A cloud of burning ash settled over the Bishop’s eyes, and the world went dark. The ash slithered into his ears and up his nostrils, and the entryways to his mind howled with hot pain. Anger festered inside his skull, anger and shock and denial and pure, simple, logical, powerful hatred. Hatred of the person who’d attacked him, hatred of the demons who attacked his city, his world, who defied God’s good name. Hatred for the girls He tasked with protecting them- hatred of the degenerates Heather and Nicholas, hatred of the perversions they embodied; hatred of the other three, their arrogance and their apathy and their loyalty to the other two; hatred of himself for allowing them to prosper, for allowing them into His Holy Church in the first place. It dulled his senses, melted the barriers of his mind, and the burning ash settled in and polluted the water of his consciousness. The ash did not dissolve, did not settle, but overtook the clear liquid and turned it pitch black. The polluted water flowed from his mind into his soul, staining it with the demon’s essence, and the Bishop’s thoughts, his feelings, and his memories floated to the surface and mixed with the ashes. The filth saturated every fiber of his being, resonating with the Taint of Original Sin already present. The barrier between the demon and the Bishop blurred, and deep inside the darkest recesses of his soul, in the small place still sterile, the Bishop wept as his most private thoughts and feelings were cannibalized. 

Through eyes that were no longer his, the Bishop saw the woman in the devil mask approach him and reached a hand down into his shoulder wound. She tore off a chunk of flesh, and removed her mask to slide the bloody meat down her throat. 

The woman was well into her forties, hair more gray than black, with pasty skin and teeth that were too white and too sharp. “Mmmm,” she said, “Tastes like doves. And hubris and bigotry and… Greed? Now that’s interesting.”

The Bishop’s voice rumbled up from his neck and spoke without his consent, without his desire, without his mind, and said, “That right, babe?”

“Yeah, baby, it is,” the woman said. She leaned in and kissed him, and to his shock and horror and revulsion, the Bishop’s body kissed the devil-woman back. His own blood went from her lips to his and slid down his throat, and deep inside his own body, Bishop Marcus Roberts wept with abject terror. 

***

“Who are you and what do you want?” Nicole demanded as the young woman in the devil mask walked into the room and shut the door behind her. Nicole backed up, hands raised and palms flat, not taking her eyes off the cocked gun. 

“I told you, silly, just to talk,” the woman said. “About you, about me, about us-”

“Didn’t you lend me a bra yesterday?” Nicole asked. The girl’s voice was familiar, but it was ultimately a shot in the dark. 

“Think of it more as a gift,” the woman said. A dead-on target shot in the dark. Dang, aight. Good to know what I’m working with, Nicole thought. 

“So you live here, then,” Nicole said. “You’ve been posing as one of us-”

“One of what? A student? I am a student, sweetie. And I’m a sorority girl.”

“And you’re also, what, a Satanist?”

“That I am! Teehee!” the young woman chirped. 

“You can drop the mask, then, I know what you look like,” Nicole said. It was only partially true- Nicole could somewhat recall the girl’s face, but they’d only actually spoken for a brief snatch of sentences yesterday before the girl had unhooked the bra she’d been wearing, pulled it out from under her top, and handed it to Nicole. It was more her voice and her posture that Nicole recognized- she didn’t even know this psycho sorority sister’s name. “Your cover is already blown.”

“Yeah, but I never get to wear this thing, and I mean look at it, it’s so fucking cool!” the girl said. “Besides, it’s not like you’re tell anyone about this.”

“Then kill me already,” Nicole said.

“I’m not here to kill you, silly!” the devil-woman giggled. “I’m here to ask if you want to join us!”

Nicole blinked. This girl wasn’t serious. She couldn’t be serious. That was just… so very absurd that… That… “Pfffftttttt hahahahahahah!” Nicole laughed. 

“Why are you laughing?” the girl sounded genuinely hurt, genuinely confused. 

“Because you think I’m gonna join your Satanic death cult or whatever this is? Blue Blazes, have you met me?! I was an altar boy, for crying out loud!” Nicole said. 

“So was my boyfriend before he joined up,” the girl shrugged. 

“Well that’s not me,” Nicole said. “And I am not ever, EVER going to join the forces of darkness, so you may as well just shoot me!”

“And why would you wanna stay with the people you’re with?” the girl said. “It’s not like they want you. The Church sure doesn’t. God definitely doesn’t. Your own family doesn’t, for fuck’s sake!”

