(Dear readers, I must apologize if this segment seems a bit more darker than the others, or a bit rougher in reading towards the end of it. Therefore, without further ado, I present Chapter II, part II of Shadows of Fire)

Pond Household

5:30 PM

            By the time Jenny got back from college, her home was in full dinner preparation mode. As she stepped in the door, delectable smells were wafting from the kitchen, and the sounds of clanking pots, skittering whisks, and scurrying feet could be heard. Jenny could spot the cluttered schoolbooks in the family room from where Rory had nested down to do his schoolwork. Mrs. Pond stuck her head out from the kitchen, and caught Jenny’s attention.

            “Girl-child, while you’re off at your party tonight, the rest of us have to eat something too. Care to pitch in?” her mother asked sarcastically, a single eyebrow raised in mock-severity. Jenny grinned at this and shrugged her pack off her shoulder, and walked into the kitchen, ready for action. Half an hour later, the four were settled around a dinner table, digging happily into various platters and dishes with an unmatched enthusiasm. Jason was hesitant at first, digging his way methodically through his dinner in proper military fashion, until finally his Air Force training protocols gave way to a loving family and a rumbling stomach.

            Finally, the platters and plates and dishes were mostly scraped clean, and Rory slouched in his chair, entirely content and at peace with the world. Jenny and Mrs. Pond gathered up the dishes to put in the dishwasher, while Jason very carefully washed them off and put them in the dishwasher. Mrs. Pond cautiously took Jenny aside from Jason and Rory, leading her up the stairs, before stopping her at the top of the staircase. An anxious look crossed her face, as though she was about to unveil a war chest of nuclear warheads.

            “Jenny, my little one, if things are going the way I think they’re going, very soon the unexpected will occur. Don’t even think of lying to me, something happened today at school. Something wrong and direly unnatural. Am I right?” Jenny nodded cautiously, her eyes filled with suspicion.

            “How did you know?” she started to ask, but her mother hushed her, staring her in the eyes intently, as though searching for something… different. Finally, she spoke.

            “What happened? Tell it to me from the beginning. Without a detail left out.” Jenny sighed, and told her mother the whole thing, starting with her dream. When she got to William Gordon reappearing in person, a wry half-smile crossed her mother’s face for a moment, and muttered something that sounded like “good to see that boy’s still around.” When she concluded with Kat’s conversation with her invisible bully, Mrs. Pond clasped her shoulders and shook her gently, a frightful look flashed across her face, an intensity in her eyes that Jenny had never seen before.

            “Did… did you see it? Who she was talking to?” Jenny shook her head nervously, keeping her eyes locked on her mother’s.

            “No,” she started. “When I got there, Kat was on the ground, half-way into shock, with-”

            “A burned spot on the tile?” Mrs. Pond continued, her face settled into a grim mask, her eyes flickering all over Jenny’s face, as though searching for some unknown sign. Jenny nodded incredulously, and Mrs. Pond continued. “Jen… my little one… as you know quite well, there are evil things at work in this world. Not just mere men, but things of darkness as well.”

            Jenny winced, thinking back to that moment in the hallway, when she had felt the waves of fear and hatred and evil.

            “Like… Satan?” she asked hesitantly, and her mother nodded gravely.

            “Aye, he’s the center of it all. Evil, ancient, and bearing absolutely no good will towards humanity, but here’s the thing,” she cracked a half-hearted smile. “For all Satan’s lies and whispers reaching everywhere, he’s powerless. Sucked dry, when he was cast down to Earth.” Her smile grew wider, as she continued. “For, you see, there is but one person whom he fears entirely, the one from whom his ultimate destruction will come from. You know His name.”

            Jenny smiled a bit too, as she realized who her mother was talking about.

