Order of the Shattered Cross: Pt. 04

Timothy closed her trunk while cradling two brown paper bags each underneath one arm and started walking with her to her porch. Kat finally saw a nun sitting on her swing.

"Another female exorcist. Have they learned nothing?" Kat asked, making Timothy chuckle and Sister Frost blush. "He has a history, Sister."

"I'm well aware," Sister Frost said with a half-hearted smile. "Excuse me, I'm Sister Frost."

"Take this please," Kat said while awkwardly outreaching the keys to her house. Sister Frost took the keys and opened the door for them. Timothy followed in after Kat and the Sister walked in last, closing the door behind her.

"I was going to have some soup for lunch, care to stay for a meal?" Kat asked.

"We don't have time to stay..." Timothy began but was interrupted by Sister Frost.

"...absolutely, I'm famished," Sister Frost said and gestured to be led to the kitchen to assist. Timothy sighed and leaned against the entrance of her small kitchen next to the refrigerator.

"Are you still researching witches?" Timothy asked, and Kat chose to ignore him. "Kat?"

"Food first," Kat replied.

Timothy chose to leave the women alone and took a self-guided tour around her living room. Unlike his barebones apartment, Kat's home was full of framed pictures from her travels since she left her vows. Paris. England. Germany. Japan. China. She had become well-traveled since he had last seen her. There were trinkets and artwork displayed all around him. Recreations of the Mona Lisa. A figurine of a London double decker bus. A traditional Japanese Kabuki mask featuring a dark demonic face.

"Have you been traveling a lot?" Timothy asked as he rolled the bus across the table it was resting on.

"Every summer," Kat replied. "Before this school year started, I was in Japan."

"I see that," Timothy said, and turned to the mask which seemed to be watching him.

"Next year, I'm thinking maybe Mongolia."

"Kind of random," Timothy replied and walked to the frame of the kitchen and peeked inside. "What kind of soup?"

"Smell that?" Kat asked, and Timothy sniffed the air and was surprised that he didn't notice it earlier. "I've had chicken noddle in the crock pot since last night. Should be about ready."

The ladies finished putting the groceries away before Kat opened a cabinet above the crockpot to retrieve three bowls. She slid a ladle out from a tall and narrow ceramic bowl filled with other serving utensils. Timothy watched as she filled a bowl with hot soup, and then handed the bowl to Sister Frost and directed her to eat at the small four-person dining room table through the other door to the kitchen opposite Timothy. She poured a second bowl and handed it to Timothy who took it and shrugged.

"I really do need to ask some urgent questions."

"Ask with a full stomach, because I'm not answering with an empty one," Kat replied and prepared herself a bowl as well. She opened the silverware drawer and removed three wide mouth spoons used for soup. "Sit."

Kat and Sister Frost sat near the corners of their respective sides of the table, chatting like old friends. Timothy sat alone, stirring his spoon around the edge of the bowl, openly displaying his irritation.

"How much do you know about the New England Covens," Timothy asked impatiently. "Namely witches who were in them in the last thirty years."

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the growling of your stomach," Kat teased. Timothy took a spoonful of soup and made a display of slurping it as loudly as he could. "Could you narrow that down? There are many witches in the covens, and I don't know all of them. Plus, a lot of covens don't record their membership out of fear that list will be used to hunt them."

"Henrietta Moore," Sister Frost asked, and Kat shifted her head swiftly to her.

"Moore?" Kat asked. "The Sisters of the New World, their Priestess is Angelica Moore."

"New World?" Sister Frost asked.

"Their coven is older than America itself. They left the European Covens in the early 17^th century because they violently disagreed with the Confederation's French elitism. Only French witches had been positioned as High Priestess over Europe, and the English and Prussian Witches were fed up with it. They joined many of the early settlers of the continent."

"Where can I find Angelica?" Timothy asked.

"I just know the name, couldn't tell you where she is," Kat explained between sips. "I've heard all kinds of rumors. Salem, Boston, Philly. I've only spoken to two former members of it. They're very secretive."

"What do you know about them?" Timothy asked.

"They're obsessed with prophecy," Kat said and placed her spoon down. "They've predicted the end of the world multiple times but never comes to pass."

