Chapter 20 - The Call of The Shepherd

Keep dreaming, stupid witches! Carl Winters scoffed in the privacy of his mind. If only they had any idea what their precious goddess had in her mind for them! Only he knew that the only reason Hecate had enhanced their powers was to speed up the process of her entry into this world. The girls had done a marvellous job at creating chaos, sacrificing innocent unsuspecting souls like himself and his brother Melvin, and toying with weak minds to saturate the entire Lincoln College grounds with grief, fear and paranoia - a perfectly wild and unstable atmosphere for the Goddess of all things morally grey.

She's going to devour souls the moment she steps into this world, he mocked them as he silently stared at their satisfied expressions. Your little bodies are spilling with too much power your frail bodies cannot possibly contain. You're nothing but fattened pigs for her to feast on, nothing more! And to think that your cruel goddess wants me to be the one to dispose of your worthless little lives! Ah, the irony!

Of course, Hecate was not trustworthy, not at all, he knew this. There was nothing to guarantee that she wouldn't turn on him the moment she was here. Just like she did with her two devout, but oblivious, followers. Which was why, the moment his part of the deal was done, he had to get the hell out of there. He had to disappear for good, maybe invent a different identity, a different life altogether. Put as much distance as possible from this college, New York, or maybe even this country. He had always wanted to travel the world anyway.

Focus on the damn task, Carl, he berated himself for letting his mind wander yet again. He adjusted the aim of his gun to carefully land on the glowering kid on the floor. He looked pale, tired and possibly in pain by the way he kept his injured right hand close to his chest. Hecate had been kind enough to warn him about these two at least. The two Cailleach's agents carried way too much power between them. It prickled against his skin in the most uncomfortable manner; being close to either of them made him feel like he had angry gnats crawling all over his skin. He had to be careful never to touch this kid.

Something else bothered him about the Shepherd, Joe. He was way too composed, unlike the two girls sitting next to him, wavering between murderous glares and fearful glances in their reddened faces. He was way too observant and alert. He was angry, a lot worried, possibly about his unconscious brother locked inside the toilets down below and quietly observant of the wholly unnecessary theatrics of the Phillips twins. One thing Carl couldn't see in his demeanour was fear. He was surrounded by guns, a vengeful spirit and two girls capable of controlling minds, but the kid was showing no fear.

Either he was too stupid to realise how bad his life was going to get in a minute or he was way more dangerous and informed than he seemed.

…not what they claim they are. Beware of them… Hecate's words came to his mind, unbidden.

Maybe Joe was aware of exactly what was hovering in the sky, just out of reach, way above the magical ward the twins had erected. Just as Carl was. The gloomy twilight and the unnatural rain - the world beyond, already here as if it was waiting patiently to grab him the moment the Shepherd did his job. He did not want to think of the influence this slip of a kid had to call on an entire domain just by sitting there wearing a scowl on his face.

Which was why he had to die before the day was over.

Sierra, finally done with self-aggrandizing, gestured to the other two girls. The command was laced with magic, and the air around her rippled in subtle reaction.

"Temperance, Constance, get over here and stand on these circles." She pointed at two of the three smaller circles of the Soul-Binding Circle. It was brimming with power that glanced off his heightened senses. It was not a comfortable feeling either, and he wanted to get this over and done with, so he could move on.

"Go to hell!" Constance snarled.

"Oh my! Somebody is wearing protection," Sienna clutched her chest dramatically and giggled. "No matter. It won't be of use in a few minutes anyway," then she turned to one of the Quentin boys and narrowed her eyes. "Dylan, shoot Joe."

Maybe it was because she was stretched thin due to her constant control over the four boys, or maybe Dylan was fighting the compulsion, or it could've been Joe's pure dumb luck. The bullet that shot out of the gun not even five feet away from him, bounced off the concrete less than an inch from his thigh to bury itself in the nearby Wisteria bush. The twins screamed and the kid didn't even move, let alone make a sound, only grimacing at the new bloody cut he had on his upper thigh due to a piece of chipped concrete.

"Sienna, no, please, wait!" Temperance squealed in terror when the girl opened her mouth to issue another command, possibly to ask the boy not to miss this time. "Stop this. Please!

