Free time can be painful, if one has forgotten how to make use of it. After days upon days of action without barely any time to sleep, it was jarring to find ourselves with a day of absolutely nothing. Clay and I packed in the morning, not procrastinating on something for what was probably the first time in our lives.
There was no class, no explosions, the demon activity had settled on campus, and according to Lily the Templars where here in full force, leaving them without need for Clay or I. We found ourselves hanging out with June, as she was very much in the same boat as we were. In our dorm room we lounged, combing social media, wandering out to the common room to check the news.
It was barely two when we decided to get stoned. We were going on some righteous pilgrimage tomorrow, there would be no time for such mortal things. We might as well get rid of our stashes now. There was no worry of complaints or an angry RA. It was the end of the world after all. The three of us passed a massive joint around while watching a live-stream of the national news, which Clay had pulled up on his laptop.
The United Nations had established a council for international unity in the face of this great chaos. The man they had elected to lead it held a press conference, streamed to every news station all over the world. He was a British man, with warm blue eyes and what seemed to be a genuine intensity. He was trying. In the midst of all this he was trying his very hardest to hold everything together. Lucas Dejan was his name. It stuck with me, despite the state I'd been in when I'd learned it. He was a member of the British parliament but also the founder of some massive international charity. I'd recognized the name. He had been given a tremendous challenge, leading the comity tasked with overcoming years of bureaucracy between countries, enemies and allies, so collectively humanity could survive.
He really emphasized that, voice like silk, “humanity will prevail. Together we have overcome so much, as a species known for adapting, surviving. I am not one with the authority to speak on these matters, but be the origin of this threat natural, human, or other... It doesn't matter. Not to me. I will not let my people, billions upon billions of people, die. That is regardless of who or what commands it.”
Pen and he would get along, I decided. I liked him too. There was something about his face that made me want to trust him.
Dejan, who seemed to speak many languages, began to repeat his words in French. We changed over to Facebook then, scrolling through Clay's feed. June was on Tumblr on my computer, and I just sat watching, absorbing the information as best I could.
“People are sick all over,” said June. “It looks like, for what I'm reading, that half of LA is shut down and quarantined. I even read a post that says it spreads as far south as Central America.”
“Petulance,” I said, thought no one responded.
“There's an article here, from China,” said Clay. “Apparently massive amounts of food have gone rotten for no explicable reason. And there's mass crop failure. It's been reported in Japan too, and Thailand. They say Dejan's committee is already working on organizing international food aid, though.”
“Famine,” I said.
This time June responded. “Oh my god, Xavier, I get what you're doing.”
“Bro!” Clay's eyes widened.
“I know where War is,” said June. “Half my dash has been about what's happening in the Middle-East and North Africa. All that religious tension. Boom.” She made an explosive hand movement. “There's nothing that sparks a holy war like the rapture.”
“Death?” Clay asked. “Isn't there a fourth one?”
“I wouldn't even know where to start for that one,” June muttered, and I had to agree.
It wasn't exactly specific. Next time I ran across an angel I'd have to ask them.
On the door there was a banging.
“Oh right!” Clay jumped to his feet. “I called Lily and Kate. The Templar's are here in full force now so I was thinking umm...” he paused, “maybe we could bring them with us. They're young. They fit the profile of someone Sara would bring with her.”
“Plus we know how to take care of ourselves,” came Lily's voice from the other side of the door.
Clay pulled it open after a nod from me, and the two girls entered.
“Man...” Kate fanned the air. “It reeks in here, guys.”
“Sit down, ladies,” Clay indicated the bed like a gracious host.
“Shouldn't you be doing something more productive?” Lily asked, though there was a hint of teasing in her voice.
“Come on,” I protested, “it's the end of the world.”
Lily flopped down on Clay's bed, Kate beside her. “So, you guys rolling another joint any time soon?”
Me and my roommate exchanged a grin. Sara had to let them come. They would, in theory, be of more help to her than Clay and I ever could. They were trained, had been fighting demons since their childhood. They had also smoked less weed than the three university students in the room, though neither of them were virgins to the experience.
It was nice, to have some time with my friends. Though Sara's absence was glaringly obvious, at least to Clay and I. As it often did, when everyone was high, the room had lapsed into silence.
“So...” I asked, hopping up on the bed beside Lily. “Vampires. I have recently been made aware of their existence. Is that in Templar jurisdiction?”
She giggled. “I've fought a few in my day, not as big a problem as demons though. Actually, any monster you can think of, probably real.”
“What!” Clay was astonished. “And you didn't think to mention it until now.”
