Among Us: A Supernatural Novel written by Carver Edlund

Epitaphs and Epiphanies

Hungry.

So hungry.

The pathway wasn't open yet. The ritual had not been completed.

Kammapa squealed and shrieked its mindless frustration. It rocked from side to side, banging into the rocks, snapping trees, pulverizing stone. It stomped on wood and metal, scattering the pieces as it tried to pull itself out of the pit.

Close. So close.

Freedom was only a dimension away.

The smell tantalized it. Tortured it. Human flesh, scurrying around the edges of its prison. Human souls, animating the human flesh.

It crouched and began to inhale.

Human souls, who could give it the strength to break free.

And inhaled. And inhaled.

Human souls, of which there were not enough in all the Heavens and in all the Hells of all the universes to fill the Void.

..::~*~::..

From the borders of Heaven, Micah looked down on the Earthly dimension, one of many angels who had gathered, his whole being swamped with worry. Though he tried to keep the emotion from Angel Radio, he could hear it crackling, disrupting his channel. He watched a minuscule spot to the southwest of the center of a single continent, wreathed in clouds and backed by severed ley lines, with the kind of focus that could cause a bush to burst into flames. The energies around the spot warped and shimmered, light slowly surrendering into dark. Even from his lofty position, he could hear the terrible cries of the creature.

Unsettled, he stiffly furled his wings.

"What are our orders?" Paschar asked at his side. Though she appeared just as focused as he on that deceptively insignificant speck of turmoil, her eyes remained closed.

"Do we evacuate?" Jeremiel asked from his other side.

Micah hesitated a shade too long. "Not yet. There is still time."

"Time for what?" Zuriel's colors were muted and sluggish, dimmed by something akin to shock. "I can no longer hear Castiel's song. He has failed."

"If Castiel has failed, we will not succeed," Jeremiel said, billowing verdant like the aurora borealis. "His failure is proof. We can do nothing against that."

Micah tightened his wings to hide their trembling. His superiors had not given the order to evacuate. They had not given the order to fight. Beyond the command to return and fortify Heaven, they had been silent. Their silence clogged the spaces among the cluttered voices of his brothers and sisters, impossible to ignore.

Paschar opened one eye. Just one. And it fixed right on him.

"Not yet," he repeated stubbornly. "There is still hope. We must have faith in our Father. Let us pray."

..::~*~::..

"This is our brilliant plan, huh?" Dean grunted, freeing a commercial-grade pressure washer from a jumble of equipment in a truck bed. "Cleaning paint off cement?"

"Yep." Sam, a collection of stiff-brushed brooms and cans of industrial paint stripper tucked under one arm, also grabbed a couple of scraping tools. The wind positively howled, flattening his hair to his head.

It had sounded like a good idea ten minutes ago, a result of exhaustion and desperation, but now . . . Dean flipped the pressure washer's power switch to check that the battery had juice, then off again, satisfied. "You realize we're going to have to get up next to that thing to do this. You also realize, it's not going to sit there quietly while we try to slam the door shut on it."