The car ride was somber and quiet. It was uneventful, but I knew we were all still trying to understand what happened and how this could even happen. We were just a bunch of high school kids at the end of the day. Now, they were following me into the treacherous unknown to a destiny that could kill me and them.
It really wasn’t fair of me to bring them with. Maybe I should have insisted they go home. The interior of my mind was quiet. Madison said nothing as my mind worked endlessly on different levels to fit that event into my reality and handle the anticipated guilt of bringing them all along. I wondered if she knew what the right answer to this was. Would I be okay if I went it alone? Or would I end up needing them? She did say that no one had made it this far before. Maybe she didn’t get the chance to find that out.
I made a face to myself, thinking about all the deaths I’d seen in my dreams, how they were all startlingly real. The pain I’d felt wasn’t imagined. None of it was just my overactive imagination like I’d silently been hoping it was. All of it was real, and so was what we were heading in to. I wanted to turn back, quite suddenly. I wanted Bond to turn the car around and head back home, where things were normal and didn’t require me to deal with incarnations or angels or demons. I wanted to go back to a safe place where all I had to worry about was my growing cynicism of the world. I didn’t want any of what was being given to me on a silver goddamned platter.
This fear welled up deep within me and made me feel very nauseous, so I rolled down my window to try to quell it. The fresh morning air did make me feel a little better, but it just
made me crave normality more and more.
“You can’t be normal, Ama. You know you were never meant for that,” Madison murmured solemnly, responding to the stream of thought. “We were never meant to be normal, and as much as we want, nothing can change that. All you can do is see this through to the end.”
What’s at the end? I thought dully.
“Rebirth or salvation.”
Neither of those sound like things I want, I shot back dourly. I knew what “rebirth” meant for me in this case. Without her having to say it, “rebirth” was just a sweeter sounding stand-in for “death”. I couldn’t be reborn until I died.
“No one knows what salvation looks like for us. We never got this far,” she responded, her voice fading quietly. “This is all up to you, Ama. End it now or it continues.”
“Is anyone hungry?” Bond asked, his voice sounding odd in the stillness of the car. Everyone murmured back quietly some form of “no”, and he said back, “I’m going to stop at this grocery store anyway. Get whatever you need; I need to take a piss.”
A second later, he pulled over off into an old looking town with an ancient grocery store at the front. I got out, if only to stretch my legs, and realized I was actually much hungrier than I thought. Groaning quietly to myself, I walked into the old store. It was still nice and maintained within, and the food all looked up to date. There was a single bathroom at the back, so I waited for Bond to get out before I went in.
“Why is this happening?” I asked the mirror. Madison appeared a second later. The triangle under my eye was now undeniably red, and not red as in a blush, but blood red.
“Why is what happening?” she asked, arms crossed as she leaned on the wall behind me.
“This,” I said gesturing to her frantically, “Why can I talk to you? Why are you my incarnation? Why did I have to be part of this?”
She threw her arms up and said with a bit of a snip, “I don’t know Ama. My guess is as good as yours. I asked the same question, too, and so did Donovan and Yaya and Abigail and all the others. We don’t know why we individual people are chosen, but it’s not like there’s anything we can do about it.”
“I can’t just lay down and die?” I mumbled.
“A few of us tried that and it didn’t work,” she shrugged. I studied her in the mirror for a long moment, and she returned the gaze evenly with those ocean blue eyes of hers.
“Why don’t you have this?” I asked, pointing to the mark on my face. “I remember you had it in my dreams of you, but you don’t have it now.”
“Only the living ones have it,” she answered.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I wish I had all the answers, Ama. I have some of them, but not really all of them.”
“What can you tell me?” I asked critically.
She rolled her eyes and sighed, and she said, “We are all part of the same person, and we’re all kind of the same person at the same time. We’re somehow connected to Azazel. We’re incarnations of her, but no one really knows how since she’s evidently still alive and kicking. Apparently these marks you have get passed down from person to person and are embodiments of our connection to Azazel. Some of us think the mark on the back is supposed to be a wing or something. We don’t really know what the triangle is.”
“A wing?” I mused to myself, and then I thought back to the dream I’d had, and something clicked into place. She went on before I could tell her of my discovery, “We’ve all had dreams about her and that’s the only way we can guess that we’re connected to her, but we haven’t had them as much as you, or at least not in such sequential detail. We know Azazel is behind these random killings, but it’s not because she’s evil. She’s looking for something, and we couldn’t ever figure out what it was. We never got that far in life.”
