

The Arcana©

by Matt Hiebert

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

The

ARCANA

by Matt Hiebert

I.

The demon is of the Baal caste. Fifty-feet tall with vaguely feline features, mouth like a forest of fangs. Two thick, yellow horns curl from its forehead, and a giant flaming pitchfork burns in its right hand. It stabs into a cluster of soldiers who scurry around its hooves, skewering a pair of them upon the fiery tines.

I've noticed a lot of the larger demons carrying pitchforks lately. They look just like the devils from old paintings.

The soldiers' assault rifles are ineffective against the demon's flesh. Stray rounds ricochet off its scaly goat legs and whiz over our heads like angry hornets. Many soldiers drop their guns and run into the abandoned streets of Dallas, fleeing for their lives. How can you blame them?

The Hand has just arrived and we're still trying to get our bearings. This time it's Justice, the Hermit, the World, the Hanged Man and me. The Chariot is there, of course, but he's just the taxi. He doesn't join in the fight.

"Tower!" Justice calls to me in the secret language of our kind, the language we are given once we're chosen. Justice is always a woman. A few months ago, this woman was a school teacher in Beijing, married, mother to an eight-year-old boy. Very pretty. Now she wields a flaming blue sword that can cut through anything. She is our leader. "Come with me!"

I follow her down an alley while the demon is preoccupied with the soldiers. She doesn't want it to kill me before I get a chance to do my thing.

We crouch behind an abandoned beer truck, hidden from the demon's sight.

"Wait here until I call for you," she says.

I nod, always willing to lay low. The battles are horrific, nightmarish, filled with blood and mangled bodies. Fear burns from my center and makes my arms heavy. If I had a choice, I would leave the Arcana and move to a remote and empty place. Montana or Idaho. But I don't have a choice. I am compelled to battle the demons. All of us are.

We are the Arcana.

Justice leaves me and returns to the fight. From my position in the alley I can see the Hanged Man and World ramping up their power. I have worked with this Hanged Man before, but I do not recognize the woman who is now the World. She is new. From Jamaica, I think.

I crouch behind the beer truck and wait. Soldiers and ordinary citizens run up the street, trying to escape the crushing footfalls of the Baal. An Army Humvee fires upon the demon with a .50-caliber machine gun from several blocks away. The pellets leave welts upon the creature's flesh, and it shields its face with a clawed hand.

The demon holds out its gory trident and a red fist of fire shoots from the weapon's prongs, roaring down the canyon of buildings like a comet, striking the Humvee head on. The vehicle and its inhabitants flash-burn into nothing.

I didn't know the pitchforks could do that.

The World lifts her arms above her head and a chunk of the concrete street rises like a tidal wave. Cars fly into the air like toys. The gray wave crashes upon the Baal, and the giant stumbles backward into a ten-story building that calves like a glacier. I see people falling in the avalanche of glass, steel and concrete; flashes of clothing and flesh in the tumbling debris.

For a second, I hope the World has taken out the Baal without my help. I hope I won't be needed.

But she hasn't. The demon recovers from the blow and starts walking down the street, steel and concrete shedding from its shoulders.

"You must prepare," a voice whispers from behind me. I turn and see the Hermit, a little old man who had lived his entire life in Kenya until being conscripted into the Arcana last year. I have never been in a Hand with him before, but I know his power. He can see ninety seconds, give or take, into the future. Or at least, a possible future. "The Hanged Man will momentarily bind the demon. You must strike then."

"Justice hasn't called for me," I tell him.

"She won't have time."

I have to decide what to do. Justice is our leader. I am wired to respond to her commands. Yet I also know the Hermit can see the future.

I decide to listen to him.

I begin gathering my power from the invisible ether of the universe. Crackling arcs of energy crawl towards me from all directions, leaping into me from parked cars, fire hydrants, and drainage grates. The power pours into my body, and I feel myself becoming the Tower.

"Get ready," whispers the Hermit.

I see the Hanged Man standing in a parking lot two blocks up the street. His arms are swirling around in large and small circles, gesturing in the air as if he is a mad man. He is tying knots.

The Baal charges toward the World, trying to get to her before she can strike again.

Suddenly, the Hanged Man drops to his knees and throws out his arms, pulling tight his knots. The demon stumbles, its arms and legs bound by invisible shackles. It hits the street face first. Pavement explodes into the air. Water mains snap and white geysers spray from cracks in the earth. I am several blocks away but the monster's impact almost knocks me off my feet.

The demon is trapped, snared by the Hanged Man's noose. This is the moment I must strike.

Great ropes of lightning converge within my chest from thin air. Bolts the size of tree trunks disappear within me. A knot of boiling black clouds rages in the sky overhead, awaiting my command.

The Hermit mumbles something but I cannot hear him above the sound of crackling power all around me.

I let the tower fall.

"No! It's a trick!" The voice of Justice enters my mind from somewhere unseen. I hear the command clearly, but it is too late.

The demon leaps to its feet, snapping the Hanged Man's bonds, never truly restrained. My bolt falls from the sky: a pillar of twisting blue lightning, burning hotter than the sun. It hits the ground and misses the creature entirely. Uncontrolled power ricochets in all directions. One of the stray fragments of blue shoots across the street and strikes the Hanged Man. He disappears in a puff of smoke.

I now hear what the Hermit is mumbling.

"I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong."

As the realization of what just happened sinks in, I see Justice peer over the edge of a high rooftop.

"World! Strike!" she commands.

"I can't!" The World's voice is shredded with panic. She is too afraid to summon her power.

Justice jumps, trying to strike the Baal from above.

The demon sees her. Its pitchfork shoots upward, impaling her upon a tine the size of a shovel. Her sword falls to the ground. She is still kicking and gripping the prong of the pitchfork when the demon brings her up to its mouth and eats her.

The World is frantically trying to gather her power, but she is too terrified and inexperienced.

The Baal charges. The World runs, but in a few strides the demon closes the distance and stomps on her. She disappears beneath the monster's cloven hoof and I look away.

The demon turns and sees us in the alley.

"Run!" I scream and tear off in the opposite direction. I am forty-five years old and not endowed with any physical enhancements. I can bring down fire from the sky, but I am also twenty pounds overweight. My heart pounds against my rib cage until it hurts.

The giant's footfalls shake the earth behind me, closing with every step. They stop for a second and I hear The Hermit scream. I do not turn around.

"Tower!" I hear someone else call behind me in the language of the Arcana. This time I turn my head. The demon is three steps away, The Hermit's legs hang from its fanged mouth, its pitch fork is raised to gig me like a frog. The Chariot is right in front of it. He tilts the white disk of light upon which he rides to allow me access, and I leap toward its featureless surface, clinging to it like iron to a magnet. The disk is magic that way.

The demon swings its trident and misses us by only a few feet. As we pull ahead, the Baal points the weapon and a rolling ball of fire explodes toward us.

"Hang on!" the Chariot screams. He has only had the job for a week. There is nothing to hang on to.

He banks the disk upon its side, at a right angle to the blast. Were it not for the jealous properties of the vehicle, we would be thrown to the ground and killed. But once a member of the Arcana is on the disk, he or she can never fall off.

The ball of fire scorches past us and I can feel its hell-spawned heat upon my face. It strikes a high rise in the distance and the building melts into a mound of steaming sludge. God knows how many people were inside.

The Chariot makes several more turns through the maze of buildings and we maneuver beyond the demon's sight. The monster rages, smashing through a city block trying to catch us, but it heads in the wrong direction and we pull away.

"How long before you can generate another strike?" The Chariot asks. He is from the Middle East. This is only the second time he's been out.

"I don't know. I've never tried. An hour?" I consider the prospect of facing down a Baal-caste demon by myself, without a Hand to protect me.

"It could destroy the entire city by then," The Chariot says, his voice soft, as if he had already seen the destruction.

We take refuge beneath an overpass near the highway, far from downtown. The Chariot cannot help but stare at me. He paces upon the flat white disk, impatiently waiting for me to regenerate my strength, although he knows there is nothing I can do to speed things up.

The demon is a rumble in the distance. It has given up looking for us and is smashing everything in its path. It laughs and the sound carries through the air like stuttering thunder.

My hands are shaking and I want to throw up. Baals are the most powerful caste of demon we've encountered. This is only the second one to cross over since the invasion began. The first was last year. I wasn't sent. It took two Hands to kill it, and even then, there were no survivors. What chance do I have alone?

The rumbling sound of a building toppling in the distance makes the Chariot stop pacing. His face is frozen in a look of agonized worry. There is nothing he can do but listen to the destruction and wait. Chariots do not fight. They are fragile and must avoid the demons. There have been many Chariots.

"How much longer?" he asks after an agonizing length of silence.

"A few minutes." My power is growing, but still feeble.

Columns of smoke rise into the sky and fan out over Dallas. Fires cast orange light across the faces of shiny buildings.

The sound of artillery pops in the distance, a string of firecrackers, far away. The Chariot gestures and the disk rises so we can get a better view of what's going on. I wish he would just keep us hidden, but the frustration of the wait is too much for him. I can tell by the change on his face he is hopeful the Army can do something to halt the demon. I am more experienced and find that unlikely.

We can see the demon moving between the tall glass structures of downtown Dallas. Another spattering of heavy weapons fire reveals three tanks a good distance up the street. Their cannons spit great blooms of flame and cause the Baal to take cover behind a skyscraper. It is faster and more agile than the tanks. As we watch, the demon slips around the corner of one of the buildings and flanks the war machines. Again it raises its pitchfork. Any hope of the military taking out the creature ends when the tanks melt into lumpy blobs.

I am watching the scene when the Chariot turns my direction. The pinched expression of despair upon his face startles me.

"I'm almost ready," I say. "Start moving closer."

Fear bores a hole in my center, and I wonder if I am compelled to say such things.

The Chariot takes it low and wide as we reenter the thick of the city. He peers around corners carefully before moving forward. Open spaces are not bridged before he is certain of the Baal's location. When we set down in the alley a few blocks away from the demon, my power is still not fully rejuvenated and I'm worried.

"I only get one shot," my voice catches as I state the known.

The Chariot nods. His expression has now caved inward. Darkness shadows his eyes. His mouth is a frown that would look comical were it not for the pain behind it.

"What should we do?" he asks.

I realize I don't know. I have no plan. This is the first time it's gotten down to just me.

"You'll have to drop me off near it," I say. "I can't strike when I'm on the disk."

The Chariot levitates and we move closer toward the sound of carnage. The demon is ramming itself into a twenty-story building. It backs up, charges, backs up, charges. Glass and rubble rain from the tilting structure. At last the demon smashes through a key support and the building topples like a hobbled mountain. A thick, gray cloud of dust billows down the city streets.

"Wait!" I shout at the Chariot as a strategy revels itself. "Put me right in front it."

I hear the words but I can't believe I am saying them.

The Chariot circles wide and fast around the Baal, no longer afraid of being seen. When The Chariot deposits me on the roof of a beautiful, asymmetrical skyscraper a mile or so up the street, the Baal is already charging toward us.

It is fast. Its hooves kick up explosions of concrete from the street. Cars and trucks scatter before its careless stride.

I struggle to summon my power. This is the first time I've tried to use it twice in one day. I can tell this strike will not be as strong as the first. I did not wait long enough.

Again, arcs of blue plasma crawl toward me as if alive. A whorl of black clouds clenches in the sky.

The demon is close. I can see the patina of cracks webbing its ancient horns. I can see the leaf-shaped golden scales upon its legs. The hair upon its torso. The variegate color of its red eyes. The fireball forming between the prongs of its weapon.

