Coffee and Chills

The city was caught in a fever of celebration. Music poured from the bars, and the streets overflowed with people.

Rafael had already drunk three beers, and he had a hope.

It was a simple hope: that the night would reward him for leaving home despite his hangover.

Caio did not need to believe in anything. He sat across the table, elbow on the wood, scrolling through his feed with one thumb, oblivious to the cauldron of people boiling in the street.

The table between them was a portrait of the holiday: a bottle of beer nestled in a foam cooler, two bar glasses sweating onto the wood, and a sizzling platter of picanha buried under fries, already half eaten.

"Caio. Hey, Caio." Rafael kicked him in the shin under the table. "Put down that damn phone and look over there."

"Huh?" Caio did not even look up.

"Over there, man. Those cuties." He pointed with the hand holding his beer. "Look at those costumes. Like something out of a movie. They’ve gotta be foreigners."

Four strikingly different women had emerged from an alley and passed through the smoke blanketing the street. Wings, horns, tails. No one found it strange—this far into the night’s revelry, looking unusual meant nothing.

The four crossed the street, taking in their surroundings. One had horns that caught the streetlight and armor that glowed like living embers. Another, taller than the rest, trailed gray arms attached to nothing at all. They floated in midair—wire, Rafael thought, thin and strong, fine workmanship. The third had wings, a tail, and skin the pale shade of ice. The smallest had pinkish skin, magenta hair, and translucent fairy wings traced with fascinating veins.

A group of girls applauded, assuming they were headed to some kind of rehearsal. "Holy shit! You girls ain't kidding! That's sooo cool!"

For a moment, the four women basked in the applause of the vibrant city.

"Look, look!" The pink one turned her head every which way, enchanted. "What a lively place. So many toys."

Rafael was amused by the excited foreign girl. He could not hear what they were saying; from that distance, he could only see their mouths move.

"There is not a single presence here worthy of a warrior." The horned woman did not slow down, her gaze sweeping the street and dismissing everything it found. "All I see is garbage."

The tallest let the gray arms slowly fan out behind her, tasting the air.

"No one is bothered by us," she said, pleasure lingering in the slowness of her voice. "Not one of them is afraid. They just wander around like cattle."

The dragoness lifted her chin toward the row of illuminated buildings, entirely unhurried.

"Hm. What a bizarre place. Still, I must admit: I expected burrows, not structures of this magnitude." Her voice sounded less bored than usual. "Who would have thought the rabble could stack stone with such competence?"

"You complain about everything." The pink one shrugged, still captivated by the lights. "I love it."

Something in the crowd caught her eye. Across the street, a young man in a green tank top stared at the group in fascination, as though hypnotized.

Rafael checked to make sure—life had fooled him before, and he did not believe it at first. But her jewel-green eyes were looking straight back at him. Then she smiled.

There it was. The feeling he had carried all day finally made sense: Lady Luck had arrived. The universe might pay late, but it paid.

"There! They’re moving. Come on, come on!"

"Come on, move." Rafael was already getting to his feet and adjusting his collar. "Get up, Caio."

"Take it easy, you freak." Caio finally looked over without letting go of his phone. "Never seen a woman before?"

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Rafael kicked the leg of his chair. "Get up."

"Okay, okay. I’m coming." Caio stood, fulfilling the time-honored duty of the wingman.

Rafael got close enough to be sure they could hear him and unleashed his entire international repertoire.

"Oi! Hi! Hello! Konbanwa! Buenas noches!" He switched between languages he most certainly did not speak.

The pink one turned, tilted her head, and pointed at herself.

"Are you talking to me?"

Her voice was clear, and she spoke without any trace of a foreign accent. Somehow, that made her sound even stranger.

"Oh, you speak my language? And you don’t even have an accent..."

"Man, those costumes are insane!"

"Costumes? Oh..."

"Are your friends from here too?"

She moved closer. A floral scent came from her—wildflowers, no flower he knew, not that Rafael knew many, but he was certain this one came from somewhere else.

"Why do you want to know?" she said. "Do you want to do something with us?"

"No, never..." The words came before he could think. "...I was just going to ask you all to have a drink." What the hell am I saying? he thought, far too late.

"Hmm." She looked him up and down, amused. "So what did you want to talk to us about, anyway?"

Rafael took it as an opportunity. It was the last miscalculation he would ever make.

