The light of three streetlamps pooled on the pavement, the spotlights in her three-ring circus. Waiting in the wings for her cue to start the act, peering from between the curtains of a stand of trees in the park on the corner. For her first trick, maybe she would turn some water into wine. She could use the drink.

        Silence was her drum-roll as she took the stage, and the streetlights each sputtered and went dark as she passed under them, like the theatre houselights dimming to start the show. One. At. A time.

        Her boots echoed hollowly on the pavement as she loped diagonally across the suburban street, towards the house on the far end of the block. She skirted close around the side of the building, the only one with lights on so late, and ducked under the sill of a window as she whisked past the side of the house like smoke in a gust of wind. She paused in front of the bottom step under the front door, just outside the light of the porch lamp. She stood quietly, there at the edge of the stage. After a moment, the porch light sputtered out, too.

        The door had a window in it, and the window was covered by cheap plastic blinds, and on the other side of those blinds was shining the only light, where the audience was waiting. She took a moment to compose herself, straighten her clothing, take a deep breath. She rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, first the right, then the left.

       Nothing in this hand; nothing in that hand.

        The show must go on.

        Knock. Knock. Knock.



        The after-midnight silence deepened as the near-imperceptible sounds of movement inside the house ceased, all eyes inside suddenly fixed centre stage. Scrambling sounds came from the other side of the door, of people and furniture being hastily re-arranged. Then, for another moment, silence once more. A silhouette of a head and shoulders cut through the light between the blinds.

        The door was yanked open sharply, like someone was trying to tear it off its hinges, jumping to the end of its chain like a lunging dog, and a snarl was on the other side. A pretty face wearing its ugliest scowl glared at her over the door chain.

        "Do you know what time it is!" the girl in the house snapped.

        "Should be about three a.m."

        The door started to swing closed. The interloper stomped down the steel toe of her black boot between the door and the frame, jamming it open a few inches. She peered over the door chain into the house at three extremely hostile faces inside. The doorknob rattled under the girl's efforts to force it closed.

        "Hello to you too. Listen. Let me introduce myself: My name is Bridget Cleary," she smiled like a shark. "Maybe you've heard of me?"

        The rattling of the door ceased, and the faces inside the house glanced at each other uncertainly.

        "Why would we have heard of you?"

        "Do me a favour and don't screw around, please. We both know what this is about." Bridget handed the girl a business card, hand-written in a spidery scrawl of black ink across thick, creased paper, aged yellow as a lion. The girl reached out and took it before she knew what she was doing.

        "Bridget Cleary, of the Cleary Line. Demonology, History of Occult & Arcane, Weirding. By Appointment Only," Fionna read out, then looked up at Bridget with an eyebrow raised incredulously. "'Appointment only'?"

        "Not everyone is aware of their appointment."

        "How did you find us, then?"

        "Same way I find everything else."

        "The internet?" Fionna snorted.

        Bridget frowned.

        "I work in mysterious ways," she muttered noncommittally.

        "So Bridget the Burned is supposed to be your great-great...great..."

        "Five greats. Mother's side all the way down, yes."

       There was a moment of conspiratorial glances and pursed lips between the girl in the house and the two men behind her, but then with a metallic swish, she unlatched the chain, and opened the door.

        "Prove it," the girl demanded coolly.

        As the door swung wide, the light from inside poured out down the steps in a long, square shaft, casting Bridget's shadow stretched and spindly behind her. The spotlights converged.

        "Let me just..." Bridget carefully and slowly raised one hand in the air and reached the other towards the inside pocket of her jacket, palms open and hands flat, to make it clear she wasn't reaching for a weapon. The girl and the two men watched her closely, and tense as coiled springs. All she pulled out was a lighter and a pack of cheap cigarettes. Confusion began to creep into the other three faces.

        "I said--"

        Bridget cut her off with a quick gesture of her hand, briskly raising one finger for silence. She flipped open the pack and took one. It rested loosely between her lips as she put the rest back inside her jacket. She raised both hands, one flicking the lighter and the other cupped around it against the breeze, and lit the cigarette. She glanced up. They were getting restless for the main act. She took a few quick, short puffs, working up a strongly glowing ember on the tip of the cigarette, and exhaled through her nose, looking the girl and the the two men straight in the eyes one by one. Bridget took one more drag, long and slow, as deep as her lungs would let her, leaning back slightly as her chest rises. The ember flared up red, visibly consuming the length of the cigarette, until she stopped suddenly, and the ember lowered. She tipped back her head. Unnatural, oily black smoke churned in her mouth, just behind her lips, and escaped in a lazy drift from her nostrils. By some strange trick of the reflected light, Bridget's eyes seemed to glitter red for a moment.

        Then, with a sudden, violent breath, she exhaled.

        Smoke poured out almost tangibly thick, black and pungent. It formed an ashy plume in the doorway. It twisted, condensed, and pulled, then seemed to go taut. A creature's head, gaunt and toothy with a long, flickering, forked tongue and wide, torn ears, appeared in the smoke like a statue in stone. It seethed in place for a moment. Bridget grinned toothily at the three in the house, stray tendrils of smoke still curling from between her teeth like a volcanic fissure. The creature suddenly shot forward, giving a roar that grew in pitch until it was like a scream of wind through a rusty gate, gnashing blindly with its needle-like teeth. The girl in the house barely flinched as the smoggy mouth clamped its jaw down with a snap one last time a hair's breadth in front of her nose. It seemed to shattered itself with the force of the bite, and dissipated back into smoke.

        Bridget descended into a vicious coughing fit, dropping the lighter, which clattered away between the boards of the porch steps. She inhaled raggedly and shuddered into another breath, a mischievous smile managing to sneak into her expression. She used the toe of her boot to stub out the dog-end that still smouldered dully in her hand, and tossed it over her shoulder into the street. The girl gestured for her to come in, and Bridget did, raising her hand for a glass of water. The girl nodded to one of the men, and he quickly brought some tap water from the kitchen. Bridget downed the whole thing so fast the other three hardly saw it and cleared her throat loudly.

        "Thank you for your vote of confidence," she rasped, starting to get her voice back. She looked around, taking in the room. It was a small room by the back door, that with four people in it, felt cramped. The walls were an optimistic enough yellow, but a pale shade lacking the courage of its convictions that didn't want to interrupt. Accents like the door-frames, windows and baseboards were a similarly meek shade of blue. The floor was shiny white hospital-like linoleum, aggressively practical and clean. Boots and shoes were lined up neatly on a mat by the front door, under a row of coats hung in an alcove. Polka-dot gardening rainboots and a cartoonish yellow plastic rain poncho and hat particularly stood out. Much of the space was occupied with thin, metal shelves of potted plants and canned foods. The exterior-facing walls were lined with windows, and a closed door was opposite them, behind the two men. Bridget left the empty water glass on the corner of one shelf.

        A single drop clung to its edge, a fragrant purplish red.

        "I suppose we should thank you for coming, Ms. Cleary" the girl said, somewhat blandly. One of the men behind her, the older one with his thick beard, wrinkled his nose at this like he smelled something foul. Bridget saw his reaction over the girl's shoulder, and locked eyes with him before looking back at the girl.

        "Just Brid is fine..." her eyes darted back to the older man again for barely a second. "Actually, how about Bridget."

        "We were just sitting down to dinner, if you'd like to join us? Sit down and get acquainted?" she asked, sounding as if she wouldn't mind if Bridget declined, but Bridget enthusiastically agreed. The girl walked between the two men, and opened the closed door on the other side of the small room. It led into a generously sized kitchen, with a huge dark oak table in the middle, with a white table cloth over it and set for dinner. The plates and glasses were empty, but the kitchen smelled of the hearty beef stew that bubbled on the stove, quietly rattling the lid of its pot. The design of the room meticulously matched the first room and likely the rest. The counters were bleached laminate and the appliances were all a matched set of identical shining stainless steel. All the dining chairs around the old, ornate wooden table didn't match it; they were as streamlined and modern as the rest of the kitchen.