I am still not ready.

As the demon raises its burning trident, the Chariot comes out of nowhere and rams right into one of its eyes. The disk of light is insubstantial. It is only a form of mystical transportation. He has used his own body as a projectile. He strikes hard enough to pierce the Baal's eye and his body disappears into the red goo.

The demon shrieks, grabs its eye and misfires the fireball straight into the sky.

Now I'm ready.

Within me, the lightning lives. It sees with my eyes, touches with my hands, feels with my heart. We are one. Where I command it to land, it shall land. And now, I bring the column down upon the demon's head. A blue spear of power impales the behemoth from head to cloven hoof. Its flesh cracks like dry earth and spills azure flame. Screaming, the monster burns from the inside-out and turns to solid ash. There is a horrible silence.

The carbonized sculpture stands for a few moments, frozen in time. Then a tine from its raised pitchfork crumbles. Then an arm. The incinerated remains tumble upon themselves like clumps of dirty snow, crumbling into a gray, flaking dune that blankets the street below.

I do not collapse. My legs are shaking but I keep standing.

In a few minutes the military arrives. They want to make sure I'd killed the Baal before coming in. I take the stairs down twelve flights to meet them.

A captain in body armor walks up to me in the street. He doesn't want to talk to me. There are a lot of justified superstitions circling the Arcana. It's bad luck to interact with us.

"We'll take you off site by helicopter," he says, pointing in the direction he wants me to go.

Usually The Chariot speeds us away after we've taken out the demons. But not this time.

The helicopter is long, black and very loud. A huddle of armor-encased soldiers escorts me to the cargo hold of the craft and we rise into the sky. We pass through a cloud of blackness. I know they are taking me to the airport. There, a faster craft will be primed and ready to speed me back to Florida, to the Enclave, where I will be safe.

II.

A supersonic transport is already waiting for me at the Dallas airport. It is the only plane on the tarmac.

I sit in an uncomfortable seat inside the passenger area of the jet. There are no cheerful words from the pilot. No stewardess to serve me drinks or remind me to buckle my seatbelt. The canvas and rubber smell of the military fills the cabin.

The jet climbs into the sky and I watch the ground descend into a patchwork beneath the clouds. Black smoke still rises over downtown Dallas, but my part is finished.

In a few moments my hands start to shake. The fear drains from me and I am left hollow, exhausted.

I think of Justice entering the mouth of the demon, kicking and screaming on the end of the pitch fork. I think of the World disappearing beneath the monster's foot. I think of the Chariot, sacrificing himself to give me one more second to prepare. The Hanged Man. The Hermit.

I think of their husbands, wives and children. My eyes crush shut trying to push away the images.

Will it ever end?

Four years ago I was a reference librarian in Springfield, Missouri. The pay wasn't great but I loved my job. I liked helping the younger patrons with their homework and bullshitting with the older ones who had nothing better to do than hang out at the library.

I had a wife and a daughter.

When the demons came, all that went away. No more time for the mundane. No more pretending that politics or television or income tax or retirement or families meant anything anymore. The curtain had fallen away.

Most of the world still plods forward between attacks, hoping their city is not next on the list. They go to work, hang out with friends, raise their kids, watch TV. But for those of us conscripted into the Arcana, the loss of innocence is fatal. It ends the lives we lived before. We are the front line of humanity's defense. The mysteriously chosen. The mystically transformed. One day we are nurses, truck drivers, students, doctors, librarians, bottled water salesmen. The next, we are the Hierophant, the Sun, the Hermit, Death. The Tower. As if born with the knowledge, all of us knew what to do and how to do it. But inside, we are still us.

I long for the past too often.

After a while, the white noise from the jet engines helps push the memories from my head, and sleep fills the hole left by the fear.

It only takes a little while to make it back to the Florida Panhandle, where the Enclave stands. I startle awake when I feel the jet bank on approach.

The great pillar of the Enclave seems to follow us as we circle to land. Its vaulting organic spires reach into the sky like strange elongated seashells, spiraling five hundred feet above the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. It reminds me of something Gaudi would have built, but smoother and shinier. Something grown, not built. Green lights wink down the length of a black runway next to the fortress, welcoming us home. The military built the runway very quickly after the Enclave appeared out of nowhere. They knew they'd be around a lot.

On the ground I am again escorted by a squad of heavily armed soldiers. I am a very important man. I could be replaced in a second, but they don't want that to happen. No one's lived through this as long as I have. I was one of the first chosen four years ago. The only original left. My death would be bad for morale.

I am happy to get back to the Enclave. In many ways it's a prison, but I am safe here. I can rest. Monsters aren't trying to kill me.

The Enclave materialized from thin air the day the Arcana appeared. Its smooth vaulting walls rose from the empty earth like a sprouting tree. It has hundreds of rooms but not a single right angle. Its walls are covered in raised and recessed glyphs whose meaning is beyond our comprehension. Even the members of the Arcana cannot read them.

As I walk through the cavernous central great room of the structure, several of the Arcana stand to greet me. They were not summoned to the fight, but their pity for the fallen is just as great. Although some of it is for themselves.

We are all physically altered by the change. Some are marked by mysterious tattoos that crawl up their arms, neck and face in chains of occult symbology. Others have raised metallic brands upon their flesh that look like the glyphs on the Enclave walls. My change is different. I have solid blue eyes. No pupil or iris. Just two blue glass marbles that don't make the world look any different to me. I'm told they blaze when I summon the lightning.

Strength, who now stands before me in tears, suffers the most profound alteration. She is from Berlin, a woman in her thirties, dark blond hair, eight-foot tall with biceps like beach balls, shoulders as wide as a Volkswagen. She can lift a dump truck but she cries all the time. Before I pass, I stop and squeeze her hand in reassurance, then move on quickly.

But not quick enough. Before I can get to my compartment, an Air Force captain stops me at the edge of the great room.

"General wants a debrief," he says to me. I sigh, but nod and follow the captain to the cluster of offices the international coalition has commandeered at the far end of the Enclave.

General Stokes doesn't bother to wear a uniform anymore. He hasn't in two years. Just said screw it. He still oversees strategic operations of the unified forces but the futility of the task burned him out some time ago. The demons are disorganized and their surreal technology is inferior to ours. His forces are often victorious even without us. But no matter how many battles he wins -- with or without the Arcana – the horrors just keep coming, materializing out of nowhere without plan or warning. He cannot counterattack. Just react, react, react. I suffer the same gnawing frustration.

He's sitting behind a forest of computer monitors that vomit video of the recent battle recorded from various angles. Some shots are from helicopters above the conflict, some are from the helmet cameras of the soldiers who were there. I see myself appear in many of the shots. In one of the rectangles, I see the World get squashed again, but from a different perspective.

"The whole damned Hand?" Stokes says in greeting.

I don't answer. My silence tells him to take it down a notch. We've worked together for a while. He sighs and turns his desk chair toward me. That's his way of offering sympathy, or whatever similar emotion he can muster.

"The Baal was smart," I say. "It pretended to be snared by the Hanged Man. The Hermit told me to strike when it fell. I did and it dodged."

He reaches over and hits a button on a black keyboard. The largest computer screen flashes and begins replaying the scene I just narrated. The shot was captured by some anonymous solider with a helmet cam, crouched behind a taxi a few blocks up the street.

From behind the action I watch the Baal fall to street. The Hanged Man is visible in the left side of the frame. I can see myself glowing blue in the distant background, tentacles of lightning arc from my body in all directions. The screen goes white when I drop the blow. The picture fades back from a new angle showing the demon already standing. The Hanged Man is gone.

Stokes taps a key and the image freezes.

"Its pitchfork could shoot flames?"

"More like fireballs."

"That's new."

"It was bad."

He hits another button. It is a blurry image of the Hanged Man being vaporized by a stray fragment from my strike.

"Your shot took out the Hanged Man?" He asks, but I know he knows.

I nod. "Yes. It was out of my control."

"And the Chariot? Do you think it was his idea to ram the Baal. Or was he forced to?"

He clicks a button and displays an aerial view of the Chariot smashing into the Baal's eyeball.

"I don't know."

He clicks his mouse and all the video screens pause, capturing various images of mayhem.

"Get some rest. When you feel like it, talk to Borges." He speaks in a low, even voice, visibly trying not to show his frustration. It is not often an entire Hand is killed. "This time was different. We need to gather all the intelligence we can."

There is an unspoken distrust between the military and the Arcana. They think we know more than we do. I think it's because our private language is indecipherable. When we address each other, no one but another member can understand our words. The military always thinks we're talking about them, telling secrets. And sometimes we are.

I stand to leave.

"Not to keep stats," Stokes says. "But you broke a hundred trips today. Congratulations."

Back in my personal area of the Enclave, I lie on my bed and turn on the television. The very first station is showing footage of Dallas. I instantly change the channel to a documentary on penguins. Television is a thread that connects me to the past. Sometimes I can watch it and feel like nothing's changed.

I sleep for several hours. When I wake up I don't know if it's day or night. Not that it makes any difference.

I make a pot of coffee in my little kitchen and drink it black while an infomercial blares the virtues of a miracle cleaning product. Must be night.

Someone knocks on my ornate shell door. I know who it is.

"Come in!" A section of wall melts away allowing my visitor access by a magic we will never figure out.

Borges comes in reeking of cigarettes. He's some kind of quantum physics genius. Young, maybe thirty. From Argentina, but speaks perfect English. The government conscripted him right after they read a paper he wrote as a joke many years before the demon invasion. Borges had used humor to illustrate a theory about how many dimensions could coexist within shared space. He talked about what kind of creatures might live upon these ethereal realms. What if our imaginations were actually perceptions of other dimensions? What if the creatures we invented to scare children actually existed somewhere? What if our dreams, nightmares and fairy tales were reflections of real places vibrating at different frequencies?

Turned out he might be right.

"How's it going?" he asks absently.

"Tired," I say.

"I tried to give you time to sleep."

"I'm good."

He sits in a leather chair against the wall. I sit at the edge of my bed.

"Okay, let's get all of it. Start from the time you were summoned." He turns on a small recorder and props a yellow legal pad on his knee. I narrate the incident, telling him what I remember, what I saw, how I felt. He asks very specific follow up questions. Where was the Hermit standing when he gave me the bad advice? Did I see Justice on the roof before she jumped? Were there any funny smells? Flashes of light? What did the Chariot talk about after we fled? How did the second bolt I dropped differ from the first?

We talk for an hour. I like Borges. I would almost call him a friend, but there's no one I'm that close to anymore.

"That's all I need for now." He clicks off his recorder and stands up. "If you think of anything else, call me."

"Yeah. Of course."

"See you, Tower." He doesn't know the name I was born with. To my knowledge no one here does. I don't give it out. I don't like to say it. As he's walking out the door, he turns to me. "Oh, a new Chariot arrived a few hours ago. She's out reassembling the...ones we lost."

"Okay, let me know when they get here. I'll go meet them."

I make it a point to meet the new arrivals whenever I can. I want to know who they are. We will be fighting together very soon and each new member is slightly different than their dead predecessor. I want to see these differences before my life is in their hands.

Also, my appearance is said to be good for morale. I am proof that not every member of the Arcana dies within a year.

The replacements arrive in a very short time, swooping through an opening in the ceiling of the Enclave upon a white disk of glowing light. I've never seen this many arrive at once.

The Hermit is always an old man. The elderly Asian farmer who now holds the title kneels on all fours upon the disk as it settles to the floor. He is terrified and has puked.

