The Rule of Three

  I rushed to his side and took his hand.

  “It hurts!” he said. He was clutching his chest as if an alien was going to burst out of it.

  My mind started to race. The lights were still going on and off in strobes, but the room was oddly silent and calm. I pushed Aaron onto his back and took his hands from his chest. The veins on his neck were strained and red, and his chest fared no better. My medical knowledge wasn’t fantastic, but it seemed to me like he couldn’t breathe, or he was having a heart attack.

  So, with an image of his heart and lungs firmly in my mind, I pressed my hands to his chest, closed my eyes, and visualized a green light emanating from my breast traveling down my arms and into his body. I wanted to calm him, to relax him so that we could speak, and to dislodge whatever was stopping him from breathing. When I opened my eyes, the undersides of my palms were glowing faintly green and Aaron was starting to breathe more easily.

  “That’s it,” I said, “Breathe, breathe.”

  Aaron heaved in slow, deep breaths, in and out. My Magick was working! But my victory was cut short when a foul odor wafted my way. I shook my head and turned my nose away from the stench of rot and piss, but it was too late. An involuntary gag worked its way up my throat and I almost threw up on Aaron.

  I closed my eyes again and imagined three brilliant silver rings descending from the ceiling to encapsulate me and Aaron in their protective light. From out of nowhere, someone grabbed a great clump of my hair and pulled up so hard the motion forced me to my feet.

  “Fuck!” I yelled. My concentration broke, and the imaginary rings fizzled into nothing. My scalp felt like it was on fire, and not just because the tug had aggravated a previous hurt. But because I couldn’t see anyone around me, only a quiet apartment with flickering lights.

  I was about to stretch my psychic awareness into the Nether when the activity in the apartment came to an abrupt halt. The lights shut off and then returned to normal, the heaviness in the atmosphere lifted, and even the temperature started to slowly rise. I hadn’t noticed until then just how cold it had been in the apartment.

  Did all this mean that it had left?

  Aaron’s groans sucked my attention in like a black hole. I knelt beside him again and ran my hand across his burning face and through his hair. “I’m here, and it’s gone,” I said, “Just breathe through this. You’re gonna be fine.”

  He reached for my hand and grabbed it. “Amber,” he said. His voice was coarse and rough still. “I’m so fucking glad you came.”

  “I came as fast as I could. I just want you to feel better now.”

  “It won’t stop,” he said, “The pain, it keeps coming.”

  “I know. But I won’t let it take you, you understand?”

  I had to figure out how to get this thing away from Aaron for good, but Frank had told me that it wouldn’t be easy. Demons had a tendency to stick to people. Getting rid of them often required an Exorcism, or figuring out how they came to be attached to a person in the first place and destroying whatever link they had.

  And even then, some of those victims of Demonic possession still needed Exorcisms. I had no idea what kind of power this Inhuman Demonic Spirit had and hoped that severing the link alone would be enough. I hadn’t the first clue on how to perform an Exorcism; having shared a conversation with an Exorcist once in Barcelona was one thing, but performing the rite was a completely different thing.

  Luckily, Aaron’s temperature seemed to return to normal, but the pain remained. It was in his chest, shoulders and stomach; but his legs and arms was where he felt it the worst. I had never heard of an invisible entity that could cause so much physical damage to a person.

  “Can you stand?” I asked.

  Aaron nodded and, slowly, rose to his feet. He used the fridge for support.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said. “We have to get this thing away from you and get out of here.”

  “And how are we going to accomplish all that?” His voice was forced now and almost guttural.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you don’t have a plan.”

  “No, I thought the wards would help.”

  Aaron would clutch his chest tightly every couple of moments and double over with pain. His body was wracked!

  “We need to get you painkillers,” I said.

  “I… feel like it’s twisting my insides,” Aaron said.

  I couldn’t feel my legs. My brain turned to mush. I had no idea what to do, but I knew who did. I grabbed my phone and dialed Frank’s number.

