One week later, Winterberry was starting to look more akin to its name.

Christmas break had begun, and with it came over the extended members of the Rosario clan (those who weren’t incarcerated or in witness protection or just MIA) to spend the holiday season at the Moratas’ small colonial home. Once the Moratas and Eldora’s own family learned about the presence of good ol’ Adelmo Rosario’s blood relatives at the house, many excuses related to canceled plane tickets, injuries, ailments, and deaths of family members whom they’ve never heard of popped up.

Zeke and Ugo and their parents were stuck in the house with an all-star roster of the Rosarios.

Great additions included Zeke’s Uncle Pablo, who was recently released from prison for organizing an underground cockfighting ring in his late grandmother’s home; Aunt Ángela was the walking definition of an angel with a dirty face. She often bragged about avoiding jail time after pulling off massive swindles and the men and women she left penniless and psychologically scathed.

Her son, Esteban, attained internet fame by trying to rob a convenience store with a carrot in his jacket pocket. And who could forget Uncle Juan, fresh off the slammer after receiving his 20th DUI—just 11 more, and he can ring up Guinness for a new record.

His little girl, Maria, was not even a 7th grader yet (because she got held back), and she was already pulling off shoplifting heists that would make cousin Martinho proud. Martinho was famous for traveling to Nepal and stealing an Asian palm civet to get them to poop out coffee beans and sell Kopi Luwak on the black market. Zeke was glad he couldn’t make it due to being incarcerated. He always smelled like shit.

The reason why Eldora continued to entertain and play host to these stains of society was beyond Zeke. After arguing with her back at Esther Rosario’s burial, he learned that she had been visiting him regularly and decided his mother was a lost cause. Adelmo had some sort of mental hold over her, like a spell.

Maybe the same Violet had over him.

Zeke and Ugo shared their room with Uncle Pablo and the world’s most annoying 13-year-old, Ramon, who was on his way to getting expelled from his school with his devious licks. The following nights consisted of loud Christmas-themed dinners, late-night gaming sessions with the stepbrothers against Uncle Pablo and Ramon, and group efforts to diffuse arguments between Auntie Maria and her new boyfriend of the week: Sergio. And estranged Granduncle Javier (who didn’t speak any English) almost burned the house down on four occasions.

Finally, the blessed day arrived, and presents were exchanged, speeches were made, spiked eggnog was chugged, slaps were delivered, and breakups were finalized.

Remarkably, not a single person was injured, and the police didn’t get involved. This year was a success.

Came the 27th and a true Christmas miracle occurred. All the extended members of the Rosario clan actually left. Leaving the family of four enervated and strained as if they were forced to run a week-long marathon. Once serene silence returned to the home, everybody retreated to their rooms to rest.

It was the cue to prepare the spell.

Zeke collected Gill’s note from the desk drawer they stored it in and, with Ugo, followed the instructions explained in the bottom half of the message. They traveled back and forth from the Infirmary’s dispensary, bringing vials and jars of various occult items into their rooms.

A teaspoon of water from a lake in which a Kelpie gave birth, a dash of grounded succubus horn, 4 tablespoons of incubus blood, and 2 cups of crushed gorgon eyes. After mixing it all in a large flask and getting a maroon-colored solution, they performed an incantation that took 2 minutes to finish.

Zeke was for once unworried about the noise they were making as his exhausted parents were probably asleep or just assumed they were playing a video game or having a strange Dungeons & Dungeons campaign.

The instructions on Gill’s note explained that the mix could be added to any drink, and the effect would remain.

Ugo and Zeke volunteered to set the table for their leftover pig and sides for dinner when nighttime came along. Zeke added the enchanted mix into Eldora’s and Gerardo’s wine and moistened the rim of the glasses with the substance before bringing them to the table.

Halfway through Gerardo’s rant about not being allowed to wear jean shorts to work, he froze, and then Eldora followed with the same glazed expression.

They awaited their suggestions.