The World is now a tall, freckled woman from some Scandinavian country. She's about my age. The World is always a woman. Now this woman commands the earth. She can raise great walls of stone from flat ground. She can summon tidal waves or hurl boulders through the air with a thought. Her arms are crossed, tears streak her face.

The Chariot is frowning. She is middle-aged, strong cheekbones, slim, attractive, possibly from Africa.

The new Hanged Man wears the turban of a Sikh. I can tell he is trying hard to be stoic. His hands are interlocked behind his back. His eyes are closed and he breathes deeply. He is in his underwear.

When I notice the new Justice, almost hidden in the crowd, something closes in my throat. I can't believe what I'm seeing. She is a little girl. Not even a teenager. An American judging by her t-shirt and sneakers. I don't breathe for several seconds. A child has never been chosen for the Arcana.

The horrified look on my face is noticed by the new arrivals. It doesn't help their anxiety. Borges comes up behind me.

"Is this right?" he asks when he sees the child.

They ask me questions like that as if I know the answers. "How could it be?" I say.

The others are all looking at me but I can only stare at the girl. She was about the same age as my daughter the last time I saw her.

The sword of blue fire already glows upon her hip.

"Welcome to the Arcana," I say in our private language, trying to hide my duress. "We will try to answer your questions as best we can, but to be honest, there's not much we can tell you. You already know what your powers are. You already know what role you play. You know why you're here. Beyond that, I can show you where the bathrooms are. The rest is theory."

"Are we going to die?" The World asks.

I meet her eyes and shake my head, helpless. "I don't know."

"Will I be able to see my mom?" Justice calls from the back of the group. The Chariot leans over and hugs her.

I can't bring myself to answer. There is a theory that the Enclave is sentient. That it has a mind. It is selective about who can come and go. The soldiers and airmen enter and leave as they please, but members of the Arcana are locked in. The barrier extends to anybody we love, keeping them out and away from us. The only time we leave is to fight. Often, families camp outside the razor wire, begging to see their kidnapped loved one. But to no avail. The Enclave is possessive. Only letters can be exchanged, passed by soldiers. For some members, the letters sustain courage and hope while they are here. I wouldn't know.

"How am I understanding you?" The Hermit asks. "What is this place?"

And so the orientation begins. As always, Borges and I answer most of their questions with "We don't know." After a while, we escort them to their rooms. This is where they will live until the end of their days. That's one of the things you automatically know after it happens. I don't have to tell them.

We take Justice to her room last. She is trembling.

"It's going to be okay," I tell her, because I can't think of anything else to say. "You can write letters to your mom."

"Letters?" She looks up as if I can help her, but I can't.

"Check out your quarters and make a list of everything you need. They'll bring you anything you want. Food. Music. Books. The biggest TV you can imagine. Anything."

I say good night and head back to my room as quickly as possible. I want to get away from her. I can't bear to be around her. I can only think of my family now. Lost to the past. Memories. I rarely allow myself to remember their faces. Now that is all I can see. After all these years you would think the pain would ease. But it doesn't

Borges follows me back to my room.

"A kid!" he is upset, outraged. "For god's sake is there no mercy?"

"Not that I've noticed."

He sits in the chair he sat in earlier, but doesn't say another word. He stares at the floor with his hands clinched as if he's praying. After several minutes of silence he gets up and leaves. I turn on the television and watch a 1960s sitcom.

III.

There is a consciousness behind our condition. A mind. Somewhere decisions are being made. Evidence of choice intrudes upon the chaos.

Why are we named after the major trumps of a medieval divination system? How does the Tarot fit in? Why are only certain trumps chosen? In four years, there has never been a Wheel of Fortune, a Devil or a Fool. Why?

And the demons? They are caricatures from folklore. Some of them are red-fleshed with horns and tails, the whole nine yards. Some are less traditional and more horrific: twenty feet tall, multi-headed with tentacles for arms, mouths for hands. That kind of thing.

Four years ago, they came pouring in from a rip in the sky over Manhattan; thousands of them, armed with blunderbuss guns that fired flaming bones - femurs, clavicles, ribcages. They leveled half of New York in two days. Who could stop them? Who the hell was ready for that?

I watched the horror unfold on the news with the rest of the world. Like everyone else, I was adjusting to the reality that monsters existed and were slaughtering people by the thousands. It was tough to get your brain around.

On the third day of the invasion. I was sitting in my living room coincidentally talking about the demons with my wife and daughter, trying to comfort them. It wasn't the end of the world, I told them. They were probably really just aliens that looked like demons. They could be killed. The army had already shot thousands of them. Our guys would stop them before they got here. New York was a long way away.

About then, something exploded through the front door. Heavy debris sprayed the room. Part of the door frame hit me in the head and I fell to our low-pile carpet floor.

I didn't know it then, but the intruder was a member of the Belphegor caste. An assassin sent for me. Nine feet tall, talons like scythes. It had the head of a goat terminating in the serrated mouth of a smiling shark.

I looked up just as the demon cut my wife in half. I had managed to stagger to my feet as it reached my daughter.

Laughing at my grief and horror, the demon then came for me. But it was too late.

I had already become the Tower.

With the gut-crushing memories churning, I turn off the television and let the darkness consume me. It covers me in a shroud. I am small, hidden and safe. Even from the past.

I sleep hard and almost escape the nightmares. Not quite though. There is a whole separate war raging in my dreams. Most of it's gibberish, random horrors leaping at me from a fog, but some of it gets pretty bad. In the dreams, my limbs are heavy and I cannot move. I see the previous Justice kicking and screaming on the end of the pitchfork in Dallas. She transforms into the new Justice, the child, impaled upon a demon's sword. Then her face becomes my daughter's.

I wake up soaked in sweat.

By the next day, the persona of the Arcana is fully cooked in all of the new members. They now know there is no option, no alternative to what is happening. This is their destiny. It makes it easier in some ways, harder in others. The persona feels like a template overlaying our minds. Or maybe a loose set of clothes. It hangs upon our true selves. Separate from us, yet covering us.

Justice is stronger today. She seems to have made more progress than the others.

Soldiers take requests for supplies and dietary needs. The new members are shown around the Enclave then introduced to Stokes and the other government types. They are lavished with gratitude. The importance of their role is stressed again and again.

The day unfolds in mundane spirals of boredom and time-killing. I eat, read and watch television.

At dinner I sit with Justice and the Chariot.

"How you guys doing?" I ask.

Justice nods big. "Better."

"What choice do I have?" the Chariot says. "My number came up. That's all there is to it."

She is in the first stage of the transformation. The one filled with bitter resignation.

The Hermit comes up holding a tray of food and joins us. He's only gotten vegetable sides and a salad. I realize he must be a vegetarian. A big smile fills his face.

"I want to thank you for making this transition easier for us," he says to me. "I had heard about the Arcana in my village, but I had no idea how members were chosen. I didn't know what was happening! One second I'm gathering eggs from my hens, the next I'm being swept away by a woman on a flying wheel."

I take a bite of steak. It's not very good.

"The initial shock wears off after the persona sets in," I tell them." You come to accept things very quickly. Or at least a part of you does. But I won't lie. The tough part is still ahead of you. Your first battle could be at any moment and it will be horrifying. There is nothing within our nature that prepares us to handle this. At some point you'll freeze in terror. When that happens just remember to push through it. Push through it or people will die."

The table goes silent. I keep eating. Why pull punches?

"When do you think our first battle with be?" Justice asks and takes a sip of milk.

I shrug, shake my head. "No telling. Could be any minute."

"Any tips for surviving?" the Chariot asks. I've been asked that question a lot by new members over the years. At various times, I've given different answers to people who are no longer here. I've come to believe I've just been lucky.

"Work as a team. Listen to your leader."

"I'm a leader," Justice says.

"Yes, you are," I say, knowing that at any moment this child could be leading me into combat against another Baal.

A voice comes from the entrance to the dining area.

"Beside the sea a city sleeps/Demon hate runs cold and deep/ The horde will come in waves of death/ And never let the chosen rest."

It is the Hierophant. He is also one of the leaders. He spooks me. He is an old gray-headed man who shouts poetry during the battles. He talks strangely, in riddles and rhymes, but you have to listen. He's usually giving you a heads up. His power is knowing. He sees great swathes of the future. Not like the Hermit, who can only react a few seconds ahead of an event. The Hierophant sees the future as an open map. Possibilities and strategies sprawl before him in endless combinations of ifs and what ifs. Or so I'm told. All I know is that he is very fragile and not always right.

"A swarm," I say out loud. My companions stir nervously.

"What's happening?" the Chariot asks, but knows. Justice turns her head toward the Hierophant, making sure she's getting everything.

"He said 'waves of death.' That will be a large attack by lesser demons." I do not feel the summoning. I do not feel the need to go out. But there is one at the table who always goes. "You're up, Chariot."

No sooner are the words out of my mouth than the woman stands, abandoning her meal, and heads toward the great room to wait for the rest of the Hand. She does this without thought or choice. She is compelled.

I look to see if Justice moves, but she remains seated. She has not been called either. Something in me feels relief. I've got to get over that quickly.

I see Moon cross the room to join the group. She is the longest surviving member of the Arcana after me. Three years. She is maybe sixty years old with short salt and pepper hair. She reminds me of a nun who has abandoned her habit. Her skin is mapped with elaborate symbols that look like silver tattoos. Sometimes she plays pool with me in the rec room and we discuss literature and philosophy. I don't know where she's from.

Others join the Hand. The Star. Temperance. Death. The swarm fighters. Each has some mass attack ability that works against large groups. They've been picked for a reason. There is always a decision behind the choice. There is always a visible plan.

I notice that Justice is looking at me. Is she measuring my reaction? Looking to see how to respond?

I give her one of those tight-lipped smiles that can mean many things. This time I mean it to say: "This is how it is. This is how it works." I think she understands.

The Hand gathers in the great room. I go to see them off with Justice and the Hermit following.

The Chariot extends her arms toward the floor and the white disk forms beneath the feet of the Hand. They rise into the air. A hole in the ceiling parts and they shoot into the night sky. The hole closes as if it were never there.

We won't know how it turns out for a while.

IV.

I wander back to my room to take a nap and watch some television, but all I do is lie on my bed and cycle through the channels. Nothing catches my interest. Soon the news will start covering the battle. I don't want to see that.

After a while, a knock comes at the entrance and the door opens without my prompting. This has never happened before.

It is Justice. Her arms are crossed and I can tell she's shy about disturbing me.

"Can I come in?" she asks.

"Of course!" I am ill-at-ease with her presence yet another part of me is glad she's here.

"I'm sorry to bug you, but I'm bored," she says.

"No problem. Yeah, it gets boring when you're just waiting around. You never really get used to it."

I have trouble remembering the earlier days, when everything was new and strange, but I do remember the anxiety of waiting for a summoning: Standing around inside a seashell before being thrown into mortal combat. Never knowing when it will come. One second you're watching an old movie, the next, demons are trying to tear you to pieces. You learn to prefer the boredom pretty quickly.

"Tell me about when you first started," she says innocently, not knowing that she just sent a knife of pain through my solar plexus. She already brings back memories I've suffocated for years. Now she asks me to relive them.

Perhaps it is the look on my face or the several seconds of silence that tell her she's crossed a line.

"I'm sorry. If you don't want to talk about it...."

"No. It's all right," I decide to say. I have never talked about my family or that day to anyone, even the government counselors and psychiatrists that work in the Enclave. "Well, I had a wife...And a daughter about your age...."