"That's not how prophecy works," the little maiden said from the empty chair at the end of the table opposite Kat. She sat with her arms down on the table, using them as a pillow with her cheek on her forearm. She resembled a child pouting because she wouldn't get dessert if she didn't finish her vegetables. "Most times these oracles are just blitzed out of their skulls on mushrooms and claim they're translating the crazy."

"How does prophecy work?" Sister Frost asked while facing the maiden, confusing Kat who didn't know who she was talking to.

"Who is she talking to?" Kat asked.

"Prophecy doesn't work. It's not a realm of magic," the maiden said, her voice suggesting this was something she was tired of explaining. "There is no third eye or a lens to the future. It's all psychobabble from witches high on their own ego. I remember this coven when they were still in England. Back then they were called the Sisters of the Apocalypse, and they were crazy then too. They killed a good friend of mine."

"Sisters of the Apocalypse sounds ominous," Timothy said, and Kat looked at him.

"I was about to say they were once called that. Before they came to the new world. I take it the maiden told you that? How can your exorcist hear her?"

"Long story," Timothy summarized, and the Sister looked at Kat with a shrug. "Are they dangerous?"

"Hard to say, they keep a low profile, lower than most covens anyway. Why don't you ask Nora, she probably knows where she is considering she's the High Priestess of the Eastern Covens."

"Nora's a little pissed at me right now," Timothy explained.

"You still know how to ruffle a girl's feathers," Kat said with a slight grin.

"The more things change," Timothy replied, knowing she completed the line in her head just by her lips widening into a smile.

"What do you know about what witches call the Black Winged Angel?" The Sister asked out of her own curiosity.

"You two are just full of very particular questions," Kat said. She lifted her bowl with two hands and tipped it to her lips to drink the broth. "Follow me."

Kat led them away from the kitchen and up the stairs to her second floor. Timothy observed the pictures on her walls as he followed. They displayed more of her travels with photographs of the many places and landmarks she had visited. The Eifel Tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Temple of Athena. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Sydney Opera House. One he had been to himself; the Demilitarized Zone at the 38^th Parallel on the border of North and South Korea. It looked like she had started in Europe and was now progressing her way through Asia.

At the top of the stairs Kat opened a door at the end of the hall and turned on the light switch as she entered. Sister Frost entered behind her, and Timothy followed. It was an office with her L-shape desk pushed against the far corner with a typewriter resting on the longest stretch of the desk. A plush reading chair was next to it. Kat opened the double doors of her closet and pulled down on a string to turn on a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Plastic bins were neatly stacked inside, and she pulled the top one off a pile of three and handed it off to Timothy so she could grab the one in the middle. She took the first bin back and slid the middle bin with her foot to the center of the room.

"Okay, let's see," Kat said to herself and began to rummage through the bin. It was full of composition notebooks, each one labeled with a green sharpie marker. U.S. Covens: East Coast. U.S. Covens: West Coast. U.S. Covens: Midwest. Canada: Ontario. Mexico: Veracruz. French: Coven Aristocracy. England: Doomsday Covens.

"Take that one," Kat said, extending out the notebook for the Doomsday Covens to Sister Frost. "Where are you...got it." She handed Timothy a notebook labeled Creations Myths and Other Things.

"How long have you been studying the covens?" Sister Frost asked while running her fingers over the dozens of notebooks.

"Long time," Kat summarized and sat down in her comfy reading chair. "So, Black Winged Angel," she said while flipping pages in the notebook. "Simply put, it's their angel of death. One of the core components of a Witches view of the world regards balance. Everything has an opposite. Fire to water. Sky to earth. Light to dark. Life and death."

"Can confirm," the maiden said.

"The Black Winged Angel is more of a colloquialism. It's also known as the Ravened Disciple. Even then, that's just a description. The true name has been lost to time, and now most just refer to it as the Black Winged Angel."

"I've heard all kinds of names from all regions for millennia. Ravened Disciple is the earliest I know of," the maiden said, and Timothy gestured for her to be quiet.

"Angels can't send souls to hell, and demons can't send them to heaven. They have no power to permit souls to a realm they don't inhabit. This being can do both, because it is a being of all realms. It's everything, all at once. The opposite of everything is nothing. The opposite is known as the Void."

"About that," Timothy said, taking the notebook from her hands to read it himself. "The Void is real."