"Oh, right! Of course... My name is Rafael. Nice to meet you." He held out his hand, remembering introductions rather late. "And you? What’s your name?"

"You want to know my name? It’s Eryn."

"Hi, Eryn. Since we were lucky enough to meet, how about we sit down somewhere and talk? Or do you need help with anything? There are loads of great bars around here, and I know them all."

"You’re very forward, aren’t you?" It was neither praise nor complaint.

"Since you’re offering, there is something I want."

Eryn reached toward Rafael with her index finger extended. Red scales covered her arm all the way to her fingertips, and her nails were claws sharp as sword points. He saw the scales on her fingers and assumed they were part of the costume.

"No way, seriously?! That pickup line actually worked?"

Slowly, her index finger approached his chest. The tip of her nail stopped at the exact point between his collarbone and his heart.

"...Huh?"

Half an hour earlier

Giovanna was riding the elevator alone when the last trace of the city's noise vanished behind the steel doors.

All that remained was the silence of a government office and a light that blinked every three seconds, as though it too were tired. She preferred it that way.

Her reflection stared back from the brushed steel door: blurred, impatient, and dressed for anything but an emergency meeting. Long light-brown hair, green eyes, fishnet over a black top, purple sleeves around her forearms. Black nails. Boots. The look of someone dragged away from her day off—which was exactly what had happened.

The summons had arrived a short while earlier. Álvaro had been economical: "Report to HQ immediately." No explanation.

Giovanna’s perception was too keen for her not to understand what that meant. In the Division, an empty message meant trouble. The fewer words Álvaro spent, the more he was saving to say in person.

"A one-line summons..." she murmured.

Thinking under her breath was an old habit.

The elevator stopped on the nineteenth floor with a slight jolt.

The doors opened onto a long, empty corridor. Fluorescent lights cast a white glare across the polished floor; closed doors, fire extinguishers, and exit signs repeated all the way to the end. Giovanna’s footsteps advanced in a crisp, steady rhythm as the elevator closed behind her.

At the end stood an unmarked door.

The Supernatural Incident Division operated out of an utterly ordinary office building—and that was the point. No sign advertised what took place inside. The agency had existed that way for generations.

Giovanna entered and swept the room from corner to corner out of reflex.

Workstations filled the right side, facing a monitoring console covered in a mosaic of screens. On the left, beyond the water cooler and coffee nook, an old desk disappeared beneath books, folders, and cigarette butts. At the back, glass partitions enclosed Álvaro’s office.

His chair was empty, but the rest of the team was already there.

Dante occupied the nearest station, slouched before a dark monitor as though boredom were a working posture.

The other agents waited around the room.

Mirian sat at the desk on the left, the only person in the room who looked neither annoyed nor curious. The cigarette rested between her fingers with the natural ease of a work tool—and a NO SMOKING sign a few yards away said something about her personality. In Álvaro’s absence, she was the authority in the room.

Everyone present had answered the summons. No one seemed to know why.

The smell of reheated coffee hung in the air, and the air conditioner waged war against summer. The monitors remained lit, but no one was truly working.

Everything was quiet.

Too quiet for an emergency summons.

"Where’s Álvaro?"

Dante looked up with the expression of someone who had only been waiting for an opening to complain.

"That’s what we’d like to know. I answered the call, came straight here, and I’ve been waiting ever since. Mirian still hasn’t told us anything."

Giovanna looked at Mirian. She merely took the cigarette from her mouth, exhaled slowly, and shrugged—as if to say, "You know what he’s like."

Giovanna looked back at Dante.

"Okay."

Like many of the agents gathered there, Dante was a Latent: a human with greater-than-normal potential, capable of surviving what would kill an ordinary person, but still short of transforming into an Angel. Some awakened with time. Others spent their lives on the threshold without ever crossing it.

Despite the small difference in their ages, Giovanna would always see him as something of a rookie. Not out of contempt, but because of seniority—and the hierarchy that truly governed that place.

She went to the coffee machine, a war veteran that made more noise than coffee. She filled the filter with grounds and pressed the button.

The coffee would have to make up for the lack of answers.

The machine roared. Before it began to drip, the door opened.

"Hey! I’m here!"

Her voice entered first. Eterna followed right behind it, vibrant and cheerful, as though the sun itself had stepped into the room.

