Most things about Vallo didn’t manage to throw Sabrina anymore. After living in the world for over two years, she’d come to take all of the crazy that happened every other month or so pretty well. Disappearances were still hard but she hadn’t caused complete darkness in Vallo because of one in nine months so that was also progress. Even getting a text from Callum asking for help wasn’t that insane. She’d glanced at what he’d written, mostly focused on the ‘help’ part and location, let someone at work know she’d be back, and teleported over.
Seeing people running from Demonikea wasn’t that odd--she’d expected it to happen a lot more frequently than it did. There were nightmares popping up all over Vallo, so it kind of made sense that the store with pentagrams and various demonic runes drawn in chalk along its floors would get embroiled in the chaos.
Sabrina had expected to find demons running amok or maybe a giant or two reeking some havoc or a hag devouring children. But no. It was furniture. Singing and dancing furniture. It was almost cute until she realized that a wardrobe was actually trying to eat one of the employees.
Sabrina sent out an ice blast at the wardrobe, sending it skidding in the opposite direction of the employee as she continued down the aisle, determined to find Callum.
So here was the deal: despite being a powerful and amoral empath, Callum wasn’t great at fighting. He hated pain, he didn’t like being caught off guard, and while he had learned some basic defense spells because hello, he had been in a “someone’s gotta die” situation last year, magical dueling was not and would never be his thing.
He was fine, of course, if one could define “fine” as maintaining a strict six foot radius around himself with sheer empathetic do not fuck with me. A side table skittered past him, but didn’t engage. A lamp insulted his mother. But he was untouched, unlike say the crowd of bargain-shoppers who had come to Demonikea to find the perfect midcentury modern bureau.
“Sabrina!“ he called, and concentrated, removing the distancing impulse from her so she could approach. Catching up with her, he looked about the store, amused and dazed. “So, this is happening. I hope you brought booze.”
Did he honestly just say that? Of course he did. “You texted help, not ‘come over, I’m bored’,” she reminded, casting a quick glance at him. He looked fine, definitely not injured like half of the shoppers who were still trying to get out of the store.
One family had attempted to duck under a table to escape from a coat rack that was working to strangle them. The only problem was the table decided to help corral them toward it, while singing in an awful off pitch baritone. This was decidedly less ‘Be Our Guest’ and much more an assault on the castle moment. It felt like the time to lend even further into the ridiculous bastardized Disney moment so Sabrina quickly formed an ice sled under the family and then with a wish of her hand forced them out from the table and skidding down the aisle toward the front door. Hopefully the furniture didn’t follow.
“Can you manipulate the furniture to freeze or move to the other side of the store or something?” she asked, looking back over at Callum. Anything to give the shoppers a chance to escape.
It took a second - longer than he would have admitted to, priding himself on generally being quick of wit - for him to realize that she was asking him to save people. The thought hadn’t occurred to him (and wouldn’t have). The expression he gave her spoke volumes (and potentially a spin-off series) but he silently expanded his concentration. It wasn’t easy, hitting some targets and letting his will slide off of others. It was easy to see when he began to affect a person or a piece of furniture; the slowing of intent, the confusion, the renewed purpose in another direction - all was plain on Demonikea shopper’s faces. (The furniture, lacking faces, was not nearly so expressive.)
Of course, he was only as good as being in the room with them - his power only stretched so far. The furniture attacking others just out of his sight resumed their assault.
With a low swear under his breath, Callum mentally retreated, resuming his own circle of repelling. “Too many people, too much panic.” He’d never bothered with working with a crowd. It was far more fun to thoroughly mess with one person than to mess with a group only a little. He gestured at the chaos surrounding them and flashed her an irritating smile. “All you.”
Sabrina had needed to press a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter when he’d given her his initial look. It hadn’t lasted long as he’d done his thing, her attention turning back to the building around them, taking a mental note of how many mortals were still left in the store while he’d done his thing. “Don’t move,” she told him before shooting up into the air.
Hellfire engulfed her as her eyes turned red, blood seeping from them down her cheeks. Harvey had always called it her ‘Dark Phoenix’ stance. She still had no clue what that meant, but connecting with Hell always helped bolster her powers and using hellfire was the surest way to do that. She reached out, working to skip all of the people inside the building as best she could, and focused on unmaking every piece of furniture. The pillows and blankets working to suffocate people unspooled down to loose thread and fluff. Tables and chairs broke apart into their individual pieces, nails and screws scattering along the floor. A few of the fleeing shoppers lost a shoe or shirt, her magic snagging onto those and unraveling them before she caught herself.
That was the problem with tapping into Hell. It wanted everything. Give it an inch and it would try to engulf an entire country.
She hadn’t managed to get everything before she felt the pull of Hell’s influence, wanting her to obliterate everything in sight. Sabrina cut the connection, hellfire receding and dropped back down to the floor beside Callum, reaching to grab onto him as she stumbled.
It was probably a good thing that Callum already had a headache, because he would definitely have gotten one regardless after Sabrina had called on the power of Hell. Great light show - he was impressed; it reminded him of theater that wasn’t too self-conscious to be fun - but the sheer power and hunger of the entity was wretched. Too much for many minds. It felt like trying to filter the rush of white water rapids through a single faucet; Callum resented that he sympathized with the exploding armchairs, and wondered if his own brain matter would soon follow the bits of fluff floating through the air of the hellish furniture store.
Sabrina had grabbed him for stability, when she came back down to the ground. He did much the same, staggering from Hell’s abrupt appearance and disappearance from the emotional landscape of his mind, his shoulder slipping beneath her arm as his legs steadied them both, expression dazed. Shoppers stampeded toward the doors, the inventory whimpering in tatters on the floor around them.
