“Everything all right?” John asked.
“Yeah, everything’s good,” Nicole answered, embarrassed. She pointed around the room. “Lots of ghosts in here,” she said. “Still getting used to this human-ghost thing. Sorry I wigged.”
Theo stepped farther into the room. “Where are they?”
“All around here,” Nicole said, standing beside the bed. “Circling the bed.”
“An empty bed,” John said.
“Yeah, I noticed that, too,” Nicole said.
Theo went to the bed, leaping gracefully upon it and placing her nose against the mattress.
“Okay, that’s interesting,” Nicole commented.
“This is it,” Theo said, her voice sounding strange, like there might have been someone—or something—speaking along with her. “The smell is in all the rooms but strongest here.”
“Patient zero,” John said. “What can you tell us?”
Theo looked up, eyes dark and nasty. “Like nothing I’ve ever smelled before,” she said. “Demonic, and yet human . . . it’s driving the demons wild.”
Nicole was watching the ghosts again and noticed a bit of a commotion. The ghosts parted, and a skinny old woman in a hospital Johnny came forward to stand before her. She recognized the woman as the ghost Nana had introduced to her back at John and Theo’s place.
“Hey, guys, the old lady that Nana showed me is back,” she said.
The old woman looked away from her then, a long, skeletal finger pointing to the bed.
“She’s pointing to the bed,” she relayed. “Whose bed is it?” Nicole asked the spirit.
The woman placed a hand upon her chest.
“She’s saying that it was hers,” Nicole told them.
“Ask her where her body went,” John said.
“Where is your body?” Nicole asked her.
The woman slowly turned toward the gathering of spirits, and as she looked at them, they all stepped aside, exposing a window that looked out onto the back parking lot. The woman pointed.
“She’s looking out the window,” Nicole said. “And pointing.”
“She left?” Griffin asked. “How is that possible if her ghost is here? Is she dead out there somewhere?”
The ghost appeared to have heard him, looking back at Nicole sadly and shaking her head, tears of ectoplasm floating up into the air around her head.
“She says no.”
“Then how . . .” Griffin began again.
“Demonic possession of some kind?” John asked.
“It’s something different,” Theo reiterated. “Something that we have never—the demons inside me—have never encountered.”
The ghost of the old woman flowed toward Nicole, leaning forward to place her withered mouth very close to the girl’s ear.
Nicole recoiled.
“What is it?” John asked her.
Nicole was suddenly very cold as the whispering spirit words seeped into her brain.
“She . . . she’s telling me something . . . she’s telling me that . . . that she never knew that it was there . . . that it was inside her . . . waiting . . .”
They all looked at her, listening fearfully to what she was saying.
“It was waiting for her to die so that it could be born.”
• • •
Brenna parked the rental as close as she could, practically running up to the nursing-home building.
The police were clustered about, drinking coffee, waiting to be allowed back in to continue with their jobs. She was pretty positive that she wouldn’t be on their favorites list.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a big man with a booming voice said, coming to intercept her. She already had her identification out to show him.
“Special Agent Brenna Isabel,” she said, flashing it at him. She saw his eyes go to the ID, reading it.
“Right,” the cop said. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Are my people . . . ?”
“Your people are inside doing whatever it is that they were supposed to be doing,” he said. It was obvious that he was annoyed.
“Very good,” she said. “Thanks.”
He started walking with her.
“Tell me, Agent Isabel,” the police officer said. “What in the name of all that’s holy could a couple of TV hustlers have to do with a murder scene?”
Brenna stopped, giving him the stare that her supervisors had warned her about for years. They called it her death stare, and there was no mistaking it for anything else.
“TV hustlers?” Brenna repeated.
“You can understand where I’m coming from, Agent,” he said to her, law officer to law officer. “Paranormal investigators . . . ghost chasers . . . psychics . . . before you know it, we’ll have UFO aficionados giving their two cents as well.”
“Listen to me, Officer . . . ?”
“Noonan,” he said.
“Listen to me, Officer Noonan,” Brenna began. “John Fogg and Theodora Knight are two of the leading experts on Satanism, death cults, and ritual killing in the world. Did you hear what I just said?” she asked him.
“World experts,” Noonan said begrudgingly. “But seriously, how can we . . .”
“World experts, Officer Noonan,” she said, still shooting her death eye beams at him. “World experts currently working for a special division of the FBI, do you understand?”
He seemed to understand that he was walking on thin ice and appeared to back down.
“Yes, Agent,” Noonan said. “I understand completely, but it doesn’t mean that I have to like it.”
“And that’s good,” she answered. “As long as you understand, I think we’ll be fine.”
They glared at one another for a bit more before she was satisfied that she’d gotten her point across.
“My experts are inside, Officer Noonan?” she asked, pointing at the building before them.
“They most certainly are, Agent Isabel,” he said, practically growling.