        Bridget walked through the door into the kitchen before the others did, and settled herself in at the head chair of the table. She smiled at the three irritated frowns around her. They seemed to consider arguing about it, but just sat down wordlessly in the other chairs. Bridget looked down at the empty place setting in front of her, and grabbed the corner of the tablecloth that overhung the edge of the table by a few inches. She flipped it up sharply, revealing the bare wood of the oak table. It looked more than old, it was ancient. Intricate relief carvings in the wood and etchings in dye and ash peeked out from under the rest of the cloth.

        "Just having dinner?"

        "That was for after dessert," came the flustered voice of the younger man, who was much shorter than the other and clean-shaven, a mousey man with small glasses and wearing a priest’s collar. Bridget looked at him for a moment, corners of her mouth turned up like she was trying not to laugh, then dropped the corner of the tablecloth back down.

        "Fair enough."

        "I guess I'll hurry up and serve dinner then," the girl said, with an attitude of trying to get this over with as fast as possible.

        "I thought we were going to get acquainted first," Bridget said with mock disappointment.

        "We can do it while we eat," the girl pushed, and got up to go to the stove. While she ladled out the stew from a deep steel pot, Bridget reached half-way across the table and picked up a clear plastic pitcher of water and poured herself a glass, then grabbed a couple pieces of bread from a roughly cut fresh loaf that sat on a wooden cutting board in the middle of the table. She crunched on the bread with a satisfied expression, like she'd momentarily forgotten three other people were watching her with sour stares. When the girl poured the soup into her bowl, she dipped the bread and looked around at the others, who had grudgingly started to eat.

        "So!" Bridget dropped into the awkward silence, "Names to faces? I know you've heard of me, at least within The Industry as the current curator of Bridget the Burned's notes and research...." she trailed off here, prompting someone else to continue. There was another awkward silence. 

        "I'm Fionna Kelly," the girl began reluctantly, and stalled over a few more spoonfuls of stew. She was older than Bridget had first thought, nearly Brid's own age, but in many ways looked quite her opposite. Where Bridget was fairly tall as women go, Fionna was quite short. Bridget's pale skin, her long ruler-straight black hair, and her sharp features and strong build made her seem older than her years. With Fionna's smooth-featured rosy complexion, her thick curls of auburn hair that fell around her shoulders, and her slight frame, she seemed much younger. Fionna dressed in a knee-length narrow skirt in an earthy dunn shade, with a matching vest. An airy spring blouse lent the only splash of pastel colour, and only seemed to make her seem washed and pale, as if she were constantly shocked and livid about something. Her jewelry was limited to a simple gold chain and stud earrings, and she wore polished flats indoors with immaculately white socks turned down evenly at the ankles. She had a French manicure and perfectly emphasized eye make-up. She dressed the way she decorated her home. Bridget was strictly a jeans and t-shirts type, and when she wore shoes at all, she chose steel-toed boots. Just in case. She had a worn and faded dark-red jacket that she wore like a second skin, its only adornment a pair of buttoned-down epaulets. A tiny inverted cross, carved from old wood and worn smooth, hung from a nylon cord around her neck. Her only other jewelry was a large and ornate silver signet ring on her right hand, totally at odds with the rest of her appearance. The one thing that Bridget and Fionna shared were their bright, icy blue eyes. Their gazes locked for a moment, and the room frosted over.

        "Do go on," Bridget muttered.

        "That is, Nexus Fionna. I...specialize in research. Not of any particular note in The Industry, as you call it, certainly nothing like your great-great..."

        "Five greats."

        "Grandmother. But I am the local Nexus, and this is the local Red Cabal."

        "The whole thing..?"

        "The Red Order has been having issues with our numbers for several generations now, and this isn't exactly the best neighbourhood for recruitment. But, yes, I'm Nexus Fionna, and this is our Red Cabal."

        "You're a Weirder." It wasn't a question.

        "I...yes, I am," Fionna said defensively.

        "Not long ago they didn't allow Weirders like you to even be lay members of the Order. Not long before that, they didn't even allow Weirders like us to be in general. And now it's 'Nexus Fionna', is it?"

         The older man dropped his spoon in his bowl with a clatter and a splash. The young priest grabbed his shoulder gently.

        "Joshua," Fionna muttered.

        "She's not a Weirder! Not a dangerous one...she knows as much as she needs to. She uses it to uphold the Purge, never done anything uncanny," Joshua suddenly broke his silence. He looked at Bridget pointedly. "Unlike some."

        "Mister. Brant." Fionna said, mildly but firmly. Her eyes stayed fixed downwards at her hand holding the spoon, paused an inch above the bowl. Joshua settled back. He smouldered there quietly, like the last hot coal burning under the ashes of an extinguished campfire.

        Bridget let the tension hang awkwardly in the air, seemingly unaware it was awkward at all. She looked at Joshua, eyes flickering over minor details. He was an old man who wore his age like armour, like an ancient tree, the veins and tendons in his hands and neck standing out as spreading roots. His skin was like a leather holster, his features sharp as a knife. His eyes with irises like the dark between stars were startling, like shining glass behind the mask of his face. Black strands and highlights stood starkly against the silver of his densely curly hair and beard, both just barely past the point of needing a trim. His clothes were inexpensive and plain, just blue jeans and an olive green men's shirt covered over by a faded denim jacket. He had the look of a farmer who used to be a solider.

        "Did you come here with a reason in mind? Besides saying things you know will get people going?" the young priest injected into the silence.

        "Of course I did," Bridget said, continuing to totally ignore or simply not detect his iciness. She cleaned her bowl with the last bite of bread. "I assume you've heard lately from the guys who run your club?"

        "How did you know the Seven Inquisitors had contacted Nexus Fionna?!" demanded Joshua. Fionna cut him off with a volley of daggers glared across the table.

        "I don't. But I know there's been some... whisperings ...lately. In The Industry, in the..." Bridget waved her hands vaguely around her head, "...aether? The words 'ark' and 'covenant' are being used, among others. And if I've heard about it, I assume the Inquisitors of the Red Order are already passing notes about it in class. I also assume they asked you to place a little call to the information desk for them?"

        "How--"

        "How did I know that? Maybe you know something and I know something and together we might know something else. Maybe I need an extra set of hands and you need a monstrous signal boost if you're going to make that call tonight. Maybe, just maybe, I inherited more from Bridget the Burned than just the five or or six hundred pounds of diaries and bits of paper, where she jotted the secrets and mysteries of the Weirding in the margins, between her shopping lists and her recipes for Welsh rabbit and shepherd's pie, and maybe it's something you need a lot more than I ultimately need you, so maybe you shouldn't be asking. Maybe I should light up another smoke and remind you."

        Bridget picked up her glass and downed it, as a punctuation mark. A swirl of red appeared in the water as it drained, like a single drop of blood had fallen in it. When she exhaled, it smelled like over-sweet fruit.

        "Father Callaghan, would you be so kind as to help me prepare the table for tonight's work." Fionna didn't sound like she was asking. The young priest complied, and helped her quickly clear the table and put aside the tablecloth, constantly looking around through his small, round, wire-frame glasses with guileless brown eyes like a lamb. He was clearly nervous, glancing over his shoulders, like something was upsetting him. He seemed guilty and reluctant. He had pale brown hair in a youthful but conservative 50's Boy Scout cut. As he turned back to the empty table, he fingered his priest's collar and visibly gulped with anxiety. With his timid, soft features, he looked like a frightened little boy staring down into the blackness at the top of the basement stairs. Some candles were lit, and the electric lights extinguished. He and Fionna returned to their seats.

