Black Friday- retribution

Chapter thirteen- The gates of hell.

The vibration on her mobile phone had alerted Katelyn from her deep sleep, glancing at the phone she saw it was just after four- twenty AM and the person calling was Chief Ian Holden.
She hadn't forgotten that her boss had left her at the mercy of Roman, absolute coward that he was.
"What does he bloody want?" She said, answering while half asleep.
"Hello.."
"Miss Valentine." A deep voice at the end of the line, sent a chill to her very core.
Not Ian...
Katelyn sat straight up. Heart pounding and fully awake, she momentarily froze in fear.
"You have something that belongs to me." The voice continued.
"Roman..." she croaked. "What have you done with Ian?"
"Oh that fat piece of shit? Made a nice meal for my children, well the ones you didn't manage to kill. His wife is next, and there is a couple of small ones too."He growled.
He wouldn't... not children surely?
In the background she could hear Ian's wife's cry for help, pleading and begging to spare her life and that of the two small children who, no older than seven and eleven could also be heard crying, confused and frightened they begged to see their mum.
"Leave them alone! Please!" Katelyn begged. She got out of bed and hurried to find her shoes and jacket.
If I leave now I can-
"I know where you are, Katelyn." He said, interrupting her thoughts.
"At your mothers house. I sent someone to keep an eye on you last night. He said you looked peaceful sleeping after that little walk by the lake with the pretty girl. I bet she tastes good!"
If you touch Selena, I swear to god-
"Why don't you just fuck off back to the sewers where you crawled from, you ugly fuck!" She screamed, anger rising like fire.
"You and your rescue party killed my family.. so now I'll kill all of yours. But first..."
Wait...
Chaos erupted from the other end of the phone, as Katelyn listened helplessly while Roman ripped apart Ian's wife and the grandchildren.
Please stop!! Oh god...Please!!
Katelyn screamed and cried until her family had run into her bedroom to see what the fuss was about.
Crouched down by the the foot of her bed she began to rock back and forth, as her parents switched on her bedroom light,the baby began kicking inside her as a reminder of the torture Roman was capable of.
Katelyn wanted the baby to go away. She wanted Roman to go away. She wanted to go back in time to the day of the conference with the prime minister and not do a stakeout, but to just go home and stay home, just like they were told to.
Cass might still be alive and she wouldn't be sitting here right now!
"I'll see you real soon, baby." Roman slurred.
Then the line when dead.
"He's killed them!" She cried.
***
No one had slept much after the phone call in the early hours of the morning.
Katelyn sat in the living room, silently sobbing as her family all tiptoed around her like a fragile basket-case.
It was late morning, Kyle had taken Kova and Audrey into town to see the festival preparations for Mabon, the celebration for autumn equinox.
All she seemed to do was cry, and she was getting tired of it. She wished she was tough, but the truth was that she just couldn't cope with this much loss at once.
It wasn't like being a detective. Yeah sure, the dead bodies and violence do get to you, but your trained to deal with that. The desire to fight crime is what led Katelyn to the police force in the first place. This was her life that had now been destroyed.
That fight she once had now gone, and she was no more than a snivelling wreck.
Angry at the injustice of the slayings she had just heard, and with the screams still playing in her ears, she was really at a loss of what to do.
"Love, we need to talk." Joel said as he passed her a warm cup of tea and sat beside her.
Joel's grey hair had clumps sticking up and a stale smell of whisky and cigarettes lingered on him, his overgrown beard was looking messy and his pale complexion screamed out for hydration.
Joel had been drinking since five AM, but no one dared to say anything to him. His mood could become quite unpleasant if he felt that he was being challenged.
Katelyn felt bad for waking her parents up, they were getting older now and despite everything between them it was still unfair.
"Dad please, I don't know what to say.. it's all a mess." Katelyn tiredly mumbled. She sipped her tea and rested her head onto her free hand, propped up on the arm of the sofa.
"You need to know something. That time that your mother was away, well she wasn't having an affair." He confessed.
Katelyn sat up, "where was she then?"
He sighed, and Athena sat on the coffee table in front of them.
"Many years ago, there was war between the witches and the vampires. No one is really sure why it started..The witches of River Falls managed to find a spell to send vampires back to where they came from." Athena said.
Katelyn was confused. "I don't get it?"
"For the witches to send them back they performed a ritual to temporarily open the gates of hell." Athena explained.
"But it went wrong and the seal broke. Leaving the gates wide open for any creature to come and go as it pleases." Joel continued.
"They've been walking this earth ever since and we've been hunting 'em." Said Joel.