“I think I know what she’s looking for,” I said slowly. She didn’t say anything for a second as she looked at me with a calculated expression, but she finally said, “I think it’s best you keep that to yourself. I don’t know really what’s going on, even on our end, but we do know each incarnation gets a little bit closer to finding out everything. Besides that, there’s been this really bad foreboding feeling among us that you haven’t been experiencing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked curiously. Before she could answer, someone knocked on the door, and, startled, I called out, “I’ll be right out.”
When I looked back, she was already gone. I made a face and stepped out, Jo stepped in. I wandered the aisles for a second and grabbed a bag of chips and some cookies. At the counter was a nice looking older lady. She had a warm smile and said, “That’s a nice tattoo you’ve got.”
“Oh, yeah, thanks,” I said back sheepishly, my hand shooting to my face.
“Does it mean anything?” she asked.
“Uh, I liked how it looked,” I lied. “Just felt like a very ‘me’ thing.”
“Ah. How long ago did you get it? It still looks fresh.”
“Um, a couple of weeks ago,” I shrugged.
“Is that when the things started happening?”
“What?” I asked, my attention zeroing in on her.
“That’ll be $6.62,” she said with a smile, pretending she hadn’t said anything.
“Um, okay,” I said back, pulling some change from my pocket.
“Can I let you in on a little secret?” she asked with a smile, dropping her voice low. I furrowed my eyebrows and leaned in, said warily, “Okay.”
She leaned in and whispered, for only me to hear, “What you are looking for is not at the destination you’re thinking of.”
“Um,” I said, confused and a little scared.
“You aren’t the first one to come through here,” she giggled, raising up her sleeve to show me an odd looking mark. A triangle with three lines on the left side. A jolt ran through me at the sight of the mark, and some spark of recognition hit me. Someone very far back through my lives whispered, “Trust.”
Slowly, I said, “Okay,”
“Here, this is the place you’re looking for,” she said, writing on the back of the receipt.
“Every place you go to that you see on the internet is just going to bring you trouble.”
“Are you sure? This place isn’t going to kill me, right?” I asked cautiously, gesturing to the address on the receipt.
“We know. Don’t worry, look for Agatha,” she said warmly, patting my hand kindly. “Now go. The last time you came through here, trouble wasn’t far behind.”
“Oh, okay,” I said quickly, gathering up my stuff and heading to the car. I glanced back at her, and she nodded with a smile. Everyone was already waiting in the car, and I asked Bond, “Bond, what town are you in?”
“Um, it’s says we’re in Zela, Indiana,” he said, glancing at the GPS.
“Zela?” I asked, the name not ringing any particular bell. I reached in my pocket for the receipt and said, “Here. We’re going here instead.”
Bond looked at the receipt and asked, “What’s going on over here?”
“I think this is where we should go instead.”
“Why?” Evelyn asked.
“The lady in the store said I should go here instead and that the other place would cause trouble.”
“So we’re talking to strangers now. That’s what we’re doing,” Jo said with a pointed tone.
“Shut up. Yes.”
“You’re going to take advice from some stranger you don’t even know?” Evelyn asked skeptically.
“I mean; I guess? My gut is telling me it’s okay,” I said defensively.
“I think we should go to the place on the GPS,” said Evelyn
“I really think we should go here,” I said, pointing to the receipt.
“Why? Because of your gut?”
“My gut hasn’t been wrong so far.”
“Did your gut tell you not to go to the last place?”
“It doesn’t speak, thanks. I had a weird feeling from the start! But it’s not like we had any other option now did we?” I shot back, growing irritated.
“Fine, fine,” she said, holding up her hands. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Well, it’s the only idea we’ve got that has some sort of backing,” I shrugged, settling into the backseat.
“Whatever,” she grumbled quietly. The rest of the ride was quiet. The location the woman had written down was less than an hour from Zela. At first, we didn’t notice the building. The only thing alluding to its presence there being the barely noticeable gravel path, which was covered by thick bushes and trees. As we drove past the brush, the path suddenly cleared away, and at the end of it was an old building.