Her hazel-green eyes swept the room, as lively as her smile. If the last-minute summons had bothered her, no trace of it remained.

"Oh, Gio! Dante!"

Her smile widened further. Eterna waved to the others as she crossed the room, but stopped after only a few steps. She looked through the glass partition and found the office empty.

"Huh... Where’s Álvaro?"

"We still don’t know," Giovanna and Dante answered together in the same weary tone.

The accidental harmony made Eterna’s smile grow wider, as though she had found something immensely funny about it.

As Giovanna picked up her coffee cup, Eterna walked through the room whistling, as though there were no emergency at all.

She turned to the side and found herself near Dante’s desk.

"Hey, Dante! Oh, I saw your show! You’re doing pretty well with the boy band."

The effect was immediate. Dante straightened in his chair.

"Boy band, my ass. This is rock ’n’ roll, through and through!"

"Uh-huh, sure. Let me give you some advice: ditch the rock ’n’ roll thing and stick with the boy band. It’s working. People love it—I saw them."

A crease appeared between his eyebrows.

"Eterna, you—"

Then he stopped. Another thought occurred to him.

"Oh, right."

He turned to Giovanna and pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket with a smug smile.

Giovanna sensed trouble coming a long way off.

Dante walked over and held out the sheet.

"Hey, Gio. Take a look at this."

Giovanna sighed. Politeness prevailed.

"Fine."

Drawn by curiosity, Eterna approached from the other side.

"Aw, how cute. Is it a love letter? I always knew you two liked each other, despite all the fighting..."

"Knock it off. They are the lyrics to my next song."

Giovanna took a sip; for a moment, the excessive heat helped mask the bad taste of the cheap coffee grounds. She scanned the page, then returned to the beginning to make sure.

"Hmm."

"See?" Dante leaned forward, confident. "There’s no way around it. This is the bomb!"

Giovanna set the little cup on the desk beside her and picked up a pen.

She wrote. Folded the sheet.

"Look, Dante! Gio’s answering your little love letter!"

"You’re a pain, you know that? I already told you it’s not like that."

Giovanna wrote again, made another fold, and handed it back.

"There." She reclaimed her coffee and walked away, sipping without looking back.

"Wouldn’t it have been easier to just say it?" He opened the first fold.

Eterna was already peering over his shoulder, eyes shining. At the center of the page, Giovanna had drawn a musical note: F. Beside it, a short arrow pointed down.

Dante frowned. His gaze traveled from the note to the arrow and back again, trying to decipher the message before opening the next fold.

"F? What’s that supposed to mean? Is it the key?" Dante murmured, following the arrow with his eyes.

He opened the second fold.

There was the answer, written in Giovanna’s beautiful handwriting:

"F. For failure."

For one instant, there was absolute silence.

"Goddammit, Giovanna! You’ll pay for that!"

Eterna hit the floor. Not figuratively—she lay on the office tiles crying with laughter, slapping the ceramic and rolling from one burst of laughter into the next. The sound filled the office, bounced off the partitions, and made Mirian look over her monitor.

Dante raised the sheet over his head and launched into a complaint from which Giovanna caught only scattered words: respect, art, ignorance. She took another sip without paying much attention.

A yellow flash streaked across the room.

Eterna ceased to be on the floor and appeared beside Dante, smiling. His raised hand was empty; the paper was between her fingers.

"Here, Gio!"

She flung the sheet like a playing card.

Giovanna reflexively caught it in midair.

Dante came after the paper.

Giovanna moved at the last moment, shifting only as far as necessary to slip out of reach.

He tried the other side; she turned one shoulder and let his hand pass. The cup remained steady between her fingers.

On the third attempt, half a step backward was enough.

The chase began tracing short, ridiculous orbits around the room: Dante trying to reclaim his work, Giovanna contributing the absolute minimum of movement, unwilling to participate in this particular extension of the joke.

Mirian sighed; Eterna kept laughing.

The door opened again as Dante tried to corner Giovanna between two workstations.

Mabel crossed the threshold with a cup of water in one hand and the expression of someone no longer certain whether she had entered HQ or a kindergarten. Her dark hair was tied into twin buns, with braids and blue streaks.

"Well, I’ll be. What in tarnation’s all this ruckus? Dante, why’re you chasin’ Gio around?"

"Because she’s bitter!"