  Aaron went to his knees. “Amber!”

  I nearly dropped my phone.

  “I can’t!” he said “I need to get out!”

  “Out? What? Where will you go?”

  Aaron shot upright and headed for the front door.

  Frank picked up on his end and asked “How did it go?”

  “Aaron, no! You can’t just leave!” I said.

  “Amber?” Frank asked.

  Aaron opened the door and turned to face me, his piercing blue eyes as alive as ever. “I’m going to finish this. Right now.” His voice was like a lion’s roar, primal. Animal. I stood rooted to the spot, electrified with fear as Aaron turned away and bolted into the corridor. I could hear him bounding down the stairs.

  But was it really him? Had the Demon succeeded in possessing him after all? Or was he just being stupid and big headed?

  “Amber! What in the fuck is going on?” Frank sounded desperate.

  I struggled to process what had just happened. “F-Frank.” I said.

  “Where are you? I’m coming to you right now.” He knew something was wrong.

  “Aaron’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone? Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But I did know; Aaron had gone to his death.

  CHAPTER 27

  I wanted to wait for Frank to arrive, but Aaron had moved so fast. He could’ve been half way to the woods by the time Frank got to Aaron’s place. Every second counted, and time was ticking.

  Gods-dammit.

  I ran out of the apartment, burst onto the streets, and hailed a cab. Aaron was on foot so I would beat him to wherever he was going in a vehicle, but my car was too far away. I would catch him in a cab. At least, that was the thought. I had no idea how far he had already gotten, but the thought of Aaron alone, in the woods, possibly lost… it burned a sense of urgency into me like a hot brand and I had lost the ability to think.

  The cab driver took directions well. I sat, lost in silent thought, in the back seat as the town faded to black behind us and we made the quiet drive into the same road I had driven down with Frank and Damien not a few nights ago.

  Aaron.

  Damien.

  Demons.

  Nuptis Profanum.

  “Where did you say you were going again?” the cabbie said.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “There’s nothing out here. What’s a pretty thing like you doing going out into the middle of nowhere?”

  I wanted to snap at him and tell him that it was none of his business. For all he knew I was going to kill him and bury him in the snow.

  “Nothing. I’m meeting a friend,” I said. “My boyfriend,” I added.

  “Party, or…?”

  “Party.”

  “Ah good, ‘tis the season huh?”

  I shot him angry eyes in the rear-view. In retrospect, I maybe shouldn’t have. But the frustration building within me was starting to claw at my skin. A trickle of Power escaped my containment and the mirror cracked, splitting my reflection into pieces.

  The cabbie cursed. “Shit!”

  He struggled with the wheel and the car spun wild. I held on to the head rest in front of me for dear life; I thought I was going to die! But the car skidded to a slow halt in the middle of the road, and I was left panting. Alive, but panting.

  “Fuck!” the cabbie said, “Fuck, fuck. Are you okay, Miss?”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, brushing crazy hair out of my face.

  “That was close.”

  He was breathing through the nerves, and I wanted to help him. After all, I had caused this whole thing. But a slight chill raced down my spine before I could speak again, and I recognized the feeling.

  “I’m going to get out here,” I said.

  “What? But it’s just down that road.”

  I rummaged around for a twenty and handed it to the cab driver.

  “This is too much,” he said, but I was already gone.

  I pulled the coat around myself and hugged it shut as I made my way into the snow covered woods. There were no tracks in the snow, no visible signs I could follow. Nothing that would help bring me to my destination—not that I even knew where exactly that was. But I had made it here in only twenty minutes. Aaron, on foot, would take way longer than that… wouldn’t he? I had time. Time to get to where I was going to go and stop Aaron from getting himself killed.

  The forest was dark; too dark to see the features in front of me with any clarity. So I decided to use the flashlight on my phone to light my way, but the brilliant light barely illuminated more than a few yards in front of me. Somehow I had a signal, so I dialed Frank’s number but he didn’t pick up. No messages either. By now he should have arrived at the address I had given him and noticed I wasn’t there. He would have called. Why hadn’t he called? And why wasn’t he answering his phone?