Nicole blinked again. “That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is: they say they want you, but that’s only what they say to your face. What people say behind your back is vastly more telling: it’s easy for them to say to your face that they accept you, but in their minds they know that having you around will make their lives more difficult. They know that as soon as you become inconvenient, as soon as the bigots start to come for you, the only thing they’ll be able to do to stay alive is wash their hands of you like the filth they secretly think you are. Once the Archdiocese finds out about their newest magical girl, you know they’re gonna cut you loose, and once your little brother’s friends find about you, they’ll make him suffer. Once your father’s and mother’s coworkers find out, they’ll ostracize them. Once your little sister’s boyfriend finds out, she’ll be lucky if all he does is dump her. And the only way they’ll have any semblance of their old lives back is by cutting you out!”

Nicole blinked once more, and this time tears leaked out. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, please God don’t let it be true. But… It made sense. She wasn’t of any real use to anyone like this- the way she was would only make life worse for the people she cared about. 

“Then kill me,” Nicole said. 

“... Wait, seriously?”

“If my being this way is gonna hurt the people I care about, then my death is the only thing that can save them from that hurt. Kill me,” Nicole said, her voice hollow and her throat hoarse.

“Fucking hellfire, girl, either I’ve gotta work on my negging skills or you’re just… Fucking pathetic. Satan, Sin, Death, now I just wanna put you out of your misery-”

Through all the doors and empty space, a knocking registered on the outside. 

“Nick?” Zack’s thin, reedy voice reached all the way through. “It’s your brother. A Priest named Father Gonzalez said I could find you here. It’s just me, and I just wanna talk. You in there?”

Nicole saw what had to be a smile bloom beneath the devil mask and reach all the way to the young woman’s eyes. “Answer the door. If you don’t, I’ll kill him and make you watch.”

Inside Nicole, the brittle twig of her patience and self-control snapped. As the young woman opened the bedroom door, Nicole charged. 

The gun fired. The bullet tore through the door. On the other side, Zack screamed in agony.

A flood of memories surged through Nicole, beginning in her mind and rushing down into her body. Her shield hummed, and she wanted nothing more than to extend it to Zack. 

A summer’s day eleven years prior, the air filled with pollen and salt water, the wind snaking between the trees around their driveway, Nicole holding onto Zack’s shoulders as he pedaled on a bike finally stripped of its training wheels. He was so eager, and Dad was away, and Mom was busy cleaning the house and watching little Monica. Nicole let go and clapped as he rode the bike up and down their asphalt driveway. He cheered and cheered and cheered as he realized he was doing it, and together they rode their bikes down to the ice cream store to celebrate. 

A fall morning ten years prior, on the bus taking the two of them to elementary school, packed to the gills with rambunctious children screeching and hollering, the stench of oil and sweat choking the interior. The younger kids refused to let Zack sit with them, yelled at him and called him mean names until he’d started crying, and so Nicole had walked up from the back of the bus and brought Zack to sit with them. Her fellow fourth graders hadn’t exactly been happy about that, but she hadn’t cared then and then she didn’t care now. 

A winter’s afternoon, fresh-fallen snow blanketing the whole town. School was off for the day, and the hill their house resided on was perfect for sledding. The two of them spent the whole day on their toboggan, up and down the hill as slivers of sunlight sparkled on the white expanse. Nicole was in middle school now, the pain of puberty driving fresh spikes through her heart every day. Only her shield kept her safe, and only taking care of Zack made her feel normal. When they were done, Nicole made them both hot chocolate, and they sat on the deck together watching the clouds drift away and reveal the stars of the night sky. The stars reflected on the snow they’d flattened beneath their sled, and woodsmoke aroma accented the area along with the scent of chicken stew boiling inside the house. 

A spring day, the first warm and dry one of the new year. Zack had started playing basketball that year, and hadn’t had a good debut season. Nicole found him crying, and he screamed when he saw her, told her to go away, but she hadn’t listened: she grabbed him by the scruff and led him outside onto the same asphalt where she’d taught him to ride a bike, and she taught him to shoot a basketball properly, how set picks, how to pivot. The whole day vanished into that practice, and by the end he’d gotten it, and she saw that smile light up his face once more. The air was clean and fresh from all the spring rain they’d gotten, their hands dirty from the wet grime on the ball, but it didn’t matter. None of that had mattered then, and it didn’t matter to her now. 

She taught him to shave. Had started teaching him to drive the previous summer. Taught him to shoot a gun and hunt a rabbit and clean the kill. Taught him to cook. Taken him to his first PG-13 movie, his first R-rated movie. She’d given him so much and no matter what happened to them, even if he hated her, hated what she was, who she was becoming, that didn’t matter to her. Not then, not now. Not ever. 

