Shadow Guardians: The Key
Chapter 13

In Abbot Lane in the rural countryside outside NYC, was a privately owned lot. The gothic chapel erected on the land emitted an ominous, foreboding energy. The antiquated structure seemed alive in the darkness of night, casting eerie shadows that danced across the grass fields.

The surrounding area was a blanket of darkness and silence, save for the whispering wind in the trees. The overcast sky hid even the light of the moon, while a mist obscured nature around the chapel, which seemed to hide the secrets of the dead.

The vampire brothers, and Katherine, didn’t know if the mist was just nature or the doings of evil. The chanting could be heard from thirty feet away, though.

“You ready?” Magnus asked Katherine. She gave a nod, unsheathing her daggers and flipping them.

“Oh yeah. I’ve been hankering to spill some demon guts,” she smirked, fangs flashing.

Magnus sighed. He wished she didn’t have to come, but Uriah, who was now at home and getting patched up by the servants, insisted that she needed to be present. His eyes swept over Draven and Zachiel, both eager and ready for bloodshed.

He gave a nod and the four of them closed in on the chapel, muscles taut, veins pumping with adrenaline. “Be ready,” Z said. “It’s gonna be a clusterfuck of madness in there soon as they see our mugs.”

Before they burst through the doors though, they got a glimpse of what was happening through dark tinted windows. A woman dressed in what was a white dress, but was now tinged with red blood, lay on an altar in the centre of the chapel. Around her, a priest and his closest disciples raised a chalice in the air.

“By the power of our lord, we call upon the dark forces to descend upon this sacred space that has been cleansed by the blood of this virgin!”

Around them, the followers were embracing one another in a circle, their bodies swaying in trance as they chanted.

“Let us take the cleansing blood within ourselves, so that our souls may be taken into the body of the lord!”

The four warriors busted through the weighty doors. And chaos erupted. The disciples shapeshifted into demons, the worshippers whipped out guns and blades. The men sprang into action, each picking a side to slice down. As the first khad approached Katherine holding something like a mace high in the air, she evaded the blow it sent down, and gave an arching slice with her dagger, tearing a deep gash into the creature’s throat. The light as it dissolved was the last thing she saw before she went dizzy and felt herself slumping down to the ground.

She heard a faint cry of her name, Magnus, before everything went dark.

The wisps of violet and blue fog swirled inside the enclosed space. Katherine approached the strange structure. She frowned and tilted her head. Inside now, she saw terrorized apparitions clawing at the invisible walls of the cage. They seemed almost...human.

“They are...”

She turned her head to the side. “Naya’il?” She asked.

The angel smiled affectionately, her massive white wings dragging behind her feet on the ground as she treaded closer. “He remembers my name...after all these years.”

Katherine swallowed. “Am I dead?”

Naya’il shook her head. “No. But they are. They are trapped. Only for a moment in time.”

“What are they?”

“Human souls, who will be khad. They are trapped here, in this... limbo realm... before he takes them into himself.”

Katherine frowned, and noticed the souls were growing in numbers. A realization dawned on her. “These are the members of the church we’re raiding right now...”

Naya’il gave a nod. Her voice was like a melody. “There is a small amount of time where you, as the Key, will be able to free them before he takes them. His power will cease to increase if he cannot consume...”

Katherine ignored the fact that she was called the Key. “Who is he?”

“I know not his name...I do not travel to the realms. Tis’ my duty to guide the dead to the Light.”

Katherine raised her brows. “So if I free them, you guide them to the Light Realm, and he won’t be able to consume their souls and turn them into khad. Or grow his own power. He’ll stall out in his strength,”

“Quickly now,” Naya’il encouraged, her voice still calm and lyrical even in the urgency of the situation, “There is only minutes left.”

Katherine closed in on the cage, and searched for the lock. She was intensely aware of the souls watching her, pleading, begging.

She found no shifting stone lock, but she did replace a round little dial no bigger than a button, seemingly in the middle of the mist. It had to be turned in the way of the dial on a safe. Three millimeters left, ten millimeters right, fifteen to the left again. She saw something like an illuminated azure arrow guiding her hand. Once it was done, the whole enclosure seemed to collapse in on itself.