Lily shrugged. “The angels keep them under control pretty well. Before the flood, and this is just a story by the way, apparently there were creatures all over. After apparently, to keep their species from complete genocide at the hands of heaven, all nonhumans have had to keep a low profile.”
“There aren't that many of them around,” commented Kate. “I met a werewolf once, on a rampage.”
“Like a spree killing,” said Lily.
“Yeah. He was completely suicidal. He wanted to die and he was going to go out in a blood bath.”
I shivered. That was not a nice story.
From Kate and Lily we also learned that Gregor had been in contact with the angels. From how they made it sound, it looked like the Templar's would be working for IRIN; something I had trouble stomaching. But whenever I pressed for details someone would change the subject. It didn't seem to be on purpose, just that I was too stoned to form a proper question, and no one had the attention span to discus anything in depth. Maybe Kate and Lily didn't really know.
As we chatted about nothing in particular, the atmosphere began to burn out. We could have smoked again, but Clay and I were saving our last joint for going to sleep that night. June was sitting on the floor, slumped back against my bed. She looked to be falling asleep.
“June?” I sat down next to her, touching her arm.
She gasped, head flying forward, eyes bulging. She was shaking and I tried to hold her. Her hand gripped my arm so tight it began to hurt, and here eyes stared at something the rest of us could not see. The others gathered around.
“Is this what it's usually like?” Clay asked. “Her visions.”
Lily shook her head. “Not so violent. Drugs, especially hallucinogens are said to have effects on psychic powers, maybe even strengthening them. Move out of the way.” She pushed me away from June, taking a seat in front of her and holding both her hands. “Now, June, I need you to breath. In and out, deep breaths. You are in control. You will remember the things you're seeing. Breath.”
“You're not trying to snap her out of it?” Kate asked, a little shocked.
“No, we need any information we can get.”
Slowly, June's shaking stopped, and seconds later she seemed to relax completely, her eyes no longer glazed.
“What did you see?” Lily asked.
“So much,” the usually forceful girl answered, in an uncharacteristicly small voice. “First, when I was touching Xavier, I was somewhere hot. I have never truly felt being somewhere as strongly as that, ever. I was following a boy, a blond one.”
“Pen?” Clay asked me, but Lily shushed him.
“He had a backpack, and he seemed to be all alone. I followed him as we walked through a desert. But then he was stepping over bodies.” A little panic crept into her voice. “There was so many dead, a massacre, piles of corpses. So much blood. We must have been in a town, but the buildings were rubble. The eery thing is, he didn't... uhh...” June struggled for words. “No reaction, at all. He was looking, taking it all in, but I couldn't tell what emotion he was feeling.”
I shivered, though I wasn't sure why. What was surprising about June's vision? He watched, detached, as always. How he had gotten to some desert somewhere, I had no idea. And that was what worried me. At least that's what I told myself, at the time.
“Then...” June continued, “when Xavier wasn't touching me anymore, I saw something different, really briefly. It was Dejan, from the TV. You know, the politician?”
Lily nodded.
“He was in a meeting, though a weird meeting. I think they were in the back room of a nightclub. I was there so briefly I didn't hear them say a word, but he was drinking wine, with this brunette man in a full white suit. And it felt... Wherever it was felt dark, like Sumar that day I helped you make that map.”
The others tossed around theories, fearing Dejan was in danger, only June briefly suggesting that maybe he was not as good as he appeared. Where was he? Was the question on their mind. I could barely listen. It felt like I had been punched in the gut. Should I tell them that I knew who the white suited man had been? But that lead to questions I could not answer, about how I had concealed information before, and how I worked with an angel I had caught having lunch with the devil himself. And what if I was wrong? A white suit, brown hair, by those general descriptions Lucas Dejan could easily have been talking to another politician.
My paranoia had reared its ugly head, and I felt utterly powerless. The curse of information is that sometimes you are unable to use it.
There didn't appear to be a food shortage here in America, as we had no trouble getting dinner that night, from a nice little restaurant on campus. We all ate together, going our separate ways after. Before we went to Sara's meeting place the five of us decided to meet at our dorm. We'd all agreed that Lily and Kate were coming, and that we would present them to Sara together.
Clay and I packed, and smoked, and went to bed fairly early, setting an alarm. Lying in bed I was with the overwhelming urge to talk to Pen, about what I'd seen, or at least to Kasdaye and Tamiel. Pen may have been not even God knows where, but the two Watcher woman could be at their apartment. I needed to see them, tell them I was okay, if Pen had neglected too. I hoped they weren't fighting. I briefly considered sneaking out for a late night visit, but in my hazy state I fell asleep before plan could make its way into action.