The air of the summer night was warm on Miranda's skin as she strode down the sidewalk, hands in her pockets, body forced into a casual manner. She kept her steps slow and easy despite how badly she wished to sprint across the pavement. A homeless man looked up at her as she passed. His hand stopped mid reach toward his cup of coins when she leveled her heated gaze on him. A small cluster of young men cat-called from across the street. She diligently ignored them. This part of town was no place for a woman at night. Unfortunately for them, she was not an average woman.
She glanced both ways at the curb of an intersection, then jogged across it. Her mind was reeling, playing over and over what had happened in that abandoned manufacturing plant. SHIELD had already been on the scene when they had arrived back at the destroyed conference room. The men Miranda had shot were just beginning to come to, already handcuffed and drug up against what remained of the far wall. When Miranda had come to stand over them and they had shrunk back from her leering gaze.
The man on the right had gaunt cheekbones, his red rimmed eyes sunken far into his sockets. His skin was sallow and his cheeks fever bright. He stared back at her with a hatred so entirely vehement, that it had almost caught her off guard. The man on the left was bright eyed and terrified. There was only a small amount of pink and angry vessels at the corner of one eye. He had been a stark contrast to his companion.
"This one," Miranda had pointed to the thinner man. "Question him."
As a pair of SHIELD agents in dark gear moved forward, the man on the left began to shriek. "It was his idea!" he wailed. "Oliver wanted to do this. He convinced us to help him. Mariah, oh Mariah…"
"They're not taking you," Miranda had spat, disgusted. "God. Have even just a little self respect."
Then Sam had called her across the room. "It's another pentagram. But this one is far more fucked up than the first."
Miranda let out a breath and looked up at the night sky. Over the pollution of the city lights, she could make out a few pin pricks of stars. She had already known what she would see. And no matter how many times she came across an identical scene, always by an ignorant ametuer, the disgust never stopped. No amount of time was enough to dull her to this.
Like in the parking garage, a woman had laid at the center of the pentagram. She was neatly arranged, arms crossed over her chest, eyes open with the unfocused stare of death. The symbols on this body were not nearly as neatly cut as the first. Some of the strokes were wrong, scarcely resembling what they should, but they had been close enough.
A young tech had gasped, stumbling back from a deep bowl at one point of the oblong pentagram. She gagged and covered her mouth, turning from the scene. Everyone had paused to watch as Miranda moved over to the bowl and nudged it with her foot. It had been filled with a deep sludgy liquid. It sloshed over the edge and onto the toe of Miranda's boot. And there, in the rocking movement of the fluid, a small shape appeared. Miranda closed her eyes, looking away.
"Is that…" A man had come up behind her, horror struck. "Is that an infant?"
"My God," someone had whispered.
There is no god here, Miranda had wanted to say, only the devil.
The other items around the pentagram had levered on the side of disturbing. Bones that had been pulled from the carcass of a bird that had been discarded a few feet from the circle. A candle whose flame burned an unsettling shade of blue. Teeth arranged in a macabre smile, the elongated canines gleaming in artificial lights set up about the scene. Blood still colored their roots showing evidence of the gums they had been pulled form. And at the top of the star, a small figurine that looked as though it had been carved from bone.
Miranda's pace quickened as she remembered the fear that had welled up to overcome her at the sight of it all. This attempt had been the closest she had seen in decades. So close, in fact, that it had allowed that lesser demon through. And if that truly meant what her fears were screaming at her that it did, things could be taking a hard left into Shitsville very quickly.
The moon was high in the sky, when Miranda pushed open an ornate wrought iron gate. It screeched a protest, filing a grievance for its lack of maintenance. As she settled it back into place, she ran a finger of the latch. For so long this gate has stood faithfully, always welcoming her as she returns again and again.
The path ahead of her rose from the unkempt grass in the form of crumbled and uneven pavers. She ran her hand over the ridged surface of a headstone. Its inscription had long been worn by the hand of time. So often she wondered what the oldest of these stones said. What loving words they conveyed back when someone cared to read them. There were hundreds of graves surrounding her, their markers standing like soldiers in the night.
Her arm throbbed dully. Paramedics on the scene had tended to the cut and wrapped the injury, but her body was being sure to lodge its complaints for the treatment it had received that night. Every inch of her felt as though it would be covered with bruises by morning.
"You realize that you will never get that 'gotcha moment' with me, Areia. You should just stop trying."
