She took the cigarette from the corner of her mouth and pulled a chair from beneath the desk. “All right then, Remy. Please, sit down,” she said, motioning to the chair as she plunked down on the queen-sized bed that was covered with a wrinkled floral bedspread.
“What about my little girl?”
Remy leaned forward in the chair and looked her straight in the eyes.
“What can you tell me about the Church of His Holy Abundance?”
She stared, slowly bringing the cigarette back up to her mouth. “Nothing,” she said with a shake of her head. “Never heard of it.”
“Are you sure?” Remy prodded. “Perhaps your husband mentioned it in passing?”
She shook her head again, releasing a choking cloud of smoke. “No, nothing,” she said, squinting through the noxious fumes that surrounded her head. “Why? What’s this all about Mr. . Remy?”
Remy thought for a moment. “I’ve been doing some poking into your past,” he said finally.
She stared intensely, slowly bringing the cigarette back up to her eager mouth. “My past?” she questioned.
“The Church of Dagon,” Remy said. “I know about what happened at the Church of Dagon.”
“Fucking shit,” she hissed, bouncing off the bed and practically hurling herself toward the dresser where an ashtray waited. “I–I can’t fucking believe this,” she stammered, stamping out her smoke.
“There was a therapy assistant at Franciscan Children’s who had apparently befriended your husband and daughter. I talked with him briefly at the hospital, but when I went to his home to question him further, I discovered he had been murdered.”
“Murdered?” she repeated with a gasp, both trembling hands going to her mouth as her eyes widened. “It’s not Frank, is it? Please, tell me it’s not fucking Frank.”
“I’m sorry,” Remy said quietly.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she repeated, grabbing her purse from the dresser and pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Immediately, she lit up.
“Seems there’s some kind of connection between the church Frank belonged to and the one you and your husband. .”
“That son of a bitch,” she snarled. “I always knew he hadn’t given up the old beliefs, even though he swore he had.”
She started to pace, puffing on the cigarette as if she would die if she didn’t.
“I thought he might’ve been slipping when he lost his job, and when we first learned how sick Zoe was, but he promised me it wasn’t true. He knew how I felt about those. . those freaks.”
Remy stared and listened.
“That’s what they were,” she said to him forcefully. “Wanting to use my baby to stick some sort of. . spirit inside her and. .”
She threw her hands in the air in frustration.
“We were young and fucking stupid; what can I say,” she explained. Her back was to him now as she stood in front of the double windows, their shades drawn to keep out the sun, and any nosy motel residents.
“So you think he might have gone back to his old beliefs?” Remy asked.
She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue and flicked it away. “Yeah, he could have, especially if Frank was a member. I was sort of wondering where those two would go off to together sometimes. Seriously, with the way things were going, I don’t think it would’ve taken much to push him back to the old ways.”
A sudden knock at the door startled them, and Deryn looked at him. “It’s housekeeping,” she said, heading for the door. “I called for more toilet tissue just before you came.”
The Seraphim inside Remy awakened in an instant, aroused by something familiar, and Remy gasped, fighting the nearly overwhelming power that struggled to manifest as Deryn opened the door.
It wasn’t housekeeping. Not unless they traveled in packs and stank of violence, desperation, and decay.
And not unless they were all missing their souls.
CHAPTER TEN
The pack of soulless beings spilled into the motel room, strangely silent in their attack.
Remy barely had time to react before they had Deryn on the floor, holding her down as one pulled plastic ties from a pocket and bound her hands behind her back, and another drew a hood over her head.
Remy threw himself in the fray, and they swarmed him like ants on a piece of bread. They drove him to the floor, but still he fought.
The Seraphim screeched and wailed to be unleashed, and this time Remy allowed his guard to drop, the essence of Heaven surging to the surface, only to be pushed away. It struggled wildly, but something was preventing its manifestation.
The soulless beings kicked and punched Remy mercilessly, driving him back to the floor every time he tried to stand. Through bleary eyes, he watched as Deryn was dragged from the room.
And then he saw a gray-haired man, standing just inside the door, smiling as he watched the ferocious beating.
The assault was relentless, and as they laid their hands upon him again and again, he caught sight of the mark they wore, his eyes taking in brief glimpses of a pair of lips caught in a flash of exposed flesh.
“Enough,” a voice that sounded a million miles away called out, and the soulless ceased their abuse.
Remy managed to push himself up onto his knees, swaying as the cheap motel room’s floor seemed to move beneath him. Through his unswollen eye, he looked into the barrel of a pistol aimed at his forehead.
The gray-haired man stared down its length, his thumb cocking back the hammer. Remy could sense—could smell—that this one’s soul had been removed as well, but there was something about him, in his cold, unemotional stare, almost as if the absence of God’s greatest gift were nothing important.
Maybe he had learned to live without a soul long before it had been taken.
Remy watched the man’s finger begin to twitch upon the trigger, and summoned the strength to react. He reached up, grabbing hold of the barrel, and twisted it away just as the weapon discharged.