###

As Zeke packed his luggage alongside Ugo, he felt awful about hypnotizing his parents, but explaining to them the occult world with Healers, angels, and demons seemed even more of a hassle. There was also an odd duty he felt he needed to comply with for his mother to save face, given that it turned out Grandma Esther was never crazy.

In Gerardo’s and Eldora’s charmed minds, Zeke and Ugo were going to spend the rest of Christmas break at a winter camp-nerd thing in Vermont they won in sweepstakes. Sure, he could’ve set up something less elaborate like staying over at a friend’s or family’s. But if either Gerardo or Eldora ran into anybody whom the spell suggested they were staying with, the whole thing would shatter in seconds.

Ugo was finished packing first and ready in his winter outfit. He wore a black coat over a heavy blue flannel shirt and dark jeans and boots. “Mano, you ready?” he asked nonchalantly as he wrapped a midnight blue scarf over his neck that matched his beanie hat.

Zeke zipped his suitcase closed and nodded. His casual attire was composed of a wool gray sweater over a collared shirt, all under a long-length padded coat, and gray jeans and black boots that looked oversized on him. He had a crochet hat on with pom-poms that resembled ears to top it all off.

Zeke watched Ugo walk over to the door and close it. Of course, his brother was calm. Even knowing about his strenuous daily effort to not dwell on things with his eidetic memory to keep from going mad, Zeke was still a bit envious and surprised by his calmness.

###

Zeke (with doctor’s bag) and Ugo entered the Infirmary, hauling over their suitcases, and found Naomi and AJ waiting for them—both in comfy-looking indoor winter attire.

The girls approached them.

“So, it’s time, huh?” AJ started.

“It’s only for a few days, Shaq,” Ugo said. “We’ll text you. No need to miss us so much.”

In her red chunky knit jumper and patterned leggings, AJ gave Ugo a sharp scowl. “I’ll miss Zeke.”

“Do I need to remind you that I was the one who first talked to you?”

Zeke’s eyes shifted between the two back and forth, thinking back to when they were 11-year-olds, and AJ was the new girl. Both being the tallest kids in their class, Ugo believed that commonality was enough to make her his girlfriend.

It wasn’t.

But they got a new friend in the process. It was also part of why Violet started hanging out with them. Most of the time, Ugo’s antics strangely had a silver lining — be it a new contact or a funny story to share based on his humiliation.

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be part of our group,” Ugo said proudly. He then looked over at Naomi. “Same goes for you.”

Zeke and AJ made identical awkward smiles realizing he was right.

Not wanting to grant Ugo any more points, Zeke turned back to the door, pulled out Gill’s gold-speckled note from his back pocket, and turned it over, looking at the strange sigil. He handed the note over to Naomi and then reached into his doctor’s bag.

After pulling out the marker, Ugo snatched it away from Zeke. “I’m on it,” he said and proceeded to draw the sigil on the door in perfect detail without looking back at the note.

“Amazing!” Naomi squealed. She wore a pink cashmere sweater and pants set. “Even my memory isn’t that good,” she added.

Ugo and Naomi shared a smile.

“Yet, he uses it to recall his favorite porn scenes at any moment,” said AJ, conspiring to ruin their moment.

“I don’t do that!” Ugo looked away and muttered, “... anymore.”

AJ took Zeke in for a hug. Crushing him with her affectionate strength. “Be careful,” she whispered in his ear.

A gasp of relief came out of Zeke as AJ let go of him, and then he shared a more delicate hug with Naomi. Once they let go, he found Ugo and AJ sharing an apathetic handshake.

“Just don’t die, okay?” AJ said to Ugo.

“Will you cry if I do?” Ugo said with a smug smile.

“I’ll frown.”

Naomi raised a finger and stood on her toes like a child trying to get her parent’s attention. “What is porn, by the way?” Naomi asked.

The room became silent as the rest of the gang stared back at her.

“Well—” Ugo started.

“We’re leaving!” Zeke grabbed the back of Ugo’s collar, opened the door, and dragged him over.

AJ pushed their luggage to the other side and closed the door.

“Wait! I didn’t get my hug from Naomi.” Ugo whined as they arrived at a new location.

