Black Cat, White Moon
Chapter Eight
The Summons of the Sandman
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And though the paths that I have followed
Have tread against the flow
There is no need for sorrow
For I am coming home
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"What do we do now?" Garcia asked softly, unsure what the somber Gideon or the visibly furious Hotchner would say. The ex-hacker didn't know who to ask, either. While Hotch was their leader, Gideon seemed to know more about what was going on. But maybe that was simply because the other BAU agent was telling anyone anything, whereas the retired agent was giving out piece-meal info based on the circumstances. Garcia didn't know which to turn to.
Her boss's old second-in-command didn't even look at the computer whiz. His eyes were focused on Razielle's pale, heroin washout face, her hunched battered-woman-postured shoulders, the black ink bruise on her chest from the gunshot wound, sucking lightly on a silver-steel spoon she'd pulled out of her pocket and slipped into her mouth, her left thumb hooked into the waistband of her jeans, her jagged, jutting hipbones like razorblades to slash apart reality as she leaned against the window and blended like fog and breath into the glass.
Garcia could see Reid, where he sat on a low, cheap armchair near the young, mysterious woman. He was reflected in the glass through Razielle's bare midriff. The sight made the computer geek's brain throb.
The cell phone in Gideon's pocket went off, a low, eerie, whistling siren call. He flipped it open, lifted it to his ear, clicked it, and replied to some unheard prompting, "I'm here."
Razielle turned to glance at Gideon over her shoulder through the curtain of her hair.
A soft static sound from the ear piece. The humans in the room, JJ and Emily, Morgan and Garcia, shivered. Something old and eldritch hissed from that phone. They didn't understand what it was, and none of them cared.
Special Agent Hotchner eyed the phone with a fierce, almost hawkish glance. Something moved behind his eyes, something that was far more - and far less - than human, something the others had never seen before, except Gideon. Ignoring the other man, Hotch flexed his broad shoulders, but that was all he did to show his discomfort with the hissing static emanating from the cell phone.
Spencer Reid didn't take his eyes from Razielle's face.
"She's here." Gideon's reply was soft as death. Beneath the subservience and strange growling cadence of his voice was something his adopted niece alone knew was tenderness for the woman-creature he spoke to on the other end.
The shadow wraith barely held to reality that was actually Razielle became more solid as the static hissed again.
"Is that what we're doing?" Gideon asked quietly. Hotch cut his eyes to the other man, all pretenses of ignoring him gone. He, too, could hear what the woman on the other line was saying to the ex-BAU agent. Gideon went on, "Are you sure?"
Crackling from the phone.
Razielle's eyes widened to become large cat jewels in the strange misted darkness that only surrounded her as she blended with the window. The hairs on the nape of her neck prickled sharply, and her skin crawled. Something in her belly rolled and rumbled. The huntress put one hand to it, trying to will it calm. It didn't work.
"You got it," Gideon spoke gently to the other end, and hung up the phone.
The dark-haired huntress pulled herself out of the icy embrace of the window's existence and became real flesh, warm blood, rippling muscle, and ivory-bladed bone again. She locked her emerald eyes with Gideon's, just barely challenging him. Was he really going to suggest what she thought he was going to suggest?
"We've been called to check out a crime scene," her uncle said to her, and to the others. "We've got a fresh body, looks like a serial killer."
"That was the higher ups?" Hotch said.
Something about that soft and fuzzing static had carved into his veins with tiny knives of ice and frozen his blood and his breath. That static told him that for this case, if a case it was, Gideon was top man, the man in charge, and he, Hotchner, was second in command. He also knew who the new top man had been speaking to, and the BAU agent's blood simmered in his veins at the thought of taking her orders.
"No," Razielle whispered. She looked at Reid and tilted her head, like a kitten or a small bird. Her eyes glittered, and when she pulled the bowl of the spoon out of her mouth, everyone saw it had been warped and twisted into a sharp, thin, jagged, glistening needle. She tucked it behind her ear, the point buried in her hair.
"No?" Hotchner echoed. "No? Can we have a little more than that, Razielle?"
Razielle sighed and glanced at Gideon before locking eyes with Hotchner. The man in front of her was really starting to irritate her.
"That was my mother. We're being called to the Cradle, across the stinging river of bliss and the sweet divine dust of ecstasy, over the bridge and past. We're going home. Which means," she said, and pulled the spoon-made-needle out from behind her ear again, "we need a ride."
And she dragged the jagged edge of it down the pane of glass her body had mingled with before, filling the air with a blood-burning, bone-aching, teeth-grinding screech like a tortured cat, a summoning for a creature that obeyed only her call.