“Shit,” the man cursed, lashing out at him with his foot and kicking Remy back to the floor. He chambered another round and aimed at Remy’s face.
He was about to fire when a roar filled the room.
It was coming from outside, growing louder by the second, and giving Remy just enough of a distraction.
He rolled onto his belly as the sound outside the motel grew to a nearly deafening crescendo, his eyes drawn to the thick curtains that had been pulled across the large motel windows.
The window exploded in a cacophony of shattered glass and cinder block, as a four-wheel drive crashed through the wall.
The soulless screamed as they were scattered, the leader with his gun falling backward as shards of glass and broken cement blanketed the room.
A cloud of dust and dirt billowed through the air as the vehicle’s doors opened and two people emerged.
Remy reached out to the small desk against the opposite wall, trying to pull himself to his feet. He watched in disbelief as a man and woman, exhibiting strength not usually attributed to humans, made short work of the soulless.
Limbs were broken and skulls shattered as the pair waded into the room, administering violence with cold efficiency.
Remy saw movement from the corner of his eye, catching sight of the gray-haired leader bolting from the room. He tried to pursue him, but his legs had become like rubber, and he stumbled forward, falling against the bed.
He quickly turned, trying to stay upright as the room spun, and came face-to-face with one of the pair. It was the man, his face large and square, adorned with a mustache and goatee, his hair shoulder length, the top a spiky mullet. Their eyes locked, and then the man drew back, driving a fist like a wrecking ball into Remy’s face.
He fell back, fighting to remain conscious. He could feel himself being picked up, then tossed like a bag of dirty laundry into the back of the truck
He could hear sirens in the distance as he felt the truck back up.
Banshee wails that too
k him by the hand and showed him the way to the land of unconsciousness.
Carl Saylor had always thought of himself as a failure.
But as he drove his car up the winding dirt road, with little Zoe sitting in the seat beside him, he believed that now—finally—that was all about to change.
He’d never really been much good at anything. He was the middle child of three; his brother had been great in sports, and his sister had been top of her class in high school and college. Carl never really had much luck with sports, and school, no matter how hard he applied himself, was always just too damn difficult. Even after school, his failures had continued as he moved from one low-paying job to another.
From an early age he knew where his path would take him.
Nowhere.
He stopped the car and peered through the windshield at a rusted yellow gate. He’d followed the directions Frank had given him, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about a gate, and now Carl wondered if he shouldn’t have taken that right about two miles back.
“Where are we, Daddy?” Zoe asked. She was rocking back and forth. “Where are we, Daddy? Where are we, Daddy?” she repeated again and again, not waiting for his answer.
“We’re looking for that special place Frank told us about, remember?” Carl said, reaching across the seat to squeeze her bare knee.
“Frank’s dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “Dead. Dead. Dead.”
“Don’t say that, honey,” he scolded. “It’s not nice.”
“It’s not nice,” she repeated, rocking faster. “It’s not nice Frank’s dead.”
Carl truly believed Frank had saved his life, removing him from the path of failure and putting him on the highway to redemption.
He’d thought that about Deryn too, at first. She’d seemed an awful lot like him.
He glanced over at his little girl, mesmerized by her rocking. He could see his ex in the shape of her face, in the blue of her eyes.
Deryn was the first to hear about the church. Carl had never been one for religion, but he loved Deryn as much as he loved anything, and he went along to one of the meetings just to keep her happy.
The Church of Dagon had welcomed them with open arms, giving them a place to stay when they’d had no other, and even inviting them for a special visit with the church’s founder, Pastor Zachariah.
And suddenly their lives were changed. They were no longer failures. They were chosen, Pastor Zachariah had told them. The pastor’s words were like a magic potion, and Carl and Deryn had thrown themselves into the church, body and soul, waiting for the time when they would be able to fulfill their special purpose.
Then Deryn became pregnant. All the plans began to fall into place, and their future never seemed clearer.
The pastor told them their baby would be the vessel for their god. . Dagon. And the world would be changed forever.
Carl opened the door, letting a rush of moist, West Virginia heat into the coolness of the air-conditioned car.
“Stay right there,” he told his daughter as he exited. She continued to rock to some silent tune that only she could hear.
He slammed the door closed and walked around the car, standing before the metal gate, craning his neck to see what lay beyond. It appeared to be more of the same, but he didn’t want to believe he was lost.
Not again.
The closer it had come to the time for the ritual, the more doubt had filled Carl’s mind. He’d known it was selfish, but he didn’t want a god to live inside his baby. Carl wanted his baby to belong to him, and to Deryn, not to the church. . not to the world.
And that was when he had taken a walk down the road to failure again, placing a series of phone calls to various state and federal agencies, suggesting wrongdoing at the isolated church compound.
He’d believed his attempts to rouse the suspicions of the authorities had failed as the night the god Dagon was to return to the world was upon them. All the church was to play a part in the ancient ritual, sacrificing their lives for the good of the world, for the good of their god.