For an hour I spill my guts to this little girl. I talk about the murder of my family, I talk about learning to use my power, I talk about all the people who have come and gone over the years, all the places they were from, all the mistakes they made during the battles. People and places I had forgotten reappear in my memory whole and vivid. I can't believe how much I have kept buried.

Twice I start to cry and she puts her hand on my shoulder to comfort me, which for some reason makes me laugh through the tears, perhaps out of embarrassment.

"I'm sorry about everything," she says when my monologue winds to an end. "I wish all of that hadn't happened to you."

I smile at her. She means it. I suddenly feel guilty about all the things I have said to her. I feel like it was selfish of me to burden the kid with such horrors, especially when she has problems of her own and doesn't seem to know it.

"No," I say. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have dumped all that on you. I don't usually do that kind of thing."

"It's all right. I'm glad you did. I wanted to know."

I just stare at her. Her long brown hair is straight, parted down the middle. Her face is heart-shaped and her eyes are gray. Justice doesn't display any outward physical change, but like other members of the Arcana, she is bound to an object. The child will never again be separated from her sword.

A noise like a sigh or a painful laugh escapes my lungs. This is not right. She should not be here. Her parents are out there somewhere, torn to pieces. Grieving.

A child. Please, God.

Some kind of commotion seeps through the walls. People running, shouting. The door parts for us and we go see what's happening.

Medical personnel sprint toward the great room and we see the Chariot floating to the ground. The disk wobbles and lands hard on the stone-like floor. The woman who is the Chariot collapses. She is wounded but I can't see how badly.

There is only one other person on the disk of light. The Moon is hurt and sits at the back of the disk, conscious but stunned. Three deep parallel gashes on the side of her face drip red down her neck.

A viscous puddle of blood spreads from beneath the Chariot's body. When the disk of light disappears, her limp form drops to the floor of the Enclave with a dull thud. Medics rush to her with all kinds of equipment. When they roll her over I can tell she's already dead.

Justice runs over before I can stop her. She looks down upon the staring eyes of the woman who had been the Chariot, the woman she just ate dinner with. Her hands shoot to her face and she spins around, reflexively trying to unsee what she has seen. Her eyes are wide and round.

Before I know it, I am holding her. She pushes her face into my chest and begins to sob.

"I'm sorry," I say as if all of this were my fault. Her cries are muffled against my chest.

"Get her out of here," Stokes says quietly behind me. I drape my arm around the child's shoulders and turn her away from the scene. I want to give her false words of comfort like: "It will be all right" but the lie is not within me.

We are halfway down the corridor when the ceiling opens and the new Chariot arrives. A man this time. Latin American. The battle is not over.

I feel the summoning rise within me. Without control, without any decision on my part, I turn and leave the child to take my place upon the disk.

I am horrified when I realize she is right behind me.

She, too, has been summoned.

V.

Upon the disk, the woman who is the World and the man who is now the Hermit, join us.

I am the only veteran in the Hand, the only one with a single second of experience. Somewhere, someone is trying something new. There is always at least one fresh face in the crowd, but usually not this many.

As we rise into the air, Borges enters the great room and watches us float through the ceiling. A lit cigarette hangs from his lips. He's not supposed to smoke in the Enclave but he does all the time.

The Chariot can reach any spot on the planet in a matter of minutes. The sudden velocity of the disk makes my stomach lurch like I'm on a roller coaster. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I'm not.

I look over the members of the Hand. The World wears a familiar expression of fear I have seen many times before. The Hermit looks more determined than afraid. Anxious, but focused. For some reason, he raises my confidence a notch.

Justice is trembling as if she's out in the cold without a coat. Her hand bounces on the hilt of the blue sword. Her eyes are wide circles, open as far as they can go to take everything in. She stands on the forward edge of the disk looking ahead.

She will be leading us into battle. Soon we will hang on her every word.

We arrive at our destination in seconds. It is in America again, close. I look down on the city below. Fingers of land jut into a webby delta of brown and blue water. Herds of buildings and a tangle of streets cling to an abrupt shoreline. As the French colonial architecture comes into view, I realize we are over New Orleans.

I went to New Orleans once for Mardi Gras when my wife and I were first engaged. I drank way too much that week.

Thousands of reptilian Imps fill the streets dressed in spikey armor and carrying a variety of ironically occult weapons. Blasts from their bone guns illuminate the faces of buildings like flashbulbs. Some carry flaming whips made out of fire. I see the stuttering retaliation of machineguns from human soldiers who have taken position behind a line of scattered cars. Helicopter gunships rain bullets down into the horde indiscriminating tearing apart the street and historical facades.

I am extremely worried about what I'm seeing. This is a swarm fight, the largest I've ever witnessed. No one on the disk possesses a power to counter this kind of attack. I can fork my lightning bolts and take out a few hundred with a lucky shot. I've done so dozens of times before, but never against a force this large. My one shot won't put a dent in their forces. I scan the streets and alleys below, looking for a place to hide until I'm needed.

As the disk descends to the edge of the chaos, Justice takes the Chariot by the elbow.

"No! Take us up. Over there." She turns and points toward the south. I see her face. There is no longer fear there. Her gray eyes have hardened into steel ball bearings.

The Chariot swoops over the northern edge of the city. Water churns beneath us.

"Set down right there," Justice commands. I cannot tell what she's thinking. The battle is a mile away.

"World, get off here and wait for my instructions," she says. Without question the World steps from the disk into an area that looks like an empty industrial park or warehouse district of some kind.

"Okay, take us in," Justice says and pulls the all-cutting sword from the sheath upon her hip. Cold blue flames ripple from the blade.

Adrenaline pounds through me. My mouth is filled with sand. I feel my heartbeat against my breast bone. The World is the only other major hitter besides me and we just dumped her off in the middle of nowhere. The Hermit does little more than give advice, and Justice is a frontline fighter who can only kill so many demons at a time. I am now the only artillery in the Hand.

Something is wrong.

We rise into the air for a brief moment and descend to the edge of the fight, which has moved forward as the human soldiers retreat.

One of the officers sees us.

"They're here! Fall back!" He shouts.

We're here. To do what?

"Come on!" Justice commands and I follow. We step off the disk and the Chariot flies away.

Ahead of us, a line of demons advances as the soldiers retreat. The demons are falling over each other to move forward, an approaching wave of talons and teeth. Imps are the lowest caste of demons. Aside from their fangs and claws they are no more powerful than human beings. But there are a lot of them.

The front line is armed with the bone guns. They fire and a swath of retreating soldiers is shredded to bloody meat. Fiery mandibles and femurs protrude from parked cars and uniformed corpses.

"You two wait here," Justice says to us. Before I understand what she's doing, she charges into the line of monsters as they are reloading.

The Hermit looks at me bewildered. He can see the future and he doesn't even know what's going on. I am shaking so badly I can hardly stand. Justice has lost her mind. The fear has driven her mad, made her suicidal. We are leaderless. We watch as the child confronts the onslaught of Imps. She is a speck of pink against a gray tide of rage.

The demons converge around her and I know she's dead. Without thinking I rush to help, to pull her out of the mob, but an eruption of body parts stops me midstride.

Justice is a blur. She leaps and spins and flips, swinging her sword madly. Arms, legs and heads fly into the air. I have never seen anything like it. The child is a whirlwind of carnage. Ten Imps fall with every blow.

The demon line breaks. They can know fear, and watching them drop their weapons and run sends a shiver of courage up my back. I start to summon my power to help.

"No!" Justice shouts, sensing my effort. "Run! Go to the World! Let them follow us!"

I turn to the Hermit, seeking some kind of affirmation that the command is correct, and he is smiling like he's at Disneyland. He sees something I don't.

We run and I curse myself for not losing some weight. The Hermit's twenty years older than me and many yards ahead. It reminds me of the old joke: I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to out run you.

After a minute, I stop to catch my breath and turn to see Justice behind us, the mob of berserk demons screaming at her heels. She is leading them on. I see her mouth moving and I know she is giving the World commands remotely. The leaders can do that kind of thing. It's like radio. We can hear their voices in our heads.

The demons are closing. A blast of red-hot bones just misses me. I feel its heat on my face.

"This way!" the Hermit shouts and dodges down a narrow alley.

Justice follows and the demons are on us. She spins around to face them at the choke point of the alley. The Imps crowd the narrow opening in a frenzy, pushing each other forward. Her sword is a lawn mower against the onslaught. Chunks of hamburger and black blood splatter the brick walls and pavement.

I step further down the alley and my feet splash in something wet. Frothy water is pouring into the alley from the street. It hits my ankles and is up to my shins by the time I reach the corner.

The flood rises quickly. A few feet down the street I'm slogging against a strong current hitting my knees. Soon, the water is up to my waist and I can barely move. It reminds me of the nightmares where my limbs are weighted and I cannot run. Except this is real.

"Chariot, now!" Justice screams.

The Chariot swoops into the narrow backstreet at forty-five degrees, crouched on all fours so he can fit the slot of the alley. We jump and cling to the disk like it's fly paper. Justice barely makes it, catching the rim with her free hand and dangling loosely from the edge as we shoot above the rooftops. We pull her onboard and I can't help but stare. I am stunned by her performance. I have served many Justices, but none who fought like that. She is inspiring.

I notice the Hermit is smiling at me. For a second I'm afraid he's gone nuts. He leans over and whispers into Justice's ear, who nods in agreement with whatever he said.

I look down and see that the streets have become rivers. Debris travels down them in growing clumps. Parked cars yield to the current, becoming buoyant and banging into streetlights and buildings.

Ahead I see the World standing on a warehouse roof, arms outstretched before her. A torrent of whitewater pours through a wide gap she has opened in the levee across the parking lot. She is flooding a portion of the city.

We pass over her without stopping.

I look at the horde. They struggle against the waist-high deluge to get to us. What is Justice trying to do? Drown them?

At that moment, the Hermit steps toward me and pushes me off the disk. I am shocked and feel myself plummet to the earth. I didn't know we could leave the disk against our will. Then I land on something solid many feet above the ground. It is riveted, metal lattice, solid and firm. I realize I am on top of a drawbridge tower.

Justice stands on the disk with her fists on her hips, legs set wide, covered in black blood. She does not look like a child, but a tiny berserker Amazon, or some species of miniature Valkyrie. A warrior without fear.

"Summon your power. Strike the water in the center of the swarm."

And now, all is clear.

I stand and bring forth the Tower. Clouds clench into fists and form a vortex in the sky.

Blue arcs of raw energy twist and coil from the metal of the bridge and converge within the center of my chest.

I look down upon the horde. There are ten thousand demons coagulating in the open area of the industrial park. They push against the rushing waters trying to get to me before I can do my thing.

They are too late. I bring down the fire.

The bolt is as fat as a battleship; a jagged pillar of blue-white might reaching from beyond the sky.

The strike lands in the center of the water-locked multitude. A shockwave blasts a ring of mist outward from ground zero. Thousands of the demons turn to smoke at the touch of my power. The ones on the outer edges of the blast are burnt to a crisp by the teravolts of electricity surging through the water.

In a split second, the screaming horde is silenced. The floating bodies of dead demons clog the streets.

I am a swarm fighter after all.

I watch as the World reseals the levee. The parted earth closes and the flow of water stops.

The battle is over.

No one is dead.

Chariot swoops down and scoops up the World then comes for me. When I hop on board, Justice is still standing on the front edge of the disk with her hands on her hips, looking forward.

I try to remember. When was the last time everyone came back alive?

VI.

Back at the Enclave, both Borges and Stokes are waiting in the great room. They already know the story. It was thoroughly transmitted by an army of soldiers, helicopters, jet fighters and satellites.