"Our ancestors of this town, the original settlers were the ones who performed the ritual. No one has ever been able to close them damn gates ever since. Your mother was possessed by a demon. And I had her kept at the log yard until we could find a way to get rid of it." He added.
Katelyn absorbed their words like a sponge to water.
Things began to make a bit of sense, finally. Her mother's disappearance, her fathers late night outings and the Mumbo jumbo demon crap they constantly would fight over.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner? All this time..." she gulped.
"You were angry. And we tried so many times, to warn you and tell you both. You just said we were crazy druggies." Athena remarked.
"Mum... I'm sorry, if I'd known..." Katelyn said, full of regret.
"We let you go and didn't fight you both because it gave you the freedom to live your lives, but we always knew the vampires would be back. Just like they promised." Athena told her.
"Then somehow, some idiot thought it would be okay to grant asylum to these things, on the promise they kept out the way. The fact is, there was just too many of them and people got scared."
Katelyn wipes her eyes and stood up. With a glimmer of hope, she had an idea.
"What if we do the ritual? What if we can close the gates and keep them closed?"
"We don't know what the spell is, everything we tried didn't work. It only made things worse." Joel said, putting his head in his hands.
"I need to see Selena. She'll know what to do!" Katelyn said.
She hurried upstairs and got dressed, before heading out the door and across the street. Hammering on the door, Selena answered with her hair in a upright messy bun, still in her pyjamas and holding a large mug of black coffee.
"I may have a solution..."Katelyn began.
***
After explaining everything to Selena, The two of them immediately went to Jocelyn who, at midday, was still in her room sleeping.
"She's been sleeping a lot lately." Selena whispered as they quietly walked in to gently wake her.
Jocelyn opened her eyes, startled and very sleepy still. Selena places a fresh cup of tea beside Jocelyn and began to explain the situation to her.
"It's no good. The ritual was written in a letter and no one has seen it since the late twenties. Nineteen twenty four to be precise." She said.
The pair looked at each and sighed.
"What can we do, auntie?"
"There is nothing we can do, not really. Time has nearly run out." She said, weakly.
Katelyn shook her head in disbelief and began to pace the room.
"No, there has to be something we can do! It's never too late, right?"
Selena sat beside Jocelyn and stroked her hair while she drifted back to sleep.
The women quietly turned towards the door to leave Jocelyn in peace, just as she began to mumble something.
Selena walked back towards her and said "what's that Auntie?"
"You need someone from the original bloodline to perform the ritual. There were eight witches, each representing a sabbat" she told them.
"Each representing witch must be at the entrances of the eight gates of hell."
"I thought there were only seven gates?" Selena questioned.
"No my dear, there is eight."
"Get some rest Auntie and I'll come back later." Selena kissed Jocelyn on the forehead and thanked her before the two left the room.
"Okay so not too difficult right. Just need to find the ritual, find out who the original witches were, find new witches to do the ritual and locate the eight... not seven, but eight gates of hell.." Selena rambled.
"Meanwhile I need to give birth to a half vampire baby while it's psychotic father is trying to kill me and everyone I know and we need to stop an apocalypse from happening." Katelyn said almost robotically, hearing how ridiculous it all sounded.
"Shall we have a tea first? I'm parched." Selena chirped.
"How do you stay so calm?" Katelyn questioned as they walked into the kitchen.
"Well, I guess because I know there is an afterlife and I'm not afraid to die. I don't want to die obviously, but I'm not afraid to."Selena said, filling the kettle with fresh water.
"Huh, that's interesting."
"Well y'know Katelyn, Auntie always told me that things have to die to be reborn. So I figure that applies to humans too. We die and we are born again. And I'm not talking vampires, they are reanimated corpses. No I'm talking about something pure and beautiful."
The kettle began to boil and she poured the water into two medium sized mugs,
"Watch this." Selena said as she put a teaspoon in each mug, and without touching the spoons at all, began to stir the teas anti-clockwise.
"Wow... you little witch. How did you learn to do that?" Katelyn said, impressed.
"I've been practicing, and that's not all. I can create and controls fire with my mind."
Selena said proudly.
"That's amazing, you always said you'd be a powerful witch someday." Katelyn beamed.
They chatted for a while, figuring out a plan and working on who could be the bloodline representatives, researching where the locations were and how to get there. They almost had it figured out, only one problem... the ritual.
"Bollocks to this!." Katelyn fretted.
"You see, that's your problem. You're too quick to quit. Where's your fighting spirit? Where's the drive to survive?" Selena said passionately.
"We can do this, we will get justice."

Katelyn nodded in agreement but deep down she knew...
They were fucked.
***