Cast In Blood: Revelations Series Book 1:

by Christine Sutton

  "I gotta remember not to call it that. Polly said Lucy hates it," she whispered under her breath.

  Lenny continued walking, going deeper and deeper into the church offices. She came to Hershel's office door and looked around to see if anyone saw her. There was no one around, but these church members seemed to be really good at sneaking up on people. Also, she had learned that a few of them were evil monsters, so there was that.

  She grabbed the doorknob and twisted gently, letting the door pop open just a bit. She gingerly leaned her head in and spoke as if she was supposed to be there.

  "Father, are you here?"

  No answer.

  With that, she slipped in to the office and closed the door. She would have to work fast so no one would see her.

  I could shift into a mouse or something, she thought, and then quickly dismissed the idea because mice can't open drawers or read. That was one sucky part about shifting: She was bound by the limitations of the form she chose. The cool thing was she also got the strength and power of whatever she shifted into.

  She opened the first desk drawer and looked inside, hoping to find a smoking gun sitting on top waiting for her, but there was nothing but a pack of gum, a comb, and some hand lotion.

  "At least his hands are soft and his breath smells fresh," she whispered.

  In the second drawer, she found some files that seemed to be mostly financial records of donations and some prayer requests. She saw a request form sitting on top of the pile that was from Maggie. She winced as she read it silently.

  Please, pray for my new friend, Lenny. Help her to find peace in this world and to embrace the Heavenly love that Father showers down upon us. Allow her to see that Father is the light of the world and only through Father will we attain our true salvation. Lenny is a lost lamb in a sea of wolves, and I wish only for the salvation of her eternal soul and for her to embrace the inner light that Father brings to all of us. I worry about her.

  Praise Father.

  Lenny felt a lump in the back of her throat as she replaced the paper in the drawer. It wasn't fair that Maggie had died for all of this bullshit. She was a nice kid.

  She wiped at her eyes with Joshua's hand and walked back to the door. There was nothing of value here. As she reached for the knob to leave, she heard voices in the hallway.

  "Shit, shit, shit," she chanted as she tried to figure out what the hell to do if they came in the office.

  As the knob turned and she thought she might have an actual heart attack, she quickly plopped herself down into the chair behind the desk, trying to look natural.

  Celia entered, looking shocked to see anyone in the room. "What the hell are you doing in here?" she whispered in a growl.

  Lenny scoured her brain for a viable excuse, but found nothing.

  "You are supposed to be getting that pig ready for the releasing, not chilling in the pendejo's office. He'll get suspicious, and that pinche zealot Joseph might tattle on you—again."

  Lenny thought she might do a happy dance when she realized she was not actually going to die. Instead, she kept her composure.

  "Where are we doing the releasing?"

  "In the basement, dumbass. The same place we do them all. Are you feeling all right?" Celia asked, looking Lenny's borrowed body up and down. "You're acting muy loco."

  "Oh, yeah. I'm cool. Just tired from all the, uh, gathering and releasing."

  "Okay, then," Celia said as she turned to leave the room. "Freak."

  Lenny followed Celia down the hall to the main waiting area. A man between sixty and seventy sat in a plastic chair with a dirty blanket wrapped around his gaunt shoulders. The poor guy looked as though he had not had a bite to eat in more than a month and a bath was only a very distant memory. Lenny walked up to the man and leaned over, the stench of body odor almost making her lose her lunch.

  "What's your name, Sir?" she asked.

  "Billy. Billy Martin," the man said in a voice roughened by alcohol, smoking, and a life lived in the elements.

  "Like the baseball coach, right?"

  "Yep, that's right, young man." He smiled at her with a mouth full of greenish yellow teeth, and a light in his eyes that had obviously not been there for a while.

  "Well, Mister Billy Martin, how about we get you some food and maybe a nice hot shower?"

  "Oh, that'd be so fine," the old man said, seeming to be on the verge of crying. "That'd be mighty fine."