            “Jesus?” she asked. Mrs. Pond nodded gently, calmness washing the worry away. “Aye, our Lord and Savior. If things are going the way I fear they are, you’ll need to remember that.” She nodded towards Jenny’s still-open bedroom door, and smiled a bit.“Now go get dressed. If you’re going out to a Halloween party, you might as well be ready for it.” Jenny smiled, and slid past her. The coming night was certainly going to be interesting.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

Edson Manor

7:50 PM

            As Jenny stepped out of her mom’s car and waved goodbye, she looked over the estate’s grounds, and sighed. Before her loomed Edson Manor, its twin towers stretching into the night sky like outstretched arms reaching for the stars. Between the towers the rest of the mansion was about three stories tall, its roof raised into a gentle steeple, unlike the sharply angular and gothic mansions of the days of yore. The tall stony walls that surrounded the mansion had fallen down in some places, its iron gates rusted open. A few windows had been broken, but its tall hardwood doors stood proudly between the two columns supporting the arched porch.

            What had made Jenny sigh was not the state of the once grand manor, but rather the crowd of people swarming around it. In dark corners or under the trees, Jenny could see a few couples making out in demi-privacy. On the front steps, someone had set up a boombox and some speakers, and a mini dance party had been sparked up on the open lawn. On the outskirts of the dancing crowd she could spot people just talking, or flirting, in certain cases. And walking towards her, with a deeply embarrassed and apologetic expression on her face, was Lexie, dressed in a chain mail shirt with a broad, round shield slung over her back.

            “I’m so very sorry about all of this,” she winced, as she gestured vaguely to the chaos behind her. “It was just supposed to be a small gathering, but then my brother invited a few of his friends, and they invited their friends, and…” she left off, lamely.Jenny sighed again, and gave a wry half-smile. “Your plans never end up exactly the way you dreamed them, do they?” she asked. Lexie shook her head self-consciously. Jenny chuckled softly, wrapped an arm around Lexie, and led her back to the crowds, into the outskirts. As her eyes wandered through the crowd, searching for a safer haven than the half-drunk ravers, she spotted something- or rather, someone- that made her smile: the poofy afro of Jake, jiggling gently as he talked to one of the other seemingly sober party-goers.

            Lexie saw where she was looking, and grinned. “Go hunt down your Bob Marley. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” Jenny nodded in acknowledgement, and stalked through the crowds, her eyes locked on Jake: no fallen branches to snap now, with all the noise from the party. As she crept closer, her eyes flickered over the person he was talking to. She was tall; taller than her, at least. From her stance, it seemed as though she was just as uncomfortable and disgusted as Jenny was with the rowdy, inebriated crowd around them; at the same time, it seemed as though she was calculating, plotting escape routes, and examining weaknesses.

            The girl in question was very slender and willowy, clad in close-fitted segmented plate armor. Her silky raven hair draped over her crimson armor plates contrasted by a broken white stripe down the abdomen plates, and a pair of silver wings painted onto the chest plates. Her shoulder pauldrons and greaves were similarly decorated, and her jumpsuit under her plates was solid black, well-tailored to her frame. Her hazel eyes glinted gently in the twilight, and, barely noticeable against her well-tanned skin, she bore a delicate, almost decorative scar on her chin. All in all, Jenny was momentarily tempted to hate her for her natural, unadulterated beauty.

            As Jenny crept closer, the girl seemed to notice her, nodded in farewell to Jake, and peeled away, sliding through the crowds back to the manor. Jake turned around and grinned wryly, as though he was expecting her. Jenny nodded in the direction of the armored girl walking off.

            “Who was she?” she asked. Jake shook his head, holding his hands up mock-pleadingly.

            “Just an old friend from my hometown,” he explained uneasily. “Her name’s Vicky.” Jenny raised a single eyebrow appraisingly. “Honestly!” he continued. “She’s not some secret girlfriend, I promise. You’d know if she was, you’d be the first to know.” He paused, taking in her costume.