She smiled as she stared out the window into the darkness of the night.
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The cat's in the cradle
And the silver spoon….
We were needle and spoon….
How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?
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The Car moved through the burnt-amber Vegas night, a sleek black jungle cat, a jaguar or a panther, a shadow predator prowling streets, preying on the flesh and blood demons of the surrounding concrete and glass and neon hell. Wheels pristine and untouched by dirt, dust, or oil rolled down asphalt streets, leaving smoking tar in its wake. The Car zoomed through Las Vegas, searching... searching.
No one drove it. No creature, mortal or otherwise, sat behind its pristine, black leather steering wheel, or pressed their foot to the black pedals to rev its engine or burn the fuel that smelled of rotten eggs, sulfur, and boiling blood. Music played softly on the sports car's radio, spilling like blood from the dark pores of the speakers:
All this time I've been so hollow,
Inside…
I know you're still there….
A soft, shrill sound, the clear ringing of a silver trumpet and the mewling cry of a newborn kitten calling for its mother, a witch's fingertip circling the rim of a glass full of candy-apple red poison, the wind singing through juniper leaves and rose briars, nails dragging down a chalk board, the screech of a cat being skinned alive, a master's summoning, hit the evanescent black steel frame of the car, and struck a chord that shivered through it, called up the yearning in it, summoned it.
The music from the speakers whispered to the caller, the caster of the summons:
Hunting you,
I can smell you…
Your life….
The sweet scent of fresh blood and burning gunpowder and leather and icy darkness made the engine throb beneath the shiny hood of the demon thing that took the shape of the Millennial Jaguar, that scent that was more than smell and less than soul. The sound of a gentle, liquid drumming, slow and fierce and strange, filled the car until the very windows rattled with it, and the engine screamed with joy.
Your heart pounding in my head!!!
It raced to find its mistress and answer the summons, Razielle's heartbeat calling it, driving it onward, leading it through the night.
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He who makes a beast out of himself
Gets rid of the pain of being a man….
The sand is singing deathless words to me….
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"Is the Car coming?" Gideon demanded suddenly, almost angrily, after the shriek of the tormented glass had died away into sepulchral silence.
Everyone turned to stare at him, at the man who stood with his eyes closed, his fingertips pressed to the bridge of his nose… everyone, that is, except Razielle, who thunked her head against the window with its one long scratch, and breathed a soft breath against it. Mist crawled from her mouth to mate with the glass pane. Tension crawled up her spine to sink claws into her back, shoulders, and neck.
She could feel the Beast rising in him, that part of him that made him not human. But why? She could almost taste a faint ringing in the air, like a note of sound or song, too high or too low for anyone to detect. Anyone, that is, except for the Beast inside Jason Gideon… but what note could the Beast hear, that she could not?
"It may be night, but with these cat's eyes I still see light," she said softly, "and thus I can see breath, and air, as well as Heaven's ire. But only the Fallen can hear the singing of light and breath and liquid fire." Finally, she turned her eyes to Gideon. "What do you hear, Uncle Jason? What do you hear that I cannot see or smell? What is it?"
"Your mother summoned us," Gideon told Razielle, and did not add, With a phone call that made mortal blood shriek within the vein.
"This is so," she murmured, cocking her head like a curious kitten. Her jade glass eyes glinted dangerously in the dimly lit room. There was something here that her uncle was sensing, and yet it was slipping past her. "What of it?"
"You summoned the Car," the retired BAU agent added, with the silent words, With the screeching needle slicing down the glass. Razielle nodded to him, and he sucked in a deep breath before demanding sharply, "But who summoned the Beast? Who howled to the moon and challenged the demon?"
Who indeed, the Night Child wondered, pressing her fingers to the glass as frost crystals climbed upwards from the bottom of the window, a filigreed cage of ice. Who could shriek to the Hunter Moon and summon the demon in Gideon, when she, the cat-demon daughter of Hunters and Nephilaea, couldn't hear it?
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Say your prayers, little one
Don't forget, my son
To include everyone…
Till the Sandman, he comes…
Dreams of war, dreams of liars,
Dreams of dragons' fire….
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Dreaming Caligula let the vengeful, furious, agonized, joyous, malevolent howl of challenge and death fade from his thick, white throat so like a giant worm's. The dream demon grinned and stared at the giant building of concrete and iron. A pathetic defense against the Son of Morpheus, eldest of the dream demons. Night was his time, didn't they understand? His turf in this gang war of the mortal psyche's inner archetypes brought to life and into war against the old tales that were true.
And he could smell the Knight Lyon, the Prince of the Fiery Wings, the Great Beast with cloven hooves and pieces of a shattered halo blinding one eye to lock him by his imperfection into semi-mortal form….