  "All right then, mijo," Celia interjected. "Let's get you in to meet with Father. He'll get you all set up and settled in."

  Billy rose on shaky legs and followed after the teenaged girl. Lenny brought up the rear, wondering where they were headed. The trio passed the kitchen without slowing down.

  "Can't I have a little bite to eat now? Just a piece of bread, maybe?" Billy asked hopefully.

  Celia ignored his request and kept walking until she came to a door that Lenny had never been through. It was the door to what Hershel and the Faithful called the conference room. It was actually a nursery that was no longer used. This was the place they made all of their plans for God only knew what. Celia lightly knocked on the door three times and waited for a response.

  "Come in," Hershel called out quietly.

  Almost the entire church was out for the evening. Outreach was scheduled from six to eight every night, and everyone had to go and pass out flyers and sandwiches. The Faithful were not bound by that rule because they did a lot of their "outreach" work much later at night.

  Celia entered the room, leaving the two of them out in the hallway. Billy stared longingly in the direction of the kitchen. They didn't have to wait long before Hershel emerged from the room, a thousand dollar smile spread across his face.

  "Thank the Lord! God has seen fit to bring us another lost soul to deliver to salvation. It is my pleasure to meet you, Billy. I'm Hershel, but my flock calls me Father."

  Hershel offered his hand to the homeless man and did not flinch when he took it. He cupped Billy's grimy fingers in his own and shook them warmly.

  "All right then, Father it is." Billy smiled again. "Father, is it too much to ask to get something to eat? I ain't trying to be pushy or beg, it's just that I haven't had a bite in about three days."

  "Of course you can have some food. It is not begging at all. That's what we are all about here, helping our fellow man. Right, Joshua?"

  "Yes, absolutely," Lenny replied.

  "You just come with me and we can get you fed and cleaned up and then get you rested. I'll bet you are ready for a good rest, aren't you? The rest that only salvation can provide," Hershel pontificated as he put an arm around Billy's shoulder and gently eased him down the hall, toward the door to the basement.

  "We going down there?" Billy asked with some trepidation as Hershel opened the door to reveal a darkened set of stairs.

  The dirty man looked down into the dark cavern of the church basement only illuminated by a single forty-watt bulb that Celia had switched on, and turned back to Hershel.

  "I don't wanna go down there. Something ain't right about all this mess. I'll go. I don't need nothing, and I won't tell a soul I was even here, I swear it in Jesus' name."

  "It's too late for that now, Billy," Hershel said, flashing a grin that made Lenny feel dirtier than Billy. "It's time to repent your sins. All of the years you spent defiling the body that God gave you, filling it with alcohol and drugs, ignoring every opportunity for salvation, you get to make good on that now. Don't you understand, Billy? You need to get square with the house before you can be saved. You'll give your life for a greater cause than you could ever imagine. Then you and I will be rewarded in Heaven and all of this mess will be cleared from your soul."

  Billy tried his hardest to pull away, but Celia had a hold on his frail arms. Hershel had a look in his eyes that Lenny could swear was absolute, utter madness. He was gleeful in his proclamation that Billy had to die. Billy had other ideas.

  "Naw, fuck that, preacher man. I ain't gonna be n
o damn sacrifice for your devil cult or whatever you got here. Let go of me, you crazy bitch!"

  "Aw, mijo," Celia said sweetly. "I can't do that. You need to pay for your sins to get salvation. Via con Dios."

  Without further warning, she shoved the old man down the steps leading to the basement. He tumbled head over feet, landing at the bottom with a thud and a loud expulsion of air. Lenny did her best to stifle a gasp. She wanted to rush down to the old bum and see what she could do to help him, call an ambulance, maybe, but she knew that would only lead to her landing in a pile right next to him.

  She was able to look past Celia and Hershel into the basement. What she saw made her want to go just as crazy as Hershel.