 “Jeez, Jen, you look like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ goes Rambo,” he smirked. It was a fair enough description; she was dressed in a knee-length, sleeveless sky blue dress, with a modest neckline, akin to the stereotypical dress plastered onto almost every Alice in Wonderland movie poster. However, in place of the nice little buckled shoes, Jenny was wearing ankle-high steel-toed combat boots, with iron cleats strapped on, and she had tied a stained camouflage bandanna around her head, holding her hair back. From a casual observation, she looked like she was ready to stomp card soldiers into the ground, and then have a tea-party on the roaring battlefield. Jenny’s face was masked over in a somber, suspicious expression, before the laughter that was struggling to escape from her finally did.

            “Jake, you really look ridonkulous when you’re trying to be sweet and innocent-sounding,” she quipped, opening her arms invitingly. Jake started laughing as well, and caught her up in a bone-crushing hug. As Jenny looked over Jake’s shoulder, her eyes roved over the crowds, and- Who the heck is he? And why would he abuse his costume so badly, she thought. Slipping through the crowds, with the focus of a cruise missile, was a looming, helmeted, heavily armored figure, making his way towards the manor. Compared to Vicky’s armor, this man was an absolute tank.

            While her armor was still mostly unscathed, with only a few nicks here and there, his once sea-blue suit looked like it had been to hell and back. His plates were heavily scratched up, until it was more metal than paint; what paint remained clung on in faded patches. Across his backplate was a battered and worn crimson half-cape, torn, blackened, and burned in some places. His shoulder pauldrons were a strange mix-up; one was painted a patchy sea-blue, the other a faded dull red, and both with a white stripe down the center. He carried no shield, or visible armament, but his gauntlets were very scratched up, barely any paint there remaining on the outside except for a few patches of color here and there.

 His helmet seemed to be based off Greek designs, but in certain areas, it was clear he had modified it: the dome was segmented, and riveted together neatly; in the back, there was a roughly-cut exhaust port, with its exhaust fans carefully welded in; and around the ear areas, they seemed to be formed so he could clip his helmet to his belt when not using it. She couldn’t see the front, but from the back, she could see that the helmet echoed his armor’s blue-and-white paint scheme, but on a back panel, next to the exhaust port, were nine crimson stripes in a row, almost like kill marks. As he strode through the crowd, it seemed as though the crowds parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses, pushed back by tenacity and force of will alone. As he tramped towards the manor, his cape fluttered tauntingly, almost daring her to chase after him, and the crowds slipped back into his wake, almost as though nothing had happened. All of this flashed through Jenny’s mind in a matter of seconds.

She made up her mind. By the time the armored behemoth made it to the bottom of the great steps leading up to the double doors of the manor, Jenny had broken away from Jake with feeble excuses tossed back to his protestations, and dove into the crowds. By the time he had reached the top of the stairs, Jenny was half-way through the crowd, shoving and squeezing her way through the raving horde, occasionally stamping down hard on the feet of those who would casually reach out to try and pull her into the craze. And by the time he had disappeared behind the manor doors, Jenny had emerged from the crowds, amid a chorus of pained groans and mutters from drunken would-be dance partners nursing their crushed feet. She raced to the top of the stairs, and looked back, hoping to spot Jake, or Lexie, to let them see where she had gone off to, but they were gone.

She carefully scanned through the crowds once more, the outskirts, the shadows, but there was no sign of them. She reached down and felt in her boot to make sure her cell phone was still tucked away carefully, and when she had confirmed its stability, she got back to her feet, pulled back one of the tall, heavy looking doors with a barely suppressed grunt (how on earth did he do this single-handed, she thought), and slipped inside. All thoughts of searching for the armored man vanished, as the door slid silently shut behind her, cutting down the noise from the party substantially, and she beheld in the dim light her surroundings. “God Almighty, protect me,” she whispered in horror.

Even as she pulled out her cell phone to further enlighten her surroundings, she still had fear tugging at her heart. She first noticed the long, deep slashes in the walls, the wallpaper peeling away from the grievous marks. In random intervals, the dust-grey, threadbare carpets were stained with large patches of rust brown. The once grand staircase leading to the upper levels was shattered and barren, and the banisters were hacked to pieces, as though someone had very desperately tried to keep something from getting to the top. Worst of all were the long, spidery scratches in the bare, rotten floorboards; too thin for furniture being moved about, and far too shallow and precise for animals. She knew, deep in her gut, that something terrible had happened here.