Callum turned toward Sabrina. “Let’s get out of here. This is going to be so much paperwork.” Why had this happened? Would it happen again? Was anyone hurt? He neither knew nor cared. He did, however, have an excellent survival instinct, and a knack for escaping the premises when there might be follow-up involved.
Sabrina did care about the whys and woulds, but the shoppers had escaped and the only employee that she gave a damn about was Callum, so it was definitely time to go. Something was happening in Vallo. Again. It’d been nearly two whole weeks in August without any big incident so they were more than due. Reports had been trickling into the DOA since Monday, but it wasn’t until recently that the incidents had taken on a darker spin. She’d text the office and let them know to add another location to the board.
“Are you alright?” She might not be able to feel emotions like he did, but she’d glimpsed his dazed expression and while Vallo could be a mess, Hell wasn’t something that many got any sort of glimpse of until they were dead. It was one thing to go to it and see the gory splendor of the palace. Another thing entirely to catch a snippet of its raw power. “But yeah, we should leave because I’m not sure how long it’ll be before they put themselves back together.” And she had no intention of being around to find out.
Might not hurt to put some wards up to keep the furniture inside and people outside until whatever was happening stopped.
“I want a triptan,” Callum managed, because fuck his head hurt, but he was mostly just wanting a triptan because it’d be fun to be high right now. He guided Sabrina toward the employee exit, which was thankfully less insane than the main double doors out, but his face still looked a bit unguarded. What was all that? It had started so suddenly. One minute he was (not) doing his job, and the next, the screaming had started. Callum may have been a sociopath but being forced to feel the terror of employees and shoppers wasn’t particularly fun for him.
“I had a dream that this happened. Last week,” he explained as they cleared the children’s department, which frankly was terrifying looking, because a) children’s toys were scary on their own, but b) demonic possessed children’s toys? Fuck that noise. “It played out exactly like this.”
A dream. Well, that fit with everything else that was happening. The source of it was still up in the air though. “There’s been other stuff happening in the city and out in the forest that people said they dreamed about and now it's suddenly occurring in real life too.” She knew he didn’t always bother with looking at the network but wasn’t sure how much he kept up with whatever was happening in Vallo from day to day. “It was cutesy stuff at first, but well.” That had obviously changed.
She glanced over at him as they neared the exit door. The silence that had fallen over the store was a stark contrast to the screaming and chaos that had filled it only moments ago. Even the shadows didn’t look quite right, longer than they should have been with the overhead lights. Not that they ever seemed right to her in this place.
“I can heal your headache.” Sabrina wiggled her fingers.
Callum didn’t particularly like being a statistic. How plebeian. Not that dreaming about “cutesy stuff”, as Sabrina called it, sounded any better. He eyed the remains of what had once been a coffee table with distaste and gingerly stepped over it. Slipping through the exit door without a single look at any of his fellow employees - because if you made eye contact, god, people thought you might owe them something - Callum emerged outside in Vallo.
He didn’t bother to feel safe; if Demonikea was fucked, all of Vallo had to be fucked. Ugh. He glanced at Sabrina out of the corner of his eye, and waved her off. “I’ll live.” For fuck’s sake, she’d just summoned hell in the literal way. “I’ve no fewer than thirty people you would be welcome to use those moves on to smite back home.” Which was about the way he said ‘thank you’.
“Mmm, I’d need to know their sins against you before smiting anyone.” Not that she did that. At least not in Vallo and she’d only done so to a few back in her own world. The angels who’d killed some of her witchy classmates and her had deserved it, even if she’d been able to resurrect herself and them. But at least Callum wasn’t looking at her weirdly. She never knew how anyone was going to react when they saw what she could do.
She was probably supposed to head back to work. No doubt there had been even more instances called into the magic department, ones that she should head out to and get notes on or help disperse. And yet.
“I’m starving. Want to grab takeout and hole up away from the insanity for a bit?”
Callum was too lazy to try to take over the world, powerful friend in Sabrina or no. For better or worse, he was exactly what he appeared to be. He gave her a side glance, bored, as the weight of responsibility pressed against her emotions, but brightened up when she decided for self-care instead.
“Fuck all this,” he agreed. He didn’t want to have to be in the position to rescue anyone again, ugh. He couldn’t imagine much worse. He thought it over, and decided: “Mexican?” There was something visceral about the crunch of a taco he thought he’d appreciate.
She sent off a text message to the Magic Department, letting them know about Demonikea and that she was making sure a friend got home and was alright before heading back in. It wasn’t technically a lie. Sabrina scanned her phone’s map, letting it sync with the data from the department. “Our favorite Mexican place hasn’t had any instances near it.” At least none that had been called in.
“Grab some food and everything for margaritas and head over to your place?” she suggested. “Roz gets twitchy when you come to ours.”
Callum didn’t care that Roz got twitchy - perceptive people were frequently bothered by him, either due to his ability or (more likely) his personality and entitlement, but when other people got twitchy, and he felt it, it was annoying. He consequently gave Sabrina a nod of agreement, thinking longingly of the good tequila he had stored away on his bar cart. It wouldn’t save the day, but it’d damn well improve it.
His phone buzzed. Callum flicked it to silent without looking at it and smiled at Sabrina. “Olé.”
A niggling feeling pressed at the back of her mind, pesky conscious admonishing her for skipping out on her responsibilities. Again. It was getting a lot easier to push it back down and ignore it completely for a few hours when she was with him. Easier to rationalize it away as well--a work and life balance was important, there were plenty of others to help out. The list went on.
She extended a hand to Callum, ready to teleport the two of them away and leave the continuing chaos behind.