a cleared out area, a firepit strewn with cheap beer bottles and bodies. Something bad happened here, happened last night. I’d like to say I felt it coming but the truth is, so much bad shit is happening at any one time, it all just melts together. I can see the outline of a failed ritual circle. Failed because if it had done its job these kids would still be alive. This was a holy place once. A place where sky meets earth, where earth meets water. Where the scent of dry timbers burning lingers on the air. But thanks to the casino, darker things lurk near the surface. Still they should have been safe. Just a bunch of college kids who read the wrong sociology book. A little drunk and alot stupid.

Usually they just chant some words they have half translated, scream their frustrations, then fuck in the water shaped gravel. That would have been bad enough, the gods can be a puerile bunch. Maybe the kids would have had a run of good luck, if their performance was pleasing. But some asshole thought that they should sacrifice a animal too.

That bloodletting… I could feel the lurch as something tore itself through the spirit world into ours. What we in the business call a 3rd aetheric to first aetheric transfer, but only among the stuffed shirt set.

This is bad. Something has ripped it’s way through and it is hungry.

Prologue

Don’t let my facade fool you.
This jovial face, friendly enough if dour, is but another in a series of masks that I wear.

There are other darker aspects I may call up, pieces I have discarded but not forgotten.

It is not the rage you need fear but the cold. When my hands shake with it, when all else is still then you may fear, if not for your life then for your soul.

I will destroy all that you hold dear and when you stand in the ashes your
life has become wondering where it all went wrong, I will take you apart
piece by piece, until all you know is pain.

Not a subtle balance. Not half of what I could do if I reached for darker masks still. But I find I am no longer as cruel as I once was.

chapter 1
There is a cadence to the world. Its slow and pulsing. Sometimes I can
almost feel it around me. But not tonight. Tonight there is the body of the missing girl I was tracking splayed out before me like a butchered hog. Her amber hair and sparkly dress soaking in a pool of her own blood. She’s died for nothing. Run to ground like an animal, cornered and afraid. Maybe the next one will be different, maybe I’ll get notified in Time. Maybe not. Gods are fickle that way.

My name is Dominic Dostra and I’m a priest. No particular denomination, most of my gods no longer have followers. They mostly want to be left alone. Unfortunately, most people aren’t that bright.

His warm,  softness entered me.  Filling me, pushing heat radiating through and out into the night. Each thrust pulling a startled cry.  I clung to him, legs wrapped around his muscled thighs. 
I float lost, each stroke touching me deep and, like a live wire, grounding me.  I feel it building,  deep in my chest, a scream to drown out the world.  His soft firm lips find mine, tongue sliding over tongue matching the pulse of him.  His fingers, working a magic I can barely sense right at the ragged edge. 
It rushes across me sudden, the power bowing me back, pulling me from his embrace.  The cold night wind mixing with the sharp spiked pleasure.  More, more don’t let it stop.  I don’t know if I spoke aloud but he started pounding into me, like those first gentle minutes were someone else.  Hard, one, two, pause, three, pause, his cock deep inside, pause.  He repeats, he varies. 
I’m soon lost to the artistry of it.  Waves of red pleasure take me. His warmth spills into me wet and knowing. My eyes open looking deep into his blue eyes burning with the knowledge that I am his.  My heart leaps up. I pull him back down. My mouth devouring him. He pulls back.  Eyes holding me, Michael pulls out a silk handkerchief, he pushes into, cleaning me up as his warm cum spills across the hood of his Mercedes. 

“No,” he growled, pushing me onto the hood of his car, “now.”
He leaned in, lips brushing against my neck. His hand reaching down, my pulse quickens, as his tongue hovers over my carotid. The sound of a zipper fills the swiftly falling night. Heat and dexterity giving, his mouth, his tongue tasting me. The cool air brushing my thighs. My pants having come off in the moments rise and fall. A long, slow deep sound fills the air as Michaels strong rough hand reaches inside me filling me. I whimper against his curls. His knuckles kneading me. “Now, now, now”