Ten minutes had passed until headlights cut through the darkness on the street below. Two black vans pulled up in front of the gym and parked. Five figures got out.

  Alexander watched from behind the curtains, one fidgety eye turning back toward the creature. It hadn't moved in the eight minutes since he'd spoken to it. Just sat there, breathing a wet rasping sound, and waiting. Chris was huddled against the corner, clutching a knife in one hand and a can of bug spray in the other, not taking a single eye off the creature.

  “Are you sure I shouldn't just stab it in the head and get it over with?” Chris said.

  Alexander let out a long sigh.

  “I wish we could, but... you know what Marion said.”

  His mana had begun to climb back to 23. It went up, but extremely slowly. He still felt hollow, like he'd donated blood and then run a marathon. But one thing was for certain, he had to protect his home.

  The buzzer for the gym's front door rang on the floors below. Then notifications began popping up on his phone. He unlocked the screen and found Marion's message.

  Marion: We’re being polite, but just so you know, your door is gone. And tell me that thing on your stairs isn't moving.

  He moved to the intercom panel by his apartment door and pressed the button. “Come through the gym entrance. Careful, there are more of those things around.”

  “We know. We've been killing them for the past twenty minutes.”

  The intercom clicked off.

  “They're finally here,” Alexander said.

  Chris looked down. “Are you sure you can trust her? Didn't she just say she was some sort of witch? How do you know she's not going to be possessed or something?”

  “She's better company than those monsters, that's for sure,” Alexander said as he opened his apartment door. The creature tracked him with its eyes but didn't move a muscle.

  Footsteps echoed below, and five people came up, moving in a tight formation, led by Marion herself.

  She looked fit and even beautiful for her age, with curly black hair streaked with silver, wearing a long black dress and golden amulets around her neck and wrists. She carried a wooden staff, carved with symbols in Hebrew and Latin. Two women and two men came behind her. Some stopped at the bottom and began writing on the floor with chalk. Alex was about to protest but thought better of it.

  Marion, however, walked up along with another woman. She stopped on the landing, three steps below the subdued creature. She looked at it, then at Alexander, then back at the creature.

  “You stupid boy,” she said. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this was?”

  Alexander shrugged, relaxing a little. “I figured, but I was out of options. I wasn’t sure I’d kill this one as easily.”

  “You were supposed to hide.” Marion moved closer to the creature, keeping the staff between them. “This is a morph, a corrupted animal imbued with demonic essence. It normally takes a trained sorcerer to subdue one, and you did it alone with an improvised binding.”

  Alex shrugged. “Sounds like a good thing, doesn't it?”

  “More like suicidal.” She touched the creature with the tip of her staff. It flinched. “But it worked, which means your bloodline is even stronger than I thought.”

  A younger woman stepped from behind her, maybe in her late twenties, about Alex’s age, with blonde hair in a bob cut and a red headband, an angular face, and sharp blue eyes. She whistled, examining Alex from head to toe. “He's a Dee? An actual Dee?”

  “Alexander, meet Samantha Blake. Samantha, meet John Dee's great-great-great-et-cetera grandson.” Marion glanced at Alexander. “How long on the binding?”

  The mere thought of the time summoned a timer in front of him. From their reaction, he guessed only he could see it. “Sixteen minutes.”

  “Then we have plenty of time.” Marion stepped past the creature and into the apartment. The others followed. Samantha gave Alexander another appraising look as she passed.

  Marion moved to the window, looked out at the collapsed city street, and sighed.

  The other four people walked up. To Alex's surprise, the first one was dressed like a Catholic priest, with robes and everything under a leather jacket. The other two were a Hispanic woman with black hair and a younger Asian man with broad shoulders and a buzz cut.

  The apartment suddenly felt very small with six people in it.

  Marion pointed at the priest.

  “Alexander, I want you to meet Father Thomas Kirkpatrick.”

  The man stepped toward him, hand out. He was tall, more than 6'6", with sharp features, dark hair, and piercing green eyes, and something like a cross wrapped to his back. “Just Thomas,” he said in what Alex recognized as an Irish accent. “The 'Father' feels pointless now.”

  Alexander shook it. The priest's grip was solid. To Alexander's surprise, the long object wrapped behind his back was not a massive crucifix. The upper end looked too much like the pommel of a sword.

  The priest's eyes narrowed. “So... You must be Alexander.”

  “I am,” Alex replied.

  “Marion has been telling me about you. She said if someone could help our cause, it would be you.”

  “Your... cause?” Alex raised an eyebrow.

