A warning. Neon Gods II: The Coming Of The Exiled

‘Lilac and lemon’. Sadie Fuller glanced down at the garden spade caked in sludge and pursed her lips. The sun was warm today, bordering on hot. She felt perspiration on her forehead and the back of her neck, her pony tail swayed in the soft breeze. ‘It’s coming along’. She thought.
“We should head inside.” Nephthys said beside her. “Fudo San doesn’t want us being seen.”
“We’re far enough removed.” Sadie said evenly. “Couldn’t be farther from the city.”
“Still.” Nephthys insisted.
“Fine.”
Sadie bent to her lilacs and touched the delicious purples and rouge reds. She felt furry bristles on the petals. A softness like Kleenex. The garden had bloomed triumphantly in the past few weeks. Lilacs of every sort erupted in a twenty foot tapestry just outside the main entrance of the Lotus estate. Sadie supposed from above  that it resembled a postage stamp swimming in the ocean of yellow that marks the estate proper.
She plucked a stem and tucked the floret behind Nephthys’s right ear. Her almond eyes swam for a second, her breath caught.
“Thank you, Sadie.”
“It wasn’t me.” Sadie replied. “Not this time.”
Nephthys took a step back. Her ebony skin had a slight sheen. Her eyes lowered as if unable to look Sadie in the eye.
“Thank you, Kali.”
‘The Egyptian is beautiful.’ Sadie heard in her mind. ‘She is kin, yes’?
“She is now.” Sadie said out loud.
“What?” Nephthys asked.
‘She is Mahakala?’ The voice boomed in Sadie’s head. Kali raised one of Sadie’s hands and touched Nephthys’s face. She stepped closer. Sadie gritted her teeth.
‘Stop it.’ She thought.
‘No.’
‘Now!’
Sadie stepped away as Nephthys watched her angle strangely towards the pagoda.
“She says your welcome.” Sadie said.
Nephthys bent and placed the spade and shovel in a lock box bought specifically for Sadie. She turned the master lock, securing the potential weapons safely. Sadie glanced back at her. Nephthys smiled sheepishly.
“Just in case.”
Sadie nodded. “I get it.” ‘Get what mortal?’
‘Nothing’.
‘Say it again.’
‘Why’?
‘Say it’.
Sadie sighed. ‘Lilac and lemon’.
Kali purred in her mind. ‘I like it’.
‘So do I!’
Sadie popped open a beer and rested the bottle against her cheek. The coolness spread across her face, numbing the left side.
“The situation is getting easier isn’t it?” Nephthys said. She took a long look at Sadie, her hands on her hips.
“I guess you could say that.” Sadie said. “She is so strong though. Sometimes I wonder if she’s just biding her time.”
“Playing coy?”
“Waiting for the right moment.”
“I don’t like that you have a terrible goddess inside you that wants the dissolution of all time and lap the blood of her victims.”
It was said in playful jest but Sadie knew that a tinge of fear was attached. ‘Say it again’. Sadie sat hard on the floor and breathed deeply. What she wouldn’t give for the delicious warmth right now. Just one line or maybe two. Especially after such a good day in the garden. The delicious warmth would ignite her soul, focus her troubled thoughts.
But that was lunacy. Any drug now was wrought with the potential of ceding all control to Kali. That she couldn’t do. A passing thought of Nephthys bathed in blood swam into her mind. She shut it out quickly.
‘What was that’? Kali asked.
‘Nothing. Go to sleep’.
‘Say it again.’
Sadie licked her lips and willed the thought clearly. She let it dance in her mind, embroidered it with all the colors of the garden. ‘Lilac and lemon’. Kali purred again.
A soft knock rapped at the pagoda door. Sadie recognized the cadence. Her stomach rumbled inside her. Nephthys opened a series of locks and peeked outside.
“I have rice for you.” A voice said softly.
Sadie’s stomach rumbled again. Once or twice a week Fudo San had made sure fresh food was delivered to the pagoda. Most often it was rice and vegetables. Sometimes smoked fish or berries. Nephthys took two containers into her arms and bowed.
“Are you new? We haven’t seen you before.” Nephthys said.
Warning lights went off in Sadie’s mind. “What is it?”
She stepped to the door and spied a tiny man, hunched over slightly. He had bright, hawk eyes and a shaved head. His stubby arms and gait belied the confidence in which he stood. Sadie wondered if a muscular disease was hidden beneath the simple, gray robe.
“I am.” He said slowly. “I just recently arrived at the monastery.”
