Page 82 of Bent Out of Shade
Dybbuks aren’t the only monsters there.
Follow the Whispers. James had.
When I opened the rift, I heard a wash of whispers and felt something watching me.
My parents were killed even though they didn’t have the Ascendant.
McMurtry was killed because he knew who’d ordered their deaths.
A broken hallelujah.
What if all those facts didn’t point to a demon acting uncharacteristically, or a celestial trio, but the most broken being of all—a fallen angel in charge of torturing evil spirits?
Dumah could release dybbuks to earth on the Sabbath and blow his trumpet to call them back to torture time, but no one ever mentioned his presence here.
What if he couldn’t leave, because like the Leviathan, he’d been imprisoned? It wasn’t a stretch to believe that, like another famous fallen angel, he’d been banished to a realm where he tortured the wicked.
Perhaps Dumah’s only way to communicate was via the amulet. I hadn’t had possession of it long enough to know whether he would have “whispered” to me directly. He’d summoned me, though, and when I hadn’t responded, passing the amulet to Nora, he had gotten her to lead me to him but by piquing my curiosity with “the whispers.”
Another point in favor of this hypothesis was that Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammaneglof saw Banim Shovavim and the Leviathan as abominations. They wouldn’t exactly think highly of a fallen angel either, and when I’d asked Nora who those evil figures were, she’d said that I knew, then quoted the hunter motto.
Since the three angels weren’t as passive in their hatred of Banim Shovavim as I’d thought, it was entirely plausible that they’d founded the hunters to kill us as a backup to their plans in the KH. “After darkness comes the light” made scary sense if I framed it as the angels coming after Banim Shovavim.
Dumah, a fallen angel, and another abomination in their eyes, wouldn’t have any love for that sanctimonious trio and would plausibly deem them evil. How long had he been spying on me to know that I didn’t care for them either? Since the night he murdered my parents for not having the Ascendant?
My hands shook so much that I dropped the cap of the marker twice before I popped it on. If I was right, I was the latest pawn in a long con by the fallen angel Dumah to get the Ascendant and attain his freedom. But unlike everyone else?
I’d succeeded.
