by Harley James
To make matters worse, they’d found Mason yesterday—his dead body draped over a light post, eyes gouged and an upside down cross carved on his chest and abdomen. Jessie hadn’t even cried as Nate and Dorian took his body down and brought it back to the club so they could prepare him for burial.
There’d be time for grieving later. Hopefully.
She rubbed her eyes as she came around the corner that led to the dance floor. Nate glanced over from the bar and smiled. She quickly looked away before those curving lips drew her like a chocolate milkshake to a pre-menstrual, test-cramming law student. He was standing next to Katherine, Spencer, and a priest with steel gray hair—short on the sides and long on top—wearing the typical short-sleeved clerical shirt and collar, but with pumpkin-orange-colored denim jeans. This had to be Father Angus O’Flannery, whom Nate had mentioned yesterday. He’d said Angus wasn’t your run-of-the-mill priest, but hadn’t commented on the colorful tattoo sleeves on the priest’s arms. Wow. He didn’t look like any priest she’d ever seen. And she’d seen more than her fair share of them after her post-rehab mother had found Jesus.
Jessie prematurely ended her yawn when she caught Nate’s raised eyebrow. Hell’s bells. She didn’t want him to know how bone-weary she was. That arching, sexy dark eyebrow meant he was going to try to hyper-supervise her again.
Screw that. She needed five minutes of autonomy.
Just five minutes.
She made a bee-line to the dozens of cots where injured humans of all ages rested in Mirage’s makeshift field hospital on the dance floor. The Guardians had begun dialing down the intensity of their city-wide lockdown during daylight hours to preserve their strength. The citizens who ventured out of their homes to assess the ‘earthquake’ damage to their city were calm. Watching them interact on the streets, joking and unruffled amid so much destruction, Jessie had accused Nate of pushing out a Xanax-like compulsion. Remember who started this, Jessie, he’d answered.
Yeah, demons that Uncle Mason had released. Like she could forget.
There was still no power and no cell service, though, so without technology, there could be no organized recovery efforts or wide-spread communications. And Asmodeus’s force field was still at full capacity, keeping citizens in and, according to Katherine and Spencer who’d managed to slip past the force field by streaming directly into the sanctorum, keeping government and military rescue groups out. Apparently the country was in a state of widespread panic over what was happening in the Twin Cities metro. The complete opposite of the serenity under the dome.
Jessie bent down to feel the forehead of a gray-faced, middle aged woman when Jaws burst through the front doors carrying a dark-haired girl. “Katherine, hurry!”
Jessie ran to where Stark spread a blanket on the floor so Jaws could lay the child upon it. It was hard to tell how old she was with her long, coltish legs and knobby knees peeking from torn, purple leggings, but Jessie would guess around nine or ten. She was crying, blood running from the insides and corners of her eyes. “I found her seizing by the baker’s shop down the block. She was alone,” Jaws explained.
Katherine sank to her knees beside the girl, her expression grave when the child gnashed her teeth at her, then began to thrash.
“Give me the relic!” The deep, rasping voice was anything but childlike, raising the flesh on the back of Jessie’s neck. The bitter and sweet scent characteristic of the possessed wafted from the girl’s waxen skin. Nate and Dorian held her down while the orange-clad, tattooed priest withdrew a crucifix from his shirt pocket and placed it under one of his hands against the child’s torso. She roared in a terrifying bass that rattled the club chandeliers Dorian had restored. Katherine added her hands to the girl’s trunk while the priest started praying in Latin. Jessie could feel the power of the old words as his voice swelled.
Katherine’s face grayed, her shoulders bowing under the weight of the battle for the child’s soul. “J-Jane. Her name…it’s Jane. Pray for her, this demon is particularly…robust,” she gasped. Jessie had watched Katherine wage this war for souls dozens of times since Halloween night, helpless to do anything but hope that the Guardian would be able to withstand the physical and mental cost.
The girl bucked and screamed and gnashed her teeth. Jaws and Stark joined Nate and Dorian in restraining her. Jessie knelt behind Nate, unable to tear her gaze from the hatred pouring out of the girl’s eyes, spittle dotting her flawless skin, her face contorted with rage. Jessie leaned forward to whisper. “What can I do?”
