Evil - Chapter 18
Moments ago, I was in a basement, trying to free my friend Margaret from her kidnapper.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
It's not easy being the Antichrist.
Anjelica’s mother never told her that she was a demon. Now, all she wants is her old life back, but that’s not possible for her. Not after what she’s seen.
Anjelica used to be a popular cheerleader with an awesome life, but that was before an evil cult of demons tried to use her blood to open a portal to Hell and start the Apocalypse.
She was rescued from that fate, barely, and because of the imminent threat to her life, her saviors ripped her from Los Angeles and brought her to a safe house in the middle of nowhere.
They said it was for her own good, but she would rather be dead than stuck in boring, old Bronard, Missouri. She was from the big city, so a sleepy, rural life wasn’t for her.
She longed for excitement.
So, when she met a young witch with a mysterious past who promised to show her everything she knew about opening portals and traveling between distant lands, they bonded immediately
I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, right?
It’s not like they would open an intergalactic gateway to another planet and get thrown into a brand, new world with no way to get back to Earth, right?
Join Anjelica in her own solo adventure and find out what happened to her immediately after the events in Magic.
Kimberly had stabbed the man in the chest and sent him tumbling backward through the same white light that enveloped me soon after. I only knew that because he laid on a plush, peach couch behind me, dead, a gnarly knife sticking out of his chest, as he bled on two patrons of the quaint coffee shop in which I now found myself.
The writing on the walls was in English, or at least most of it was, and a vibrant sign read Lambzen Coffee and Tea Shop. A line of people wrapped around the store as patrons waited for their cup of java…or at least they had been before I materialized out of thin air, hands covered in blood. Now, the mundanity of their day had been interrupted by a dead man, myself, and a girl bleeding out in front of them.
“Margaret!” I screamed, crawling toward her on wobbly knees. My head throbbed with the aftermath of what was likely a concussion—I hit that floor hard. Still, I made it over to her and cradled her curly hair in my hands. “Margaret, are you okay?”
“No,” she replied softly. “I’m not okay at all. I’m not sure if you saw, but I’ve been stabbed.” She winced in pain. “Ow.”
She had lost a lot of blood before I even found her and was still bleeding onto the floor.
“Somebody call an ambulance!” Everyone looked at me with blank eyes, except the barista, who was already on the phone. Her eyes didn’t say concern, at least not to me. No, they looked at me with malice.
“Yes,” the barista said. “The girl has blood on her hands, and there is a man who has been stabbed to death, and another one—well, I know because he has a knife sticking out of his chest and he’s not breathing…yes, I agree. That would do it…the other girl is bleeding but looks to be alive. For the moment, at least. She was just talking.” The woman looked at me. “I don’t know if she—she just appeared…No, she doesn’t look armed. Thank you.” The barista peered over the counter at me. “I’ve called the police. They’ll be here any minute. Stay put because I think you’ll be totally under arrest pretty soon.” She turned back to the people waiting in line. “We’ll get this cleaned up ASAP. You’ll all receive complimentary drinks and ten free Java bucks to use in the future for your trouble.”
The masses seemed appeased by that, but they still eyed me suspiciously. I couldn’t blame them. After all, I had just appeared out of thin air.
“And the ambulance?” I asked. “Are they sending one for my friend?”
“Some friend,” an old woman grumbled.
“Why would you stab your friend?” A tiny shell of a man asked. The skin of his face folded inside itself so far that his eyes were barely visible. “Doesn’t seem very friendly to me!”
“Stab?” It finally connected in my brain that they thought I had done all of this. “I didn’t—I’m not a killer!”
“Could have fooled me,” a younger man said.
“Why you got blood on your hands then?” a woman with blue hair shouted from the back of the line.
The group of people started to surround me, and they looked neither kind nor polite. I laid Margaret back on the floor and scooted away from them. In the distance, sirens blared, and I knew they were coming for me.
“I—I—I don’t have to explain myself to you.” I fell backward, practically crab-walking across the floor, leaving bloody handprints in my wake. The group enveloped Margaret, and through their legs, I saw two of them applying pressure to her wound.
They had no such concern for me, and with every step, their eyes grew more vicious. When I bumped against a black coffee table, one of them lunged at me. I rolled out of the way and pushed myself to stand.
“The king will have your head for what you’ve done, witch!”
“Witch?” I said, trying to process everything that had happened. It was hard to concentrate with the ringing in my ears. “I’m not a witch.” I’m a demon if anything, but I kept that to myself.
“Well, you appeared out of nothing, didn’t ya?” It was impossible to pick one voice out of the crowd at this point. “I’ll bet ya was doing a blood ritual to a demon, wasn’t ya?”
“No, that’s not—” Another barista came out from a black door behind the counter, and I saw an opening to escape. I wanted to make sure Margaret was okay, but I couldn’t risk the cops thinking I was to blame for a murder…at least not until I figured out where I was and what was going on.
The mass of limbs lunged for me, and I flipped over them, then dove across the counter.
