Its head snapped over to stare at Eva.
The whistle worked, apparently. She didn’t know if it would eventually grow tired of looking towards her when she used it, but for the time being, the enigma was forced to look at her every time she used it. Just letting out a low, continuous stream of air through the whistle had it moving back closer. It didn’t even resist Arachne as she got back on her feet and started tying up the enigma.
She stood up, only replacing the whistle in her pocket once Arachne gave her a thumbs up. The enigma’s eyes didn’t droop in the slightest. Eva might have worried that she had drawn out the runes wrong, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Humans in all the occupied buildings around her had passed out. Even with the adrenaline from all the windows shattering, they hadn’t been able to resist the call of the sandman.
None looked like they were in immediate danger, but Eva used her feet to scratch away the runes anyway. It would take a few minutes, but they should wake up before the pizza ovens burned down the buildings.
Stepping off the roof, Eva landed just in front of the enigma. It didn’t try to snap at her, but it did start up another whine. Eva kicked it in the jaw before it could finish the noise.
“We should just kill it,” Arachne said, pressing down on its back with her leg. “If the succubus wants to perform experiments on it, it should revive later, right?”
“That could take weeks.”
“Better than it getting loose during transit. I’d rather not have my back half eaten.”
Eva hummed for a moment, scratching at her chin. They already had the one enigma safely in containment. Same with the separated tentacles, if they needed them for some reason. This one had scales instead of fur or leathery skin. Catherine or Lynn might want to figure out what it ate to gain those. Lynn could still take blood for whatever she was using it for. Which was really something she should check in on. So far, Eva had been assuming that Lynn would report anything important when she discovered something. But it had been quite some time since Eva had spoken with the former nun.
However, that was for later. For the moment… Eva stared at the enigma. With the whistle, it escaping probably wasn’t much of an issue. Judging by how it twisted back to stare at Eva despite its attempt to escape, it wouldn’t be able to resist more calls. But Arachne was right. It could take a chunk out of her before Eva could react.
“Do it.”
“With pleasure.” Arachne lifted her foot off the enigma’s back. She held it for just a moment before dropping down on the base of the enigma’s neck. Not quite severing it, but violet blood did splatter around as the bones of its neck pulped. The rest of the body immediately went still. And yet, despite the definitely severed spinal cord, its heart still pumped blood.
“Well, let’s pick it up and–”
Eva cut herself off, jumping back and away from the fallen enigma. Arachne did the same.
A wide portal, black as night, opened up beneath the enigma. Unlike normal demons, the enigma did not immediately fall inside. Violet bled into the black portal. It shimmered, much like the sky overhead. Only once all black had turned colors did the enigma sink into the portal. Even then, it was a hesitant sink. Normal demons fell in like a stone in water. The enigma sank like the portal was filled with tar.
After finally disappearing beneath the surface, the violet portal hung around just long enough for Eva to worry that it would stay open permanently. It did eventually collapse in on itself.
The violet shimmers faded away into nothingness.
But the street wasn’t back to normal. The portal was gone, but it left a dark splotch of land left behind.
“That was an enigma, right?”
“As far as I could tell.”
Eva knelt down, touching just the tip of her finger to the darkness. The moment she did, she felt a certain familiarity. Like being back within her domain in Hell. As a quick experiment, she tried forming a single metal bar from her prison, just like how she built the alternate women’s ward.
Her fingers wrapped around cold metal almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind. She withdrew her hand, pulling a narrow bar of rusted iron from the darkness. Exactly like what she might find in one of the cell blocks at her prison.
A scowl crossed her features. “This must be what Nel meant.” She had never followed up on the augur’s message about enigmas leaving things behind. If it had been important, she figured that Nel would follow up on her own. Obviously she couldn’t trust the nun to do that much.
“Do you suppose this is Life’s plan?” Arachne said. She leaned down next to Eva, but kept her hands well clear of the dark splotch. “We kill enigmas, they leave some of Hell behind. It seems like it would take forever to bring all of Hell through.”
“Seems like it would take forever to get meaningful results.” The entire spot of distorted terrain covered less than a five foot circle. It wasn’t a perfect circle at that, somewhat elongated. Perhaps using the outside edge of the enigma’s body to determine its radius.
“Powers are different beings. They don’t think like we do. I doubt they experience time like we do either. Still, if other things can come through this at will…”
“Then we kill more, which makes more, which means more and more things will come through.”
“It might not take as long as we think.”
Eva stood, backing away from the dark area. “Let’s see if Anderson will set up a few guards—guards impressed with orders to not kill the enigmas—around this and ones Nel and Ylva made. Then… we need to finish the ritual circle. Immediately.”
Chapter 010
Hands clasped behind her back, Eva walked around the completed ritual circle. Arachne followed along at her side, as usual, and Zoe had joined in as well. Catherine flew overhead, snapping pictures of the entire thing. They had a few changes to make that Catherine pointed out as errors. After her final check, the circle would be ready.
Ready. An odd thought. They would summon Void. Void would fix the sky. Maybe send Life back into its natural dormancy. And then who knew what? It was an odd feeling. She had been working on the ritual circle since Vektul had arrived at Brakket. Given that it was now the end of December, that had been several months ago. And she had known about the problem since long before that.
With it all over, maybe she could just go back to attending school like a normal person. She doubted it. Things entirely unrelated to Powers had been interfering with her school life from the start. She had no reason to believe that they would stop anytime soon.
Then there was the hunter. Eva hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her since she had kidnapped Juliana. Of course, they had been careful. Nobody went anywhere alone. Not even Zoe or Wayne, as far as Eva knew. When leaving the school, they almost always left with each other. Though, since both were capable of long-distance teleportation, Zoe was able to safely get to the prison without Wayne on occasion. According to Juliana, Genoa had asked a few of her old colleagues to patrol around the city on the lookout for the hunter as well as any enigmas that managed to slip by Brakket security.
Which, as it turned out, happened at least once already. Another stealthy enigma escaped from one of the remnants of Hell from a deceased enigma. Thankfully, Genoa’s friends had gotten the memo to not kill more of them. Instead, they focused on capture and containment using Catherine and Devon’s containment scheme from the prison.
If the mage-knights had found anything about the hunter, nobody had said a word to Eva. She had a feeling that they hadn’t been looking all that hard, given the enigma problem. But Genoa wouldn’t have kept quiet about something like that given her daughter’s kidnapping, so they had to be looking out for something.