The building we pulled up to this time looked more like an old schoolhouse. It was a short, squat building that probably had four rooms max; maybe one big one instead. It looked very old and its outer walls had peeling off-white pain. The building was shrouded by tall trees with low hanging branches that swayed gently in the late summer breeze, and the grass was long and overgrown. It almost looked abandoned, save for the flowers nearest the building and the windows, which were neat and obviously tended to. Directly above the door was a symbol that looked like four overlapping triangles. Two were red and the other two were blue. A small pang ran through my face, right over the triangle, and the same voice that had whispered
“Trust” now said, “This.”
“This is it,” I whispered to myself. I wasted no time, and I walked up to the door and knocked without hesitation. The knock echoed far into the building, sounding empty and lonely. It was silent inside. There wasn’t a sound of movement from within. Bond, Jo, and Evelyn followed a second behind me and I waited patiently for someone to answer, but no one came to the door.
“You think anyone is in there?” Evelyn asked.
“I don’t know,” I said back, knocking on the door a little harder. I peered inside the window and saw that the building was dark inside, but it was clean. There were a few rows of chairs and a podium at the back. There was some sort of statue standing further behind the podium, but it was covered by a dark cloth.
“Maybe they’re out right now,” Jo offered.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. I squinted a little harder, trying to discern one dark object from another, and I decided to knock on the door one last time. Before my fist could make contact with the door, the door whipped open, startling everyone. I jumped back, and standing before me was a tall woman with a warm, friendly face. Her eyes were a soft blue and her hair was done up in a messy brown bun. She looked older, maybe in her forties, and she had a rag in her hands.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice betraying her appearance. She sounded hard and irritated.
“Um,” I hesitated, “Is this an Azelian cult?”
She frowned at me and said, tucking the rag away into her back pocket and placing her hands on her hips, “No. Why would you think this is an Azelian cult?”
“Um, I was just, uh, passing through Zela a little while back and, um, a lady at the grocery store there told me I should come here instead of to the place we found online . . .” I drifted off, feeling myself shrink beneath her scrutinizing gaze. She studied me with an intense scrutiny, looking me up and down, and then she focused on my face, staring hard at the triangle.
“What’s with your face?” she barked.
“Oh, um, this is um . . .” I stammered, trying to think about an appropriate response to give her. My eyes drifted off to the side for a brief moment, considering telling her the same excuse I’d told the lady back in Zela, but I sighed. I answered truthfully, saying, “It just kind of appeared on me like a week ago. It was barely noticeable, and now it’s red and I don’t really
know why.”
She studied me for another moment, then looked around to my friends. She looked up towards the sky and sighed, said, “Come in.”
Surprised, I said, “Oh, okay.” I took a step through the door, and something about the scent of the building brought me back to a nostalgia I hadn’t faced in this life.
“Your friends have to stay back, though,” she said coldly. I glanced back at them, and they had a look of protest on their face, but I nodded at them and said, “It’s okay. I think it’s going to be okay.”
“Ama,” Bond said in a low warning tone.
“You let us know if anything goes wrong immediately,” Jo said in a similar tone. I nodded at them with a small smile, and the woman closed the door behind us. She closed the curtains then and flipped a switch on in the room. Everything was as I had seen through the window, and she pulled up a couple of chairs. She sat in one and gestured for me to sit in the other. On guard, I did. She watched me for a few silent seconds, and the suddenly reached over and ran a thumb roughly against my face. I flinched away from her, and she examined her thumb, and looked back up at my face carefully. Finally, she asked, “How did you find this place?”
My brow furrowed, I answered, “Well, I was passing through Zela trying to find another Azelian cult and at a grocery store, the cashier told me if I went there, I’d just find more trouble.”
“What do you mean ‘more trouble’?” she asked suspiciously.
I made a slight face and pursed my lips, saying, “We—I was trying to learn more about the Azazel, so I went to a cult outside of Gary and they kind of tried to kill us, and then someother really weird stuff happened and it’s just . . . there’s a lot going on and just want to know about Azazel.”
“Weird like how?”
“Like, supernatural weird,” I answered, sheepishly. Saying nothing, she sat back in her chair and put her hands behind her head as she looked up at the ceiling.
“Can you tell me about Azazel?” I asked quietly, taking in the room we were in, which was dim even with the light on. It was more spacious than I’d expected, and I saw there were two doors flanking either side of the podium.
“Why are you here?” she asked, straightening her back and looking down at me.