  “Do not fret. We will explain.” He cast a casual glance at the wolf-demon at the landing. “I see that you have chosen black magic. You picked a path most wise people avoid,” he said quietly. “It is dangerous for yourself, your own soul, and for others.”

  Alexander was about to sigh in frustration. Was he about to get another lecture from a member of the clergy?

  The priest continued. “I know you had good reasons to make that choice.” Thomas let go of his hand. “It might be the path set out for you, for all I know. But that school pushes back. It asks for things most people can't give without losing pieces of themselves.”

  Alex swallowed. “Good to know. I... do have a lot of questions.”

  Thomas's expression softened. “Good. Ask them whenever you need. Confusion is safer than arrogance in your field.”

  Alex managed a breath. “So... a priest with a sword?”

  “Thirty years as an exorcist. The Church didn't get blindsided by this. We've been dealing with lesser forms of these things for ages. Most people just never noticed.”

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  Alex's eyes swung toward Marion. “And... you were friends... with witches? What are you exactly?”

  “Fellow travelers,” Thomas replied.

  “I am a natural mage,” Marion said. “Witch was usually a slur. But I embrace it. I am a witch, and proud.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. “Witches and priests working together...”

  “Do we really have time for a history lecture?” said the blonde girl, Samantha, as she crossed her arms.

  “He wants to know,” Marion said. “Father, make it brief, if you will.”

  The priest nodded.

  “Well, long before the Church chose its current stance, in the Middle Ages, and before the Hammer of the Witches and all that demonic work, there were certain partnerships in place, and… the places where the magic arts were preserved and developed were in fact, monasteries.”

  Alex crossed his arms. “Right, monks writing treaties on magic and all that, before they were prohibited.”

  “Yes. There were cunning folk, healers, people who dealt with things that didn't stay in the dark. We argued plenty, but when a demon took shape in the world, the arguments didn't matter.”

  Alexander shifted. “And…I know there are more pressing matters to deal with, but how long have you known each other?”

  Marion raised her brow at him. “Try a decade of work together.”

  Thomas nodded. “She calls, I answer. I call, she answers. That's how it's been.”

  The Hispanic lady looked stressed, but somehow in control, with her dark hair pulled tight in a band.

  “Now you have to meet Sandra,” Marion said. “She's a healer, and an expert in healing arts.”

  Sandra gave Alexander a small nod. “Nice to meet you. You have a beautiful place. Strong walls. That will definitely help.”

  The last was the Asian man, with a backpack clutched to his chest.

  “And this is Sean,” Marion continued. “He's also a mage. A Taoist cultivator and... our tech guy.”

  Sean raised a hand in a quick half-wave. “Hi.”

  Marion moved straight to Chris. He sat on a chair near the wall, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His breath came fast but steady, and he kept wiping his palms on his jeans as if he could hide the shaking.

  “I've seen you before at the gym. How are you holding up? Are you injured?” Marion asked.

  Chris shook his head sharply. “I'm alright, I'm just, you know... What the hell is going on out there? If I'd had my shotgun? Different story.” He pointed toward the landing. “Those things wouldn't have made it three steps.”

  Sandra raised an eyebrow, but Marion didn't engage with the bravado.

  “Good,” she said. “You're not slipping into shock. Stay with Sandra anyway. Talk to her. Don't sit there stewing.”

  Chris muttered, “Could've handled it,” but some of the wildness in his eyes eased simply because someone was treating him like he still had a say in things. “How are people out there? My wife and child… they were outside…”

  “We will try to reach them soon, and provide aid if necessary,” Sandra said, moving toward him. The way she said it, though, made Alex think that they’d seen some unsavoury things out there.

  Alex couldn't blame Chris. He had been in shock but had not entered into a full panic attack. He was strong and capable, but this situation would probably have most people shitting their pants.

  Alex himself didn't know what got into himself.

  Marion turned back to the room.

  “Alright. Sandra, stay with him. Sean, pull every scrap the networks have. Samantha and I will deal with the creature.”

  Thomas pulled chalk from his pocket. He paused near Alexander long enough to say, “If your class pushes you toward something you can't stop, you come to me immediately.”

  Alexander nodded, still half-wondering what he meant. Thomas continued to the splintered frame and began sketching sigils along the wood.

  Sean opened his laptop on the nearest table, typing furiously. Sandra guided Chris to the couch, where he continued whispering half-formed complaints about leaving his shotgun at home.

  Marion pointed at Alexander's rolling chair.

  “Alexander. I suggest you sit and take a rest. You burned through most of your mana, and your body hasn't caught up yet. When the adrenaline drops, you'll fall over.”

  She was right. He was pushing himself. He went back and let his weight drop onto the chair. His muscles loosened, and he leaned back, shutting his eyes for a moment.