“You’ll get it when you return,” Zeke said and then paused to give him a look. “You do know you can’t actually date Naomi, right? I don’t think she understands the concept of love in the way you do. Which is the disgusting way. In her mind, we’re just family to her. You could even argue she sees us as her children.”

Ugo paused. He froze in silence for almost a minute as if his brain was going through a software update.

“You know what? Screw it,” Ugo said. “I don’t need Naomi. I need to stop obsessing over her. I can swoon over a girl during this retreat.”

Zeke was taken aback by the sudden character development. If he could call it that.

“One of the Tainted Generation could be my next girlfriend—”

“You mean ‘first girlfriend.’”

“You’ve changed, Zeke!”

Making a thin, smug smile, Zeke looked around the small room. It was a log cabin with a single room that served as a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom for whatever hermit decided to retreat here.

The place had definitely been abandoned for years. There were two doors, a front one and a backdoor (where they came from). The rustic, decrepit contents of the home seemed artificial in a way, like a Hollywood production studio trying too hard to hammer the idea of the killer’s idiosyncrasies into their audience: “Hey, look at where the killer lives! Look how messy and crazy he is!”

The fireplace was in ruins and had a mount of an ibex in poor condition on it and cracked pots on the stand. Random detritus of trees sat next to a neglected, ashy club chair that looked older than Granduncle Javier. And, of course, a dusty, broken shelf filled with tattered books to add to the creepy factor.

The bustle of the snow that pattered against the dirty, frosted windows called for their attention.

A shiver came out of Zeke so intense it made him think he had fallen through a frozen pond. The blizzard outside looked to be just as cold as it was inside the cabin.

“Okay, did we just get pranked by Gill?” Ugo said.

Zeke didn’t respond immediately and looked around for a hiding camera crew to pop out with the host and announce the prank. He couldn’t spot anybody.

“Damn, maybe I got the sigil wrong?” Ugo added and looked back at the door they came from.

Zeke approached the window, trying not to think about the colonies of super-evolved bacteria, and kept his face away from the glass as he peered out into the hectic blizzard.

In the field of white, there was one element that contrasted the rest of the whited-out visage. A moving speck that seemed to be increasing into a sizeable dot. Behind it was a golden glimmer.

“I think something’s out there,” Zeke alerted.

Ugo rushed over to him and planted his face onto the diseased-covered window glass imprudently.

Zeke held back his urge to scream as he watched Ugo trying to make out the dot in the distance. When he looked back to the window, the dot evolved into a bodily shape. It looked human, but Zeke knew that wouldn’t be enough to calm him down. There were plenty of human-shaped creatures capable of unspeakable horrors.

“Oh, he’s definitely coming towards us,” Ugo said in a slightly panicked voice, to Zeke’s surprise.

The figure was now near enough for them to make out. It was a young black man with a not-so-friendly look and was… shirtless.

As if they were trapped in the middle of a prepubescent girl’s fever dream, they watched the handsome man with an impressive physique stride in the snow towards their cabin, wearing nothing but a navy blue chino slim fit. The only thing that kept him from being the quintessential heartthrob was not having his hands in his pockets as he walked.

He fired a piercing stare at the brothers, and they leaped away from the window. Zeke and Ugo leaned on the wall on either side of the window, huffing out cold breaths.

“Mano, get ready,” Ugo said sternly. “We’re going to fight that guy.”

“What, why?”

“Dude, it’s a shirtless guy walking towards us in a blizzard! He is obviously insane and trying to assert his dominance over us, showing that the cold doesn’t stop him.”

“Maybe, this is his house?”

“All the more reason to believe he is insane.”

A loud bang on the door made Zeke yip in a pitch higher than he had ever reached before.

The door swung open with a second loud bang, and a sandaled foot extended out the doorway.

“Vesklepios!”

“Rutapexy Samhita.”

After their Garbs armored them, they got into fighting positions and waited for their opponent to enter.

After the sandaled foot slammed onto the creaking floor of the cabin, it pulled in the mystery man.

“Whoa!” he shouted and raised his hands upon seeing the hostile brothers.