Her eyes flickered over the scene, her overactive mind projecting horrors onto the silver screen of her imagination. Her hearing strained to catch anything, anything out of the ordinary, anything that didn’t appertain to her normal surroundings. It was perhaps because of this, in spite of her not knowing what crumbling remains of abandoned manors sound like, that she caught the first clue: a faint undulating noise, never stopping or pausing, just rumbling on, like a thundercloud on the edge of her consciousness. She would have mistaken it for an echoing of the party outside, maybe a broken window someplace letting the sound in, but as Jenny stood there, in the near darkness, listening, she could tell it had a subtly darker tone than the rock/pop metal she could barely hear blasting outside. What happened next ultimately sealed her actions; somewhere on the upper levels, in a distant corner of the manor, came a horrendous clatter of metal and breaking wood, followed by an ominous silence.

Jenny barely resisted the temptation to jump out of her skin, and instead crouched low in a defensive huddle, fists clenched and eyes as wide as possible, taking in everything; or rather, almost everything. It was then, in the silence, that she heard something else, over the now more urgent-sounding drone; heavy footsteps thumping, tramping down the stairs, echoing through the house, growing louder, and closer. Someone else was in the house, and they were coming. She looked around the desolated entryway, searching for somewhere to run to, somewhere to hide. She ran into a hallway, not caring where it led, so long as it got her away from the approaching footsteps.

            As she ran through the hallway, her cleats leaving dents in the rotting floorboards, she passed by battered cupboards and slashed-open doors, until she blindly slammed open a door, and barely stopped herself from stumbling down a narrow, dark stair-case. She stopped, panting hard, and weighed the situation; keep running, and eventually get cornered, and possibly die an embarrassing and violent death, or hiding out wherever the staircase leads, and escape from her pursuer, and possibly find out what’s going on. With that in mind, she pulled out her cell-phone, with its dim light barely lighting up the few steps ahead of her. She closed the door behind her carefully, and began to make her way down the stairs.

            Surprisingly, as Jenny tried to make her way down the stairs, she picked up the strange noise again, loud enough now that she could distinguish deep voices, chanting, albeit in a tongue she couldn’t understand. The stairs creaked loudly as she placed her weight on them, but the chanting continued uninterrupted. By the limited light from her cell-phone, she could tell she was in some sort of cellar, filled with large shelves, which were stocked with murky-looking sealed jars. She could only hazard a guess that they were filled with some sort of fruit, but she didn’t have the time to investigate. As she passed through the towering aisles, the chanting grew louder, more distinct, and before her, just around the corner, she could see a dim, yet inviting patch of reflected, flickering light.

            She approached the patch of light, carefully, uncertain of what she’d find. She flicked her cell-phone off, so as not to give herself away, and flanked the wall, edging along, before peeking carefully around the corner. God, get me out of here, she thought vehemently. What she saw she would still be haunted by when she was old and grey.

            The room was small, and very dirty and cluttered, but in the center of the room, a chunk of stone, possibly taken from the manor’s wall outside, stood as a make-shift altar, with crudely-carved pictograms engraved into it. Around the crude altar, someone had drawn a large pentagram in what Jenny desperately hoped was spilled wine, for it was a glistening crimson liquid. At each of the five points stood dribbling red candles, providing an ominous light to the surroundings. And standing at each of the points, with the candles positioned at their feet, were five tall, figures cloaked in black; their robes were trimmed with gold, and they all also wore rusted, stained gauntlets, clasping their spellbooks. They appeared to be waiting for something, as they continued to chant faster and faster, louder and louder; suddenly, as one, their hooded heads turned towards her, their faces shrouded in the darkness of their hoods, and spoke.

            “Welcome, Jennifer Pond, Guardsman-born, to your honored death.”