“I want to know more about Azazel.”
“If you wanted to learn about Azazel, you could have gone to the internet like any other normal person and been satisfied with whatever your ten, twenty, or thirty minutes of research. You came all the way out here to find out more than just her. Why are you really here?” she demanded.
I sat back in my chair, caught off by the sudden tension in the air. I looked at her pointedly, feeling somewhat stuck in a position I didn’t want to be in. I hadn’t expected her to be so direct about the information she wanted, and I was still at a sort of mental incapacitation thinking things completely through. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons about telling her the whole truth of what I’d been going through; I just wanted to find some sort of resolve on my end to the things I was searching for.
“I’ve been dreaming about other people’s lives since I was a kid. I’ve died at least twenty times in my dreams, and they’re all so vivid. I feel like it would drive anyone crazy. A week ago, this thing just randomly shows up on my face and it’s just like everything got worse from there. There was a car accident that killed a little girl and a junkie and a bunch of horses, and I pulled the little girl from the crash and it kind of messed me up really bad. I had this hallucination of some person on fire calling me and telling me she was coming for me, and then I got this mark on my back. Then I started having dreams of this cave, and this woman actually kills me in there. On top of that, apparently I can talk to ghosts now? Or I can at least talk to my past selves, which are the people I was dreaming of before, and they kept telling me these things and they all lead back to Azazel and I just want to know what this is all supposed to mean and why I’m part of it.
“Can you please just tell me about Azazel?” I asked in a rush, feeling enervated as I quickly relived everything I’d said.
She studied me for another long moment, and I felt myself get irritated. I didn’t want to be studied. I just wanted answers, and it seemed I couldn’t even get that much.
“Well?” I snapped. She shook her head with a small smile and said, “You’re just like the last one.”
“The last one? What do you mean the last one?” I asked quickly.
She didn’t answer me. Instead, she stood and gestured for me to follow her through the door on the left. The door opened into a well-lit stairway leading down. I stopped at the top of the stairs, feeling part of me swaying thinking about the last time I stood at a set of stairs. She went on before me, and wallowing I followed behind her. It wasn’t cold or dark or terrifying like the at the last cult. It felt ancient and humbling walking down those stairs, and at the bottom, there was pristine, wooden door. She opened it for me, and behind it was a group of people all chatting quietly with each other. When they saw me, they quieted instantly and stared.
“It’s okay. She’s okay. She’s the real one,” the woman spoke to the crowd.
“How can you know that?” someone from the back asked. “The last one was decades ago.”
“She’s the real deal,” she said, putting on a hand on my shoulder. “She says Azazel has killed her.”
There was a low sound of awe, and then they all smiled and bowed to me. I felt myself blush and I asked, “What is going on?”
“You wanted to know more about Azazel and so you found us. Only a true disciple of Azazel would find us,” the woman said warmly, her entire demeanor doing a 180. “We are the true Azelian followers, the Ninth Branch.”
“The Ninth Branch?” I asked as they all stood and resumed their chatting.
“Let me introduce myself. I’m Alana, the Guardian of the Ninth Branch. There are many more clandestine groups of Azelian followers. In order to distinguish one true group from a false one, we began to form secret groups with specific names. Only the true groups use the terms Branches, because we all stem from the same belief. We don’t splinter off, but we grow out from, and we are the Ninth.”
“Whoa,” I said as she sat me down at a table against a wall with a set of tarot cards.
“How many Branches are there?”
“In America? Last I checked, there were fifty-two. Each Branch must fully recognize any other Branch that chooses to grow out. We haven’t gotten notice of any other Branches growing in a long time.”
“What did you mean by the ‘last one’ that came through?”
“Over time, we’ve come to understand that Azazel has chosen specific people to carry her essence over the years, and we’ve recognized a handful of them, but we don’t know how many of you there are, and the last time one of you sought us out was about eighty years ago.”
“Was it this same Branch?”
“No, it was the Nevada Branch last.”
“Do you know why we’re here? Like, why we’re like this?” I asked, looking around the basement. It, as well, was very spacious, and there was an interesting portrait taking up a large portion of one wall. The portrait depicted the image of a woman with long black hair and equally black skin, covered in a red veil that hid half of her face. She held her right palm up and her left hand held a sword. She had a single white wing behind her.
“I really couldn’t tell you that. None of us can, but there is someone who can,” she said, pulling out a pen and writing something on my arm.