Pink light exploded from behind her shield, pulsing through her, reverberating through her each and every molecule and singing out into the world. A rod appeared in her hand, the solid mass manifesting from nowhere and tripling the power that surged through her. It was the feeling of being alive, one she’d barely felt before the past week, rising exponentially within her like a rising sun finally taking its proper place in the sky above. She hopped on her broomstick, and she flew. 

She slammed into her opponent, the blunt end of her broom crashing into the woman’s lower back. Nicole heard a crunching sound as she willed her broom to accelerate; it was linked to her mind, her soul, and the more she felt, the faster she flew. She kept jamming the end into the same spot where Amy had been stabbed the previous day and watched the woman’s legs lose contact with the rest of her body as she slammed into the floor face-first. Her mask shattered on the floor as she howled with animalistic pain. 

Nicole willed the broom to stop, and she jumped off and ran past her opponent to where her baby brother lay bleeding on the ground. The streets lay barren, people presumably hiding inside their homes at the sound of gunfire. The bullet had gone through his stomach, and his hand clutched the gaping hole that was now there. Beneath the harsh, clear sunlight, Zack Nygaard lay dying. 

Nicole approached him, channeling the pink healing light into her hands. She could fix this, it would be okay, it had to be okay-

“Don’t touch me,” Zack groaned. “Please don’t touch me. Please don’t-”

The words became her bullet wound, and her shield could not protect her this time. 

Part of her wanted to turn away, a hideous voice in the recesses of her mind that wanted her not to care what happened. It was safer that way, easier that way.

She didn’t listen to it- she knew the right thing to do. Knew what she had to do. 

She reached for him, and he tried to shimmy away, but once more she grabbed hold of her sibling by the scruff of his neck and channeled the light into him. 

When it was done, she collapsed onto the ground. She finally noticed she was wearing the full regalia, the light pink knee-length loose fitting dress and matching witch’s hat. Her broomstick lay on the sidewalk next to her. 

Zack sat up, running his hand over the scarless tissue of his stomach that had moments prior been a mortal wound. Nicole gasped for breath as she smiled at him. 

He opened his mouth to talk. 

“Don’t,” Nicole said. “Just don’t. I already know what you’re gonna say. I’m not gonna apologize for saving your life.”

He closed his mouth, and his eyes went narrow and he looked at the ground. 

Explosions broke open the sky deep into the city, shaking the air. Nicole grabbed her broomstick and hopped to her feet. She turned around to where the Satanist lay flat on the ground and pried the gun from her hands. 

The Satanist looked up from the puddle of her shattered mask, her face cut up and bleeding. Her eyes, however, were normal. This woman was not possessed. Never had been. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Then go see a doctor,” Nicole sneered. 

“Heal me, like you did him, dammit!”

“You hurt my brother,” Nicole said. Realization poured through her, at what it all meant. She’d never been a big brother, not really, but she’d always been a big sister, and if she were being honest she’d done more than her share of raising the boy. “You hurt my kid. And you’re still trying to bark orders at me. I don’t know what kinda place you were raised in to get that level of entitlement, but you’re lucky I’m such a good Christian, otherwise you’d already be on your way downstairs.” She turned to her brother. “Zack. You got your phone on you?”

He nodded, still not making eye contact, still sitting in the street. 

“Call 9-1-1, tell them you need everything they’ve got. There’s been shots fired, and this woman tried to kill a minor, but you managed to fend her off.”

“I don’t… I don’t trust the cops,” Zack said. 

“I don’t either, but it’s either that or you fly into an active battle with me right now.”

“I… I’d rather do that.”

“Thought you didn’t want me touching you.”

His voice was ironed monotone-flat. “... I don’t. But I know I’m safe with you.”

Nicole sighed. “Entitlement. Everywhere I see. Here I thought I raised you better than that. You know Mom and Dad are probably losing their minds right now?”

“That’s… That’s probably true.”

“Not probably, definitely!” Nicole snapped. Saved your darned life and you’re still acting like this- at least Amy had the decency to thank me. “You ran off on your own into a city you’ve been to exactly twice in your life, one which has been having daily demon attacks for the past week. Aren’t you smarter than that?”

“I-”

“Rhetorical. Question.”

That was when a silver Toyota minivan barreled towards them. It screeched to a halt, and Mom and Dad and Monica all came bounding out. The family car had been with them for twenty years now- it was their parents’ oldest child, frankly. Nicole was amazed the thing still worked. 

“Zack! Nic- Nicole!” Mom whispered as loud as she could. She ran towards them and embraced them both, and before either of them could wriggle free, Dad and Monica joined the hug as well. 

