Page 55 of Sinistram
“How do we stop them?” Travis asked.
“With a team,” Sorren replied. “I will gather some allies here. I’d suggest putting together your most trusted witches and people with supernatural abilities. If we each take on the Sinistram from our respective strengths, we stand a good chance of overturning their control.”
“I have a couple of powerful witches who will help, and Archibald Donnelly, who’s a necromancer,” Sorren went on. “I know you have a number of people who have fought beside youagainst prior threats. We don’t need an army. We just need to hit the right weak points hard.”
“Okay,” Travis said. “How do we figure out the plan and the timing?”
“We’ll call you back at midnight,” Sorren said. “Let’s see what’s come together by then.”
Travis stared at his phone after Sorren ended the call, then looked at Brent, feeling adrift. “I guess a slim chance is better than no chance at all, right?” He gave a weak smile.
“We can’t just call people and ask them to stand by for the end of the world,” Brent said. “Who do we know who has gifts and might be able to help in a fight?”
Travis made a list of the people from his Night Vigil with pre-cognition, visions, omens, as well as magic. The team he had assembled wanted to use their abilities for good, and Travis paid them a small stipend for being part of the team. The ghostly part of the Night Vigil surrounded the St. Dismas church and halfway house, frightening away ruffians.
“Angie and Roger are in,” Travis reported. Angie got glimpses of the future, and Roger saw omens. Both had called him, having gotten an insight that something big was brewing and offering to help, a testimony to their abilities.
“Aricella says she’ll rally the covens,” Brent set down his phone to take a sip of coffee.
“Good. I know Sorren said he’d bring Archibald Donnelly with him, but I was going to give Dr. Peters a call anyhow. Two necromancers are better than one, and although vampires don’t like to admit it, they are technically still dead,” Travis replied.
“How about I call Peters, and you call Father Jacinski and Father Leo, see if we can get any backing from the Occulatum or the Logonje?” Brent said.
If the Sinistram was the Church’s black ops, the Occulatum was its FBI, less extreme and more attuned to stoppingsupernatural threats. Priests from the Occulatum often helped out local monster hunters. The Logonje were Polish priests with arcane abilities, and Jacinski was part of that group as well. He was located in Pittsburgh, although Travis and Brent hadn’t worked with him in a while.
After a couple of hours, Brent set his phone aside and let out a deep breath. “Well, that’s everyone on my list. They’re on standby and said they’d been expecting a call since the sea monster showed up.”
“A benefit to knowing so many people with pre-cog,” Travis observed. “Jacinski and Leo said they’ll check with other priests they trust in the Occulatum and Logonje to see what people have heard and who can help.”
They still had several hours before Sorren was due to check in, so Brent went back to monitoring the news while Travis opened up the Dark Web, a corner of the Internet specializing in questionable supernatural information. Ensorcelled encryption was supposed to protect users from picking up a demonic virus or dark magic file corruption. The people and information were notoriously dodgy, and Travis only risked the danger when the situation was dire.
“Hey, I think I might have something,” Travis said after a while. “I’m on the Dark Web—don’t judge. Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“As long as you exorcise your own computer if it gets possessed,” Brent replied.
“Yeah, yeah. But I remembered that some of the priests I knew in the Sinistram went online even though they weren’t supposed to, including me,” he confessed. “As far as I know, the others stayed with the Order. So…I thought I’d see what they’re talking about.”
“And?” Brent sounded intrigued.
“I found them in an ‘End of Days’ conversation thread. But get this, one of them let slip that his organization had been preparing for an apocalypse that hasn't come, and so they’ve started to question whether a cleansing or reboot is needed and if they should start it,” Travis told him.
“He said they feel like they wasted their preparations, but then they realized that instead of stopping an apocalypse to protect humanity, they could cause one to cull the number of humans and make them subservient to the higher-level immortals,” Travis reported. “He was also pretty clear that they also have a distaste for the lesser monsters but see them as useful for culling the humans.”
“He just put that out there? Said the quiet part out loud?” Brent said, incredulous.
“Guess he figured he was among friends,” Travis replied. “But think about that, it’s the missing piece to explain the ‘why.’ They got tired of being on standby, so they decided to bring the End of Days about themselves and use it for their own ends.”
“Regardless of how many people it killed.”
“The Sinistram never let the little details get in their way,” Travis answered, with an expression that made his disgust clear.
“Wow. That’s…psycho.”
“The Sinistram keeps being even worse than my lowest expectations,” Travis said.
Brent slid his cold coffee to the side. “While you were figuring out the ‘why,’ I think I got the ‘where.’ Ever heard of Moraine State Park?”
Travis shook his head. “Should I have?”
