Eutopia - Apocalypse

Chapter 19

Jinn laughed.

'What, you're going to hit me with your stick? Horace tried that last time I was here.' He twitched his thick, woollen cloak around his shoulders. 'Watchers are on their way, it's not safe for Eutopia to be outside.'

'It'll be much safer when I cave in your skull!' Jed roared, the angled planes of his face flushing bright red with his rage. 'She's back where she belongs now, so sod off back to your base, Commander.' He raised the lump of wood above his shoulder and adjusted his grip.

'No, no, he brought me back. Jinn brought me home.' Eutopia grabbed Jed's arm and looked earnestly up into his freckled face. 'He saved me from the Nephilim, he's.. he's with us now.' She looked hesitantly over at Jinn, finding those words incredibly difficult to accept herself.

'And she belongs to me,' Jinn smirked. Jed's arm lowered as though the firewood was too heavy to hold aloft anymore, his brown eyes falling to the circlet around Eutopia's neck. Phoibe wailed again at that and covered her withered face with her hands, unable to look at the angel's mark on her child.

'You would enslave us further?' Horace hissed, striding forward only to be held back by Jed who had to let the log drop in order to keep a hold on the old man. 'You would grind mankind further into the dust by claiming a life, by chaining a girl as if she were cattle? How much lower can your kind fall I wonder?'

Jinn was unflinching, watching as Eutopia moved to wrap her arms around the frail man who trembled like an autumnal leaf with his fury.

'She has more protection with my mark on her than without it. There are some of my kind who still adhere to the Old Ways.'

'To Hell with the Old Ways! You have the nerve to rip her away from us, to destroy our lives by telling us she is dead, and then dangle her in front of us on your chain like a life-float to a drowning man?' Horace growled as he advanced slowly on Jinn. Eutopia could feel the resentment bubbling dangerously in him, his old and thin limbs surprisingly strong beneath her desperately soothing hands.

'Hush, Horace,' she begged, trying to steer him back towards the cottage. But Horace was relentless as he walked steadily towards Jinn.

'We will not let you take her again.'

Jinn looked with a wry smile from the advancing old man to the little crowd that had gathered out on the porch now. Jed had reclaimed his stumpy piece of firewood and the eight men and five women that stood behind him seemed to have armed themselves. Eutopia looked too, catching sight of the thin, steel fishing net Phoibe sometimes took in to repair for the lake-fishers, a few pitchforks and the long iron poker Horace kept beside the fireplace. Tally, Jed's older sister, had found a blunt kitchen knife. Eutopia had seen the crackling blue heat of Alastor at Jinn's side and so her first thought was for the lives of these people, people she had grown up with and known all her life. She had seen Jinn fight with Loki, she couldn't bear the thought of him wielding that sword on her friends and family.

Jinn's first thought however was one of amazement at the amount of people that could fit into the ramshackle building.

'So this is your revolution, Horace?' he scoffed. 'If so, I hate to say it but Eutopia would be safer in my bed than in the midst of your 'men'.'

Horace roared and lunged forwards, escaping Jed's grip and snarling like a wild beast as he tore towards the angel with the need to rip him apart with his bare hands driving him blindly on. But it was Phoibe who reached Jinn first, waving a scythe that had been propped up against the edge of the porch. The gleaming metal blade swung noiselessly through the air as the old woman stumbled under its weight, weaving forwards and back before slicing the nothingness just to the left of Jinn's shoulder.