        The old oaken table was fully uncovered now. It was imprinted over practically every inch with large, branching curved and geometric shapes made of lines of cryptic script, that themselves are made up of the tiny inscribed letters of incantations in myriad tongues, living and dead. It formed, loosely, a circle with a number of smaller circles inside it, and other shapes radiating out from the centre point towards the edge. Gilt filigree highlighted some of the most important sigils, and red or black or yellow paint some others. In the centre of the middle circle, in gold and gemstones, were the letters of the English alphabet writ large, with the numbers zero to nine, and two simple line drawings of doors, a closed one to the left of the writing and an open one to the right. Fionna put an empty shot glass upside down on the image of a closed door. Before she could move it across to the other, Bridget cut in.

        "Would you mind of I did the honours?" she asked. Fionna hesitated. "It's a bit of a speciality, and this call we're about to make is a special occasion."

        Fionna took her hand off the shot glass, and Bridget put hers on it. The others, almost in unison, put their hands flat on the table. Father Callaghan was starting to sweat, his hands pressed so forcefully against the surface that the blood had run out of them, and they clenched white-knuckled against the table. She was about to move the glass and begin the ritual, when she paused for a moment reflectively, head on one side.

        "You know...you don't need most of this stuff. The antique table, the jewels, the candles. I mean, it's like only using phones while standing on your head. You can do it if you like, but...that's just on you," she said, like someone confiding a stage secret. "If you feel better doing it than not, go ahead. But you could do this with a shirt button and a kid's alphabet book."

        Bridget slid the glass across the table to the image of the open door, and laid both her hands flat on the table like the others. Fionna, Joshua, and Father Callaghan held their breath, waiting for something to notice them.

        Back out on stage. The audience is waiting. It's time for Act Two.

        Bridget closed her eyes, cleared her mind, breathed deeply and steadily. With a high ringing sound, the shot glass began to tremble rapidly against the table. Slowly, roughly, as if it were being jerked along on a string, it began to circle the open door.

        "Hell-ooo...." Bridget chirped, in a sing-song voice that would call to a neighbour over a backyard fence, "Somebody out there tonight. We see you."

        Stark black shadows that were cast across the room spasmed as the candle flames wavered. The glass began to spin faster, like it was being thrown hand-to-hand around a circle.

        "And what's your name, then?"

        The shot glass jerked violently towards the letter D. Then it stopped for a moment, like it was out of breath and resting. After a moment, a hollow grinding sound carried it towards the R, where it paused again. A little faster, to the letter A. After barely a second, it glided smoothly to the X. It rattled back to the D. It slithered to the R. It sang to the A and the X.

        Faster. D. R. A. X.

        Faster. D-R-A-X.

        Faster. DRAX.

        Faster. DRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAX....

        Fionna, head on her chest, raised her eyes towards Father Callaghan. He gave a small shrug. Whoever this Drax was, it wasn't one of the big names Downstairs.

        "Show us."

        Cupboards slammed open and closed. Dinner china rattled like bones. Father Callaghan yelped.
        "What is your aspect?"

        W-R-A-T-H

        "We're here for the Red Order," Fionna interjected. Bridget's head snapped towards her with a fiery stare.

        "Are you that stupid?!"

        R-E-D D-O-G-S R-E-D D-O-G-S R-E-D D-O-G-S....

        "We're in Conference," Bridget hurriedly assured, "We will abide by the ground rules. We had an Appointment."
        B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S

        "There's been some crackling on the radio. Something's about to bubble to the surface. A lot of noise and commotion. What's going on down there?"

        F-I-R-E S-A-L-E

        Fionna raised an eyebrow at Bridget, who shrugged.

        "Demons can have a sense of humour, too."

        "Just get it to the point. We're not here to make friends with it."

        "Something big's about to happen."

        A-L-W-A-Y-S I-S

        "Something...Biblical."

        "We know something's out there that wasn't before," Fionna cut in again, "The Inquisitors have divined it. Weirders can hardly hear their communications for all the static about Something New."

        T-H-E-N W-H-Y A-S-K

        "Because we want details."

        T-H-E-N W-H-Y T-E-L-L

        "Because if you don't, the Inquisition has something up its sleeve. The Cabals have plausible deniability, but the Inquisitors have a way to make things hard for you."

        S-O Y-O-U D-O-N-T K-N-O-W

        Fionna flushed.

        "We know enough. The Inquisition made a Deal setting this Appointment anyways, answering us is part of the ground rules."

        W-H-A-T I-F I J-U-S-T D-I-D-N-T

        "You'd be violating the Contract, and in a lot more trouble than any earthly person could possibly cause," Fionna snapped, "Now, maybe we could just get down to our business already: where is the Ark, and what is the Final Covenant?"

         T-H-E A-R-K S-L-E-E-P-S

        "It's waking up. We can all hear it. What's it supposed to contain? What is the Final Covenant?"

        A L-O-T L-I-K-E T-H-E O-T-H-E-R T-W-O

        Silence creeps around the room like a fog, as the ringing sound of the shot glass across the table rested. Bridget's eyes closed and a bead of sweat ran down her temple, as she took the intermission in her channelling to gasp hungrily at air that was hung with thin smoke from the candles. Her breath hitched in her throat as the clear crystal ringing movement of the glass cut through the room.

        B-U-T N-O-T R-E-A-L-L-Y

        "Then what are all three of them?" Fionna demanded, frustration grinding in her voice.

        O-L-D. N-E-W. F-A-T M-A-N. L-I-T-T-L-E B-O-Y.

        F-I-N-A-L. N-E-W M-A-N-H-A-T-T-E-N P-R-O-J-E-C-T

        "What was that supposed to mean?" muttered Father Callaghan, not sure if he actually wanted to be heard. "It's a weapon? Is...is this about the war? Something we'd have seen on the news?"

        The glass shot to N, circled there for a moment, then spelled out:

        N-O-T Y-O-U-R L-I-T-T-L-E W-A-R.

        "So the Mortal Coil is safe, then?"

        The glass circled over the N near the center of the board only once or twice, before adding:

        C-O-L-L-A-T-E-R-A-L D-A-M-A-G-E

        "What kind of Ark would you need to hold something like that?" Fionna whispered. She swallowed imperceptibly, feeling like someone standing at the edge of a cliff, dropping a torch into a chasm, watching it fall and fall and fall, until the darkness swallows it and doesn't even say thank you for the meal.

        O-N-E T-H-A-T S-L-E-E-P-S

        "When is the Final Covenant coming?"

        W-H-E-N I-T W-A-K-E-S

        "Is the Ark going to be a person? An object? A place?!"

        "Animal, vegetable or mineral?" Bridget interjected with a breathless, tired laugh. Fionna shot icicles at Bridget with her eyes.

        I-T I-S G-O-I-N-G T-O B-E, the glass spelled out, and rested emphatically there on the E, while the Cabal members peered over it, hoping it would continue. Fionna sneered smugly, and looked up and around, speaking confidently to the thick darkness pervading the room.

        "That means you don't know, doesn't it?"

        T-H-E A-R-K  S-L-E-E-P-S

        I-T W-I-L-L W-A-K-E

        I-T W-I-L-L B-E

        Fionna glanced down at her hands, an almost theatrical expression of disinterest. She made a show of meticulously examining her manicure for flaws she knew it didn't have.

        "Hm...So, I'm hearing a no. No, you don't."

        A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

        "Like I said, tell us something we don't know," Fionna rolled her eyes.

        A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

        A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

        A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

        A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S...

        The shot glass was jerking and skipping and rattling around the table so violently it might break. Fionna laughed like a silver bell.

        "You don't know anything, do you? You're basically a secretary, answering the phone for someone important and pretending you know anything about the running of the company."

        " Are you even licensed to fulfil Contracts," added Father Callaghan nervously, encouraged by Fionna apparently gaining for the Cabal the upper hand in the conversation, "Or are you just angling for a promotion to Sales?"