"Do as you're told, girls," Sierra interjected, waving her hand where they needed them. "Less blood on the floor that way."

The two girls got up and reluctantly stepped into the circles as they were told. The moment they stepped inside the reddish-black lines, the magic contained within flared to life, burning brightly in his sight. It wrapped around them hungrily and they both fell to their knees within the circles simultaneously, their arms hanging limp at their sides and their head hanging low, silent, and still.

That was what a Binding Circle did. He knew this. But it still caught him unawares when the two souls of Constance and Temperance floated serenely over their respective bodies, silent and unresponsive just as their bodies. The only connection the two separated souls had to their bodies was the red lines extending from their chests to attach to the souls' foreheads.

Joe leapt to his feet instantly, glaring angrily at the Phillips twins. There was fear in him now, but only for the well-being of his friends who were inanimate inside the circle. "What the hell did you just do?" he snarled.

"Wouldn't you like to know," Sierra bared her teeth in a grin. "Now, to complete the circle…" he waved her hand in a pattern, gesturing towards the empty circle.

Another spirit appeared inside the third small circle as she did, completing the triangle of captured souls. The third soul looked exactly the same as the other two, and Carl recognized her from his previous fight with her. Unlike her sisters' sleeping souls, hers was wide awake, terrified and pitifully transparent.

That was their predicament. That one immovable snag in their grand plan. Willow Saunders was not a whole soul. She was insubstantial and hollow. There was some of her still left in her body, trapped and firmly cut off from this half in the circle. She had to be put together before they could make the offer to Hecate in earnest.

"Willow!" Joe gasped.

"Do you see where you come in, darling?" Sienna asked conversationally, nodding at the writhing spirit. "We can't complete the ritual because dear Willow is not whole. Come over here and fix her."

The look the Shepherd aimed at the Phillips girl was thunderous. The sky above lit up with flashing lightning and a boom of thunder. The Nether World above was getting agitated in response to his anger.

"I can't," he growled.

"You really wanna get hurt today, don't you?" Sienna narrowed her eyes and turned towards Dylan again, intending to use him when Joe interrupted her.

"That's not what I meant. I can't help her. Not like this, not here–"

"What do you mean?"

"The other half of her is trapped within her body," Joe said, his eyes now fixed on the three souls. "I need her body here to fix this."

It was a good attempt, Carl had to give him that. But he knew better. "He lies," he said to the Phillips twins. "He doesn't have to do anything but make physical contact with the spirit. His power is more than enough to bridge the gap between the two halves of her soul."

That earned him Joe's full attention; murderous glares and all. "Oh, yeah? You seem to know a lot. Who did you meet while hanging around like a pathetic little ghost, hah, Carl?"

That was not good. He did not need that to come out just yet. Carl aimed his gun squarely at Joe's head and bared his teeth in a threatening snarl. But, before he could reply, Sierra frowned. "Carl? That's Melvin."

"That's what you think," Joe said, paying no heed to the gun aimed at his head. Carl had a strange feeling that the kid had been in this same situation, more than once. He did not like his defiance, not one bit. "Melvin was so badly hurt he couldn't even breathe by himself. He was dying," Joe said to the girls, although his blazing blue eyes were daring Carl to pull the trigger. "You really thought you could just walk in here like nothing happened? This is Carl, wearing his own brother's body. He stole it right out of Melvin's deathbed, didn't you, Carl?"

"Shut up," Carl growled. He no longer cared about the Old Rules. To hell with Hecate! Once this was done, he was definitely going to kill this one. "He's trying to turn us against each other," he said to the twins.

"I can prove it, you body-snatching asshole!" Joe snapped before craning his neck back to stare at the grey skies. "Melvin Winters! Show yourself!"

His yelled command had a compulsion Carl had never felt before. He felt his own hold on Melvin's body waver at the power of that Call. He gritted his teeth and strengthened his resolve, hanging onto his new body with everything he had. The girls looked up at the same time he did, confused and curious. The ward around them sparked and shimmered as the rain fell in sheets against it, yet never reaching the ground around them through the magical barrier.

There.

