Chapter 125 - The Advent

"These smartphones. They are so neat and slim I always think of magic mirrors when I see one," Ghost commented as I lifted a hand to accept the call. I shushed him and pressed the green circle.

"Hi, Grandpa?" I said. "What's up?"

I didn't hear his response because at that same moment, an awful blast of a siren turned me momentarily deaf to everything except the awful shrill noise. On reflex, I clutched at my ears, hiding them from the worst of the sound. Opposite of me, Ghost did the same.

A dozen of tormentingly long seconds later, the siren shut off. Instead, a woman's voice spoke through the invisible speakers, "Attention! This is a real emergency and not a drill. All members to gather in the main hall immediately. Repeat…"

I took my hands from my ears just for long enough to end my call and stuff the phone in a pocket before I dropped it. As soon as I did, Ghost grabbed my wrist, grinning.

"Let's go, let's go! This must be something real bad! I don't remember that siren being used since the time… Oh, when was it?" He shook his head. "Another time lots of people died, I think."

He took into a brisk jog, and I had to almost break into a run to not have my hand torn off. The guy had a firm grip and long legs, but at least he didn't have to take his time on the turns to remember which exact one he needed.

When we got to the hall, it was packed to the brim with people. Like oil and water, they segregated into two not mixing that well groups: a smaller one of witches and a bigger one of, as I knew by now, associated personnel. Security, cooks, cleaners… The pampering people, as I called them in my mind.

The noise was almost as deafening as the siren. People weren't panicking, but there was shouting, there was confusion, anger and fear present. I had no idea what was going on, but some must've had, or the things would've been much quieter.

Ghost whistled. "What a mess." He ran a palm through his white mane of hair and almost fell when someone brushed past him to the hall. "Oops!"

"Careful!" I said loud enough to be heard over the crowd and grabbed his arm to steady him. "Let's get out of the way."

Together, we moved past the most agitated people to a relatively quiet nook of the hall just in time to see Elena, together with a few more of the more prominent witches, the faces of which I knew from Ivana-Kupala, march in. One had a laptop under her arm, and all but Elena looked unsettled.

Elena just looked grim.

She stopped at the edge of the hall, giving people time to notice her and calm down. It took a minute, but eventually everyone's eyes were on her, and the hubbub dimmed down to whispers. The air almost cracked with tension under Elena's glare.

She made a beeline towards the enormous screen, acting as if she didn't care if she stepped on toes or heads as she walked. People hurried to not give her anything to step upon.

"Elder, is it true that there's a demon in the city?" someone was brave enough to ask when she walked by.

"You will see," Elena threw back, not stopping until she got to the raised part of the hall.

She gestured at her assistant with the laptop, and while the other woman worked her tech, Elena looked at the gathered people. Eventually, her eyes stopped at me and Ghost, and I saw a glimmer of surprise appear within. Only for a brief moment. Then she was all business again.

Another of her assistants gave her a microphone, which she tapped twice. The rest of the whispers went out.

"Members of the Nightingale Coven. I assume that many of you had already seen the reports of the eyewitnesses freely available on the Internet and drew your conclusions. I'm here to clear up what had happened and to announce our further actions." Elena took a deep breath. "This might change the world as we know it forever."

Cold dread filled my stomach with these words. I clasped my sweaty hands on my pants and watched as the screen on the wall lit up and showed a YouTube page. A video started playing.

It was a street somewhere closer to the edge of the city, or maybe in the middle between it and the centre. I could tell from the block-like Soviet architecture despite the shitty quality of the video and the shaking of the camera. Then the angle moved, and I forgot all about the architecture.

The thing stood as tall as the houses. Four, no, five stories tall, it might've stood or floated just above the ground. It looked like a huge flaming ball, with separate rings rolling within it. The further details were impossible to distinguish.

My first reaction was to assume that it was CGI, but why would Elena turn on a siren for CGI? Vampires, witches, mermaids, shapeshifters, spirits… I had to assume the giant flaming balls were also a thing. Maybe it was even a normal thing, I wasn't a specialist!

The thing was, I knew enough to realise that if this was in the internet, if this thing was on the streets, the First Commandment, the rule of secrecy for all things supernatural enforced by vampires, was so far broken that the crack should be audible on the other side of the Earth, in America.

The video ended as abruptly as it started, just after these few seconds of showing the thing. Elena gave her audience another long, grim stare.

"Yes, my brothers and sisters. Right under our noses, witches of the Eternalroot Coven had summoned a creature from other dimension and let it escape on the streets. In other words, a demon. A dangerous, unpredictable creature, with tons of power and no idea or care for the workings of our world. There's demon in our city, for everyone to see, and I have no idea how much harm it can do."