“Get her!” the limbs said, and the barista who had called the police sprang toward me. I stepped away from her, narrowly avoiding the other barista while pushing open the door to the back room. Metal shelving lined the walls, stuffed with coffee beans and filters and flour and sugar. If I weren’t so horrified and scared, I would have liked to taste some of their heavenly brews, but I had other things to worry about, like staying alive.
The sirens were right on top of the store now, and the mass of limbs smashed through the door after me. I snaked through the shelving until I reached a metal door leading out of the storeroom. It let me out into a pungent alley that smelled the furthest from coffee possible—rotten meat and old fruit stewing in the garbage behind the cafe.
Guilt ran through my body as I took off. I only hoped they could save Margaret and that I could find her later when all this was sorted. Doctors were in a better position to fix her than I was, and part of me was suddenly relieved at the crazy turn of events that had just taken place. I doubted I could have saved her in that basement, even with Kimberly’s help.
Kimberly. Where was she? Had she been teleported with me? Would I ever see her again? But before I could ruminate on those answers, the back door opened and two officers dressed in dark black uniforms rushed after me. I sprinted forward and disappeared into the crowded street.
***
Where was I? It had to be somewhere they spoke English as their primary language. India? No, that didn’t seem right. Maybe Australia? I’d heard a bunch of super British accents, hadn’t I? But I heard American accents, too. Maybe I was in St. Louis, or Kansas City, or Chicago. I could be in Canada, I guess. It didn’t feel cold enough for Canada in the winter, though. In fact, it was kind of nice outside, so, yeah…Australia. It would be summer down there, right? It sounded right. Maybe New Zealand? Tasmania, possibly.
Enough speculating, Anjelica. I needed to find a newspaper. One thing that was not in doubt—I was in a city, somewhere. The buildings rose high above me so that I would have to crane my neck to see their spires. Having grown up in big cities, I knew better than to do that. It made you a target for pickpockets.
What time was it? It must have been morning because everybody was out, briskly walking with pointed purpose. Men dressed in business suits and women in long dresses swam through the densely packed streets, failing to pay even the littlest bit of attention to the girl with blood on her hands and clothes.
Speaking of, I needed to get to a bathroom, too, and soon. There was a glass-walled building up ahead, and inside looked like all the trappings of a convenience store. Perhaps I could handle both things at once.
I stepped into the store to see a mustachioed man with salt and pepper hair behind the counter, wearing a wrinkled short-sleeved baby blue polo shirt. “Excuse me. Do you have a bathroom?”
“Customers only,” he growled.
“I’m going to buy a paper, but I’d rather wash my hands before I pay you, so I don’t give you cooties.”
He grunted then pointed to the back of the store. “I do not know this cooties, but okay. First door on the right.” He leaned forward. “You better not use the toilet. I’ll know.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, hiding my hands in my pockets as I headed toward the bathroom. The blood had crusted on my skin, somehow both sticky and hard at the same time, like toffee, and it took forever to wash it off my fingers. Eventually, I was satisfied that nobody would think I was a killer at first blush. I scrubbed at the blood under my fingernails when I noticed that there was more speckled on my jeans, but that was a secondary concern. The blood on my jeans looked more like paint anyway, or maybe ketchup.
The man eyed me as I returned, and I made my way across the store to the magazine rack. I had never heard of any of the magazines they sold there, which confirmed that I wasn’t in America, and I probably wasn’t in Britain either, as I would expect to at least see Vogue on the newsstands. I made my way to the end of the rack, where a stack of papers sat in a metal holder. I picked one up and unfolded it. The main headline read, “Thriean troops attack Berzol. Prince Yimnit urges optimism; constraint.”
I read the headline three more times before the man behind the counter sighed. “We aren’t a library!”
“Right.” I walked over and placed the newspaper down on the counter. “Hey, this is going to sound weird, but…where are we?”
He waved his hand at me dismissively. “I don’t have time for your games, girl. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
He was certainly not very busy, what with not having left the stool he sat on since I entered, but I wasn’t going to argue. “Please, just humor me.”
He sneered. “Lambzen, of course.”
“And is that in North America, Europe…or—”
He leaned forward, giving me the stink eye. “Are you taking a piss?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. You told me NOT to use your toilet, so I didn’t, and I certainly wouldn’t do that on your floor.”
That made him crack a smile as he sat back. “Lambzen, Forche province, Onmiri. Is that enough? I can name our planet, solar system, and galaxy, too, if it helps.”
“Honestly,” I replied, “I don’t know what will help.” It was then that I pulled a dollar out of my pocket and realized he probably wouldn’t accept US currency. Still, you only learn things by doing, so I placed it on the counter.
He looked at it and cocked his head. “Now I know you’re taking a piss. What is this? Play money?”
“No, it’s—” And that’s when I bolted out of the store, with the man shouting after me. On my way out, I grabbed a travel map from a little kiosk by the door and disappeared back into the crowd. I hadn’t asked him for change or taken my paper, so it was more than a fair trade.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.