She was moving toward the stairs when movement caught her eye. Brenna wasn’t quite sure why it caught her attention, maybe because the white Ford pickup truck was moving far faster through the parking lot of the nursing home than she would have imagined was safe. Before too long, Noonan was looking as well, the sound of the truck’s engine growing louder as it came closer at increasing speed.
“Who the hell is this nut job?” the officer asked, turning in the direction he believed the truck would be coming, raising a hand for the vehicle to slow.
It didn’t. In fact, it started to go faster.
“Officer Noonan,” Brenna warned, as the truck barreled toward them. The police officer was unholstering his gun when the truck jumped the curb, striking the man so hard that he became airborne, bouncing up onto the hood of the truck, shattering the windshield, and sending the police officer’s broken body flying into the lot.
The truck did not slow down in the least. Brenna barely avoided Officer Noonan’s fate, diving out of the way as the truck drove across the walkway, up the concrete steps, and through the front of the nursing home, shattering glass and causing a section of the brick-and-cinder-block entryway to collapse.
Brenna jumped up from where she’d landed, taking out her gun and heading up the stairs.
There was movement from within the car, the passenger door swinging open with a wailing creak.
“Down on your knees,” she screamed.
There were other officers at the car before her, weapons drawn, their bellowing screams for the occupants to get out of the truck filling the air.
Brenna had reached the top of the stairs, her gun still drawn along with those of all the other officers. It looked as though they had the situation under control, and she had started to lower her gun.
When all hell broke lose.
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She had no idea what had caused the situation, bolts of electricity filling the air, seeming to explode outward from inside the Ford’s cab. At first she thought maybe it was the detonation of some explosive device, but where was the explosion?
The bolts of lightning struck each of the police officers, lighting them afire. They screamed as they burned, firing their weapons wildly as if trying to hurt the strange force of nature that was hurting them.
Brenna darted up the rest of the stairs, passing through the twisted framework of the broken window, gun in hand. What looked to be three individuals, one adult and two boys, climbed from the vehicle amidst the screams and fire.
Boy Scouts. They were dressed like Boy Scouts.
She aimed down the barrel of her Glock, searching for the source of the electricity as they awkwardly climbed from the vehicle. There didn’t appear to be anything, and she was just about to scream at them to get down on the ground when they all started to turn in unison toward her.
And then she saw.
Their eyes were glowing like coals in a hot barbecue pit, and that same fiery glow appeared to be coming from somewhere inside their mouths as well.
The source of the electricity.
An unnatural force—a supernatural force—burning inside them.
• • •
The building shook beneath their feet.
“What the hell was that?” John asked, ducking out the door into the corridor.
He walked partway down the hallway, looking for signs of distress, then he heard the sounds of screaming and gunfire. He stopped dead in his tracks.
“What is it?” Theo asked, faithfully by his side, where he always hoped that she would be.
“No idea,” he said.
Griffin and Nicole had joined them.
“Were those gunshots?” Nicole asked.
“Yeah, I think . . .”
Somebody was coming, and the sound of shoes slapping on the linoleum caused John to tense as well as the others.
Before they could react, a woman came around the corner, nearly falling but catching herself as she picked up speed.
It took a moment for John to realize that he knew who this was.
“Brenna?” he called to her. He noticed the gun she was holding in her hand and the absolutely panicked look upon her face.
“Get the hell out of here!” she screamed, waving them back with her weapon. “They’re coming!”
They’re coming.
John hadn’t a clue as to what they meant until the three figures came around the corner, walking in strange, robotic unison.
“Are those Boy Scouts?” he heard Nicole ask, and was about to answer when the three opened their mouths, bolts of crackling electricity erupting to sweep the corridor.
Brenna ducked beneath a jagged arc, plowing into him.
“Don’t know what they are,” she managed, then spun around, aiming her weapon and firing.
She was a pretty good shot, hitting at least two of her targets square in the chest but having little effect other than to cause them to stumble back, before continuing their progress.
“Did those Boy Scouts just shoot electricity out of their mouths?” Nicole asked.
“Go!” John ordered.
Theo didn’t move, standing tensed and watching the three Scouts walking down the hall toward them.
“Theo, c’mon!” John called to her, reaching out to take her arm.
His wife turned quickly toward him, her hood falling away to reveal the effects of a demonic infestation.
“Leave me!” she hissed in a voice comprised of multiple demonic entities. “Get everybody out,” she continued, turning her attention back to the three.
“I’ll take care of them.”
16
Theo had no idea what she was about to be up against.
All she knew was that the demons inside her had immediately reacted to the sight of the three Scouts as they slowly, methodically made their way down the corridor toward her.
She’d never felt such a frenzy before from her demonic inhabitants; certainly, they’d been wild, attempting to gain some semblance of control over her form, but nothing like this.
It was all she could do to keep from screaming, to keep her body from morphing into thousands of horrible shapes and forms.