        "Why in all Hell did the Inquisitors make us an appointment with you? Of all the black and fell twisted entities" Joshua snarled the last two words. His perfect white tombstone teeth flashed in the wavering candle shadows on his face. His eyes rolled as he shook his head, fire and brimstone words boiling up from within him as naturally as breathing, "Of all of them writhing  in the Infernal Breach, here's you. The Inquisition of Seven can command the attention of The Motherless Goat!  They can demand audience at will with Gr'Shaag The Bleeding. With He Of The Teeth. With The Nine Kings of Old Hyaag'Yor and the Queen of Rot and the Lady of Worms! They hold The Enemies in submission by wielding their very tools and weapons against them.  And you expect us to believe--"

        "Believe that the Inquisition drew up a Contract setting an official Appointment," Fionna interrupted, "so that we could talk to someone called..." she raised her hands, gesturing sarcastic air-quotes around the word," ...'Drax'? Really? Drax?!"

        "It sounds like a drain cleaner," Father Callaghan piped in brightly from the sidelines.

        Bridget seemed to be in visible pain as the messages relayed by the glass careening around the table shot back against the Cabal's accusations. A splintered shard of glass at least an inch long broke off from around the rim of the shot glass when it struck too hard at the wrong angle on an inlaid diamond that formed a highlight on the crossbar of the E. The shard flew towards Fionna's face and scratched her lightly across her cheek under her left eye before passing over her shoulder and clattering into the metal kitchen sink behind her. She didn't flinch.

        Suddenly, Bridget slumped forward, as if falling unconscious. The glass fell still as soon as she did, and silence again slunk cat-like through the room. Every heartbeat was audible. When the glass started to slowly quiver and crawl again, the ragged edge of its rim was jagged as a wolf's smile, and the noise it made was harsh and irregular.

        D...R...A...X

        D...R...A...X

        A...R...K A...W--A-K-E-S

        D...R...A...X

        D.R.A.X.

        D-R-A-X

        DRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAX...

        As the glass accelerated, Bridget jerked upright in her chair like someone had yanked on a rope attached to her spine. She heaved in breath like a drowning person.

        "Throwing a temper tantrum?" Fionna wheedled.

        Hecklers in the audience tonight.

        Losing control of the room.

        The cupboards above the counters and below the sinks started to bang and rattle open and closed. The plates and cups jittered closer and closer to the precipice of their shelf, setting Fionna's teeth on edge. The drawers of silverware slammed open and closed a few times, knives and forks and spoons slicing back and forth over each other, sounding like waves crashing on a metal shore. With a final surge, the drawers tore completely free from the counter, spraying the floor with a rolling foam of sharp cutlery. Before it had all even hit the floor, the the knives in the slots of several wooden knife blocks on the counter flew out of their sheathes.

        Long, thin fish knives like rapiers.

        Heavy, square meat cleavers.

        A horizontal rain, each drop a tapered triangular blade, like sharks' teeth as long as an arm.

        Several dozen of them flipped end over end through the air with a whistling sound.

        Like a shocked crowd.

        Fionna's hair flicked as a vegetable knife somersaulted just barely past the back of her neck. A tiny paring knife, curled like a talon, glanced Father Callaghan's left ear as it flew past. They lodged themselves in the opposite wall, not quite randomly. Four defined spaces showed around where they all were sitting, like the silhouette of a knife-thrower's lovely assistant. Father Callaghan raised a hand to his ear and gingerly dabbed at it. His finger came away stained red with a smear of blood from the crescent-shaped cut.

        Bridget tilted her head back, sweat soaking through her shirt in a semi-circle across her chest, and coughed roughly, gulping air as if she'd been holding her breath until just now. Fionna sighed curtly, smoothed the few stray strands of hair, straightened her clothing.

        "Look," she said in clipped tones, one corner of her mouth curling above her teeth like a cat sneering over a cornered mouse. "Can we just speak to your Manager?"

        Wind roared through the room, like breath from a dragon's throat. Bridget's raven hair flew back from her shoulders like dark wings as Fionna's many candles flared around the room like lightning, and then went dark, swallowed by the gale.

        Grand Finale. Lower the lights.

        Joshua cried out like a barking dog as he was struck in the side of the head with a sugar bowl that had blown off the counter. The cups in the cupboards rattled like chattering teeth.

        The high, ringing sound of the shot glass moving on wood started again, drawn not by the entity but by the storm it was creating in Fionna's kitchen. It slid past the field of letters in the middle of the table, and a moment later, hit the floor with a sharp 'ting!' and started to roll. Callaghan and Joshua jumped up from their chairs and ran after the uneven, hollow sound of the token they'd been using for their conversation rolling away in the unnaturally dark room.

        Too many feet scrambling, and soon that sound was replaced with a loud 'crack!' Both jumped back. Joshua dropped to one knee, and started groping blindly at the ground where he thought he heard the break. Ignoring the hot, sharp, sudden pain in his palm, he seized tightly onto the largest piece of the shot glass he could find--it felt like the bottom, with it's thick solid-glass base acting as gums to the serrated teeth where the rest of the glass broke off. The wind rose in strength, threatening to blow doors off hinges from the inside, and started to fill with smoke that smelled like Bridget's cheap cigarettes. In a single motion, Joshua jumped back to his feet, turned around, and slapped his hand down on the table in a wide arc. It struck like a drum, and the room fell still and silent.

        No one even breathed, until a tiny glow of light meekly poked up its head. Fionna had re-lit one of the candles, a wide, flat tea light, which sat in a saucer on her palm. She glanced around, her lips pressed into a paper-thin, bloodless white line. Her kitchen looked like a bomb had struck. The other rooms seemed untouched, but the kitchen was a disaster. And so was her hair, it felt like. The candle was tiny, and she could only see a couple of feet around herself, through the last dissipating veils of thick, black smoke. Near her elbow, Father Callaghan was white as a sheet and trying to occupy as little space as possible.

        Joshua still stood still as a tree trunk with his bloody hand over the shards of the shot glass on the table. He examined it in the candlelight. He'd managed to slam the bit of broken glass down right over the engraved image of a tightly locked door on the tabletop, immediately ending their connection with the Drax entity. A sticky sheen of blood peered out from between his fingers, spreading across the table. He finally lifted the hand, and began to disinterestedly dislodge bits of glass still stuck in his palm. On the table, the viciously jagged remains of the token were stained with blood that looked black in the low light, and sat exactly dead-centre of a smeared print of Joshua's long-fingered hands on its surface.

        "Ms.Cleary," Fionna called to the darkness at the opposite end of the table, "Was that 'Drax' a friend of yours?"

        No answer. As seconds pass, all three of them look up from them own concerns, and towards the table. Fionna lifts the saucer with the candle above her head.

        Bridget was gone.

        Fionna leapt across the kitchen in a single step, and yanked up the blinds over the window. She was just in time to see the orange-red burning point of Bridget's lit cigarette fade into the darkness of the unlit street.

        Exit, stage left.

                  Applause.

The grey morning sun pierced the layer of fog that draped around trees and sprawled in empty fields along the north service road out of town. It pried open Bridget's eyelids like rusty hinges. Brid cringed and rubbed away the grit in her eyes, forcing her vision to focus. She was honestly surprised to have made it back to the truck last night. Towards the end, the finale of that little performance, she'd been a breath away from collapsing on stage, right there in Fionna's aggressively tasteful kitchen. 

At least she'd brought down the house.


Bridget slowly picked herself up from the floor of her weatherworn, ancient pick-up truck, and slid behind the wheel, into the black leather seat. 

