What Crawls Below

13 § Whitewashed Tombs

No matter how much he'd doubted its usefulness, the smudging had apparently had a positive effect on Cyrus. Nevaeh had beat them back home, her first words of greeting being, "Well, what the hell happened to him?"

Raziel, pleased with how obvious the results were, clapped Cyrus on the back and said, "We found ourselves a working witch."

Setting her wine glass down on the island with a reverberating thunk, Nevaeh appraised them with raised eyebrows. "And she was strong enough to tamp all that—" she waved one hand in Cyrus's direction— "down?"

"Don't get too excited, it's a temporary solution," Raziel responded, headed behind the bar and searched beneath it before rising again with a bottle in hand. "But cause for celebration, nonetheless, I'd say. Would you object to something a little stronger?" he asked, nodding to Nevaeh's glass.

She pushed the wine glass away and tapped her nails on the counter. "Keep 'em coming, darling."

Looking at Cyrus pointedly, Raziel said, "Isn't it past your bedtime?"

As if he needed an excuse to get out of there. Without even a mental retort to that last comment, Cyrus retreated to his room for the night. For a while he remained awake, thinking over everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours or so—enough material to last him several hours of contemplation before sleep finally dragged him under. The last thing he remembered pondering was Mary and Raziel's explanations on their way back about witches. Apparently, people like her were few and far between; they were born with the gift, and how it came to be was basically a mystery. Their own power was subtle, only having much ground in very natural domains—calming energies; basic spells for good fortune; nothing that would really attract much attention. If it weren't for how obviously sensitive Mary had been to their different energies, no one would have suspected her.

The next week passed in a blur, Raziel working Cyrus from dawn to dusk with basically no break, causing him to crash immediately each night and sleep all the way till the next morning. For the first few days, the demon dragged him around the city and continued working his little miracles. The conflict with the reaper had made Cyrus forget about Raziel's "next trick", but this was brought up again one night in the Bronx.

Tuning into yet another prayer had led Raziel to a neighborhood that could bring the white picket fence stereotype to tears. It seemed every other house had boards nailed over any opening, graffiti tagging the walls and weeds choking the yard wilting under the thin layer of snow dusting the ground. On the properties that particularly stood out, barbed wire glinted under the moonlight, lining some of the fences.

Before Cyrus could ask what the current mission was exactly, a scream pierced through the otherwise eerie silence. It had come from several blocks away, but that was the thing about screaming at night—the sound travels so much further.

Raziel ordered him to stay out of the way when they neared the conflict: two men had a woman backed up into a wall, one holding a knife to her throat as the other rummaged through a purse before tossing it aside, not sparing it a second glance. That wasn't what they'd come for, that much was glaringly obvious as they held her down.

Close enough now to hear, one of the men was saying, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Tell me that's not your best material," Raziel responded, strolling leisurely towards them as Cyrus stayed behind, away from the flickering, dying light of a nearby streetlamp.

The men whirled around, one pulling a gun from his waistband, making it halfway to its desired position, but it never reached Raziel's chest. With a simple flick of his wrist, the weapon went sailing out the man's hand and out of sight. He blinked, open-mouthed and staring stupidly at his now empty hand. He raised his eyes to meet Raziel's, and Cyrus tensed, unsure what trick the demon would pull next—