Throwing back his head, blood auburn hair blowing in the wind that did not exist anywhere but in dreams - oh but that was all one of the four sons of Morpheus needed - Caligula shrieked to the dark sky, the silencing scream, the screeching siren that bound the tongues of mortals as they slept and kept their pleas for help from the monsters locked tight behind their puny, bite-less teeth. He screamed to the heavens, daring any of the Nephilaea or the Fallen to come and try to stop him. The Dream Prince knew they could not.
Inside, he felt his prey shudder, and the Beast in the Shell rise up and begin to claw its way out, as the Lady of the Kiss, the daughter of the Hunter, turned her night eyes upon him through the window glass. He could see the emerald knives glinting like deadly stars in the darkness. Her gaze held a promise of death. But even one such as she could not truly kill one of the Four Sons of Morpheus.
"Sandman comes, children," Dreaming Caligula hissed, the sound of a closet door creaking open in the dark as the gremlins slithered out to eat the babes asleep in their beds. "I come... and you will all die."
Somewhere off in the distance, he smelled smoke and melted cinderblocks, and tasted cooking flesh on the back of his tongue.
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Forever
Shall the wolf in me
Desire the sheep in you….
I'll be upon you by the moonlight…
High blood drumming on my skin, it's so tight….
Hear the hissing now on the breeze
As through the plundered groves of the carnal garden
Fresh horrors blow….
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"Guns! Draw your guns!" Gideon yelled, at the same moment that Razielle cried, "Sandman!" Her voice was a yowl like a she-cat attacking with bared teeth and raking claws, as she stabbed at the glass with the needle-that-was-a-spoon. "Sandman! Curse it, Sandman! Uncle Jason, Dreaming Caligula is here!"
Hotch and the others, minus Garcia, drew their guns, but Gideon's sudden shout of agony drew their attention as he doubled up and fell to the floor, wheezing, gasping, pounding his fist against the floor. His bloodshot eyes snapped open, and he pinned Razielle with his gaze. The huntress shoved away from the window to Gideon's side. For the first time since her uncle had shot Dragon in the head, a slither of fear found its way inside her.
"Uncle Jason?" Her voice was tremulous.
"Get them out, Razielle!" His voice was an infernal snarl.
"Uncle Jason!"
"The Beast," he growled, and something rough in his voice brought demons cackling and howling just outside a ring of light to mind. Demons waiting to devour anyone who strayed outside the circle of saving grace, of protecting light. His teeth itched as they sharpened, and his face flushed with the effort to control the part of him raking at the inside of his belly, his chest, clawing its way up into his throat so that when he opened his mouth to order her, she could see its muzzle and its hungry teeth in the back of his throat. "It must rise to the challenge… but Caligula will kill Reid if he can! That's what they want, to kill Reid! Get him and everyone else out now! Get them out!"
She nodded sharply, turned to shout an order, and jerked, gasped, her hands flying to her throat, a mirror of Reid's hands, and they both fell to the floor, choking on something glistening, bright steel sharp, protruding from Reid's throat and someone in the building began to yell, "Fire! Fire!"
Darkness slammed into Razielle's brain as the alarm went off and Gideon roared in fury and pain.
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Caught here in a fiery blaze...
And trouble is comin',
It's just the high cost of lovin'….
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Author's Note: Don't own anything you recognize, of course. Morpheus is the Greek god of dreams. There actually is no such thing as a Nephilaea - it's Nephil or Nephilim. But these aren't quite the same thing, so I changed the name. And the four sons of Morpheus are Caligula, Tiberius, Nero, and Claudius - four of Rome's Caesars. If I remember right, three of them were nutso.
Copyright Information:
The first segment of lyrics is from Return (I Am Coming Home) by the Cruxshadows
The second segment is three different songs. The first two lines are from a song that I don't really remember, but I remember the lines "the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon... little boy blue and the man in the moon." I think it's from the seventies. Line three is from Nymphetamine by Cradle of Filth, and the last line is from the Matrix.
The song playing in the Car is Haunted by Evanescence
Section three of the lyrics is from The Beast and the Harlot by Avenged Sevenfold... or is it Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold? Someone check for me?
Section four is Enter Sandman Metallica
Section five has three songs: Beauty and the Beast by Nightwish, and two that I don't remember but I didn't come up with the lyrics
" Caught here in a fiery blaze..." is by Avenged Sevenfold from one of the two songs mentioned previously but I can't remember which one
The last two lines of lyrics are from Temptation. I've only heard the cover by Cradle of Filth, not the original song, and don't know who did it originally.