The truck was one built in a previous age of manufacturing, all thick beams of solid industrial steel, and outweighing a modern-built model by the weight of the world. It was stern angles and dramatic curves, like a lantern-jawed action hero and just as battle-scarred. Rust crept across its carapace like a five o'clock shadow. Brid drove the old workhorse hard, and had years ago given up trying to keep any kind of paintjob on it. The last one had been a vivid sanguine red and patches of it still remained between the primer grey she'd finally settled for. It was like a bright red lichen branching across a dull rock, from the scowling mouth of the truck's front grill to the embossed Chevy cross stamped in the metal across the back. A tattered tarp, faded and frayed, flapped between the clutches of the rope holding it in place in the truck bed. The black interior where Brid sat was faded with age and ingrained cigarette ash. The space behind the seats was littered with a random collection of debris. Books and newspapers, clothes, food packages, bottles and cans. On the passenger seat, a rumpled and crushed bag from a butcher's shop leaked blood and water.

Squinting from the effort, Bridget closely examined the glove compartment for evidence of tampering. The old Chevy's factory stock glovebox had been replaced with one of her own devising: a thick, rectangular block of iron on black cast-iron hinges she'd taken from a cemetery gate. It was painted and scribbled on with some kind of thick burgundy ink. Some figures were very sharp and precise, some long and looping. Some scratchy and small, as if they'd been added as an afterthought. 

Or in a hurry. 

They covered the iron glovebox door so densely that they overlapped in places, and for at least a foot around it, the dashboard was veined with scrawled-in red sigils. They tapered off towards the driver's side, but also appeared in smaller, more subtle clusters of such symbols scattered around different parts of the truck cab like a blood spatter. The glovebox was locked seven times: two thick, heavy padlocks spaced evenly on each side, and the seventh in the top middle, where the glovebox latch would normally be. 

The seventh lock was black iron, and looked ancient. Not like the way the old truck was ancient, more like the way that dirt and fire are ancient. It was inscribed with thin white lines like old scars. They formed no distinct sigils or writing, but curved and zig-zagged and crossed over each other like the lock was wrapped in the silver-white webs of a ghostly spider. It was a puzzle lock, with no key or combination, though it still had a keyhole and tumblers as red herrings to its true mystery. It was unbreakable and intricate, but with a simple, clever solution that the owner would never forget and a thief could never guess. 

Bridget looked over her shoulder at the pack-rat horde behind the seats. There was an empty beer can there with the tab still on; she could break that off and use it as a token. That menu placemat from the diner had the whole alphabet on it, it looked like. Well, she couldn't see a "Q", but that wasn't usually one of the important letters. She wondered, without much hope, if she had enough strength left at the moment to make a Rather Important Call.

She swallowed against a lump in her throat, and started to cough. Leaning forward against the steering wheel, her hands clutched her knees and her fingers dug like talons into the thick fabric of her jeans. Her throat dried up and tightened, and felt like it was full of steel wool. She wheezed like she was going to bring up a lung. Her eyes went wide and she clamped one hand over her mouth. The other yanked the driver's side door open. She slumped out of the cab and stumbled ahead a few feet away from it. 

Before she could fall, she caught herself on the trunk of a tree. The truck was in an abandoned field, bordered by a forest that she could barely see in the dim, blurring edges of her peripheral vision. Overgrown grasses almost waist-high stuck to her jeans, slicked around her legs like tentacles by the dew. They were rough and slick and sharp, and quivered in the cold wind. The effect rippled against her vision and she strained to keep her balance. Brid stood bent over at the waist like that for a moment, then took her hand from her mouth. She coughed once more, wetly, and started retching. She spat out clots of black bile like road tar first, starting with tiny dark flecks and getting bigger, to the size of her fist. Flakes of rusted metal glinted dully in the sludge, more each time until it was like metal chips in motor oil. The tar-like substance gradually dried up, and she dry-heaved up several more mouthfuls of metal filings and volcanic ash, followed by thumb-sized pieces of coal and jagged igneous rock, then lastly, threw up the remains of Fionna's cooking. When she felt finished, Bridget spit once more to clean out her mouth, then pulled a red handkerchief from her back pocket, and wiped her face with it. 

'Guess that means Phoning Home is out of the question," Brid thought. She pocketed the handkerchief, got back in the truck, and turned the key already set in the ignition. 'At least, by the regular connection.' The truck let out a roar on waking, and Brid drove it across the field back to the service road, lumbering over the uneven ground and clinging undergrowth like a grazing dinosaur. 


The truck's tires growled against the gravel and dust. The north service road got rougher the further you got from the city, paved roads having disappeared a couple of miles ago. It was lined with tall pines that jostled shoulder to shoulder for a view of the sun. A few miles ahead in the distance, the trees and fields suddenly dropped off, and the ground had been levelled. A dark mesh of criss-crossed shadows stood needle-sharp in the distance, stretched across the road and out of sight in both directions. 

It was a rusty chainlink fence, strung through up and down with barbed wire and thirty meters tall if it was a foot. It encircled the massive site of the former collective junkyard once used by the city and its surrounding areas. It stood abandoned now, filled to capacity and waiting for disposal on a city-ordained date that would likely never be selected. The piles of trash, mostly things like rusted-out metal and shredded furniture and construction scraps and dead Christmas trees, towered over the tall fences like a mountain range. 

Bridget pulled up in front of the gate, which was as wide as the road to allow garbage trucks and moved on a pulley system. The control for it was in a security guard's booth on the other side of the gate, which had long stood empty. Stained yellow paint peeled from the walls in long, narrow strips. A sparking transformer buzzed at the top of a pole, but was still attached to both the main power line and the gate, and still functioned. 

She parked the truck by the side of the road just in front of the gate, grabbed the butcher's bag, and locked the truck behind herself. The dripping bag swung from one hand with each step. She stopped a few feet in front of it and craned her neck to look up at the wall of barbed wire, shielding her eyes from the sun with her free hand. 


Bridget heard a stack of old newspapers finally topple under their own weight, somewhere behind a mini-van that had been crushed flat and pushed up on its edge. Points of white and yellow light like pairs of fireflies appeared in the dark alcoves formed by the rusted out husks of cars, and between the jumble of broken timbers. Brid grinned and shook the bag in the air, raining droplets of blood. Some landed above her eye and ran down the side of her face. She whistled loud and sharp.

"MOONDOG, HERE BOY!" She whistled again. "HEY! MOONDOG!"
The points of light shrank back, except for two, inside the open end of a shipping crate. They were joined by a silhouette, and then he stepped out into the light.

It was a dog. A wolf. He had a narrow, sharp face. His ears were pointed, though ragged. His coat was dense and uneven, with shaggy grey fur, grizzled in places with black, brown, and white. With all paws on the ground, he was around four feet at the shoulder. It was small for his kind, barely half-sized, but his long limbs and huge paws were all tendon and lean strength under under the thick fur. His black claws clicked like a gun cocking against the spill of broken ceramic tiles under his paws . A thick brush of a tail twitched uncertainly, and he raised his nose into the wind. 

It was a man. He had a wild shock of long jet-black hair, sheer features and darting eyes. A face like prairie sand and wind. The dog had started to twist, and the skin had rippled strangely as if something was shifting underneath it. The air around him had wavered, and it was hard to look at him. He was in two places at once, and the space around him made no visual sense, in an Escher etching sort of way. The brain couldn't interpret what the eye was seeing, and there was a sound like tearing leather in half. Typical signs that reality is being bent into shapes it doesn't like.  

He was barefoot, with calloused soles that didn't need shoes even here in the junkyard, and he wore a black t-shirt much too big for him. It billowed around his rail-thin body like a sail on a mast. His jeans were worn through at the shins and ankles. He knelt on the tiles, crouched on the balls of his feet and the tips of his spidery fingers. He half ran, half climbed or crawled over the stacks of crushed cars, like a monkey, as quick with his hands as his feet. His black t-shirt blustered around him like wings as he flew. At the edge of the fence, he stopped abruptly, leaning back and extending a foot forward to halt his momentum, then curled his body forward and upward like a wave. He pulled himself to his full height, and was face to face with Brid through the fence. She could still see the wolf that was always hiding just under the surface in this poorly-upkept person suit. The eyes examined her like two orange oil lamps swung at the gate by a night-watchman. His nostrils flared.