  The night’s icy chill bit at my face like a harpy, zipping in and out in quick, sharp attacks. Worse, my fingers were starting to go numb and the phone felt like an ice cube in my hand. I didn’t know how long I would be able to keep it up and cursed myself for not wearing gloves out tonight. But then I had an idea.

  “Horned God of the sun,” I said, starting to chatter, “Send me your radiance.”

  A single pulse of Power emanated from my chest and filled me as the words left my lips. Welcome warmth came with the Magick and my body started to thaw. It was like being submerged in perfectly warmed water and then stepping out into the cold air, watching the fingers of steam rise from off the skin.

  At least the cold wouldn’t bother me anymore, but what about Aaron? How could anyone survive this kind of cold, this alien cold? It was unreal for the temperature to have dipped so low; unreal and unfortunate. Of course, it was just my luck that I would have to go into the woods on one of the coldest nights of the year. But I couldn’t remember Aaron even putting shoes or a shirt on before leaving. I was sure he did, but the memory eluded me.

  A twig snapped nearby and I spun to see what had caused the noise. I expected hooded men, waiting for me, but saw no one. I wanted to call out into the darkness but I didn’t. I couldn’t. If the light from my phone wasn’t already giving away my position a loud shout into the darkness certainly would have.

  Fuck it.

  “Aaron?” I said, but the woods swallowed my voice. “Aaron!”

  If the hooded men came, they would have my Power to contend with. This time I wouldn’t hold back. The other night I wanted answers. Tonight I wanted to end this, and I could feel the Power pulsating between my fingertips.

  Another twig snapped. This time there were two consecutive cracks. I stopped in my tracks and raised my phone. The copse of trees before me was like a tunnel. The trees towered over me and arched into each other creating a kind of blackened rib cage of crooked bones. There was no one there, no man nor animal, of course, but it felt like there was. I was either going crazy, or something was messing with me; and for the first time in my life, I hoped for the former.

  The simple fact remained that the woods were coming alive. Either that or my senses were becoming hyper sensitive. But every flutter of a bird’s wings reached my ears, each trod of a hoofed animal slushing on the snow, every creak of the withered old bark. I wasn’t sure where this alertness was coming from, but I was thankful for it. Nowhere in my immediate vicinity was there any real danger; only wildlife, living, surviving. Dealing with the snow.

  I could almost picture families of deer or birds, searching for any morsel of food they could eat before heading back to their warm homes. I wished I was one of them. A warm home seemed like a pretty good deal right about now.

  Many times I fought the urge to call out again and draw attention to myself so that someone—anyone—would come and break me away from the silence of my lonely trek, but attracting the wrong kind of attention would be a mistake. Again Aaron crossed my mind, though this time he was naked and running on all fours through the snow. On his back, a tiny devil was riding him like a mount.

  No.

  I shook the thought away.

  Aaron hadn’t been possessed. The entity had not gotten that close. When he sped out of his apartment he did so of his own volition. I had seen that look of determination on his face before. It wasn’t foreign to me. Maybe he was half-possessed at that point, but the decision was still Aaron’s. Fool. To think he could come out here on his own and square off against those inhumanly strong, hooded men. I had to find him, and I had to find him fast.

  I took a turn beneath a set of low hanging brambles I thought I remembered from earlier and emerged at the mouth of a familiar stretch. Bare black trees crawled out of the snow like bony, dead hands and stretched into the sky. The ground seemed firmer here, as if the snow were thinner or more tightly packed. I had been here with Damien and Frank the other night. I was sure I was on the right track.

  My pace quickened to the point where it almost crossed into a jog. I no longer needed the light from my phone to guide me. I was running on instinct alone, following my own internal compass and the vivid memory of that fateful place that still lingered at the forefront of my mind.