"What? The Void is an allegory, like the Black Winged Angel. Nothing can be nothing, and nothing can be everything. It's like dividing by zero, or multiplying by infinity," Kat explained as she pulled her feet beneath body to sit cross legged. She looked Timothy in the eyes and felt the intensity of how afraid he was, and how talented he was at hiding that fear. Few things damaged his calm, but whatever creature he was currently facing had done more than merely bruise him. "You think it's real."

"It doesn't matter what I think. I've seen it, twice, and it nearly killed me the second time. I've had little access to the Coven texts and most of what I know is second and third hand. What do Witches believe the Void is?" Timothy asked.

Kat sighed and leaned back into her chair. Timothy must be desperate for any information if he was forced to come to her. It's not that they departed on bad terms. It's more so that Timothy wasn't proficient at what came after.

"You ever heard the Witch's creation myth? Not the mainstream myth of Wiccan wannabes who wear black and eye shadow and think they're connected to mother Earth..." Kat began, making the maiden laugh. "The Void was created by the collapse of Eden.

"There was Adam and Eve, but here's where it breaks off from traditional Christendom. Lilith was there as well, at the same time, and Eve grew jealous of Adam's desire for Lilith, so ate from the Tree of Knowledge which started the collapse. Witches believe that Earth and Eden existed in tandem as the population of Earth was developing. The souls from those who were born and died on Eden would go to the Cistern of Souls, but would eventually cross over and inhabit the bodies on Earth, losing all memory of Eden in the process. The pouring of the Cistern created the Black Winged Angel. However, one soul resisted. One soul refused to leave Eden, preventing its total collapse. Eve."

Timothy ears perked when he heard her name the second time. He felt his hands shake and quickly tucked them into his pocket to contain it.

"The Void is Eve?" Timothy asked.

"Her flesh removed from her soul. It's the most common translation," Kat answered. "It's complicated."

"Why is she only appearing now?" Sister Frost asked. "Since creation, to now? Why now?"

"You're asking the wrong person," Kat sighed. "I'm not even sure if I believe that you saw what you think you saw."

"I saw it, but you wouldn't be able to," Timothy said, and Kat's forehead wrinkled. "Just saying."

Timothy scanned over the page until he saw what it said about the Void.

"Shape of a drowned feminine, pale as a corpse..." Timothy read aloud and turned to Sister Frost. "That sounds familiar."

"It also fits the bill of folklore for many cultures. Japanese Onryo. Irish Banshee. What makes what you saw so different?"

"I know what I experienced," Timothy declared. He gestured for Sister Frost to hand him the other book, and she requested the other in exchange so she could read it herself. "English doomsday covens. They're not in your east coast book?"

"They're in both under the appropriate names. Take both if you want," Kat said.

"We can just take these? Are you sure?" Sister Frost asked.

"I typed those notes years ago," Kat said, pointing to another bin she said was full of those pages.

Sister Frost retrieved the east coast covens notebook as well.

"We'll get out of your hair," Timothy said and tucked the book under his arm.

"Whoever said you were in my hair? You know you don't need a reason to say hello Timothy," Kat said with a sigh while standing from her chair. "What to do the morning after has never been your strong suit."

Kat walked across the room and softly kissed him on the lips. She pulled away slowly, flashed him a warm smile, and squeezed his hand before walking past him. "Hope it helps."

--

"I can't believe how many Covens there are," Sister Frost said as she flipped through the pages of the notebook. Most only had a few members, twenty being the largest coven she read about, but the sheer number of them surprised her.

They left Kat's home shortly after they received the notebooks. Unsure of where to go once they departed Timothy had pulled over at a rest stop while driving north on I95 toward Salem. Sister Frost at first said nothing regarding his haste to leave, but her silence in the truck was loud all its own. After they stopped, they had the notebooks splayed on the hood of the truck.

"Do you think we should have stayed longer?" Timothy asked, feeling that she wasn't willing to speak about the matter unprompted.

"She is as close to an expert as we'd get. I'm only twenty pages in and I already have more questions. I mean, the Sisters of the Province of Carolina? The Province?"

"English colony, pre-revolution," Timothy explained. "Kat doesn't need to get involved in this more than we need her to."