"You...you look--and smell!--terrible...were you out drinking instead of...what happened to the damn Cabal?!"

"What?! No! Shut the Hell up, Moondog, and let me in! I brought breakfast," Brid lifted the bag 
to eye-level and looked around behind the werewolf at the other dogs crawling out of their hiding places. No other shapeshifters, as far as she could see, but every possible type of dog in every size and colour. The address may not be great, but they had food enough and were largely safe, protected both by the fences and by the giant in their midst.  

"Is anyone following you?" he asked cautiously.

"No, and last night went fine. But it might still not be fine. I need to make sure it's fine, and I need you to help me, and I need to get in there!"

Moondog reluctantly pressed the button in the dilapidated security booth. The gate started to roll away to one side, and the yellow and black banded bar across the inside of the entrance lifted. The transformer shrieked and sent out sparks as Brid passed through the gate, and it closed behind her with another fireworks display. 

"That's a problem, y'know," Bridget pointed out.

"I know," Moondog muttered, his forehead wrinkling in an instinctive attempt to twitch pointed 
ears that weren't there, "So what happened with the Cabal last night?"

"I intercepted a Phone Call."

"What?"

"Their higher-ups, the Inquisitors, arranged a Contract commanding that an entity, a representative from Downstairs, should speak to their particular Cabal, at a pre-agreed particular time in a particular place. I guess it wasn't more specific than that, because I was able to pull it through a loophole and redirect it to myself."

Brid dropped the bag of meat scraps, and Moondog's pack of junkyard dogs barked happily, and the quickest among them raced over to the bag and gulped it down eagerly. Finder's keeper's.

Moondog and Bridget wandered for a while among the mazes of wreckage, before Brid paused by the hood of a taxi that was nothing but a chassis, yellow paint sloughing off to reveal rust. The taxi slumped forwards with a metallic groan as she hopped up on the hood and made herself comfortable, planting her boots wide on the listing remains of the front bumper, elbows on her knees. She cracked her knuckles absently. Bits of rust flaked from the taxi's carcass like a dog shaking off water. A knee-high terrier with a wirey white coat scurried out from underneath, barking testily, and stopped a few feet away from Brid. The little dog's lip curled up, and it let loose a barrage of furious barking. Feeling like he'd said his piece, he snorted huffily, shook himself, and trotted over to Moondog's ankles. The mostly-feral werewolf sat down facing Bridget, cross-legged in the dust. His thin, sinewy fingers scritched at the back of the terrier's neck and the little dog decided Bridget had been put in her place, and closed his eyes as he relaxed into Moondog's hand.

"So what's wrong, then?"

"So the real Call was never completed. From the point of view of the Power they made the Contract with, the Deal remains unfulfilled. Even if the Red Order don't wonder why that may be, they're going to try again as soon as they can. And someone actually at Home Office needs to take it this time."

Moondog looked off into the distance, mentally shuffling through his limited supply of human reference points, and was fairly sure he grasped her ongoing metaphor.

"If even one person in that half-assed little local Cabal says anything about you, and they will, all of Hell will know you're up here."

"I know. But I know who I can trust to take the Call, and how to get a secure connection with them." As Bridget spoke, she absent-mindedly fished around the inside pocket of her jacket. A single smooth gesture, and a cigarette hung loosely between her lips at a world-weary "Play it again, Sam" angle. She snapped her fingers. 

Nothing happened. 

She looked down with a curious raise of her eyebrow, then rolled her eyes in frustration. She'd taken for granted all these little habits like that, and even now half-expected them to still work, like when the power is knocked out, and the first impulse is to try to turn on the TV to check when the storm ends. With all her strength drained, she felt diminished and confined and slow. Everything felt loud and shrill. Her clothes felt rougher. Metal, like the ruined taxi hood where she sat, felt sharper. She was irritable, restless, like everything was deliberately going out of its way to make her lose her temper. A sensation like a tightly coiled wire strand in her chest started to pull taut as a garrotte.  Her lips pressed to a razor-thin white line, she sucked in air through her nose, trying to pull herself into check. 

She shook her head and willed her fists to relax, barely holding back the old and very familiar feeling of the Wrath. She patted down her jacket, groping through all its many pockets looking for her lighter, when an image from the night before flashed across her mind's eye. Her lighter, falling between the boards of Fionna's porch with a hollow clatter, the glint of the metal striker-wheel winking out weakly as it was swallowed by the darkness below. She growled and cursed violently, and her eyes seemed to flash bloody red like a trick of the light, almost an illusion. She snapped her fingers again, and an angry gout of flame spat out, explosive and uncontrolled, that sparked out around her hand, and speckled her clothes with constellations of tiny singed points. 

Without even lighting her smoke. 

She resisted the urge to crush the little coffin nail. Her hand was twitching to become a fist and her lip to curl into a snarl. Her tongue flicked across her teeth like a snake. Holding back the Wrath was apparently something else she'd taken for granted. She caught herself, took a deep, slow breath, and looked back at Moondog. Her eyes were wide and distracted, her mouth frozen in a stiffly forced smile. Moondog looked at the ground like he was just trying not to get involved. 

Or in her way. 

The little white terrier sensed the tension radiating off of Bridget and vibrating in the air like a single note sawed on a violin string, and he whimpered. His ears pinned back against his head and he looked off into the distance before leaping from Moondog's lap and beating a hasty retreat down a mossy section of cement pipe. 

Seeing the frightened little dog turn tail and run from her, Bridget's expression softened. The citizens of Moondog's little self-made society were among her favourite things about the Mortal Coil, and she honestly hadn't wanted to chase the little guy away. She honestly didn't want to chase anyone away, really. But that was the trouble with Wrath.  

"As you can see," she muttered stiffly, tucking the cigarette away behind her ear, "This is where you come in. I need you as...a Battery." she glanced down at the carapace of the car, "A spark-plug, if you will. Something like a cross between a jumper cable and a lightning rod? You and your trans-mundane werewolf mojo and what-not. After last night, I'm completely done and will be for a while." 


Bridget swallowed and looked at her feet for a moment.  When she spoke again, her voice was lowered, confiding her words like a shameful secret. "I'm practically mortal. Another reason I won't be able to pull that little "Dancing With Myself" trick at their next seance."

"How do we...secure the connection, you said?"

"With a sandbox and a lot of heavy lifting."

"There's a gravel pit over there."

"Perfect."

Brid climbed over the other crushed cars to the gravel pit and began to draw in the dirt with her toe. First, a circle enclosing the whole space. Inside that, another circle about halfway to the centre. Frowning in concentration at the position of the sun, she drew a flourishing sigil facing due south. Complex and at once floral and geometrical, Bridget knew it from memory.


She surveyed her handywork for a moment, then pointed at the outer ring. 

"First, we need to line that circle with anything you can find made of iron. Then," she pointed at the inner ring, at the base of the sigil, "We need something shiny and pretty, like silver or gold."

Moondog raised his eyebrows, looking from the trash heaps around them and back to Bridget. 

"Her aspect is Pride," Bridget shrugged. "We may have to improvise."

"Improvise?" he asked dubiously. 

"It's not like we're binding her on Contract as a Familiar, we're not even really doing a proper summoning. Just opening a line. It's not as formal, you don't need all the accessories."

Moondog shrugged, and started rooting through the piles for iron scrap. Bridget looked around herself.

"We still need an Ark. Not a big one, though, the only real requirement is 'A Mouth to Profess'..."


She grinned and reached into a torn-open green plastic garbage bag of discarded toys, and pulled out a pair of wind-up chattering teeth with running feet, and placed it in the middle of the sigil with a mischievous grin. Some gaudy children's costume jewellery made of plastic and Styrofoam covered in gold spray paint poked out from inside the same bag, half-obscured by the stringy scraps of garbage bag twisting in the wind, like nervous players peeking through the curtain before show-time. Bridget dragged them out on stage and laid them by the sigil as an offering to Pride.