  Then I saw it, and everything shattered.

  “No,” I said. “No! Fuck!”

  Before me, a tunnel made of arching black trees beckoned and heaved with the wind. I hadn’t seen this part of the woods the other night with Damien and Frank; this was vivid because I had been here not a few minutes ago. Somehow I had circled around, and I was totally lost.

  Hello little piggy.

  That’s what the voice had said to me from within the dark depths of Aaron’s bedroom. It had just said the words in reverse. Funny how the weirdest thoughts come to the front of one’s mind at the strangest possible moment.

  CHAPTER 28

  I had never been lost in the woods before. Raven’s Glen was small, and while the wilderness around it was vast, the trails were well marked. One would have a hard time losing their way under normal conditions, but these weren’t normal conditions. For starters, I wasn’t on a trail. And so much snow had fallen I wouldn’t have been able to spot one even if I had been standing on it.

  Fucked, I thought, I’m fucked.

  My breathing quickened as I stared at the black ribcage of trees, heaving like a dead man’s chest as a gust of cold wind rushed through them. I spun around in a three hundred and sixty degree arc to try and gain my bearings, but I couldn’t make head or tails of exactly where I was in relation to the road. How could I have left no footprints in the snow?

  The time on my phone told me it had been almost a full half hour since I stepped out of the taxi and into the woods, so how had I managed to lose myself and get turned around? It didn’t make any sense! I thought for sure I would have found Aaron by now; that I would have run into him in the woods or heard him crunching around on the snow like I did those animals earlier. But I couldn’t find any trace of him or anyone else.

  Even the animals seemed to have gone back into their holes.

  I reached into my shirt and produced a silver pentacle necklace, which I unclasped from my neck and held in my right hand. Then I slipped my phone into my pocket and let the pendant dangle in midair like a pendulum. Focusing a trickle of Power into the pendant, which gently was gently with the biting breeze, I said “Show me no,” and the necklace began to sway from right to left. “Show me yes,” I said, after letting the necklace settle f
or a moment, and the pendant moved across and swung from front to back.

  Satisfied, I said, “Have I been turned around naturally?”

  No.

  “Am I being followed?”

  Yes.

  I swallowed hard. “Show me the way back to the road.”

  The pendulum swayed from left to right. When it reached the apex of its swing, however it stayed fixed, pointing to my right. I twisted my body around the pendulum to align with the direction in which it was pointing, watching as it oddly remained fixed to the same point in space. This was the way to the road. I was sure the Magick wasn’t lying.

  “Now… show me Aaron,” I said.

  The pendant relaxed and fell to the center again, swinging with inertia. Then it started a light sway before fixing itself to a different direction. It was pointing North West now, exactly opposite from the way to the road. The pendant was telling me to go deeper into the woods if I wanted to find Aaron, through the black ribcage and beyond it. But before I could take a step, a thought entered my mind unbidden: what if Aaron is already dead?

  Aaron, dead.

  My mind conjured an image of his body lying stiff on the cold snow, dead and purple. It made my head spin. I willed the image to disappear for fear that it would destroy my concentration, and replaced it instead with an image of the two of us at my place. It was the night of my attack a few months ago; the first time the old Sheriff had tried to kill me.

  Damien wasn’t the only person who had saved my life. Aaron did too that night. If he hadn’t come, Gods only know what would have happened to me. Maybe the Sheriff would have kept hitting me until I fell dead, or he may have taken me away. No one would have suspected a thing, then, and I would be dead now.

  But that wasn’t all.

  Aaron looked after me that night. Helped me with my wounds, spent the night at my place. He protected me. I so desperately wanted to go back to that moment and wrap myself in it. Life wasn’t easy then, what with all the secrets, but it was easier than it was now. I had never been the kind of girl to yoyo between guys, but Damien had made it real easy for me to remember the good times with Aaron; time would tell if I would be grateful or royally pissed off at him for that.