A slim woman stepped out from the cover a broad trunked oak, its gnarled branches reaching haphazardly towards the night sky. While her dark skin lended nearly perfect camouflage in the night, her platinum hair showed metal bright in the moonlight, a fair match to the white of her smile. "But that would ruin all the fun. We did not expect you so soon, Mor. You aren't due for another few weeks."
"Things have changed." Miranda said, her hand settling over her phone in her pocket. "Gather the others. We need to talk."
She followed the girl through the night with only the froth of blonde curls as her beacon in the dark. The night was quiet, the song of crickets their only companions. Once they crested the long rolling hill that rose from the entrance to the cemetery, she could see the warm glow of a flood light in the distance, marking the location of the keeper's manor.
It was an older home. Two stories with an incredible amount of tall, slim windows perfectly trimmed with dark shutters. The door was a simple design. Dark wood. Utilitarian. Areia turned the knob, and golden light flooded the front steps.
They stood in the small foyer, a wandering stairway sweeping along the side wall up into the second story. Areia grasped the globe of the pillar at the end of the railing and swung up onto the first step.
"Girls! We've got company. Get your asses down here."
Several young women flooded out onto the landing at the top of the stairs that overlooked the foyer. The women were an array of nationalities, like a brilliant rainbow of humanity.
"Mortekaia?" A short, dark haired girl, Eiko, stepped to the forefront then moved down the stairs. Her almond shaped eyes studied her as though the reason for her visit was written across her forehead in a language she didn't understand. "What a pleasant surprise."
Miranda accepted her embrace, marveling, as she had so many times before, at the smallness of this woman. And yet, she had fought alongside this girl in battle more times than she could count and she had always been a formidable foe and gallant leader.
"I have something important to speak to you all about."
"Then let us go into the living room. I imagine the news you bring is unpleasant," A young woman with fiery red hair, Sorcha, gestured to the french doors to their left, the lilt in her tone warm and familiar. "We might as well be comfortable."
Miranda tried her best to keep from fidgeting with agitation as she waited for nearly a dozen girls to fit themselves into the little blue grey room. Instead, she resorted to turning the phone in her hand over and over. She could not bring herself to sit in the overstuffed arm chairs built for the fashion of decades past. Instead, she leaned against a small writing desk, fingers tapping out the staccato beat of her impatience.
When they had all settled, seated in various locations, uncaring if they were proper seats or not, Miranda finally spoke. "I think there must be a crack somewhere in the Divide. Something is getting through."
The girls remained quiet, knowing she had more to say, but the skepticism on their faces was clear.
"I encountered a man today. He was most definitely possessed. Not fully. But the deterioration of a lengthy possession was there... Just strong enough that the influence had begun to spread to his friends."
"And you think it's…" A girl of eastern descent, Valanna, began before trailing off. As though to speak the name would proffer forth its owner.
"Well." Miranda's thumb flicked over the screen of her phone. "There is also this."
The girls crowded close. Aeria reached out to zoom in on a section of the photo and then flicked to the next.
"It's started again." A tall, slim girl, Astlyr, said, pulling the length of blonde hair behind her ear. Her long features serious.
"Yes."
"And they are close this time." Astlyr moved back, allowing the other girls to inspect the photos.
"Closer than I have seen in a very long time."
Frowning, a dark featured girl named Domini crossed her arms. Her accent was hard and rough. "There has been no activity that we have seen. Usually, we would see some kind of surge in the energy field if something is getting through. The ley lines have been business as usual."
"I have witnessed two pentagrams now. One of which let through a demon. While it was not a powerful one. I would think you would have noticed some sort of ripple," Miranda argued.
"Mor. We are never going to keep you from the Convergence. But there has been nothing. We dedicate our lives to looking for those anomalies. One creature coming through would hardly be enough to create a surge greater than the variances it accomplishes on its own." Aerie assured her.
"I know." Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose. " I just...call it peace of mind. Call it insanity, if you want."
"We can go down there if you want. Two girls are on watch as we speak." Domini was offering what Miranda wanted, but it was clear in the tone of her voice that to take up the offer would be an insult on her and the other Watchmen.
"Domini." Eiko warned. "She carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. In such an instance, paranoia is often an unwitting bedfellow. You would do well to remember your place."
Domini rolled her eyes, stepping back from the circle of attention.
"I want to see it for myself. I will never sleep otherwise."
Eiko nodded compliently, gesturing for her to follow. Areia rose with Miranda, falling in beside her as they followed Eiko from the room and out into the foyer and toward the front door.