Nate turned his face to the side, his profile hard. “Fetch the chrism oil.”
Jessie’s stomach churned as she skirted the cots and ran behind the bar. The bottles sitting on the re-hung shelves had changed from liquor containers to vessels of holy water and anointing oils that they’d amassed after raiding the Basilica two days ago. Consecrated by the bishop on Holy Thursday, chrism oil burned and weakened demons even more substantially than holy water. And if thrown on a demon’s shadow form as it exited its human vessel, chrism oil would exterminate the demon forever. Powerful stuff, but it had to be done just right.
Jessie’s hand closed around one of the pewter bottles inscribed OI—oleum infirmorum, oil of the sick—and hurried back, amid a growing wind that picked up loose papers and swirled her hair about her head. The child’s back bowed up as though rammed with enormous force from below, each arm and leg restrained by an adult, her hands and feet quaking, her head thrashing from side to side uncontrollably.
Katherine and the priest’s lips moved with the exorcism incantation, the ancient language filling the room, drawing more and ever-louder groans and hisses from the child interspersed with words from a tongue Jessie had never heard, but filled her with dread.
Suddenly the walls of the nightclub trembled as though assaulted from an enemy outside. “Nate!”
He looked at her, unruffled. “Stay calm, Angel. The wards will be renewed if you can run a thin line of that chrism oil in front of all the doors. But don’t use it all. We’ll need some for this bastard.”
Drizzle the oil. That she could do. She ran from door to door, leaving a fine stream of the chrism oil that smelled like fresh balsam. Nate took both of the girl’s legs when Jaws ran ahead of Jessie, pulling the iron grills across the doors as an extra precaution from whatever was trying to get in.
“I’m slipping!” Stark’s face reddened with the effort to hold down one of the girl’s arms. Nate tried to help, but if he let go of the child’s legs someone would surely get killed. A steel beam was bending slowly down a post, but Nate was obviously having trouble focusing his energy on two things at once. A primal alarm fired in Jessie’s brain. Sweet Jesus, she didn’t want to touch the girl in the state she was in, but she lunged toward Stark anyway to add her weight onto the child’s wildly jerking arm.
The girl started screaming, her voice morphing from child-like to diabolical and back again as the demon struggled to maintain possession of its vessel. It was awful—so terribly, terribly wrong—Jessie couldn’t halt the tears that flooded her eyes and fell upon the child. What was the demon doing to her mind? To her soul? Would she even be okay if they managed to release her?
What if she were my daughter?
Fire slid sideways through her. Filling her heart. Spilling into her eyes. Pouring liquid heat into her hands.
Too much to hold back.
Too much.
She leaned down, quivering with rage, to glare into the girl’s eyes which flickered black to baby blue to black. “Get out of her, you damned, hateful son of a bitch!”
“Jessie, no!”
She heard Nate’s rebuke in spite of the inhuman shriek that surged through the club like a shock wave. She twisted instinctively to shield her nearest ear, her hand slipping off Jane’s arm. The child’s fingernails gouged a streak across Jessie’s wrist, spurting blood. The girl laughed and snapped her jaws near Jessie’s torn flesh.
Jessie tumbled back on her butt, scooting away, her
anger dying, leaving her spent and shaken as Katherine and the priest’s exorcism rite continued. Feeling Nate’s gaze from his position at Jane’s legs, Jessie forced herself to meet it, steeling herself for his fury.
His eyes were piercing, but free of rancor. “To demons, human anger is like mainlining heroin. It feeds their trip and powers them up. Jane needs calm and every other warm, positive feeling you can rally.”
She nodded, scrambling on all fours to Stark’s side. Katherine’s neck arched back, teeth gritted, her form glowing and then fading. Jessie could feel the damage to the Guardian’s psyche, like lashes from a flogger’s whip, reaching far into the shadows where the proud, private woman buried her pain. It was written on her face. Nate must have seen it, too.
“That’s enough, Katherine.”
“No! We almost…have him!” she gasped.