“This is the home of our Grand Mod. Each Branch is led by a Grand Mod, and sometimes the Mods become too weak to travel far outside of their homes. If you go here and tell her that we as the Ninth Branch have recognized you as a Carnate of Azazel, she will tell you everything.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, surprised. “You said you’re the Guardian, right?”
“Correct,” Alana said proudly.
“What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that I protect this Branch from outsiders who try to infiltrate us.”
“How do you do that?”=
“There’s something special about Azazel that guarantees her existence, and with some people, the Guardians, she gives us certain abilities that we never had before.”
“Like what?”
“I always know when someone is lying,” she said smugly.
“Oh yeah? Try me,” I challenged, conversation with her becoming more and more easy.
“Tell me two truths and a lie,” she shot back.
“Alright, um. My full name is Amor Elrise Johns. Uh, I have a dog named Smokey, and my favorite color is black.”
“Your full name isn’t Amor Elrise Johns and your dog’s name isn’t Smokey,” she said instantly.
“Whoa, how’d you do that?”
“I told you, Azazel gives us special abilities. I just know, just like how you just knew that this was the place to come to for your answers.”
“Wow, that’s trippy,” I said, sitting back in the chair. “Why do you guys hide out here, anyway?”
“Have you really ever heard good things about Azelian cults?” the woman asked with a smirk. I looked past her to the image of the woman on the wall again.
“That’s how we interpret Azazel,” Alana said, following my gaze to the large portrait.
“Each Branch sees her a little different, but she always has a sword in her left hand and a wing on the right.”
“What’s the image supposed to mean?”
“Her right palm being up is supposed to show her openness and kindness, and the sword represents her secondary patronage. Her skin is black because it represents the origin of her following. She wears a red veil because she doesn’t see, if that makes sense. She feels the way of things, and it’s the truest sight there is. We all strive to view the world like how she does.”
“Huh,” I mused to myself, gazing at the image silently. “I wonder what she actually looks like.”
Alana shrugged and said, “Who knows. Maybe you’ll find that out soon.”
The mark on my face and back ignited painfully, and I groaned inwardly. In an instant, all of the chatter in the room stopped. I looked at Alana, who was staring directly at me, and then everyone turned their heads to look at me.
“So, here you are,” Alana said. I flinched, hearing the edge barely hidden in her voice. Her eyes weren’t blue anymore, but they were a dark, menacing red. “You’ve come to steal my students from me, too, have you, fiend?”
“Wh-what?” I stuttered, pushing myself away from the table. The room was immediately filled with a murderous intent, and the malice was palpable.
“Not only have you stolen my wing, you’ve stolen my appearance and now you’ve come to steal my students. I should kill you right here,” Alana continued, folding her arms and crossing her legs.
“I, I am not trying to do that all,” I protested.
“I will hear none of your lies,” she said in a stony, resolute voice. The next instant, I was surrounded by the followers in the basement. Each of their eyes were dyed a harsh, angry red, and those angry eyes were now baring down on me and ready to strangle me.
“You will not escape me this time, demon,” she said as everyone converged on me. “I’ve been searching for you for a thousand years, and I’ve finally found you, you damnable fiend!”
“No, no, no, no, no I am not your enemy!” I screamed, jumping up and narrowly avoiding their grasping hands. “I’m not your enemy!”
“The wing on your back says otherwise, demon. I knew there was something strange among my students, and I find you here, trying to corrupt them with your lies,” she scoffed. “I will not allow you to sully their souls with your tongues.”
“No!” I screamed dropping to the floor and scrambling towards the stairs.
“You can escape them here, but you will not escape me,” Alana called in a threatening tone as I ran up the stairs. I burst through the door, and just as I was running to the door, the statue suddenly moved and encased me in its arms. I let out a terrified shriek as I looked back at it. It was identical to the lady in painting in the basement, and I could hear the followers shuffling up the stairs slowly.
“Let me go!” I shrieked, struggling against the stony arms.
“You will pay for your transgressions with your life,” she spoke, the statue’s lips unmoving. The arms slowly began to tighten around my body, and I let out a louder scream as I bucked against the statue. I slammed my head hard against the body of the statue, and I felt my world spin for a moment.
“Ama!” someone yelled. I tried to open my eyes, but everything blinked out of sight the next moment.