  A shadow fell over Billy's body, hovering over the bone that protruded from his right shin. Billy weakly cried out as the shadow surrounded his wound. Based on the man’s ragged breathing and weak cries of pain, Lenny could tell that he was not going to last much longer. At least she hoped he wouldn't last much longer, for his sake. The shadow spread out and enveloped the man, seeming to take some sort of abstract shape. As it covered his face, his body hitched and shuddered with his dying breaths. Lenny fought back tears as she watched an innocent old man die.

  The shadow pulled back like a cobra ready to strike. A large red stone materialized in its makeshift hands. It held the stone up and out toward the corpse. A thread of smoke moved up from the body and danced toward the stone, disappearing slowly into its crimson center. The thread of smoke continued for almost a full minute as Hershel and Celia watched with smiles on their faces. Lenny glanced to her side and felt the urge to throw up when she noticed that Celia was lazily stroking Hershel's erection through his jeans.

  The shadow thing puffed up as the last of the smoke dissipated. Billy was dead. Lenny hoped that the old guy really was going to go to Heaven, but she had serious doubts.

  "I have to get back to my office now," Hershel said, pulling away from Celia. "Can you two get this cleaned up?"

  "Of course," Celia answered with what Lenny thought was a slight hint of irritation.

  "Praise God, another soul is saved." Hershel smiled. "That man has been cleansed and can now sit at the hand of God in paradise."

  "Praise God," Lenny whispered. "And praise to you, Father."

  She knew that she needed to play her part. Even though she felt awful for having led that poor soul to his death, there was no other way. Logically, she knew she had no choice, but her heart broke for Billy Martin.

  Hershel turned and walked away with a renewed spring in his step. It pissed Lenny off that the psycho was so pleased with himself. Was he really that deluded? What did it say about her that she had followed him and even started believing some of his bullshit?

  "Hey, Earth to Josh." Celia snapped her fingers in front of Lenny's face.

  "What?"

  "We need to get down there and get this pile taken care of. Besides, I'm hungry."

  Lenny's stomach lurched, remembering what djinn liked to eat.

  "Yeah, okay. Let's get it done."

  The two walked down the steps toward the broken corpse. Celia squatted down and picked the red stone up from the ground.

  "Put this with the others."

  Lenny took the stone from her. It was warm and heavy. She looked at the dark red gem, about the size of a softball, and swore she could see something moving. Squinting her eyes, she saw a small, swirling cloud of smoke in the center of the stone. Seeming to know that she was looking, the cloud moved to the edge of the stone and formed the face of the dead homeless man. His small, smoky eyes stared into hers pleadingly. It was Billy's soul, trapped in this shiny rock. When she looked around the basement floor, she was stunned to see a pile of similar stones stacked up over four feet tall and at least as wide. There had to be hundreds of them, each one containing a small cloud of smoke.

  All of these murders had happened while she had been upstairs making peanut-fucking-butter sandwiches and singing songs. She felt like throwing up again.

  Lenny placed the stone onto the pile with the others and turned back to Celia. She was sitting on the floor next to the corpse, chewing the flesh from his thin arm as if it were a piece of fried chicken.

  "I have to go," Lenny said, not sure she could do anything but throw up at that point.

  "Aren't you gonna eat?" Celia asked, her mouth covered in blood.

  "Um…" Lenny felt panic setting in before she blurted, "I don't like eating the really dirty ones. I got a whiff of that guy and it made my stomach turn."

  Celia eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then shrugged.

  "Suit yourself." She went back to gnawing on Billy's forearm.

  Lenny decided not to waste any time. She made her way up the stairs and closed the door behind her. As quietly as possible, she took the small plastic door stop from the floor and wedged it under the door. It wouldn't stop Celia from getting out, but it might slow her down. Besides, she looked as though she was enjoying her meal.

  Lenny shuddered and left to see if she could find any more information about what was going on in this church.