Finally, they let each other go. “What on earth happened?” Dad asked. 

“Satanist,” Nicole gestured to the woman lying on the ground behind her. Then she gestured towards the cloud of smoke choking the sky and said, “Demons. Get Zack out of here- he was shot.”

“You were shot!?” Mom and Dad both said. 

“I healed him,” Nicole said. 

Monica beamed at her. “You can-”

“Yes! But right now I’ve got some more work to do.”

“Wait, what?” Mom said. “Nicole, you can’t just-”

“Honey,” Dad said. “She has to. This is who she is. What she does. Ain’t that right, daughter of mine?”

Nicole couldn’t hide the big, stupid, proud grin on her face. Nor did she want to. “Yes, sir.”

“Just,” Mom stammered, “Come back to us safe and sound.”

“Will do!” Nicole said. “We’re still on for dinner tonight, okay?”

And with that, she hopped onto her broom. She felt the ground beneath her feet, the strength of her family, of God, and of herself, flowing through her. This was who she was, and knowing that let her fly. 

The ground faded from beneath her feet, and she shot through the air. The wind bent around her, and the city below fell further and further away. The air peeled around her skin, warm from her friction, like an air dryer over her entire body keeping her awake and alert and yet oddly calm. Through what must have been magic, her hat stayed firmly in place on her head. The slightest shift of her weight turned her left or right, up or down, and the mere suggestion of greater or lesser speed adjusted her velocity. An electric excitement hummed throughout her entire body, and to nobody in particular, she said, “It’s like I’m some kind of human rocket!” 

Nicole flew, and she flew, and she flew. And she’d never felt more alive. 

***

Cass flew, and she flew, and flew, and she’d never been more terrified for her life. The skeletal megalodon gave chase through the sky. Higher and higher and higher she soared, desperately trying to keep the kaiju away from the city below. Land-sharks appeared from nowhere and plummeted to the ground to gnaw off the legs of everyone in sight, while the masked man wreaked havoc. Heather, Debbi, and Amy would hopefully be enough to handle things on the ground. 

Cass just hoped she would be enough for the situation in the air. 

She pivoted left as the beast’s maw nearly snapped shut around her, narrowly avoided razor-sharp teeth and tongues of hellfire. 

Up, avoiding a swipe from the beast’s fin. 

Circling down as the shark redirected itself upwards. 

Left again. Dammit, I’m just leading this thing in circles. She gave the creature a shove with her telekinesis, and managed to hold in place as it hovered in the air and roared with black flames and unbridled rage. Cass hovered ten feet away, both hands extended, palms held flat, all her will pouring into keeping the shark from moving. But nobody was around to protect, nobody she cared about, nobody she wanted to save. Nobody but herself. 

Her broomstick wobbled, and her hands shook, and the shark moved forward an inch. 

“Shit,” she said as her broom began to sink lower, and lower, and lower, towards the sea of black smoke separating herself from the city below, from the people she was meant to save, from the handful of people she felt even a sliver of a connection to. 

Not that it mattered. She was expendable. Amy was more of a leader, Heather was the muscle, Debbi was the moral support, and now with Nicole as the healer they had a properly balanced party. The only thing that made Cass special was that she came first. That was it. It didn’t matter if she died. 

Lower.

Lower. 

Lower. 

The shark broke free of the telekinetic prison, the monster of cartilage and hellfire rushing at her as she fell.

Except she wasn’t falling. Something was holding her up. 

Nicole floated below her, grunting as she pushed upwards on Cass’ broom. She’d transformed, fully and completely. Hat and everything. “Nicole?” Cass said, half-convinced this was her dying hallucination. 

“Yup!” Nicole said. 

“You’re here,” Cass said, wide-eyed. 

“I am! And so is the big boy there!” Nicole said, pointing. 

“Oh shit!” Cass screamed. And she flew. She didn’t know where the will, the strength to do so, came from, but she flew high into the sky and narrowly avoided the maw once more. The two magical girls soared together, gaining as much proverbial ground as possible. 

“Well I’m glad you’re here, but I still have no idea how to beat this thing,” Cass said. 

“Actually, I had an idea when I saw it,” Nicole said. “It’s a gamble, but it’s the best I’ve got. Can you hold this thing in place again?”

Cass nodded, turned around, and raised her palms. Nicole was here. Her friend was here. And the rest of her friends were here as well, on the ground, fighting the good fight. She owed it to them to come back. 