Mabel watched Giovanna make another minimal dodge.

"Reckon."

Dante received the answer as absolute validation.

"See?!"

Satisfied by the implied agreement, he resumed the chase with renewed enthusiasm. At that moment, his foot found the base of a chair left crooked beneath a desk.

The folded paper rose on the air stirred by his stumble and, of every possible direction, chose Mabel’s face.

She barely had time to blink.

A thread of water leapt from the cup before any conscious decision. The liquid rose in a narrow curve—pssssh—intercepted the projectile, and dragged it down. Paper and water struck the floor together. The folds opened, the fibers darkened, and Dante’s work ended sprawled in a small puddle.

The entire room stared.

Mabel lowered her eyes. She could control water, but no technique could persuade wet ink to return to its former shape.

"...Well, shoot. Sorry. Just a reflex."

Giovanna raised the coffee to her lips to hide a reaction that did not quite become a smile.

Dante dropped to his knees before the puddle.

"My... masterpiece..."

His shoulders slumped. He stared at the soaked sheet as though it were a ruined cultural relic. Giovanna saw no reason to mock him. Grief, like questionable taste in music, was a personal matter.

At last recovered from her laughing fit, Eterna crossed the room with her arms open.

"Mabel! It’s been forever. How are you? How’s training?"

"I’m doin’ fine. Mighty glad to see you too." Mabel turned the page on what had just happened with admirable ease and went along with Eterna. "Picked up a new technique."

The two moved into a corner like conspirators, and from a few yards away Giovanna listened to their whispering with the resignation of someone who knew the players.

Clap—Mabel’s palms struck together with a wet sound.

When she drew them apart, a sphere of water formed between her palms. A perfect sphere, trembling with its own surface tension. It shone blue, genuinely beautiful, reflecting the ceiling lights and distorting Eterna’s attentive face on the other side.

Mabel kept the water suspended without spilling a drop.

"Call it the Wet Water Sphere. Whaddaya reckon?"

"That’s a good one. Damn." Eterna’s eyes lit with genuine admiration; then they narrowed, and admiration became competitive heat.

Eterna stepped back half a pace, set one palm beneath the opposite elbow and the other on her forearm. She pulled her arms in opposite directions, scraping her hands together in a quick motion. A spark was born between her fingers.

The sharp crack cut through the air. The spark grew into a golden arc and wavered between her hands like a living cord. Nearby monitors flickered with brief interference. Eterna spread a presenter’s smile.

"And this is the Lightning That Shocks. Cool, right?"

"Now, ain’t that clever!" Mabel brought her hands to her face, delighted.

Giovanna lowered her cup.

She remembered reading in some old book that an Angel’s Awakening brought wisdom. Giovanna wished she could travel back in time and present the author with a few pieces of modern evidence.

"That is the stupidest conversation I have ever heard. God help me. I’m going to have an aneurysm."

Eterna and Mabel looked at her with perfect seriousness. The sphere remained suspended; the electric arc kept crackling. The pause had been calculated. Giovanna noticed and still refused to yield.

"Better to hear certain things than to be deaf, I suppose," she added.

The corner of Mabel’s mouth twitched; Eterna pressed her lips together. Outwardly, they maintained the solemnity of masters revealing ancient techniques. Inside, they were laughing like hyenas. They knew exactly what they were doing. Of course they did.

They put real effort into it. Partly for fun, partly to prod the only person in the room who absolutely refused to give them the satisfaction.

She would never give in; she would rather die.

Across the room, Dante remained on his knees before the ruined sheet, muttering something too quiet and garbled to understand as water dripped from every corner of the paper.

"My beautiful song... All because you’re jealous..."

Without thinking, he crumpled it into a ball and hurled it at Giovanna.

She stepped aside toward Eterna and Mabel, taking another sip of coffee. The paper ball flew past her and across the room, reaching the door just as it opened.

A tiny flame snapped. Fwoosh.

The lyrics to Dante’s next song turned to ash in midair, half a yard from the face of the person entering.

Beatriz had just entered. Dark skin, voluminous natural curls framing her face.

The ashes drifted slowly to the floor.

She blinked.

"What was that?"

Silence.

"Garbage," Giovanna and Eterna said together from opposite sides of the room, each already returning to what she had been doing.

"My masterpiece..." The anguished voice tore through the room.

He pounded the floor with both fists.