“The chrism oil!” The priest lifted one hand off the child’s torso to point behind Jessie before his voice continued the incantation.
“Get ready, Jess.”
She locked eyes with Nate, the pewter bottle cool in her hands, and her heart tilted. Devastation and horror all around, but he was her rock. Steady as the land he could marshal. As full of stories and knowledge and treasure as any piece of earth that could be mined by the discerning human spirit.
She loved him.
This man who was putting everything into this fight for a child’s soul. Vignettes of the last two months—warm, erotic, sweet, humorous, tender, explosive—flashed before her, a shuffling deck of images in the hands of a master dealer.
“I love you,” she mouthed, staring into his beautiful eyes, enunciating each word so there’d be no misunderstanding.
He understood.
His eyes fired, lit with passion and something more. Something enduring. And her future was forged.
Whatever that looked like.
Chapter 32
Nate had never, in all his years as a human or a Guardian, felt a look as potent—as profound—as the one Jessie had just given him.
He was using all his strength to bear down on a fragile human child, who bucked and screeched beneath him, but all he wanted to do was enfold Jessie against his chest and bind her to him in the ritual that would make them one for all eternity.
Her lips had formed words of love. Unashamed. Unafraid. Unequivocal.
He’d never been more elated, nor more terrified, than this moment.
The demon inside the child—Asmodeus, he was certain—had witnessed it.
Alexios had told him this morning that even though archdemons didn’t require human hosts they still could possess a human if they so desired.
The results of which were always unspeakably vile.
Indeed.
Asmodeus roared inside the child, the power of his evil so mighty he was able to slam furniture, including the cots of the injured, into walls. Nate’s muscles strained against the now bleeding flesh of the girl. He couldn’t think of the damage he was inflicting on the child. Little Jane wouldn’t survive much longer as the Hell Prince’s vessel. He looked at Katherine and Father Angus. “Hurry!”
Jessie stood, the chrism oil bottle steady in her hand.
A terrible feeling rushed through him.
“…qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem!” The priest shouted the final words of the exorcism rite. The child opened her mouth in a bone-chilling scream. Her body convulsed, spewing Asmodeus’s blood-red colloidal form out of her mouth, nose, and ears. The archdemon launched from Jane’s body, swirling like boiling, molecularlized smoke three stories above the dance floor before shooting straight down again.
“Jessie!” Nate lunged, then swiveled as he fell, shifting Jessie on top of him, absorbing the crush of the hardwood floor. The red substance zinged past them, leaving the thick odor of black licorice. “Rosaries repel possession, get yours out, then get to the injured!”
They ran in a crouch to the bar where the extra bottles of holy water and chrism oil lined up like IEDs. He grabbed three off the self, tossed one to Jessie, then hustled to the pileup of cots and bodies against the west wall. Jessie pulled her rosary necklace out from under her t-shirt while she ran. Her eyes were fearful, but controlled. “It’s him, isn’t it? Asmodeus?”
Nate nodded, calling upon the floor to slide three more of the injured to where he and Jessie stood shoulder to shoulder.
“I thought you said he took his own form instead of having to possess a human.”
“He can do either.” He met her shell-shocked expression with what he hoped was a confidence-boosting smile, then turned to the priest. “Father Angus!”
The priest caught the bottle of chrism oil, removed the stopper, and flung it at Asmodeus’s smoke when it shot straight for him. The anointed emulsion punched the colloidal substance like a frozen turkey hitting a pot of boiling oil. Tongues of flame leapt from the red smoke, a bray so high-pitched it shattered the high-tech windows of Nate’s loft, but not the wall panel. Asmodeus was trapped since the club had no external windows besides the front door.
Another plus to operating a bar, Nate thought darkly.
Jaws pulled Jane’s limp body to the east side of the building where Dorian guarded another injured group. When the red smoke shrieked again, Jessie paled and clutched her ears. Her gaze followed the red smoke’s increasingly erratic path as it was repeatedly repelled by rosaries. “Where’s your rosary?” she asked, lowering her hands from her ears.
“Guardians are incapable of being possessed.” As far as he knew, anyway.