"Well done," Stokes says to Justice as Chariot's disk evaporates.

"Thank you," she answers. She would have sounded cocky, but her confidence was beyond that.

We haven't slept in many hours and all of us head to our quarters to rest. The debriefing can wait.

Borges can't though. He follows me into my room.

"Never," he says. "To answer your unasked question: there has never been a Hand return with a hundred percent survival rate."

I sit down on the foot of my bed, exhausted.

"I didn't think so."

Borges puts a cigarette in his mouth but doesn't light it. He knows I hate them.

"Is it because she's a kid?" he asks from behind the bobbing cigarette. "Can she use her power more efficiently because she's not clouded or tarnished somehow?"

"I have no idea." I lie back on my bed. There's something different about this Justice and it's not just her age. She accepted the change quicker than anyone I've ever seen, led us to a clean victory her first time out.

Borges paces my room and keeps talking. He is brainstorming, speculating, trying to make connections. His voice grows distant as I begin to fall asleep.

"Maybe it's her mind -- her imagination. Maybe she's more receptive to possibilities......"

When I wake up, he is gone. But I sense someone else is in the room. I prop up on my elbows.

Justice is sitting quietly in the leather chair.

"Hey," I say in groggy surprise.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I tried to be quiet. But I didn't want to be alone."

"It's all right."

She looks small sitting in the large leather chair, a child once again. Not a Valkyrie.

I can tell she is gathering her words. She wants to talk.

"It was horrible," she finally says. The phrase is everything rendered down to its smallest portion.

"I know."

"Once I saw the city, I knew just what to do. I could see it. The water. The streets. You." She looks at the floor. "But, the demons... coming at me, never stopping. Reaching for me. I could smell their breath. Some of their blood splashed in my mouth..." She pulls her legs up on the chair, hugging them in her arms. "....and I liked it."

I reach over and turn on my battery-powered reading lamp. Weak, yellow light pushes away part of the darkness.

"It's okay, Justice. You did better than anybody ever has."

She doesn't lift her eyes, but says, "My name is Stephanie."

I cannot speak for several beats. I have never known the real name of another member of the Arcana. I swallow and force myself to speak.

"Stephanie," I repeat the word to confirm my understanding. "My name is Michael."

"Michael," she says. "I miss my mom."

She stands from the chair, crosses the room and hugs me.

"I miss my mom," she says again.

"I know. It's all right. It's going to be all right," I say and wish I hadn't.

We don't talk any more after that. She stays a little while longer then heads back to her quarters. I hope what just happened helps her.

I don't get back to sleep. I am furious. I am sick of all of it. The waiting. The manipulation. The terror. And now a child must suffer to feed the horror? I hate whatever is doing this. God or devil.

I cannot deny the summoning, but I can make decisions during the battles. I think about letting myself get killed during the next one. Ending it. Cheating whatever monster is playing this game.

I hope it can read my thoughts.

In a few more hours, noises awaken outside my door. The workday has begun. The employees are arriving, performing their duties. We must debrief the military and scientists. Yesterday was significant. Something has changed. They'll want to hear all about it. Find out what was different.

An airman comes to fetch me for the inquisition but I am rude and invite him to go have sex with himself. I'm tired of being told what to do and when to do it. By anyone -- visible or invisible.

An idea comes to me. An image, really. Something I want. I grab a notebook off the dresser and scribble down a list of items. I tear out the paper and hand it to the airman.

"Get this for me."

He looks at the paper then looks at me.

"Okay," he finally says. "A tail?"

"Ask the older soldiers."

He leaves in vanquished silence, and I go out into the Enclave, daring anyone to try and get me to comply. Or say good morning, for that matter. I've had it. I'm done.

Justice and the World come out of Stokes' office. They told him everything they knew, trying to be helpful. But they have no experience to hold up in comparison. They haven't been through a hundred other battles.

Stokes sees me, makes eye contact and turns away showing his disappointment over my noncompliance. He obviously got my memo from the airman.

I eat a little, but decide to start a diet. I mope around the common areas, purposely forcing people to avoid me. The whole Enclave knows I've had it. The other Arcana offer half smiles of greeting but keep walking when they see me.

In the afternoon, my requested items are delivered. The airman brings me exactly what I asked for.

"Where's Justice?" I ask one of the scientists walking down the hallway.

The woman tells me Justice is in her room, watching television. I walk down the hallway with intent and her door opens upon my approach. She did not have to invite me in. The strange liberty between us apparently works both ways.

"Come on," I say to her and show her what I have. "We're going outside."

She jumps up from her bed and follows me through the great room. I can tell she is hopeful, but skeptical. She doesn't believe I can do it. She knows we cannot leave the Enclave.

I walk to the area where the exit appears for the staff. The doorless wall remains intact, refusing me, ignoring me.

"Open the goddamn door!" I shout and my voice bounces off the rune-covered walls. People stop what they are doing and stare at me. Soldiers, airmen, scientists, the other Arcana, all pause to watch me lose my mind.

"You bring a kid into this?" I shout at the invisible manipulator. "You force a child into this hell? What kind of monster are you? Open the goddamn door and let us outside!"

There is a fat silence. My voice does not echo but somehow the words resonate against the shell walls.

Then the portal relents. Like the ceiling, like the entries to our rooms, the wall unfolds and the world outside opens before us. Fresh air and warm sunshine hit me in the face. For a second I am stunned. I really didn't think it would work.

I can't move so Stephanie walks around me and steps outside. I break from the spell and follow her. There are worn trails all around the Enclave where the sentries walk their routes. About a hundred yards out, a chain link and razor-wire fence encircles the grounds.

In the open, I take the kite out of the bag and assemble its simple framework. I attach the cloth tail, unwind the string from the spool and tie it to the crossed supports. It is one of the old-fashioned kite-shaped kites kids don't fly anymore. That's the kind I wanted. I hand the spool of string to Stephanie. As if on cue, the wind picks up off the Gulf and the kite rises into the sky, the string feeding it distance.

The kite dives and rolls, floating into the air like the Chariot's disk, higher and higher. The string unravels from the spinning spool in Stephanie's hands. She is smiling.

The line reaches its end and the kite soars above the highest pinnacle of the Enclave. Soldiers have stopped in their tracks to gather and watch. The child reels in the kite a bit and runs across the rutted grounds. She runs towards it, giving the tether slack and watching the wind have its way. After a long time she sits on the ground with her back against the Enclave wall. I sit beside her and we watch the paper diamond dance against the clouds.

She looks at me and smiles, squinting against the sun.

Then I hear a small voice in the distance, calling from outside of the fence.

"Stephanie!" the muffled word carries over the wind.

The child looks past me to find the source of the voice.

"Mom!"

I turn and see a woman at the fence, tiny in the distance, her fingers gripping the chain link. Stephanie jumps up, drops the spool of string and runs toward the woman. Her sword bobs upon her hip. I pick up the string.

The soldiers do not stop her, but I see them shifting nervously, unsure of what to do. They have no orders that cover this situation.

Stephanie makes it to the fence and the woman collapses to her knees. She is crying hysterically, blubbering words I cannot discern. Their fingers entwine through the mesh.

I wait for a while and tie the kite to a scrub bush. With my hands in my pockets, I walk slowly over to the reunited family. I need to meet this woman, to hear her speak.

"We're going to get you home, baby," I hear the mother say as I get closer. "They can't keep you here. We're going to get you home."

Stephanie looks downward, her cheeks glisten with tears.

"No, mom," she says. "I won't be coming home."

"Don't say that, Steph. Don't say that."

The child looks up at her and pulls her hands away from the fence.

"You need to go home, Mom," she whispers but her voice is firm. "You just need to go home."

The woman collapses to her side. She is crying but no sound comes out. I want to give her comfort, but there is none to give, so I can only lie.

"We'll take good care of her," I say and wish to God I hadn't.

"I can't...I can't." She has no words beyond that.

Stephanie steps back from the fence.

"It'll be all right, Mom. But you need to leave."

She takes my hand and leads me back to the Enclave. I look back and see the woman has not moved. She sprawls on the ground still hanging upon the fence.

The unattended kite has crashed outside the perimeter. The string drapes over the razor wire. We leave it there and walk back to the Enclave wall. It opens its mouth and we walk inside.

Justice never turns around.

VI.

Weeks go by. I am never summoned. Others go but I am always left behind. I've never gone this long without being called. Am I being punished? Rewarded?

Justice goes out many times and leads many different Hands. All return whole and victorious. It is miraculous.

Once, two Baals crossover in Moscow. Two. With the help of the Hermit's short term predictions, she tricks them into stepping beneath a collapsing building and they are pinned under the rubble long enough for her to drive her flaming sword into their brains.

So clever!

She is phenomenal, magical. In just three months, she logs twenty victories. A new morale rises throughout the Arcana. When Justice is the leader, the Hand goes forward with confidence and courage. Not like the trembling conscripts I have been watching die for years.

The press goes nuts over her. Her presence seems to represent some kind of turning point in the demon war. She is hope. She is victory.

The Hermit is a miracle man all his own. He gets so good at his job he starts finding the demon portals before they open. Several times the Hand is already waiting when the monsters arrive.

I don't attempt to go outside again. Maybe I can. Maybe I can't. I don't try to find out. Who knows why?

Working intensely with dieticians and physical trainers, I manage to lose twenty-five pounds in a couple of months. I'm in the best shape of my life. I watch the news, read more books. I'm thinking about taking up painting.

Justice and I eat together sometimes. Twice, she joins the Moon and me for a game of eight ball, but she never visits me in my room like she did before. She never mentions her life before the Arcana or talks to me about anything serious.

Borges follows her around like a puppy. She is the key, the Rosetta Stone. She is the way it is supposed to work. He tries to reverse engineer a quantum formula for her success. He quits smoking because she doesn't like how he smells. Now he chews nicotine gum like a spastic camel.

Things are looking up.

I think that's why I am caught off guard when I wake up one night and realize Justice is sitting in the dark at the foot of my bed again.

"Hey, kid." I am bleary, but concerned. She's a veteran now. A hero. The best that's ever been. She doesn't need me anymore. There's a problem or she wouldn't be here.

"Something bad is coming," she says.

Adrenaline burns away any sleep left within me.

I sit up, lean forward. "What?"

She speaks with distance, staring at the floor.

"I don't know what it is. Something big. Something awful."

"How do you know?"

She shakes her head slowly. "I can just feel it."

I reach over and turn on the reading light. I don't like the darkness right now.

"Did the Hierophant say something? The Hermit?"

"No. They don't have to. "

I'm not sure what to say. It could be things are just getting to her. You can't go out there day after day without it messing with your mind. And she's just a kid. People are starting to forget that.

"Justice," I search for words of comfort and encouragement. "You're the best member who's ever been. You've brought everyone back alive on every mission you've been on."

She looks up at me and I see her eyes in the wan light. Not terrified, not despondent, but not young any more.

"That's why it's coming," she says with a voice so flat with truth I have nothing to return. "It's coming for me."

The silence that falls between us says more than any words. Within it, I am asking her what she needs from me.

"You'll never be summoned again," she finally says. "You've been removed from the deck."

Somewhere deep inside, I know she is right. You'd think I'd be thrilled with her pronouncement, and honestly, a part of me is. But another part feels bad. Guilty, abandoned. A failure. That's the part that surprises me.

"Why? Because of the kite?"

"I don't know," she stands from the chair and rests her hand on the hilt of her always-present sword. "But I want you to come next time."

"You said I'd never be summoned again."

She walks over to the door and it opens.

"I want you to come anyway."

She leaves and the wall reforms behind her.

