Sadie stepped into the nightclub and immediately felt closed in. After the wide spaces of the Lotus, a dinghy, hazy filled room with almost no light felt too much like the Basement. Her mind went back to that fateful night over a year ago and shuddered.
Nephthys took her hand and led her to a corner away from the blasting speakers.
“I’m going to get us some beers. Stay here.” She said.
“What are we doing here?” Sadie moaned.
“Until we can get a hold of Hank, we need to be someplace public.
With that, the Egyptian goddess looked towards the front door. Afternoon light seeped in from the sides and bottom making the entrance look otherworldy in the darkened club. She pulled a compact out of her backpack. Sadie leaned in involuntarily. Nephthys scowled at her face in the mirror.
“Do I look that bad?”
“Like somebody just kicked the shit out of you.” Sadie said with a weak smile.
“Look who’s talking.” Nephthys smiled then grimaced.
“Yeah, but I took his eye.” Kali said through Sadie’s mouth. Nephthys glanced at her friend. It was always a mystery with Sadie just how much control she really had. Sometimes it felt like talking to a marionette.
“Got anything else in that bag?” Sadie asked.
“Take it to the bathroom. There’s probably a half a gram left from the other night.”
Sadie licked her lips and snapped the compact shut. Nephthys watched her while scanning the room. “Try Hank again.” She said. “I don’t want to stay too long here. It will look weird.”
“I don’t think anybody could possibly be weirded out by us.”
She was right. The club was one of those goth inspired places that boomed with black lipstick and industrial rock music. Across the main floor, dancers strutted their wares in cages. Most were heavily tattooed and pierced. They shook their asses while men fumbled around slipping tips through the steel bars. Sadie thought of Freya and pushed the image of her friend out of her mind. She watched as Nephthys took a small staircase down to the bar floor and motioned for the barkeep. Still watching her friend, she auto-dialed Hank’s phone for the third time.
No response. At the sound of his voice message, she put a hand across the phone to shield it from outside noise. “Hey, it’s me. We left the Lotus.***** came.” She paused. “He messed me up pretty bad, baby. Call me.”
She put the phone away and watched a small group, maybe ten or fifteen people began converging near the center of the room. They were young, no older than herself, both men and women. All wore black, some robes that must have been breathtakingly hot. Her attention shifted shifted back to Nephthys who had just gotten two beers and was also staring at the crowd as she approached the corner booth.
“What is it?” She asked.
Sadie shook her head. She took a long pull off the beer and put it against her cheek. The coolness seeped into her bruised skin. She sighed and rubbed it on her forehead and eyes. In the center of the room, the small group had now grown to twenty or more. They made a ring, enclosed within one another. Some of the women were serpentine, slowly moving their hips around each other. As Sadie watched, an inner circle began to move opposite the main giving an eerie living effect, as if it were undulating or pulsating. To Sadie, they looked like a murmuration of birds, shifting from a circle to an hourglass shape and back. Both circles thickened like skin or maybe scales as the moving bodies coalesced into a single unit. Then from the outer circle, four stepped out. Each faced in a different direction. One for north, one for south, one for east and one for west. Then each pulled out what looked like a silver blade.
Hecate tried to visualize her friend as she stepped into the darkened room and squinted to see better. She had worn a white tank top and cutoffs and immediately felt stupid when she saw the ocean of black attire. It’s emo. She thought and debated leaving already. Stephanie would never come here. This isn’t her type of place. But was it? Her friend had been showing changes recently. She had refused to be subservient in their bedroom. The bed ties had been ignored. Hecate didn’t like it, she felt a pang of jealousy. At the very least she could say if there was a new boyfriend. Hecate strode to a booth and sat down hard. She willed the bodiless to her but knew immediately that something was wrong. Although she could see the greenish black hue of their silhouettes, they seemed reluctant. They were troubled. She willed them again and again they wanted to refuse. “What the hell?” Hecate pushed harder, letting her mind visualize the entire club. They would come to her. They would come when summoned and depart when banished. Then she heard a voice in her ear. Out of the corner of her eye, a hazy shade was near. No, my priestess. What? Hecate turned her head towards it.
“What is the matter?” She said irritably. Something is here. A Darkness. The bodiless said. A void. We won’t go near it.
“A void.” Hecate repeated.
Yes, my priestess. We cannot see through it.
“I’ll avoid nothing.” Hecate said tersely.
As she said this, she noticed a mass of bodies in front of her. They began to move in rhythm. Not unlike the people at the roof top market, they came together in Eros as one. She knew it was her. Her presence was all that was needed for the residual grace of her title. As she watched, she felt her skin vibrate, the hairs on her arms stood on end. She was electric fire. She was the red wand, a lioness. She was blazing summer, mercurial, creation manifest. Her head began to get heavy, she wondered if her eyes were bleeding.
“Is it the coven?”
But the bodiless were gone. They had fled. Hecate darted her head left and right. Nothing. Her bodiless had left her. Then off in the corner, on the other side of the room, she saw a solid darkness.
Sadie took Nephthys’s hand into her own as she watched the swirling bodies change shape into what appeared to be arcane symbols or letters of a long dead language. She stood in awe as it morphed suddenly then changed direction.
“It’s like it’s alive.” Nephthys said softly.
“Yes.”
Sadie saw bursts of green shadow. They would ignite then disappear in random places. They were flecks of hue, tiny illuminations that revealed shapes. Somewhere inside, she felt Kali tense. Sadie felt odd, as if she had accidentally witnessed a crime being committed. Then something moved adjacent to the swarm of bodies. A woman had stood up from the booth nearly directly across the room and was staring right at her.
Hecate stared into the darkness and swore it was staring back at her. She felt it thick as fog and just as blinding. She squinted and began to make sense of what she was seeing. It was a woman, tall and ebony skinned. She had a lithe build and curly brown hair. She’d be beautiful if her face didn’t look to have been beaten. But there was something else. Standing next to the ebony was a veil of blackness. It was a caul of darkness. Hecate stood and stared as it began to reveal itself. A body! Somebody else was there and the darkness had disguised it. As she watched, the veil momentarily slipped and she saw her. Hecate gasped. It was the woman she had seen both in dreams and waking life. Aside from the blue skin and tongue, it was her.
“You!” She screamed.
Sadie felt Kali lunge forward and nearly tumbled. Nephthys had a hold of her arm and began to pull. Sadie felt herself in a reverie and shook her head. Kali, stop! She looked out at the crowd. The woman had screamed and was pointing at her. Sadie felt Nephthys pull her towards the back of the club. Her arm hurt where the Egyptian goddess was squeezing and she tried to pry her fingers off. She stumbled and fell, her knee cracking the wooden flooring.
“What is happening?”
“I don’t know!” Nephthys screamed. “But I think she knows you and I’d bet she’s Descended!”
Sadie veered hard into the wall and again the Descendant flashed before her eyes. She saw broken glass and bloody screams.
Nephthys grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her toward an exit sign at the back of the club. Sadie glanced back to see if the woman was following.
And she was.
“She’s chasing us!”
Sadie screamed as she burst through the dark club into the light of day.
Hecate stopped at the exit sign and watched the women flee like terrified kittens. It didn’t matter. She had seen her. She knew the mortal face and also knew something Descended lay underneath. She willed the bodiless around her. They came albeit reluctant.
“You will follow them.”
We will not.
“You will.”
No, goddess we cannot.
“Why?”
We will not.
“Why are you terrified?”
But there was no answer. Hecate scoffed and walked back into the club.