"Nooo! My lyrics. My path to the Gods of Metal!"

"Oh." Beatriz understood without needing an explanation and closed the door. "Sorry. But you have a copy, right?"

His abandoned-puppy stare answered for him.

By then, Eterna and Mabel were posing in a distant corner, knees bent and hands tracing invisible lines through the air with the solemn precision of a ritual that had to be followed to the letter.

"Now brace yourself for my supreme technique, Empress of Lightning! Your trail ends here!"

"You make me laugh, Empress of Water. My aura is burning beyond its limit. You cannot touch me!"

"What?! Your aura is burning beyond its limit?!" Scandalized, Mabel staggered back a step as though the news terrified her.

"Exactly! My aura is burning beyond its limit!"

Giovanna lowered her coffee and approached Beatriz.

"Bia. Go put some sense into those two idiots. This is serious."

Beatriz looked at the two women in their poses of youthful delirium. Looked at Giovanna. Looked back at them. Then nodded.

"Leave it to me."

Thumbs-up.

She crossed the room with the firm stride of someone about to resolve the situation, planted a foot before them, and swept one arm through the air in an imperial arc.

"Supreme Aura? Do not make me laugh. Rabble like you could never attain the True Supreme Aura. Watch and learn, insolent insects."

Then she began to flap her arms, slowly and solemnly, like a heron taking flight.

"Wow," Eterna breathed, applauding enthusiastically. "The choreography is perfect."

Giovanna closed her eyes. Put a hand to her forehead. She remained like that for a while, motionless as an allegorical statue of mental health in a government office.

"You too, Bia."

"Phoenix Illu—"

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" She pointed at all three, her finger moving down the line of the accused. "Stop this right now! We’re going to get sued!"

At that exact moment, the door opened.

Álvaro entered with a slim folder beneath one arm and an expression that matched nothing happening in the room. He stopped two steps inside and looked at the scene in confusion.

"It’s good to see you’re all as lively as ever. Good to know. But I have bad news."

His expression hardened.

"I need your attention. Now."

It was like flipping a switch.

Everyone paid attention.

"Conference room," Álvaro ordered.

He led the way. The others followed without a word.

In the now-empty room, Giovanna’s coffee was beginning to cool.

Álvaro did not sit down.

He opened the folder on the table but did not need to look; he already knew everything inside by heart.

"For the past few days, we have been monitoring a dormant portal that appeared in the city. Today, the readings changed: we detected several signatures of evil energy inside it. That is why I called you."

Giovanna waited for the rest.

Eterna was the first to lose patience.

"And...? That’s nothing new. Why call us in? If the Latents can’t handle it, just send us straight into the field."

"Less than an hour ago, the portal began to open," Álvaro said. "Low-class demons have already crossed through, but that is the least of our problems."

He paused.

"We detected four signatures unlike anything we know. We cross-referenced the readings against portal records from other countries, and nothing matched. The machine could not even calculate their exact levels. Something terrible is coming here."

Giovanna thought of the human threat scale, unchanged for centuries.

"What does that mean in numbers?" Giovanna asked.

"If I had to summarize it, I would say the lowest value we could confirm exceeds the sum of all the energy measured over the past ten years."

The room fell silent. The air conditioner could be heard.

"But why here? Why today?" Beatriz asked. "Have other countries reported anything similar? And have we made an official report?"

"No one has reported anything. Neither have we, not until we understand the situation better." Álvaro scratched the back of his neck. "Even so, a concentration like this should be nearly impossible to miss. It is strange that no one has contacted us."

"Something is wrong," Giovanna said. "Bia is right: why today, and why here? It does not appear random."

"Whatever it is, random or not, that hardly matters now." Álvaro closed the folder. "The problem is in our lap, and we have to solve it."

The world, in truth, had seen creatures like these before.

Long before there was a machine to measure them. Long before scales, classifications, or reports.

Far from headquarters, something was crossing through the portal—and even so, Giovanna felt it.

They all felt it.

It came neither as sound nor tremor. It came as a change in the composition of the world, a new ingredient dissolving into the air everywhere at once. The instant those overwhelming presences crossed the portal, a horrifying sensation spread throughout the city, and the Latents and Angels felt it down to their bones—a shiver that climbed the backs of their necks and stayed there, cold and motionless, refusing to leave, like a finger resting against the spine.