Her words echo inside my head. I am not to be summoned again. I have been released, discarded. I am free.

Yet she wants me to go out anyway... and I don't think I can do it.

VII.

The next morning, Stokes calls me to his office. Borges is there, frantically chewing gum.

"Last night, Justice went to your room," the general says. "What did she want?"

At first, a part of me wants to lie, or at least hide the truth from them. I decide not to. I want them to know at least some of it.

"She wanted to talk. She said something big is about to come through. She said it's coming for her."

Stokes looks at Borges as if something has been confirmed between them.

"Did she say anything else?"

For a second I almost tell them the rest. That she asked me to join the Hand even if I'm not summoned. But I don't. I don't want them to know that part. What if they try to stop me? What if they try to force me to go?

"No. Just that she's worried."

"Did she tell you what made her think that?" Borges asks. He knows that Justice has no means of divination. Each member of the Arcana has their own talents. Seeing the future is not one of hers.

I shake my head. "She said she just knew. What's going on?"

Borges crosses his arms, weighing his words, deciding how much to tell me.

"Something is shifting," he says. "The Arcana is changing."

"Changing?"

Borges takes the gum out of his mouth and throws it in Stokes' trash can.

"The Hierophant died last night. Heart attack."

I am stunned. Not just at the news that someone I knew has died, but how. A member of the Arcana hasn't died of natural causes in a while. Never, actually.

"Heart attack? Has he been replaced?" I suddenly feel bad about asking such a cold and practical question, but neither of the men react with judgment.

"Yeah," Stokes says. "But not in the regular way."

They both look at me as if expecting something.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Borges sits in a metal chair in front of Stokes' mosaic of computer monitors.

"The Hermit has become the Hierophant," he says. "One trump has become another."

I am more stunned by this news than that of the old man's death. There is something....unnatural.... about the development.

"How can that happen?"

Borges shrugs.

"Did Justice talk to you about anything else? Did she mention anything out of the ordinary?" Stokes asks again. Do they know? Are they testing me? Even if they have our rooms bugged they wouldn't be able to understand us. They're grasping at straws.

I shake my head pretending to search my memory but coming up empty.

"No. Nothing."

Borges rubs his eyes. I can tell he's been up for a while.

"We think the stakes are rising," he says. "Justice and the Hermit have been shutting the demons down before they even manage to make it over. We think Justice is right. The other side is gearing up for something big. A few minutes before he died, the Hierophant dropped one more prophecy."

Borges pulls out a folded sheet of yellow notebook paper from his shirt pocket.

"We only got the end of it." He clears his throat and begins reciting the inscription in monotone, without the drama and passion usually delivered by the Hierophant. "....ignites the fires of our fears/And through the flames/ Moloch appears."

"Moloch?" I am not familiar with the name. It is not a caste of demon I've ever heard of.

"Another name from the Old Testament," Stokes says. "A real bastard according to Wikipedia. We think they're sending the worst they've got."

There have been four Baals since the demons came. The first of them leveled a city, killed a quarter of million people and twelve members of the Arcana before it was stopped. I killed the second one, Justice killed the last two. The thought of something more horrific than those creatures coming into the world sends ice up my spine. My mouth goes dry and I try to subdue my imagination.

"What could be worse than a Baal?" I ask myself out loud.

"Don't know," Borges answers. "But I think we're going to find out."

I push myself up from the chair not even trying to hide my dread. Fear churns in the hollow of my stomach. If Justice is right, I'm out of it. I don't have to go back out and face those things again. Why should I? Whatever's running this nightmare doesn't want me anymore. Maybe there's a good reason for it. Maybe I've done my time and I could just walk out the door if I wanted. Head to Idaho.

As I walk down the hallway toward Justice's room, the thought crosses my mind to try and leave. I should just turn around, head toward the wall and see if it opens. If it does I can just keep walking right out of the compound, past the airstrip, into the world.

A world that is under siege by demons. A world being smashed, burned and devoured by monsters. A world where Justice needs my help.

I want more information. I want to talk to Justice again. I approach the child's room and the wall opens.

She is sitting in the dark. The only light in the room is the glow from her sword.

"Hi," she says looking up at me.

"Hey."

I enter and the wall closes.

"Just talked to Stokes and Borges. They were asking questions about you."

"Oh, yeah?" She doesn't care. At some point the military and science people become playful nuisances. Their scrambling and puzzling becomes a drama of futility that occurs around you, something to distract you from the boredom between the summonings, but nothing more.

"They wanted to know what you said to me last night."

She stands, picks up her TV remote and turns on the huge, black, eighty-four inch screen at the other end of her room. A top-of-the-line Sony. Cartoons fill the rectangle with color and stupidity. She's not being rude. I think she turned it on for me.

"What'd you say?"

I sit in the chair next to the bed with us both facing the television. Poorly animated turtles, rabbits, and, I think, possums chase each other within a brightly colored forest.

"I told them you said something big was coming. I told them you said it was coming for you."

A bug-eyed eagle swoops down on the cartoon animals, scolding them about something.

"Did they tell you the Hierophant died?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Did they tell you the Hermit took his place?"

"Yes."

"Weird."

"Yes, it is."

"Things are changing."

"Seems that way."

I look around the room. There are stuffed animals, sketch pads, empty soda cans and teen magazines scattered around the floor. Against the wall is a cluttered desk. I see a Rider-Waite tarot deck fanned out over its surface. Like all of us who've made it more than a few weeks, she seeks meaning within the cards, looking for some clue to her existence in their design.

I also see something else, something that makes me stand up and cross the room.

A pile of white envelopes is carefully stacked on the edge of the desk. There is no postage on any of them. I pick one up. They all say the same thing on the front. "To Stephanie Sappington." There is no return address, but on the other side, a single sentence pleads in all capital letters: PLEASE WRITE ME BACK – MOM.

None of the letters are open.

"You should write your mother," I say, but instantly feel bad about it. What do I know to give such advice?

The kid just keeps watching the funny animals on television and acts as if nothing was said. I put the letter back on the four-inch-high stack where I found it.

I look up at the cartoon. The animals are all holding hands and dancing as the credits roll up the screen. A happy ending for all.

"I'm changing, too," Justice says. The words give me some kind of jolt.

"How?"

She shrugs. "I'm becoming something else. Another one of the cards."

"Which one?"

She shrugs again, a big high-shouldered shrug like kids give when they don't want to talk about something.

"Okay. You can tell me when you're ready." My gaze falls to the fanned out cards on the desk. I notice one card is on the top of the pile. Its edges are bent from attention and examination. The image on the card shows a gold disk upon which a blue sphinx sits clutching a sword. Four golden creatures occupy each corner of the card. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the Dead, bears the disk upon his back.

It is the Wheel of Fortune.

I turn to Justice and see she is staring at me, knowing that I know.

"I'm sure everything is going to be okay," I say.

She turns back to the television where a commercial for fruit-flavored candy explodes in high-definition color.

Our conversation is over. My leader is dismissing me.

Without saying good bye, I leave. As I walk down the curving hallway to my own room I seek meaning behind the coming change.

There has never been a Wheel of Fortune. Now there's going to be. What will her powers be? What does it mean to the Arcana? To the world?

In my room, the wall closes behind me. I am left in darkness. I do not turn on the light. I do not turn on the TV. I just lie on the bed and hide in the dark. Sleep comes and goes throughout the night, but it is never restful.

Morning comes and the Enclave fills with activity. I am sluggish, emotionally exhausted, worried. I slog over to the commissary to grab some food. There's a lot of commotion for this time of day. Many of the Arcana are milling about talking to each other. Some seem distraught, their arms crossed, frowning.

The Lovers is speaking loudly to Strength, almost shouting. She has a British accent. Or maybe Australian.

"Because that's what she wants, that's why!" Her card has a plural name but she is only one person. Her power is the ability to duplicate the power of any other Arcana. All she has to do is hold their hand. I often wonder why we have never been in a Hand together. If there were two of us with my power, the probability of failure would be halved.

Other members of the Arcana come out of their rooms and join the crowd. Soon all them are here.

"What's going on?" I ask Judgment, a short, big-boned woman from South America.

"Justice wants us to go out. No one's been summoned but she's asked us all to go. All of us. Some people don't think we should do it."

This is unprecedented. Without waiting to be summoned, the child wants to form the largest Hand ever assembled. A Hand with every member.

This is it.

"We should go," I say loud enough so everyone can hear me, because now I know. I know what I will do. The moment has come and my choice is made without struggle or doubt. "If Justice says we should go, we should go."

The others stop and listen. I turn and address them all.

"I don't know how much you already know, but something big is coming. Whoever... whatever...is sending the demons is sending over the worst it's got."

I see fear form on some faces. Disbelief on a few. Resolution on others.

"Justice has led us to clear victory over the past few months," I say. "The demons are upping the odds."

"What does that mean?" the Magician asks me. The golden infinity symbol magically inlayed into his forehead sparkles like real gold.

What does it mean? "I don't know, maybe..."

"It means they are afraid," the young voice comes from the great room and we are all riveted by its timbre. Justice walks forward with her thumbs hooked in her belt. Only she's not Justice. Her flesh, hair and eyes have become solid, vivid blue. The color of a bright sky.

The new Hierophant follows a few steps behind her. The old Thai farmer cuts a more impressive swath than his predecessor. He seems taller. The marks upon his face are in a different, more dramatic, configuration. He walks with his shoulders back, chin high. Here is a man who sees the future and is confident in his vision, not filled with dread.

Everyone is silent, dealing with what they are seeing in different ways. We know what's happened to her. Somewhere deep within our souls, we know.

"They're about to throw everything they have at us," the child continues as she moves to the center of the crowd. Her sword still rests upon her hip but I notice it has changed. It is no longer of simple shape. Now it bears an elaborately serrated edge. Its once featureless cross guard is now ornate with flourish and detail. "They were trying to stop me before I changed. But they failed."

I can feel the members galvanizing. Even the ones who had been hesitant now hang upon her words.

"Justice is no more. I am now the Wheel," she says, the words slow and measured. "And I have the power to stop this."

Airmen, soldiers and scientists have gathered further back, listening, hoping to understand what she's saying by our reactions.

"In a few minutes, we will all leave this place and face the greatest threat the Arcana has ever known," the Wheel says as she walks through the crowd. "We will face a foe beyond the horrors of our imagination -- an enemy beyond the limits of our minds."

It is not a child speaking to us now, but a symbol.

"The monsters we have faced for the last five years are not creatures born into the universe. They are created. They were found in the dark side of our own nature. They are hatred, anger and fear. They are war, lust and greed. They are manifestations of all that is broken within humanity. They are the monsters we must conquer to free ourselves from ourselves." The Wheel winds through the group making sure to make eye contact with all of them. "They are the demons we must defeat if we are to continue. They are us."

No shred of doubt remains among the Arcana now. Fear still shows on the faces of some, but resolve forms the dominant expression. What is the word for the feeling a human feels when they embrace their destiny? I guess there cannot be one. It is different for all of us.

The Wheel stands and nods at the woman who is the Lovers. "Join with the Chariot to form a vehicle that can carry everyone."

Without hesitation, the Chariot and the Lovers walk into the great room. They join hands and a shimmer of light takes shape beneath their feet. But the shape is not a disk as it has always been before. Now it is two circles joined at their edges. The sign of infinity.

With the vehicle formed, the Arcana gathers upon its glowing surface. There are eighteen of us. Across the room I see Stokes and Borges watching with concern.

The vehicle rises and approaches the ceiling, but the Enclave does not open.