“Well, can’t he just reform as himself?”
“He left his corporeal form somewhere when he decided to take Jane’s body. He can’t just reshape organically from nothing but his smoke. He either needs to find a human vessel, or his own form.”
The smoke twisted into a tall, tight funnel, creating a moving wind tunnel, decimating the salt lines, leaving the exits vulnerable. Blast!
I’ll reform the salt lines when the smoke moves on, Dorian said. Nate nodded from his position.
Jessie grasped Nate’s hand. “Can we lead it to a Devil’s Trap?”
He shook his head. “Devil’s Traps only immobilize demons when they’re using a human meatsuit. They don’t work on their shade forms.”
“Will it work on his true form?”
Nate didn’t know. Unfortunately, this was uncharted territory for him.
“Alexios, I think I might be amenable to suggestions right now.”
He could feel the ancient Guardian struggle to make the connection, but at that moment, Katherine yelled out for Stark, who was attending one of the sick. Nate hurled his bottle of holy water at the roiling red smoke as it sliced through the air, knocking Katherine down on its way toward her human friend. The smoke split and fractured widely around the bottle, the arcing water spraying harmlessly in the air until gravity took over, pulling the bottle down to land with an empty clang.
“No!” Katherine yelled as the smoke coalesced at Stark’s mouth, violently funneling down his throat. Father Angus ran to Stark and pressed his crucifix to his forehead. Nate heard the singe, then Stark’s arm shot out, flinging the priest thirty feet across the dance floor where he landed in a heap by the bar. Nate grabbed Jessie’s arm when she lunged.
“He’s bleeding!” she yelled.
“As will you, if we don’t deal with the problem first.”
Katherine stood before Stark’s possessed form, the Latin rite of exorcism begun anew. Stark laughed at her efforts. “You blazing idiots. It’s your human emotions—your connections—that make you so weak. You know that, right?” His eyes swept over Nate leaving him with a sense of rage. He inhaled slowly. It was a demon trick. Trying to pull out the worst in you. It’s what they wanted.
“And because that’s the case, I know you won’t hurt one little hair on my vessel’s Lucifer-like head.” Stark turned to look at Katherine. “Isn’t that right, boss?”
What were the best options to k
ill Asmodeus? Think fast. Katherine was fuming at his comparison of Stark’s looks to Lucifer’s, and he couldn’t even use telepathy to talk her down from doing something stupid since the Hell Prince had obviously blocked their telepathy once again.
Nate could implode this whole place. That might put Asmodeus out of commission for a while so they had more time to regroup. Unfortunately, he wasn’t strong enough to stream everyone—the healthy and injured—out of here at once. Think, Temple. Shit. Katherine was weak from her efforts to exorcise Jane, and Dorian, Cruz, and Jaws were busy guarding the sick.
Stark stepped toward Jessie and an unfamiliar fear pounded through Nate’s veins. He stepped in front of her, pressing a hand back against her belly to feel her warmth against his palm.
“I can hear your heart going pitter pat, Guardian. You like this human woman so much that mayhap you’ll trade your relic for something of hers. Maybe that nice elderly couple, eh?”
Nate’s heart sank as he felt Jessie’s comprehension dawn.
“Oh my God. You have my grandparents! Let them go, please.” Jessie’s form was rigid beneath his fingertips.
He should have guessed the Prince would try to barter this way. “Jess, he’s a demon. Demons lie, all the time.”
Turning his full attention to Jessie, Stark clasped his hands in front of him, solemnly. Which was total bullshit. “Your grandparents are safe, Jessica. They will be returned to you, unharmed, the moment your fly-by-night boyfriend turns over the nice little trinket he keeps downstairs.” The demon turned to face Nate and made a sad face. “Unless your hunky boyfriend doesn’t consider two human lives—the two most important people in your world—as important as a man-made object that only has significance because a bunch of senile scholars decided it would be fun to make up their own salvation story and build-in a scavenger hunt for shits and giggles. Give me a fuckin’ break.”
Jessie gasped. Nate stepped sideways to grab her by the shoulders. “Demons lie, Jess. They always lie.”