Moonlight silvered the landscape of the cemetery. There were five main roads that met at a single point in the center of the graveyard. And at that center point was a circle drive that surrounded a grand mausoleum. Every step toward its entrance quieted a small, ever nagging part of herself that desired to be closer to what it contained, buried deep down in its depths.
Two girls stood sentinel beside the gargantuan doors that guarded its entrance. They greeted Miranda excitedly, happy to see her. One hard look from Eiko set them back to their positions, chastising them for stepping away from their duties, even if for only a moment.
The building was an incredible structure, wrought entirely from marble. To step into its depths was to subject yourself to an atmosphere that was several degrees cooler than the one outside. Names lined the walls, marking centuries of various lineage. Miranda reached out to touch one.
"Wife and mother. Remembered always, loved eternally."
So many lives reduced to no more than two or three sentences. So much is strived for in the finite span of a single human life, but in the end, so few things are found noteworthy.
"Miranda?"
Eiko and Areia stood at the other end of the grand hall. Eiko held open a panel in the wall, and Areia had begun to step through and descend into the darkness below.
"I'm coming."
The panel revealed a stairway hewn roughly from the stone that lay beneath the surface of the mausoleum. Eiko reached out to touch the damp surface of the stone wall. Her eyes began to glow an unnatural shade of blue, her mouth moving in words that Miranda could not hear. The wall began to reflect that same unearthly blue. A line of it striking up like a match and lending a guideline to their descent below the building.
Miranda shivered, hugging herself against the rising cold as they moved down the steps. "I always underestimate the temperature of this place."
"We end up quite far underground, Mor. You should be used to this by now," Areia chuckled.
"I am fated to always be a fool unfortunately. Why else do you think I keep such diligent Watchmen under my employ?"
Eiko and Areia exchanged humored glances.
The stairway spiraled down, down, down. When it felt as though they could not possibly go any farther without striking the molten center of the earth, the stair fell into a grand cavern. The trail of light that had lit their path branched away from the entrance to the stairway to crawl upwards like branches above them, casting everything in a cool, blue filter.
At the center of the grandiose space, was a pentagram. The circle of stone around its perimeter rose above the rest of the floor like an altar in a church. Miranda moved away from the other girls and approached it.
The blood in her veins sang at the close proximity to a structure of her own making. The part of herself that she kept buried from so many roared to the surface. Miranda let out a breath, and stepped up onto pentagram.
The circular, star shapes pattern had been carved into the stone as perfectly as though it were made from butter. Every line was smooth with intent, dug deep by purpose. It was powerful magic. The strongest Miranda had ever encountered or even wielded in her life. But it lay dormant now, beneath her feet. Each point of the star was empty of its intended icons. Without the proper ingredients, it was not more than a painter's canvas lacking its color. And Miranda more than anything intended to keep it that way.
"You see," Eiko said, approaching the edge of the raised platform. "Nothing is a miss."
Miranda turned to each point of the pentagram. Below the platform, on the dark, smooth surface of the cavern floor were five veins of white. They stretched like lightning through a night sky until they reached an individual tip of the star. Miranda closed her eyes. She stood at the point of convergence of five ley lines. Nowhere else in the world did not so many energy paths cross at once. It had been why she had chosen this place. Even now, she could feel the sharp bite of its power. Her skin felt tight with it, her body answering the call of an intangible force. How badly Miranda wished to dip her fingers in it, to embrace something she has been setting aside for so long in an effort of secrecy.
But as Eiko said, the energy flow was as smooth and as full as it always was. There was no pulse of spell work. No divergence of power to an interdimensional doorway. Nothing whispered of the event that Miranda feared might be looming in their future.
"The happenings have been small." Miranda said, moving to stand at the edge of the platform and looking down at Eiko. "I worry that they would not be felt unless you are in contact with the lines at the moment of the power divergence."
"We can set up an around the clock surveillance of the lines if you feel it is necessary, Mortekaia."
"Please," Miranda closed her eyes. "Please do not call me that. I have told you all so many times."
"We can call a frog a rabbit. But no matter how much we call it such, it will never be pleasant to pet," Areia said.
Miranda rolled her eyes. "That is a terrible metaphor."
"While you may be attempting to delay what you are to become," Eiko said, resting a hand on her hip. "It will not change your lineage. And we will address you by your proper name. Not the one you have chosen for this generation."
"You know it is not truly my name." Miranda said, stepping down from the platform. "It was given to me in fear of what I am capable of."
"That is the thing about names, Mor." Areia said. "We rarely have the opportunity to give them to ourselves."
I am curious to see if anyone guesses what Miranda is roughly an adaptation of before it is revealed in the store. ;)