The Wheel moves to the front edge of the sheet of light. She raises her hand and gently touches the shell ceiling with her fingertips.

"Open," she whispers.

Seconds pass and nothing happens. Will we not be allowed to leave?

"It is time," the child whispers. Another few seconds pass in nervous silence and then there is movement within the ceiling. The Enclave obliges and a portal to the world parts like melting ice.

Released, all who are the Arcana soar into the blazing morning sky and fly off to face our destiny.

VIII.

We shoot across the sunrise like a comet, the Chariot and the Lovers hand-in-hand. Within a few moments we arrive at our destination a thousand miles away. Skyscrapers outline the horizon before us and I realize we are descending upon New York City, the place where it all began, the epicenter of the invasion.

The demons have not yet breeched the membrane of our world. The city pulses with early morning traffic, oblivious to what is about to happen.

I have never arrived before an invasion. By the time I get there, the demons are already in the throes of destruction. The peace is eerie to me.

The Hierophant consults with the Wheel of Fortune in a low voice. He points to an empty spot in the sky and then points to different buildings and street corners. The child asks him questions I cannot hear and nods as he answers.

"Empress," The Wheel says to one of the other leaders. "Take the Star, Sun, and Death and wait on top of that building. Emperor, you take the Hanged Man, Temperance, the Magician, and Judgment and take position on the ground. The rest of you stay upon the Chariot until we see what's coming. Don't engage until you hear my command. They'll be full of tricks."

She has distributed the fighters and leaders in combinations that will address either hordes or giants. She is preparing for anything. Or everything.

We drop off the groups upon intersections and skyscraper roof tops. The rest of us are in reserve, waiting to respond to whatever they send.

We don't have to wait long.

I have never seen a portal open before. I have never seen the sky bulge and ripple as it does now. It looks as if a piece of the atmosphere is being pushed inward from the outside. A huge convex protrusion distorts the clouds. A seam in the bulge becomes visible. A black jagged line crawls from the sky to street below, and then it splits open. I see red and yellow stars sparkling within the blackness beyond.

Thousands of demons explode from the fissure. They pour from the crack like liquid, following the rift all the way to the ground. They are an assortment of castes: Imps, Belials, Asmodia, Belphegor all armed with bone guns, fire whips, bejeweled lances and toothed swords. They flood into the streets of Manhattan, blasting a path of havoc in front of them. People caught upon the street disintegrate beneath a storm of bones.

We rise into the sky as the crowd upon the streets realizes what's happening. Several people scream. One cab rear ends another. Traffic locks. People throw open their car doors and flee up the street on foot. Chaos erupts in the blink of eye.

The Chariot retreats several blocks, then turns down a side street and doubles back toward the fight, attempting to flank the advancing horde.

"Priestess, hold this flank. Take the World, Moon and Strength. Everyone else stay put," the Wheel commands. The Chariot deposits the four at a cross street parallel to the demon's advance.

"Now take us in, head on," she says to the Chariot.

Oh, shit. I try to swallow but my throat is too dry.

The Chariot makes a couple of sharp left turns and the horde explodes in front of us, a wall of screaming demons, draped in smoke and fire.

"Stay on the disk!" the Wheel shouts as she jumps to the street directly before the onslaught. I run to the edge and look down to see where she landed.

The demons are moving fast, plowing forward with no resistance. The Wheel has her sword unsheathed and she holds it with two hands. As the horrific musketeers complete their reloading sequence and raise their fat-barreled guns to fire, the Wheel slices through the empty air with her new blade. A swath of a hundred demons is cut down without being touched, disintegrating into a jumble of torsos and severed limbs.

That's a new trick. And a good one. She waves the blade again and the invisible force drops another swath. Then another. The front line breaks.

The demons scatter down the side streets only to run into our awaiting forces. I see a hundred demons flatten to mush as if a giant invisible foot has stomped on them. The Moon is doing her thing with gravity. I see hundreds more fall at the touch of a sparkling silver mist sent by Death.

On their other flank, a cluster of white spheres of light descend almost gently upon the horde. The balls pop in complete silence and each one makes a dozen demons disappear. They are treasures sent by the Star. Some demons try to run but Temperance stops them in their tracks with sloth and confusion. They suddenly lack the desire to flee. The silent white globes harvest a thousand lethargic Belphegors in a few seconds.

My heart is pounding. We have trapped them between the jaws of a vise and already their forces are crumbling.

I see the Hierophant point to the sky.

"The second portal!" he shouts.

Second portal? I look up and see a crack in reality similar to the first, but this time a huge clawed hand pushes out of the darkness from the other side. A gigantic pitchfork wedges its way through the gash, followed by the grinning horror of a Baal's face. The creature pulls itself into our world like a monstrous newborn, landing on top of a gray skyscraper.

I look to the Wheel on the street for guidance but she is still hammering at the throng with her sword. She doesn't know the Baal is here.

"Stephanie!" I hear myself shout. "A Baal!"

She pauses and looks around. For a second she seems confused. Then she gestures and the Chariot swoops down to pick her up. She jumps on the disk and looks at me with evident displeasure.

"Another!" the Hierophant says. I look up and see the torso of a second Baal pushing through the seam, pitchfork in hand.

"Lovers, prepare to join with the Tower. And, Tower..." she turns to me, frowning. "Don't call me that name again." It takes me a second to realize what I said. Then I nod.

The two Baals smash through smaller buildings and vault over larger ones trying to get to us. One raises its trident and a fireball explodes into the street. Death, the World and the Priestess disappear within the flame before they even have time to scream.

The Wheel points to a skyscraper and the Chariot swoops towards its roof.

"Go!" the Wheel says to the Lovers and me. "Wait for my command."

She leaves us on a rooftop several blocks away from the battle and plunges back toward the street. In a second, they are out of sight.

"Looks like we'll finally be teamed up," I say to the Lovers. She smiles tightly. The woman has been the Lovers for more than a year, but I've never spoken with her. "We still can't miss. Two Baals, two shots."

"I don't plan on missing," she says. Not British, definitely Australian.

"Of course not."

We hear the battle echoing off the canyons of buildings. The din of shrieking demons is punctuated by the staccato pop of their bone guns. The heavy tread of a running Baal booms over all the other sounds.

The Wheel's voice comes into our minds. Still young but full of authority.

"Get ready," she whispers without words. "The Baal is behind me."

I feel the Lovers intertwine her fingers with my own.

"Call it!" she prompts me.

I begin to summon my power, but it feels different. I can sense the Lovers effect. My strength is doubled. Lightning crawls up fire escapes and along metal guttering. It traces air ducts, water towers and power lines. Blue fire enters both of us.

I reach the pinnacle of my strength and the Lovers raises her hands into the air, laughing, made drunk by the power. Lightning leaps from her fingertips.

At that moment we see the Wheel running on the street below. She leaps over a line of abandoned cars and bounces off the building facades like a ping pong ball. Behind her, an infuriated Baal, one eye already gouged out, rounds a corner with its trident raised.

I realize I am not in control of the strike. The Lovers is driving. She is in charge.

"Die fucker!" I hear her shout with a crazy edge to her voice.

The blue bolt drops from the clouds without my command and strikes the charging Baal dead center. A chunk of its chest explodes revealing its ribcage and black innards. Cobalt fire erupts from its mouth. The monster takes its last two steps and transforms into a statue of ash. Then it crumbles into nothing beneath its own momentum.

The Wheel never turns around. She is still bounding like a grasshopper over lines of stopped cars, already on to her next tactic.

"You did it!" I shout to the Lovers. But when I turn to her, I see she is dead. Smoke pours from her open mouth and burned out eye sockets. Her hand slips from mine and she collapses to the rooftop. The air smells like barbeque.

Now I know why we have never been paired.

I linger upon the burnt corpse for another moment, wondering if she knew what would happen when we paired, then I walk to the edge of the building to see what's going on below. There is still another Baal.

The Wheel stands on a corner up the street, blue sword blazing in her hand. She's looking up at something. Something big. When she bolts in the other direction, I see the second Baal round the corner in frantic pursuit. Its shoulder brushes a building, knocking a shower of concrete and glass to the street.

It's moving fast. I know I must summon my power now.

"Wait," comes the child's voice.

The Wheel bounds down the wide avenue no more than a pitchfork-length ahead of her pursuer, purposely holding back. As they meet a corner, I hear a string of explosions.

Four tank shells greet the behemoth as it steps into the intersection. They explode into its face and chest sending meaty chunks of flesh splattering to the sidewalk. The Baal staggers, holding itself up against a building. A final tank round hits it dead center. A gaping hole erupts in its chest and its red eyes roll up in its head. The creature is dead before it hits the ground.

The Abrams tanks rumble into view and I see the Hierophant standing on the turret of the first one. He has used his precognition to coordinate their fire and meet the Baal when it stepped into the open, before it had time to dodge.

He is good.

The Chariot streaks out of the sky and picks up the Wheel and Hierophant without stopping, then rises to my location.

They see the Lovers' body but don't react.

"Come on," the Wheel says to me with impatience. Her tone, the small edge in her voice, catches me. It is fear. The Baals are dead and she is more afraid than ever.

I step upon the disk and we plummet downward, banking through the street toward Central Park. The horde writhes in chaos at the edge of park. They are frenzied, insane. The bone-gunners blast their own kind if they step in the way.

I see the Moon and Strength are alive and holding the line at the park. Strength is wielding an uprooted streetlight like a club, scattering Imps all over the place. The Moon flattens many others beneath invisible mallets of gravity.

As we approach, a wave of Belphegors pours in from the flank. They carry strange lances with red crystal blades that gleam like rubies. I see the heads of fallen Arcana stuck upon some of them. The Emperor's group.

The Chariot descends into the fray. The Moon and Strength walk backward upon the disk, not daring to turn on the converging knot. As soon as their feet step off the grass, we shoot straight into the sky.

"I thought we had them," the Moon says, out of breath, her hands shaking. "Then the second Baal came down right on top of the Empress. Took them all out with one shot. "

I realize what she's telling us. I do the math. We're it. Everyone else is dead.

The Wheel doesn't react. She is staring at the Hierophant whose face is stone.

"And now the worst is upon us," the old man says looking up to the sky.

My eyes follow his line of sight and I see another seam forming directly above the overrun park.

The seam splits and a monstrous black mass herniates from the gap before it fully opens, pushing its way into our world like excrement. The flesh glistens with slime and a nest of squirming tentacles probes the air before it like titanic worms. It is not another Baal. The seam parts wider and the entire mass vomits into reality, indiscriminately crushing the Imps, Asmodia and Belphegors beneath it.

It is gigantic, several times the size of a Baal. At first I discern no shape to the mass, it pulses and moves like a ribbed slug. Then it stands.

The Moloch has arrived.

Horror crawls like needles over my skin. The monster rises upon a writhing jungle of black tentacles that fork from its lower torso like tree roots. At the center of its stomach, a gaping hole filled with red fire yawns wide, an open furnace belching flame. Its upper body is humanoid with two sinewy arms reaching out from its shoulders. Its neck is long and serpent-like.

The twisted face upon the end of the neck makes my breath catch. It is entirely human. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. I cannot tell if the face is male or female. The mouth is open in a silent scream. Its eyes search the ground, looking for us.

Then the stench hits.

Years ago, when my wife and I were just starting out, our neighbor's golden retriever crawled beneath our house and died. For days the acidic smell of death filled our garage before I finally squeezed into the crawl space and found the animal stuck to the dirt floor. With an ineffective bandanna tied around my mouth and nose, I had pulled upon the dog's stiff legs until its gas-filled stomach exploded into a soup of maggots. Trapped in the tight space, the smell of death had overwhelmed me like a solid thing.