The kaiju stopped short of them, jaws spread wide. Nicole flew straight for it, channeling white light into her left hand and pink light into her right. She struck first with her left hand, punching through hellfire and pumping holy light into the beast. The beast roared, and the flames extinguished, and a cloud of ash dispersed around them and dissolved into the air. 

Next came the pink light, funneling into the shark, more and more and more until a spire of radiance engulfed everything around them. Cass’ nose bled as she kept the shark locked in place, and she closed her eyes to keep from going blind. 

When the light faded, Cass opened her eyes, and the skeletal shark monster was gone. In its place was a fully-healed megalodon, floating in the air, scales and all. 

Cass floated up to Nicole. “Did you just raise a prehistoric shark from the dead?”

“No, it was already reanimated. I just purged the demonic influence from it and healed it. Whoo. Did it just get wicked cold? ‘Cause I feel…. ” Nicole said, smiling but trailing off. She didn’t get to finish before she passed out and fell off her broom. 

Cass reached with her telekinesis and caught her before she could fall too far. She looked up at the flying megalodon, which simply turned around and flew away further and further into the sky. Cass breathed a sigh of relief. That was enough flying for one day. She brought herself and Nicole to the ground, where the others awaited them. 

Blood and injured civilians littered the street. Animal control officers wrangled the landsharks in elaborate nets, and Amy and the others spoke with the cops, glaring at them with contempt while trying to remain calm. 

Past the crowd, Cass saw three cars approaching: one was a van, red, with a blue stag logo for Hanazawa Beer on the side. It pulled up outside the sectioned-off crime scene, and out of it spilled Heather’s family: Mr. and Mrs. Keith and Reiko Hanazawa, a flannel-clad middle-aged couple, Keith with long white hair worn in ponytail and Regina with long, black bob, came first. Next came their two sons and two additional daughters: Jack, age twenty-five with his severe crew cut and broken nose and business suit; Shiro, age twenty-three, with his mophead hair and flannel that matched his parents; Ritsuko, age eighteen, long-haired with heavy bangs and clad in a designer dress; and Naomi, age fifteen, with her long, messy, unstyled hair and jeans and Fullmetal Alchemist t-shirt.

Another car pulled up: Amy and Debbi’s family. Their father, a tall, lean white man in his early fifties named Patrick Donahue, wearing a thousand-dollar suit; their mother, a mid-sized, broad-shouldered black woman in her late forties named Victoria, her natural hair supporting a purple flower decoration, clad in a long black skirt and a cream-colored blouse; and their four sons, all dressed in gym clothes- Richard, age sixteen; Jason, age fourteen; Timothy, age 11; and Damian, age six. 

Another car, this time one Cass did not recognize. And for a tiny little sliver of eternity, she got her hopes up that maybe her Mom had come, maybe she’d seen on the news what was happening and drive up from Providence in a panic, that maybe she’d cared enough in the first place to surprise her daughter on family weekend.  

A white family of four stepped out of the car- must’ve been Nicole’s relations. A Mom, a Dad, a very excited and concerned teenaged sister, and a very sullen and confused teenaged brother. 

Cass waited, and she waited, and she waited, and it wasn’t until the cops had left and the scene had cleared that she finally said, “She’s really not coming.”

Amy pulled her into a hug, then helped her shoulder Nicole and brought them over to the rest of the families. For a second, Cass wanted to hesitate, wanted to turn away, wanted to run and crawl into a deep dark hole that only existed in the most twisted parts of her mind and sob her eyes out. But instead, she blinked the handful of tears out of her eyes, and half-numb, half-grateful, she walked towards the welcoming crowd of her teammate’s families. 

Nicole’s little sister ran up to her. “Hiiii! I’m Nicole’s sister! Are you the first magical girl?”

Still dazed, still supporting Nicole with her telekinesis, Cass nodded. 

“You’re friends with my sister?”

Cass’ mind buzzed with choking, cloying anxiety as she struggled for an answer. 

She didn’t need to find one. Nicole’s eyes opened, just a little, and she said, “Yeah. She is. This is Cass. She’s the best of us.”

Cass gulped. 

“That’s awesome! Can I be friends with you too? Nicole’s friends have always liked me,” the younger teenager said with a hint of a shit-eating grin. “And why wouldn’t they? I’m effortlessly charming.”

“And immensely humble,” Nicole smirked before fainting again.

Cass said, “Yeah, we can be friends. I can always use… More friends.”

They kept walking, until they reached the crowd of their families. The entire Donahue clan, Amy and Debbi included, swallowed Cass up in a hug. 

And finally, for the first time in what felt like a long while, Cass let herself smile as the tears streamed down her face.