“Who are you, and why do you want to kill us?” Ugo shouted with a flicker of lightning blasting off him at the right moment, adding gravitas to his inquiry.

“Kill you? Where did you get that idea from?” he shouted back.

“Because you’re shirtless!” Ugo defended.

“Where’s the correlation in that?”

“I… I don’t know.”

The mystery man lowered his hands and channeled a relaxed demeanor. “I’m Akachi. The Fourth Born. Deity Physician.”

Zeke and Ugo exchanged looks and lowered their guard.

Akachi had a thin and muscular frame, and his dark brown hair was fashioned into a dreadlock bun with shaved sides. He directed two fingers at the brothers and raised a brow. “So, who’s Ugo, and who’s Ezequias?”

Zeke put his hand over his chest. "Ezequias, you can call me Zeke—"

“And I’m Ugo Morata!” Ugo interrupted unceremoniously. “The… Sixth Born, I think? I’m the Surgeon.”

“Okay, cool,” Akachi said and then explained the situation in his crisp, vigorous voice. “Listen, the servant Gill had ordered to pick you guys up got a cold of all things waiting for you two to show up and had to go back. I volunteered to be the one to come pick you guys up because I was curious to see what the brotherly duo were all about.” He pointed at their suitcases. “Those are yours, huh?” Without waiting for a response, he walked over to them and hoisted them up, holding them under his arms.

Zeke and Ugo stared blankly at their fellow terrifyingly-robust Healer.

“Come on, let’s get to our ride,” he said, walking to the door, “and call off your Garbs. You are wasting precious Mana, my guys.”

They called off their Healer’s Garbs and followed him out into the snowfall.

Playing catch up to Akachi’s quick strides, Zeke felt the pressure of Akachi’s Mana in the core of his soul. He was housing a massive amount of powerful magic energy that made Zeke wonder about the kinds of devastating spells he must’ve been capable of.

“Seriously, why are you shirtless?” Ugo asked Akachi. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Nah, I’m not cold,” said Akachi looking back at them and shivering.

“You’re shivering,” Zeke pointed out.

“No, I’m not.”

Zeke and Ugo shared a look.

“Okay,” Zeke said, deciding the man’s pride wasn’t a battle worth fighting.

“Hey, you said something about a ‘ride?’” Ugo asked, directing another question at Akachi. “What did you mean by that?”

Akachi stopped and jerked his chin forward. “That.”

Zeke and Ugo halted with widened eyes when they saw it.

It was a chariot. But not just any chariot. It was golden and harnessed to a quartet of just as golden, majestic horses. The fantastical hoofed animals and two-wheeled carriage shone like a miniature sun.

A classical Greek art relief of a solar deity driving his esteemed chariot manifested in Zeke’s mind. Prompting him to ask: “Is that….”

“Yep, Helios’ Chariot,” Akachi said with a shit-eating grin. “Homie hooked me up. I don’t mean to brag, but we’re kinda best buds.”

“Helios as in… Greek pantheon Helios?” Zeke asked in awe. “The Greek gods are real?”

Akachi gave them a look. “I thought you two were already in the loop.”

“We are… I just… never stopped to think that the Greek gods were all real. Does that mean—?”

“All the other mythical gods are real, too? Yeah. In reality, they are just humans with special abilities. It’s an unexplained supernatural occurrence like genetic mutations in our world,” Akachi explained. “Sometimes, a lot more frequently in ancient times, a human would be born with special proprieties that would grow more powerful the more they were venerated. It’s like a parasitical ailment. These humans literally get their power from being worshipped, so naturally, they posed as gods. But they are all washed up now since the number of people who worship them has dwindled spectacularly.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for raindeers?” Ugo asked in jest. “What, you don’t know Santa?”

“What are you 5?” Akachi asked Ugo with a scrunched look. “Santa isn’t real!”

“Oh, I just thought that since—”

“That’s so dumb. Why would Santa be real?’

“Well, unicorns are real!”

Akachi sighed and shook his head. “So dumb…” He escorted them to the chariot.