They all wanted to come out to face these three.
Each and every one of them, and it was excruciating to hold them back.
And then she heard him, a tiny, soft child’s whisper from somewhere within her brain. It was the demon version of Billy Sharp.
She’d never heard the demon spokesman sound this way.
“You have no idea what you’re about to face!” the demon child hissed, his voice absolutely apoplectic.
“So why don’t you tell me,” Theo thought in reply just as the adult Scout opened his mouth and thrust his head forward. Blue fire spewed from his open maw like electrical vomit.
Theo attempted to leap out of the way but wasn’t quite fast enough. Her arm went up to protect her face, and she found herself letting go, allowing a demonic aspect to transform her physical form.
Her arm became an odd ribbed wing, tearing through her favorite hoodie to create a kind of leathery shield between her and the crackling energy.
The demon child, as well as the legion inside her, wailed so loudly that she thought her head might burst.
“Tell me,” she demanded. “What am I dealing with here?”
The two boys were spewing blue bolts of energy now, adding to the explosions attempting to burn her to a cinder. Theo was jumping back, more demonic attributes being allowed to come forward as the three beings continued to advance.
“They are our most hated adversaries,” Billy Sharp hissed. “Just the smell of them . . . the sight of them . . .”
“Who are they?”
She was starting to feel the heat caused by the unusual energy, the batwing that her arm had become blistering.
“Give us control, and you might survive,” Billy demanded.
A demon showed her its talents. Disgusting, but useful.
She let the ability manifest, feeling her jaws begin to shift—the bones to break—to painfully change as spiderlike mandibles exploded from deep within her mouth, a tubelike spinneret snaking up from somewhere deep in her throat.
Lowering her arm shield, she opened her own mouth, but instead of flame, a thick, liquid web like spider’s silk spewed forth. Theo moved her head from side to side, covering the three in her solidifying webbing, covering their faces and mouths, preventing them from emitting their power.
“What are they!” she demanded again, coming forward, continuing to web their thrashing forms. They were trying to use their power, but the silken substance was too thick, blackening and melting but still clinging to their faces. “Tell me!”
Billy Sharp’s childlike voice was hauntingly cold.
“They are the servants of the Voice,” he said. “The bringers of light . . .”
She was close enough now to strike and allowed even more of the demonic beings to come forth. They were insane with rage. Theo cried out as her arms elongated, her fingers distended, and nails like daggers shot from their tips.
“What are you saying?”
“The messengers of the Kingdom, Theodora Knight . . . You are facing the Divine.”
Divine. It could mean so many things, couldn’t it? Theo’s mind raced as she threw herself upon her enemies.
The webbing that she’d spewed had become hard like steel, but her attackers still struggled to be free. She slashed at them, stabbed at them, allowing some of the inhuman savagery that she contained to spill out.
Whatever these three were—Boy Scouts?—the demons hated them even more than they hated her.
They all wanted a pie
ce, each of them begging to be allowed to come forward to ravage the three in any way that they could. Vomit like acid, razor-sharp claws to cut through flesh and bone like tissue paper, multiple mouths eager to taste the flesh of their enemies.
The Divine.
Theo psychically stood back, still maintaining some semblance of control but allowing the demons to do their thing. The level of power that she sensed emanating from the unlikely trio was great, and something deep in her gut was telling her to strike savagely and quickly, or she and everybody else present would be dead very soon.
The adult was the first to escape her webbing. She was stabbing him, a bone-like protrusion having broken through the skin of her wrist acting as her knife, when, with a surge of strength, he ripped through the webbing, tearing it from his body, along with bits of clothing and flesh.
Theo intensified her attack, but it was too late. The Divine being lashed out, swatting her away. Flying through the air and striking the corridor wall, she realized that if she’d been merely human at that point, she would have likely been dead.
Through a blurring haze, she watched the Divine being free itself completely and turn its attention to its brethren, freeing them as well. Getting to her feet, she felt excruciating pain and knew that many bones had been broken. She called upon the demonic once again, telling them to heal her quickly, or they would all be dead.
Billy Sharp was there again, trying to explain to her that these weren’t divine like the beautiful beings that had been prayed to for countless centuries, beatific beings of light adorned in flowing robes, with enormous feathered wings to carry them on their holy missions.
No, these beings were harsh, emotionless, determined.
Relentless.
There was only one purpose, which was the purpose that had been given to them by their most holy God.
They were all free now, eyes blazing with an eerie internal light, liquid fire dribbling over their lips and running down their faces.
Who are these people? she wondered, leaping from the path of multiple blasts of strange, humming energy spewing from their mouths and setting a corner of the nursing-home corridor aflame.
In that moment, she saw something that chilled her to the core of her being, stabbed at the center of her faith. She saw that the holy—the seemingly good—were as cutthroat as the infernal.
Dark Exodus Page 23