Sadie knew the monastery was a retreat still within the city limits. It harbored monks as well as anybody else that needed solace from the ‘Descendant’ situation. Fudo San owned the monastery as had the Maharishi-ten before him. She knew the monastery was safe. Still. She hadn’t seen this man before.
“Well, thank you.” Nephthys said and closed the pagoda door.
Steam wafted from the top container. Sadie’s mouth watered at the mixed aromas of rice and vegetables. She took the top container and lifted the lid.
“Oh, lordy.” Nephthys said from the kitchen. She rummaged through a cabinet, produced two plates and silverware. “That smells so good.”
“You bet!” Sadie said.
She dipped her nose in the container and breathed deeply.
“What’s in the other one? They never bring us two.”
“Don’t know yet mama.” Sadie chirped. She carefully placed the top container on the floor and reached for the bottom. As she lifted the lid she knew something was wrong right away. No steam or odor emanated from it. Suddenly, she lurched back as if pulled forcibly from behind. Sadie screamed and kicked out, knocking the container sideways. Nephthys was beside her instantly. “What is it?”
Then she saw it. Ambling out slowly, its pincers snapping open and its tail in the air, a scorpion crawled out and into the open.
Nephthys gasped. “It cannot be.”
“Oh no.” Sadie said softly. She knew what it meant. They both did.
“He can’t have found us.” Nephthys stared in horror at the arachnid. Sadie’s eyes blinked with tears. She put her face in her hands.
“He knows. My husband knows we are here.” Nephthys stared out the window at the sprawling estate. She placed a hand on Sadie’s shoulder. “We have to call Hank right now.” She said. “Set knows we are here.”

Hecate Descends

She awoke in the dark. A dark sky. She looked down at her hands. They were milky. She stretched each finger, inspected blood red fingernails. She reached up, felt her face. It was warm. Heated. Her fingertips felt the contours, the shape.
She knew her name. Hecate. But she didn’t know the body. The body was a stranger. Her body was like a passerby, something fleeting, ghostly. She could still sense the bodiless. They were here too. But they were silent, quieted, She probed out. Yes. They were there but she felt them as if, like her body, they were not hers.
I am Hecate. She thought. Of the Titans.
Hecate stood. She ran her hands through red woven silk. She straightened her back, felt a popping in her spine.
I must think carefully on this.
A wetness settled on her face. She felt it drip down, warm against her skin. She raised her hands slowly, collected the wetness onto a fingertip. The wetness came from her nose as well. She sniffed. But the world was blurry now, Hecate wiped at her sockets. She squinted at tawny leaves that had collected around her, on the ground. She wondered how she’d found herself there. Had she been taken? Staring at the moon, she heard howling. First one or two than a whole chorus. She smiled. But there was a crashing sound as well. She tasted something on her tongue. The orange and brown tree leaves were just an assemblage of many. Perhaps ten to twelve large trees had all deposited leaves in a disarray.
Hecate looked past them and saw the dark churning. A rolling rhythm with beads of white on the top crash outward, downward. The ground underneath her feet suddenly felt flaccid. Hecate shivered. She watched the ocean waves blast onto the shore. She felt as if they were polishing the surface where they crashed. She looked at the glossy sand and walked out to it. She knelt. It’s cold! She looked right then left then right again and spied a pier a short distance away. She felt a pull towards it. She turned to stare at it. It was speckled in lights. From where she stood, they were tiny orbs. They reminded her of stars, like the ones above her head. Or perhaps fixed fireflies frozen in time. She wanted to reach out to them, hold them in her fingers. But even more than that, she wanted to taste the ocean.
Hecate slipped out of the sheer white dress she had woken up in. She felt it fall down her back and onto her feet. She heard a whistle from somewhere close and observed a  man also on the water’s edge. He stared at her, his head slowly shaking.
Hecate’s attention went back to the water. Its icy grip at her ankles, she waded in. A crash sent the taste of salt onto her tongue. She knew the current was strong, already she was shoved this way and that. She rocked as the waves came in. She jumped, headfirst, felt the violent jolt as air was forced out of her lungs. The wave rolled onto her, she felt it like a cutting palpitation on her back and legs. She stood in neck high water. She gasped, danced back to the water’s edge.
Again Hecate felt the pull. She glanced at the lights to her left and swung left, picking up her dress in stride, headed towards the pull. Hecate plunged down the beach at almost a gallop. She stopped to slip the dress back, although couldn’t really say why. Her nakedness didn’t matter. She found after awhile, her legs were tired. They trembled and she had to sit. But still that pull called out to her.
What is it? She thought.