"You almost sound like you care," Sister Frost jested. "Anne Bonny was a priestess of that coven starting in 1725. Why does that name sound familiar?"

"Female pirate from the golden age of piracy. 1725? That's after she disappeared from history," Timothy said, leaning over to look at the notebook himself. "That explains a lot."

"How many prominent female figures in history do you think were witches?" Sister Frost inquired.

"Some would surprise you," the maiden said, appearing on the roof of the truck with her feet stretched out over the windshield. "But for every legitimate witch like Joan of Arc, there were a slew of pretenders. Cleopatra, Empress Theodora, no relation to your beloved," the maiden teased. "Most modern witches try to claim any prominent woman in history was a witch, but the truth of the matter is, witches were almost never royalty or historically known."

"Interesting," Sister Frost said, but more so to herself. "Why?"

"A witch that close to the reins of power is dangerous for nearly everyone involved," the maiden replied. "The ones who always felt the most threatened by them, were other witches. A Persian witch whispering into the ear of King Xerxes is frightening to a witch in Athens or Sparta. And vice versa. It's not strictly forbidden for a witch to do it, but it was, and still is, considered faux pas by most covens."

"Here we go, Sisters of the New World," Timothy said from his reading of the east coast covens notebook. "Offshoot of the English Coven Sisters of the Apocalypse. They sailed to the new world in 1629 and settled in or around Salem Massachusetts shortly after the town's founding."

"Lot of blanks on their listed priestesses," Sister Frost said while twisting her body around his to read as well. "Angelica Moore, priestess, estimated 1966." Sister Frost reached over and slid the notebook closer to herself. "Look at this, historically known witches. Abigail Williams. Wasn't she an accuser during the witch trials?"

"I'm not a witch, she's a witch!" the maiden shouted, pointing at Sister Frost. "Happened all the time by the way."

"Did you know her?" Sister Frost asked.

"I died in the 1630s. In Germany. No, I did not know her."

"What happened to Abigail after the trials?" Sister Frost asked.

"She fled from Salem and there were a lot of theories, but there really isn't any strong evidence for any of them. But according to this, she resurfaced in 1701 in a, and pardon my pronunciation, an inmerenti magicae?"

"Underserved magic," the maiden replied. "The coven put her on trial, likely for the Witch Trial she caused. I said pointing the finger at another witch happened all the time, but it is a grievous crime to witches. The punishment if found guilty is harsh."

"Death?" Sister Frost asked.

"Worse; They strip a witch's magic from her body. After that, they brand them with the seal of the Order of the Shattered Cross," the maiden explained.

Timothy suddenly had a thought. He recalled what had looked like a burn or a brand on the shoulder of the Void the first time he encountered it. The pressure of the Void crushing him prevented him from fully seeing it. Timothy flipped to the back pages of the notebook and asked the Sister to find a pen in the truck. The Sister quickly found one in the glove compartment and handed it to him.

"I saw a brand on the Voids back, up near her shoulder," Timothy said as he started to draw the symbol of the Order of the Shattered Cross.

"Left or right?" the maiden asked.

"Does it matter?" Sister Frost asked.

"Yes, it matters," the maiden replied. Timothy thought back to his orientation and concluded it was her left shoulder. "Traîtresse."

"Traitor," Sister Frost replied. "Why does the left matter?"

"Eve came from Adam's right rib, and Lilith came from his left," Timothy replied as he finished the sketch and turned the book to her.

It was crude, but she recognized it instantly as the symbol for their order. A cross that was broken into seven pieces. Broken twice on the stem, once diagonally across the intersection, once on the top, and again on both arms. The legend of the order's founding was inspired by the first exorcist to send a demon back to hell. In the process of the exorcism, his cross was shattered, but he held the cross together in the palm of his hand with his own blood serving as glue.

In its infancy, the Order was primarily used as a weapon against witches. In turn the witches adopted the symbol of their enemy to mark traitors within their own covens. The Church and the covens brokered a quiet truce centuries ago, part of which included the founding of a regulatory body for witches. The Confederation of Covens. However, the damage was long lasting and the suspicions of each other had never faded.

Timothy was certain this was what he saw branded on the Void's shoulder.

"The Void was an excommunicated witch," Timothy concluded. "Doomsday coven sounds as good a start as any."