Their lives would reach to the void, punching through the barrier that kept the Lord of Abundance separated from this reality.
The ritual had been well under way, the church brothers and sisters in the throes of death, when the authorities laid siege to the compound.
Carl hadn’t taken his own poison as his wife lay there, waiting for the ritual to be completed and the god to take possession of the child—their child—growing in her belly. As the officials poured into the church, weapons drawn, he had looked into Pastor Zachariah’s eyes and realized the holy man knew he was responsible.
The pastor had run, using the confusion and clouds of tear gas to escape prosecution.
Carl, Deryn, and the baby had been the only survivors, and Carl had believed he was the luckiest man alive.
But he’d been wrong.
Because of his betrayal, he was back on the path of failure, and things had gone from bad to worse.
Carl shook his head and returned to the car.
“C’mon, hon,” he said, opening the passenger door and unbuckling Zoe’s seat belt. “We’re gonna go for a little walk and see what’s up this road.”
The child’s hands were flailing. It had been quite a while since she’d last held a crayon.
“I’ll get you some paper in a little while,” he told her, taking one of her hands in his and leading her toward the rusted gate. Carl picked the child up and placed her on the other side, climbing beneath the metal obstruction to join her.
His life after the Church of Dagon had been exciting at first, as they were interviewed by the newspapers and television, but it seemed like no time at all before things had turned to misery. It had taken Deryn some time to get over their no longer having a special purpose, other than to be mother and father to their new baby.
She had eventually accepted that, but doubt ate at Carl every day. He had thought the move to Florida would help, but a change in temperature wasn’t enough to convince him that what he had done was the right thing.
Zoe’s being diagnosed with autism and his and Deryn’s splitting up were punishment for what he had done, for allowing his selfishness to prevent the world from seeing something special.
But then he had met Frank and learned that the man’s place of worship, the Church of His Holy Abundance, was an offshoot of the Church of Dagon. It was an opportunity for Carl to make amends.
“Let’s go up here,” he told his daughter, leading her up the rock and dirt path.
Frank had seen Zoe’s drawings and taken them as a sign that Carl and his child had been delivered to him, that he would be the messenger, the one to return them to their god.
Carl had followed the man’s directions to the West Virginia compound of the Church of His Holy Abundance to a tee, or at least believed he had, but now he was beginning to think that maybe he was, as he had been for so very long now. .
Lost.
Rounding the corner, he saw that the rocky path continued.
Maybe a little bit farther, he thought, tugging on Zoe’s hand. The child was bent over, her index finger moving in the dirt. As she drew, she made strange, explosive sounds, almost as if she were imitating gunshots.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Why are you making those sounds?”
And as if on cue, the men with guns emerged from the high underbrush. There were six of them, dressed in military fatigues.
“You are trespassing on private property,” one of them bellowed, aiming down the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle.
Carl immediately let go of his child’s hand and put his own up.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes darting from one armed man to the next. “I didn’t know. . I’m looking for a church and I think I’m lost.”
“What kind of church?” the man asked, still staring down the length of his weapon.
“The Church—the Church of His Holy Abundance,” Carl stammered. “I used to be a member—a lo
ng time ago. I want them to take me back—and to forgive me for what I did.”
Carl was babbling, his voice quivering with fear and emotion.
The man who questioned him lowered his gun.
“You used to be a parishioner?” he asked.
Carl nodded. “When it was the Church of Dagon.”
The mention of the old church got an immediate reaction.
“Lower your weapons,” the man said, and the others did as they were told.
“Do you know of the church?” Carl asked nervously. “Is it close by?” His arms were starting to ache, so he cautiously lowered them.
A phone began to chirp. The man reached down to a pocket on the leg of his pants, retrieved the phone, and brought it to his mouth.
“Go ahead, base,” he said.
“What’s the problem up there?” a voice asked.
“Seems we have a lost sheep that has returned to the flock,” the man said.
There was a pause. “A lost sheep, you say?” the voice asked finally. “Ask him his name.”
“What’s your name, sheep?” the man asked. He held out the phone.
“Carl. Carl Saylor.”
The man brought the phone to his mouth again. “Did you get that?”
“I did,” said the voice on the other end. “The Judas has come home.”
The other men instantly raised their weapons, hate suddenly evident in their eyes.
“The Judas,” the man with the phone said, and Carl thought there was a very good chance he was about to be killed.
But the voice from the phone spoke again.
“Bring the Judas to the compound,” it said.
And Carl and his daughter were escorted up the road at gunpoint, but he was exactly where he wanted to be.
Lost, but now found.
The sun was going down, and the tide was rolling in.
Remy reclined in his beach chair; his entire body hurt.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
He turned his head to see Madeline sitting there beside him, her silly beach hat still adorning her lovely head.
“I think I got my ass kicked pretty good,” he said. Even talking hurt him. His jaw throbbed painfully with the beat of his heart, and the muscles in his neck and stomach were aching with even the thought of movement.
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