Just over the empty space behind the Quentin twins and the two Hyenas, over the railing but inside the ward. The air rippled and wavered as Melvin's spirit manifested out of thin air. Within seconds, he was as solid as any other, still in his blood-stained Wolves jacket and his leg terribly twisted. His bright green eyes were hard and fixed on Carl, promising retribution. The only thing that differentiated him from the others around him was the fact that he was floating in the air like the apparition that he was.

"I'm here." Malvin's growl made Carl think of an approaching deadly gale.

-oOo-

The door of the restroom was locked from the outside. When Frank put his weight against it to push, the door didn't even budge a little. He figured Carl had barricaded it from outside to make sure he stayed where they left him. He looked around the dark interior, his gaze sliding over the three closed doors, the row of sinks and urinals surrounding him. There was a small ventilation window next to the third closed door with just enough space for him to stand between that and the first sink. It was about six feet off the ground and locked from the inside. When he reached on tiptoes, he could just about see the bleachers of the football field beyond.

Climbing on the edge of the sink to stick his head out of the window that was slightly bigger than a square foot did not agree with his concussion. The world around him spun crazily while the cold rain did its best to drench his upper torso. There was a fixed access ladder to his left, about two feet away from him. If he managed to stretch a little bit, he could climb onto it and go all the way up the fifteen or so rungs that led to the rooftop. The only thing was the steel ladder was sure to be slippery in the rain, and it was very narrow. A tricky climb to negotiate, especially with his dizziness and blurry vision, and one misstep would end him forty feet down below with a broken neck, just like Carl Winters.

Frank stared at the only way out, blinking the water out of his eyelashes. It wasn't as if he could sit safely inside the washroom until he was rescued. Joe and the twins were up there along with the rest of the crazies, and he had no idea what they were planning. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had the ability to disrupt their plans, which was why Carl went through the trouble to trap him here.

Frank took a few deep steadying breaths, extended his left hand and gripped the ladder. Then he hauled himself out of the tiny window, a move that took some pulling, wriggling and kicking. But he was finally draped over the ladder and out of his prison. At least the shock of cold water is distracting me from my damn headache, he thought wryly as he started to slowly haul himself up the ladder, one rung at a time.

It took time, but he finally made it to the top. He climbed onto the rooftop behind the flight of stairs. There were chairs and tables piled up haphazardly, crushing some of the greenery that covered the railing, which helped to cover his entry. Crouched behind an upturned table, he could see his targets on the opposite side of the hangout, near the other balcony railing, the one that was facing the front of the building.

There was something very strange around the rooftop, specifically around the hangout spot that had been cleared out in the front. It was dome-shaped, transparent and blurry. It also acted as a barrier, separating the hangout area from the rest of the rooftop and it wavered in front of Frank as the rain kept sliding off its curvature. Looking down, he saw a curved line that had been drawn on the ground, like a perimeter surrounding the middle area where something was happening. The strange barrier that separated him from the rest of them seemed to have sprung up from that blackened line on the ground.

Although he was only about fifteen feet away, the rainwater distorted what he could see through the barrier. He could make out Rogers and Larson kneeling at the balcony with the Quentin twins flanking them from the sides, armed with handguns. Temperance and Constance were also kneeling on the ground in the middle, their heads hanging low, still and unresponsive. There was something floating above them both, something connected to them, but he couldn't really make out what it was through the barrier.

Then there were the Phillips twins, sneering and talking while Carl Winters stood a few feet away from them, aiming a gun squarely at Joe's face.

Relief flooded him when he saw his brother upright. Even through the shimmery distortion, the pure anger on his brother's face was evident to Frank. Apart from the way Joe kept his right hand hugged close to his chest, Frank couldn't see any other obvious injuries on his brother. Whatever was happening in there was bad enough that Joe was completely ignoring the gun in his face to confront the spirit.

The rain picked up the moment he saw Joe look up to yell something into the air. He couldn't hear what they were saying due to the sound of the rain and the strange barrier. Thunder and lightning responded at the same time and the barrier rippled before him when he saw the lightning glancing off the opposite side where the Hyenas were kneeling. When the bright light from the flash cleared, Frank saw exactly what had answered Joe's fierce call.

The angry, betrayed spirit of Melvin Winters.