Moondog heaved a twist of iron bars onto the circle. It was a section of smashed churchyard fence, with all the bars twisted out from the middle towards one side, like a car had crashed through it.

"You sure it's a good idea to just up and Call Home at this point? It's already incredibly lucky no one's noticed you missing yet. You're pushing it as it is--with all this Industry stuff, and the "five Great's". Take it from me--you should be keeping your head down. Living invisibly. Stay on the road, live out of that old truck of yours."

"I practically do that already."

"I know you know I'm right, that's why you're being such a goat right now. But I'm warning you: One word out of place from whoever you're Calling, and all of Hell is going, 'You know who I haven't seen lately?'"

"I'm not just Calling Home. I'm Calling Mag."

Another section of contorted metal fence fell to the gravel and dust with a clang and a rattle like bones.  Brid followed Moondog off into the scrap heaps to do her share of the heavy lifting.


The wall of iron around the sigil was a couple feet high.
Moondog was standing by, fidgetty and distracted. He wasn't used to being a human this long at one time any more, and his skin crawled, and his face felt wrong and toothless. His field of vision seemed slightly distorted all around him and the colours were so bright he could go blind. He itched at the constricted sensation of his clothing. He rubbed his nose and chin with one palm whenever he had a hand free, or tugged at his hair, trying to get used to his own features again. His posture was odd, sometimes slightly hunched, or sometimes stretched, and he seemed at once alert and bewildered.  

Bridget surveyed their work, nodded to herself, and climbed over the metal ring to the inside of the circle.  With one more glance around, she straightened her jacket and tucked her hair behind her ears. 

"All it needs is the lightning rod and jumper cables," Brid said, and waved Moondog over.  He joined her in the middle of the sigil. She carefully re-connected any scuffed lines. 

"What do you need me to do?"

"Nothing. Well...nothing else.  You're a lightning rod just by stepping in the sigil. "

"And the jumper cables?"

"You're already drawing the power here. I just need to divert it. Sort of...tune it to my wavelength?"

"So what do I do, then?"

"What I need you to do," she said, very slowly, "in order for me to do that, is just...keep still. And maybe hold your breath."

"Hold my--" Moondog cut off with an indignant grunt as Bridget punched him square between the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over huffing, clutching his arms around his waist. Swallowing his breath back into him, his neck snapped up and he glared at her furiously. Their eyes met and she could feel the rage radiating off of him like a red fog growing denser. It was delicious. It was like a hot light in her head, that drew her and exhilarated her like a moth finding fire. Bright white teeth seemed to stretch forward from his gums, just slightly. A wolf's eyes burned orange. His pupils contracted to slits. "What the Hell?!" he snarled, "What the God-damned HELL?!"

"That's about right, actually," she said quickly. She shrugged and shook herself, loosening her 
shoulders and taking a defensive stance. "Aspect of Wrath, y'know. Best way to channel energy into the circle that I can actually use. Once it's flowing, I can just focus the connection."

"Have you gone insane, I'm not going to--" Moondog stumbled back a few feet as Bridget's shoulder connected with the middle of his chest. He caught his balance with feet spread wide and shoulders straight. 

"C'mon, it'll be fun!" her words poured out rapidly and crashed on top of each other like boulders in an avalanche. It sounded tense and desperate and nothing like fun. A red light like a distant forest fire kindled deep in her eyes. Her grin was manic. She'd been hiding for a long time. Hadn't done this in a while. Drawing power like this was noisy, conspicuous, not usually worth sticking her neck out. There were other ways of getting a taste. The Mortal Coil was like an endless buffet of the kind of Loud energy that made her hands tingle and filled her brain with electric sparks. Loud music. Loud bars. Loud thoughts. Loud feelings and sensations. She fed on intensity, Wrath was just her best flavour. It had been a long time since she'd last tasted real, raw Wrath. 

Moondog's lip curled upwards. The shredding-leather sound of reality ripping to accommodate a new version of itself crackled in Bridget's ears. The man was gone. The dog's hackles raised. Bridget's every nerve was alert and drawing, like a cord plugged into a wall, from the frenetic energy of their anger and intention. It was cold, it was hot, it was sharp, like a web of wires and electric sparks crawling across her skin. 

"One round, first submission, no blood unless you can't help it, nothing below the belt," she barked out a hungry laugh, like a hyena, "Or through the jugular!"

Grey fur spun across the circle like fall leaves in a wind. Bridget caught Moondog's rushing jaws on her elbow. Her boot came up from under his chest, and he was knocked backwards. His jaws closed on air with an echoing snap. His claws cut furrows in the ground as he caught his balance. Bridget was mad with laughter that was tense as a coiled spring. 

He rounded back and came at her again, and her eyes flashed and glazed over bright red like coloured glass. His shoulder collided with her chest and knocked her over on her back. Her face with its rictus grin was under his jaws, unflinching in his hot breath. Another vicious peal of laughter cut through the air as a fistful of sand and gravel flew up in an arc from her hand. Moondog's eyes reflexively closed. In the dark behind his eyelids, he saw stars, when her fist connected with the side of his head. He heard her boots crunching through the gravel, putting space between them as he shook the dirt away. 

Their eyes connected across the circle, and they both wound themselves up for the next hit. A shrill hiss of annoyance pierced the air that hadn't come from either one of them. A mechanical whirring ground to an overclocked crescendo. 


"Just what on the Mortal Coil is happening here?! In my summoning circle?!"

Both of their heads shot towards the far edge of the circle, beside the main sigil. Reality stretched and warped, and the man sat there in the dirt again, looking shaken, as if just disturbed out of a trance. Bridget swallowed several times, gulping deep, fast breaths. She struggled to pull the mask of composure and normality back into place over the raging fire underneath. The red light drained from her eyes like coals being smothered. It was a very sudden come-down from such a high, and she couldn't help but wish the ride had been a little longer. 

"We're just...we're just working up a sweat here. Nothing to it. Mag, it's me--Remember?"

"No! No, no, not a word! Not a word until I've got an Ark worth inhabiting, even just for a moment. I can't even see you to answer such a question!"

Bridget walked to the other side of the circle, holding her legs steady with some effort. Her body still hummed and cracked with random discharges of absorbed energy. She savoured the feeling, knowing it would leave her as soon as she stepped away from the circle. 

Spinning aggravated paths through the dirt, the chattering teeth clattered their indignancy. Bridget couldn't help but laugh. A natural laugh. 

"Seven Hells, Mag!" she crowed, shaking her head, "It's me! Me! Who the Hell do you think it is?!"

"I'm quite certain I don't know! And also quite certain that it's Magraxiel, thank you so very much! Fancy you, having the nerve to call me 'Mag', when I don't know you from Adam."

"Alright, I've had my fun, I guess. Here's a better temporary Ark comin' your way," Bridget glanced around, and didn't see anything handy, so she reached up under a lank lock of black hair that hung over her ear, where she'd put her cigarette earlier. A bit of the end had broken off and it was slightly flattened, but still serviceable. With a snap of her fingers, some of the energy seeking desperately along her nerves for an exit surged invisibly up her hand and spat out of her fingertip as a flare of fire that quickly levelled out, like the first gasp of a match striking. Moondog wrinkled his nose. She waved her hand, and then the only flame came from the orange glow of the burning cigarette. Tendrils of airy grey smoke framed her face. 

"I'm not sure if you'll like this more or less than your current Ark, but at least it'll let you manifest...in a way."

Her eyes flashed like two reflections of the cherry on her smoke, and she began a long, slow, steady inhale. Like the night before, the smoke from her cheap cigarette darkened from light charcoal grey to an unnatural oily black. Stray wisps curled from her nostrils like an old coal train. When the cigarette had been burned down nearly to the filter, she lowered it. With a hoarse cough, she exhaled a cloud of black smoke into the general area of the chattering teeth.