That is the smell that assaults me now.

As the memory comes whole and complete, I lean over the edge of the disk and throw up.

"Take us down," the Wheel commands, her voice distant, empty of certainty.

The Chariot drops beside a museum at the edge of the park, ahead of the advancing demons. Above the trees, I can still see the grotesque head of the Moloch, swinging on the end of its elongated neck, searching, searching, searching.

My heart pounds as I step off the disk. There are only six of us.

"Fall back," the Wheel says. "Make sure they see us. Pull the swarm into a bottleneck."

The demons have definitely seen us. They rush forward through the trees and grassy, open spaces of Central Park in a full stampede. I can actually feel the Moloch's gaze fall upon us. I watch as its hundreds of tentacles snatch people off the ground who did not escape and thrust them into the blazing furnace of its stomach. I can hear their screams even above the roar of the horde.

For three blocks we run in the opposite direction. As their ranks enter the confines of the street, the demons stumble over themselves trying to get to us. Finally, the Wheel stops and turns.

"Moon!" the child shouts.

With that, the Moon drops an anvil of gravity out of the empty air. Hundreds of the demons at the head of the line are mashed to pulp, but the wave continues over the crushed bodies.

Behind them, plowing through the trees, the Moloch's undulating black mass is closing.

For a second, the Wheel is silent. I look to her and see she is shaking, just as she did in New Orleans, the first time she went out.

"Wheel?" I say to the girl. She takes a breath and her hands still.

"Strength, Moon!" she commands. "Advance!"

The pair moves forward. Strength overturns a city bus and pushes it toward the onslaught, using it like a moving wall. Sparks spray behind her. The Wheel whispers something to the Hierophant and he takes refuge between two parked cars, crouching out of sight.

The Moloch is a growing black silhouette against the rising sun.

"Stay behind me," the Wheel says to me as she moves forward.

Ahead of us, the Moon raises her hands, palms open toward the wall of demons as if commanding them to halt. I see the air warble in front of her and another swath of demons flattens into the street, paper thin. She's put a dent in the fight, but her power is finite. She won't be able to do that forever.

A hail of flaming bones shreds the surface of the bus but bounce harmlessly off Strength's dense flesh. She collides with the line of demons who trip over themselves trying to retreat. Those who don't move fast enough are crushed by her bulldozer advance.

One of the Imps gets brave and jumps on top of the overturned vehicle. The fiery tails of its whip burn red. Strength rears back to avoid the demon's blow but moves too late. One of the thongs takes off part of her hand and she screams from the pain. With a gesture, Moon crushes the bold demon into a bloody mass the size of a softball.

A dozen more Imps jump on the side of the bus, fire whips raised, bone guns ready to fire. The Wheel swings her sword and they fall to pieces like broken toys.

The stink of the Moloch chokes the confined street. The behemoth steps out of the park and knocks down a wing of a museum in its headlong charge. Granite walls crumble to gravel.

Strength clutches her bleeding half hand in pain. At least ten scaly Asmodia run around either side of the overturned bus, their lances poised to impale her. The Moon has encased herself within a bubble of gravity beneath a storm of flaming bones. She cannot help.

The Wheel springs into the fray. With one swipe of her glowing blue sword, she cuts a dozen of the creatures in half. She somersaults to the other side of the bus and the rest of the Asmodia dissemble into a harvest of arms and heads.

She is a blur, a blue wind.

Strength rallies and pushes through the pain of her wound. With a ferocious roar she throws her shoulder against the undercarriage, driving over the demons who try to make a stand, mashing them flat.

A black shadow falls over the street. The Moloch blocks out the sun. I look to the Wheel for guidance. It will take me a few moments to summon my power, and there will only be a small window of opportunity. But she does not give me the signal.

The Moon and Strength cleave forward with the Wheel and I following a few yards behind. I sense the Moloch's eyes upon me. Its head bobs upon its stalk neck and I see an eager smile upon its face. It has found its prize.

We keep moving forward, step by step. My feet sink into the pulped bodies of fallen demons like mud.

The Wheel turns around, about to speak, about to give me the command, when the Hierophant screams behind me.

"Look out!" His voice breaks with urgency.

I turn just as the old man collides with me full force, knocking me off my feet. I hit the muck hard and look up to see a thick black tentacle shoot from a side alley, enwrapping the Hierophant like a python. The tentacle is covered with screaming human faces like the suckers of an octopus, their mouths open, teeth bared, expressions flayed in agony. The Moloch has flanked us with the appendage.

The Heirophant smiles. "It's okay," he says to me just before the black tentacle lifts him into the sky. I realize he had to have known what would happen.

The behemoth roars in frustration with its consolation prize and tosses the old man into the furnace of its stomach. He explodes like a kernel of popcorn and disappears within the flame.

The Moloch laughs and the sound rumbles in my chest.

"NO!" the Wheel shrieks. The grief in her voice freezes me cold. I can feel her pain in my mind. The Moon and Strength stop dead in their tracks, stunned by the transmission of anguish.

The Moon pulls herself from the shock and throws her hands up. An invisible wrecking ball strikes the Moloch full force in the head. The monster topples backward and falls, crushing buildings flat beneath its mass.

Strength tosses a sedan into the weakened swarm. Broken, the demons fall back.

I turn to the Wheel, but she is nowhere in sight. Adrenaline shoots through my gut, closes my throat. I am alone, unprotected. I think about summoning my power and acting on my own, but then I remember Dallas.

"Wheel!" I call down the gory street. The Moon and Strength are pushing forward but I can tell the Moon's strikes are getting weaker. Her attack against the Moloch took it out of her. She's running out of juice. "Wheel!"

I backtrack, frantically looking for the child. Is she dead? Did the Moloch snag her while we weren't looking?

Jogging across the mush, I hear something in an adjacent alley. The sound of weeping. I stop and see the tip of the Wheel's blue sword poking beyond the corner of a metal dumpster.

She sits with her legs drawn up to her chest, face hidden in her knees. Her sword lies beside her, surrounded by trash. She is shaking like a newborn fawn.

"Wheel," I say. "We need you." When she looks up and I see the tears glistening over her cheeks, falling from her chin, I can't help but kneel and take her in my arms.

She sobs and her body trembles against me as she speaks.

"I want my mom."

I hold her close. My chest tightens. Her soft hair weaves between my fingers.

"I should have read her letters. I should have written her back."

"Steph...Wheel...don't...you can't think about that right now. The Moloch...we have to stop it...."

She sobs one more time, and then stops.

"I know," she says.

I feel the persona of the Wheel regain a hold within her. She begins to breathe deeply, building control. Then she reaches for her sword.

"Okay," she says, but still holds my hand tightly.

We head back up the street. Strength and the Moon have pushed the dwindling horde back to the edge of the park, but the Moloch has regained its footing and looms over the battle like a living mountain.

I see Strength hurl a streetlight at the monstrosity. The projectile bounces harmlessly off its chest. She looks around frantically seeking another weapon, something else to throw.

But she is too late. Like a bolt of black lightning, one of the Moloch's tentacles shoots downward and enwraps her in its coils. She struggles against the fleshy loops but her might is no match for their grip. The demon brings her up to its fanged mouth and bites her in half.

The Moon shrieks in despair and unleashes the last of her power. The blow strikes the Moloch on the side of the head. The monster stumbles, but doesn't fall.

"Get ready!" the Wheel screams at me.

I begin the summoning. The Moloch is on us.

My heart is hammering. Blood fills my ears and I can hear nothing.

I watch the Moon stumble over the debris trying to escape, powerless, now just a frightened old woman. One of the thicker tentacles comes down on her, and she becomes a bloody smudge on street. I close my eyes so I don't have to see it.

"No! No! No!" the child screams the word as if she can undo what has been done. Or perhaps she is protesting what she must do next. It is just her and me now. We stand against the monster alone.

And I need time.

Sword raised, the Wheel launches herself into the air at the Moloch's torso. I know it is the persona, and not courage, that pushes her to attack. She lands next to the open furnace of its belly and hacks at the bloated trunk of the beast, no bigger than a flea. Globs of shaved flesh drop to the street, but the wounds are tiny, ineffective.

I realize the Moloch is not even looking at the Wheel. Its eyes are upon me. And it is smiling.

I am paralyzed by the horror of the sight. Its gaze is penetrating, all seeing. I feel it pierce my soul.

Shaking the fear from my human heart, I gather my might to strike. Clouds roil overheard. Blue arcs of electricity jump into my chest from any metal around me: cars, fire hydrants, manhole covers, lampposts. The strength of lightning fills my limbs.

Then the Moloch grabs the Wheel with one of its human hands and lifts her into the air. The child's sword falls to the ground, nothing more than a blue splinter.

The demon's stare does not leave me. A laugh rumbles from deep inside its chest.

The child screams in terror. Her face is a mask of fear. She is not the Wheel anymore. Just Stephanie Sappington, a lost little girl. She looks down and meets my eyes.

"Help me!"

Something about the look on her face shoots me back into the past. I remember the night the Belphegor took my daughter. She was running towards me, arms outstretched, terrified, reaching out for my protection. And then she was dead.

My power has reached its peak. I am filled with the strength of the Tower. The hammer of fire is ready to fall. But I am frozen on the inside.

I feel the lightning stutter and begin to slip from my grasp. My one shot is fading away. The realization of what's happening stabs into my chest like cold steel.

There is no time for happy endings.

"I'm sorry."

I let the blow fall. A blue pillar of lightning stabs from the sky. It strikes the Moloch in the head and the monster's laugh becomes a scream. Upon its face, I see surprise. It realizes it has made a mistake.

The giant staggers. Blue fire erupts from spreading cracks in its flesh. All the fire touches becomes ash.

The flame crawls down the arm clutching the Wheel. The child's hair catches fire. Her mouth opens wide and she bursts into flame. Her scream rises to a mindless shriek and then stops abruptly.

She becomes dust.

The Moloch petrifies into a lifeless monolith, one arm raised into the air, holding its prize high. Then the form collapses.

The Wheel's ashes disappear within the tumbling mass of the Moloch and she is gone.

I fall to my knees. The sound of distant machine gun fire carries on the wind as the human soldiers finish off the remnants of the horde.

From the sky, the Chariot descends upon the disk of white light. He has watched everything unfold from the distance and weeps.

I crawl upon the disk and curl into a ball, clutching myself, seeking comfort I know I will not find.

In a matter of minutes, we are back at the Enclave. He drops me off before he resumes his duties. He still has to travel the globe and collect the replacements. Many this time.

I can barely stand. Despair consumes me. Murderer of hope. Child slayer. I look up. Borges is standing across the open room, staring at me. He does not come over to comfort me. He is smoking a cigarette.

"When you struck the demon with the bolt, were you compelled? Or was it your own decision?" General Stokes asks. He is beside me. I hadn't seen him.

"It was me," I answer. His expression is flat and doesn't change. He already knew.

The Enclave is noticeably silent. Everyone knows what happened. I cannot bring myself to go back to my room. I can only stand there and relive the moment over and over again. The look on her face. Her scream.

The roof of the Enclave opens and the Chariot returns with the replacements. I do not turn around. I cannot bring myself to look at them.

But I see Borges' face. His eyes are wide and round with terror. His mouth opens and the lit cigarette falls to the floor.

I follow his gaze to see what has caused such an expression.

The surface of the Chariot's disk is crowded. There are twenty-one passengers on board. Twenty-one people plucked from their lives to battle the demon hordes.

And they are all children.

THE END