  “Marion,” he said, “What exactly is happening out there?”

  She set her staff against the wall.

  “Short answer? Someone opened the gates. Not one, but every gate. Every pit, every abyss, every layer that ever held something hostile.”

  “The... gates?”

  “To the realms below. There are multiple realms in this... universe. Dimensions, so to say. The lower the planes, the more evil the things that come through it. It takes a great deal of evil to make them manifest in this particular reality. So... here we are. It's the book of Revelation come through, hell on earth, legions of locust demons stinging mankind, cats and dogs living in peace. You know what I mean.”

  Alexander clenched the armrests. “So it's really the end of the world.” He took a deep breath. Part of him did not want to acknowledge it. Part of him wanted to focus on the task at hand, namely, somehow killing and destroying those creatures and making his home, and his world, a safer place. “What were those shoggoths I killed? Demons from hell, you say?”

  “I would call them, negative energies and emotions made flesh, but... not powerful and sentient enough to be called demons. Like beasts of pure destructive will. After them come the morphs, like your wolf, animal spirits and bodies corrupted by demonic energies; then the bigger, devilish creatures conjured as chimeras, such as imps and ogres. And later...the real demons. Evil spirits and fallen angels that rejected who you call God and fell along with you-know-who.”

  Alexander let out a slow breath. “So, the entire hierarchy of hell is out to get us. So... who opened the gates? The reptilians? Skull and Bones?” he asked, half-jokingly.

  Marion finally looked up, chalk dust on her thumb and forefinger.

  “There has been much evil in the history of the world, coming from every culture, group, and nation of the earth. All of that gives birth to demons. But this, it is quite the logical conclusion to think that it has been led by someone. We can speculate, but we don't know exactly who. We have been chasing and destroying cults that have been trying to achieve this, but most of them have been loose and difficult to find. To come to this, however, it has to be someone with resources who’s been performing rituals for decades.”

  Samantha crouched on the other side. She pulled a long Bowie knife from her belt. “Alright, people, what are we gonna do with this little demon-dog? Do you want to seal it or banish it?”

  “Seal it. Might be useful later.”

  The creature shifted, agitated. Its eyes focused on Marion.

  “We've got six minutes,” Alexander said.

  “I know. I can feel it.”

  Marion stood and raised her hands. She spoke in Enochian now, as if it were her first language. The air thickened, and Alexander felt it like pressure against his skin.

  The creature's four eyes thrashed as Marion spoke the final words.

  A magic circle flared with dark green light, surrounding the creature, letters in Latin and Hebrew coalescing mid-air. The creature shrieked, struggling violently against invisible restraints, then stopped abruptly. The light faded, leaving the circle glowing faintly in the darkness.

  “Done,” Marion said. “It's bound to this circle now. The creature won't move unless we release it.” She looked at Alexander. “You did the right thing. It was honestly stupid and dangerous, but... it was right.” She moved back into the apartment. “Now we need to talk about what happens next.”

  Sandra looked up from where she was talking to Chris.

  Marion narrowed her eyes at Alex, then looked at the blood stain growing on his arm.

  “Take off your hoodie. Let me see that.”

  Alex let out a sigh and did what she said. The gauze and bandage he had applied to himself still oozed with blood. Sandra came over, saw Alex's arm, and swore in Spanish. “That's bad. How long ago did it happen?”

  “Maybe forty minutes.”

  “Could be worse.” Sandra pulled bandages from her bag and a jar of black paste. “Hold still. This is going to hurt.”

  “I'm alright,” Alex said. “I treated it.”

  “My guy, that's not an ordinary wound,” Samantha cut in.

  Alex's eyes drifted to Marion. She nodded. That made sense. It did not feel ordinary. Sandra undid his gauze and smeared the paste on the cuts. It burned like someone had poured acid on his skin. Alex hissed through his teeth but didn't pull away.

  “A curse happens when their blood mixes with yours,” Sandra explained, working quickly. “Left untreated, it spreads. It eventually reaches your heart and your brain. Drives you mad or kills you. Sometimes both.”

  “Nice. At risk of going completely mad. How long do I have?”

  “You? With a bloodline like yours? Days, maybe weeks. A normal person would be dead in hours.” She wrapped his arm in clean bandages. “This paste will draw it out, but you need treatment. A cleansing ritual. We'll do it tonight if we have time.”

  Thomas finished the last window ward and turned. “Marion. We have company.”

  Everyone went still. Footsteps echoed outside. Multiple sets. And voices. Whatever they were saying, in whatever language, made Alex feel like something was off. As if they were speaking of forbidden things.