"There you go, Mag, use that. Best I can do."


The smoke began to solidify into shapes in silhouette. Magraxiel began to materialize nostrils first, two twitching slit nostrils above a split lip, like a black hare. A forked tongue shot out between two pairs of long incisors that met at the tips like blades. Great round eyes appeared above them, huge and long-lashed. Two ears like like a bitten hare. The head was propped on a flexible serpentine neck that wound through the air  like a snake. A mane of scraggly hair floated in smoke as light as steam, all the way from the short goat's horns on the forehead, down the long neck to the boney body. She was like skin over a skeleton, and sat in an awkward rabbit-like crouch. The back legs were long and curled up under her oddly equine barrel-chested body. A rattlesnake's tail curled around her spindly haunches, and twitched in the dust in front of her, leaving trails back and forth of smoke and ash. 

The globular eyes blinked rapidly several times. From somewhere deep inside her smoke-and-mirrors form, there came a golden yellow light like a candle. It settled behind her eyes, and she shook her head as if to focus her vision.  The wide yellow lamps examined Bridget owlishly, then the twitching nose turned up, and Magraxiel shook her head with a grand flourishing gesture of her boneless neck. 

"Terribly sorry. Still no clue," Magraxiel said. Her voice was at odds with her Infernal form, feminine and bright and alluring. "It's been a few hundred years, you do know, since I've last been Topside."

"You're still not really Topside."

"Still the furthest I've been since..." Magraxiel trailed off, a look of realization dawning on her face. She looked Bridget over again. Mag's neck twisted up and down, and wound around all sides of Bridget in wide loops, like a vine in a high wind. Bridget smiled. 

"Since?"

"Well, to make a very long story quite short and admittedly a bit blunt..." Mag paused and withdrew her head back towards her shoulders. "...since the Burning of Bridget Cleary."

"And...c'mon, you're almost there."

"You look just like her. That's amazing. Is that you, Bridget?! What on earth are you doing--" she caught herself again, and squinted at the space around Bridget, as if to closer examine an aura that extended a few inches from her body. "No...not Bridget Cleary. Not on the inside, anyways..." Magraxiel's eyes shot wide open. "Azadraxiel!"

"Magraxiel!

"Azadraxiel, what in Seven Hells! What are you doing here? What are you doing in Bridget's person suit? If she's been your Ark this whole time, who the Hell did the Red Order burn? Seven God-damned Hells, Drax! They turned the City of Dís positively inside out looking for you! Have you been here this whole time?!" 

"My passport expired, so to speak, and I decided I kinda like it up here. I saw my chance and I took it. I found a loophole." Drax raised the hand of Bridget Cleary's abandoned person suit, and pointed at the ornate silver sigil ring, "And I can repeat it for you. And I can explain what I've been doing all these years, and why I'm in Bridget's old suit, and how it ended up my Ark when she finished with it."

"Hm. Well, I can see what you've been doing with it since then," Mag grumbled, gesturing with a boney front talon towards the dog-end of Drax's smoke that smouldered between her thumb and forefinger as she spoke. Drax took a long slow drag. "What would your Ms. Cleary have thought of that, hm?" Mag scolded.

Drax rolled her eyes and stifled a cough.

"Probably nothing, now. Most mortals lose any sentiment for their suits once they step out of them. Funerals are for the benefit of the living. The dead have bigger fish to fry. Besides," a nostalgic smile crept across Drax's face,"The real Bridget Cleary used to smoke a pipe."

"Still. Look of the thing. See here, Drax. I haven't even poked my head Topside for five minutes yet, and I already know you smoke too much."

Drax growled, and took one last greedy drag before throwing away the butt, angry mostly because it was true. Being a goat, as Moondog would say.

"Whatever," she snapped, "We haven't got long, and I Called for a reason. Look. I intercepted a Call last night. I jumped in on a Red Order seance and started talking to myself."

"You what?!"

"The Red Order isn't what they used to be when they burned Bridget Cleary."
Magraxiel raised an eyebrow.

"Tried to," Drax amended, "The local Cabal is only three people, one of them a completely unwilling participant. I put on a good show for them. But they're going to know by tonight that the Call never went through. I don't think they'll be able to figure out who did pick it up, but someone Downstairs needs to get the next one."

"Someone like me."

"Someone like you."

"And in return? It needs to be a Deal for this to work, and it's not a proper Deal if it's all Give and no Take."

"I've been working on getting you a permanent spot Topside for years. I've almost got it. Just get the Red Order off my tail long enough for me to work on the third man in the Cabal, the one they're blackmailing or holding hostage or some other dark business."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Just wait by the phone."

"Phone?"

"Telephone, yes, it...nevermind, it's probably after your time anyways. Just wait for the local Red Cabal to open a connection, probably tonight. The Nexus is a Weirder woman named Fionna Kelly." Mag looked shocked and Drax nodded, "You see what I mean? It's not the same Red Order we used to deal with back in the day."

"I should say not!"

"And make sure you keep anyone else from being there to respond. I'll be there, hopefully conducting the Call. You should call me Bridget, or better yet don't call me anything. And for the sake of Seven Hells, don't mention my real name. Not Up Here, Down There, or anywhere else. Or we'll both be in more trouble at Home Office than we could even imagine."

"Of course, I'm not a damn fool."

"Great. So." Drax examined Mag's fading smoke cloud, and used the last flashes of the power in her body to light another smoke. Mag scowled. "Just this one. Please. Look, the pack's empty now." she held it out for the luminous yellow circles of Mag's eyes to examine, then crumpled the box and tossed it away.

"You're still technically a non-corporeal entity, you know. How is it even possible for you to be hooked on that kind of stuff?"

Bridget shrugged.

"The meat wants what it wants," she said, tapping the side of her head, "And let's just say it reminds me of the Hellfires of home. One of the many Earthly Pleasures I've found worth defying the law of Hell itself for."

"Really?" Mag rolled her eyes. Very effective, with those eyes like headlights. "That's all it takes for you is it?"

"There's music. Art. Literature. Red meat...beer...3D movies..."

Magraxiel looked at her blankly.

"Nevermind. For now. I'll definitely need to show you once you're properly Topside in a real Ark."

They both looked sadly down at Magraxiel's rapidly fading form. Around the extremities of her limbs and tail, she was already evaporated.

"I hadn't seen you in a long time, Drax," Mag said quietly.

"I know. No more. I'll see you soon. We'll be Topside together, raising Hell." Drax grinned. 
"It'll make a killer sister act."

Magraxiel smiled and seemed to be about to respond, when she finally dissolved into wisps of fog and floated away in a light breeze.

Drax sat staring at the place where she'd finally seen her sister again, not looking away for serval long minutes, before sighing raggedly. She got up off her knees and started wiping out the lines and sigils she'd drawn in the dirt. A heavy, methodical silence hung about her. 

Moondog had watched the whole proceeding from the other edge of the circle, where he'd been sitting since Magraxiel first spoke. He'd stayed still, in respectful silence for what seemed to be an awkwardly personal reunion that didn't readily concern him. The event seemed over, and he let his concentration slip. The focus that kept his person suit together drained away, and the wolf was back. He laid his ears back against his neck sympathetically. Edging up behind her, he bumped her elbow gently with his cold, wet black nose. When she glanced down at him, he slid his head forward under her hand. She started to scratch behind his ear absently, and the hint of a smile began to grow on her lips again.

"You're a good friend, Moondog."

He barked quietly.


On the other side of the junkyard, several dogs turned their heads and perked their ears towards the shrill, oscillating tone of Drax's cell phone ringing in the cab of her truck. It buzzed and rattled in a clip-on cupholder next to the driver's seat. The ringing cut off abruptly as if the caller had hung up in a hurry. 

No one heard it but the junkyard dogs, and they forgot to mention it.