  Chapter 28

  The djinn knew exactly when Lucifer’s right-hand bitch teleported that half-breed succubus whore back into the church. So they were going to play it that way. Their persistence wasn't going to gain them anything but pain. They were going to die either way, but now he'd make sure they screamed for the sweet release for a good long time before they went.

  The hassle they'd turned this into was starting to piss him off.

  Hershel was just finishing a discussion with a couple of the kitchen staff when the djinn entered the office. No one could see him, and he could be patient. Sometimes it was fun just to watch the little people do and discuss the things that made them feel so damn important. Humans, as a rule, were obsessed with placing significance on their actions, and they loved to find reasons for their peers to adore them. Like little bugs climbing over one another to escape their demise, these people had no problem turning each other into both the ends and the means.

  Step on heads. Throw the guy next to you under the bus. Take what you need, and throw away the rest.

  Such amusing creatures.

  Their lives were nothing more than a flicker in space and time, the blink of a god's eye, and still they concerned themselves with who said what to whom or what was the current popular consensus on the best way to wear their hair or who could harness the most political power. Even these three people sitting together, discussing the best way to increase their meal output, thought more of themselves because they had special duties, stations that had the potential to affect others.

  "I think we're at a point where we need to be thinking about feeding more than just the homeless," said one of the kitchen workers. "With regular, organized food drives, we could put together care packages for low-income families."

  "We barely have enough to go around as it is," snapped the other. "And we don't have the shelf space or the manpower to store and sort the random items we'd end up with. The monetary donations are really the most efficient way to go. We can reduce portion sizes to increase our service."

  "Well, it would be nice to broaden the menu a little. How many peanut butter sandwiches do we expect these poor people to eat? Yes, it's protein, and the jelly gives them a little fruit, but we could be doing more."

  "Do you know what people usually donate? Vienna sausages and canned spinach."

  "Oh, come on!"

  "Freeze dried potato flakes."

  "Potatoes are healthy."

  "That's not the point. We need foods that stretch, and we need consistency. Can you imagine how the guys in the back of the line would react if the ones in front of them got mashed potatoes and they got left with the spinach?"

  "We're not a restaurant, Jack."

  Hershel sighed, and both the workers went quiet and turned to him. "Are you finished?"

  Neither said another word.

  Hershel clapped his hands with a single, lo
ud smack and rubbed them together. "So, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a little with the care packages, but it's a wonderful idea to consider after we've expanded. For now, we need to think about quantity over quality. If not peanut butter and jelly, it'll be whatever they can dig out of the dumpsters."

  The one worker gave the other a smug look.

  "With that said, we do need to find a way to increase what we have to give. It's really as simple as spreading the peanut butter a little thinner and not worrying about who might have a problem with getting the heel of a loaf," Hershel continued. "Maybe arrange bags with half-sandwiches if need be, or conveniently forget the chips every few loads."

  Neither looked happy with the solution, but they didn't dare challenge their leader. He knew best. The two of them were there to take orders, not command one another.

  "Is there anything else?" Hershel shifted his glance back and forth between them.

  They shook their heads.

  "Then you're dismissed."

  They left quietly, shutting the door behind them.

  Hershel stretched and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired. They all tired so easily, even the half-breeds. They craved rest each day nearly as much as they craved all of those disgusting foods they ate. The djinn smiled at the mental image of Hershel stuffing his face with a greasy hamburger and soggy fries while the bums he'd taken on fought over bread crumbs.

  The man played the part of humble leader well, but that didn't keep him from enjoying the benefits of his position. Sometimes he enjoyed them a little too much. He let the darkest parts of his humanity rule more of his decisions than he'd ever care to admit, and he manipulated his people accordingly. Did he wonder who might be watching over him, judging him, when he loved his congregation a little too much? Did he truly think he was entitled to the children whose innocence he took, or was he in as much denial as half the people who went along with his supposedly divine ordinances?