Hecate stared up at the full moon and began an incantation. Her wet hair in her face, she brushed it smoothly back with a shaking hand. She needed the heat. The water had numbed her.
She spoke aloud, forcefully, but quickly realized that her words were having no effect. Nothing was manifesting to her will. Her words might as well have been meaningless. Oh no. She tried again, then again. Nothing. Hecate hesitated, probed outward to the bodiless. They were there but faint. They would come but were powerless? Was that true? She felt the power in her lingering. A potential as yet untapped but couldn’t call out to it fully. It was as if her magic was only a vestigial spark of what it had been. She wanted to cry out, rage at the churning black in front of her. She seethed through gritted teeth. The bodiless were apathetic. Their shapes darker than the surrounding night. They waited. What are you waiting for? Help me! But like her magic, the ancient ones existed in abeyance.
Hecate found herself breathing hard and tried to calm herself. She looked at the pier, it was closer now. She could be underneath it in a short time. Soon, she looked up at cross beams and smelled rotting wood. Above, she heard others. Their voices echoed off the girder, booming down.
Hecate felt the pull again. It tugged at her mind. It was like an itch. But she was here. She was at the pier, still it pulled.
“You shouldn’t be here.” A voice said in the dark.
Hecate startled, she hadn’t noticed the man sitting on one of the giant beams that support the pier. He dipped his head in measured civility. His eyes never left her though. Even in the dark, she felt them on her.
“I’m allowed passage anywhere.” She said.
“Nah. I don’t think so. Not wearing that.”
Hecate looked down at the dress that clung to her wet skin. She saw the breasts pulling the cotton tight, her pubic area doing the same. The man took a step forward. He tried to smile, rubbed at his lips. He was of a middle age, perhaps half a century. He had dark, glittery eyes and a hard, lined face. His wiry frame gave him the appearance of a cricket. But she didn’t want this one to chirp too loud.
As he got closer, Hecate backed further into the dark, toward the adjacent beam opposite to where he had been sitting. She walked back deliberately, turning to her left and then left again. The man followed, as if he were hunting.
“You shouldn’t have come down here.” She heard him say. “It’s not safe.”
“What is it you want?”
Hecate ducked behind another beam, crouched and took a few paces back toward where he had approached her. On her hands and knees, she crawled forward. Again her mind was pulled by that strange sensation to head further down the water’s edge. To go south.
A hand came down and gripped her by the hair. Hecate was thrown back onto a beam. She felt warmth where her skull had cracked against the wooden support.
“Fucking bitch!” The man punched her hard in the stomach,then laid atop her, his hand on her mouth. “You dirty fucking hooker. You meeting a John here? That why you came fucking naked?”
Hecate squirmed underneath him, felt hot breath on her face. His other hand on her breasts, he gyrated his hips into her, grinding against her till she felt him hard against her inner thigh.
“Don’t you make a fucking sound.” He whispered. But it was too late. Hecate smashed the rock she had been holding into his face. He screamed as blood spurted from his nose. Hecate felt it spray onto her face and tasted it on her lips. She brought the rock up and thrashed him on the side of the head. He toppled back, against the pier beam and gurgled something incoherent. She brought the rock down again. Then again.
Hecate leaped toward him, strode silently to stand within kissing distance then brought the rock down multiple times in quick succession. It was a savage array of blows.
As she looked down at the mess at her feet, she felt it again. South. Hecate bent close until she was at the man’s ear. “Bodiless.” She said quietly. “I need answers.”
She sat him upright, his wet, glazed eyes stared up towards the bottom of the pier. Hecate frowned. She turned his head towards her.
“Can you hear me?”
She waited. The man didn’t stir. Hecate stared down at him, chewed at her lip.
“Bodiless!” She snapped. “You will liaise with me!”
Again she waited. Something was wrong. All of her gifts had waned. They felt faint, just out of reach. The man coughed. Blood splayed out in a  mist. Hecate jerked his chin toward her.
“What has happened? Is this the Titans seeking retribution?”
The corpse in front of her gurgled softly. His mouth moving faintly. Hecate bent her hear to his mouth. “Tell me departed, what is happening?”
The man’s mouth widened as if he was going to take a bite of an apple than a voice that hadn’t been his in life uttered: “You are in front of the veil.”
Hecate gasped and stood quickly. Of course. Why hadn’t she discerned it? Or had she and was merely experiencing mortality like a newborn?
She looked south, felt the itch come back. South.
Hecate went out to the water’s edge and washed her hands and feet. She ducked her head for good measure. The veil is asunder. She thought. Slowly, in ankle deep ocean water and under a bright moon, the goddess Hecate began to walk south.