by P. K. Tyler
Father Losado had promised to teach him, to guide him, but Nik hadn't done well under the Order's strict rules.
He remembered the rooms with drawings of Jesus at the last supper, and snippets of the Old Order's version of the Crucifixion but never understood their importance. The rooms beyond held rusted instruments fit for torture chambers, holy relics, and thousands of scripts written by men of the Old Order over generations. They said Jesus himself wrote the first one upon his resurrection. He gave this knowledge and, legend had it, a weapon that could destroy even the most powerful demon, to his mother and Mary Magdalene. Gruesome stories of battles against possessed men and women and even children had scared Nik away before he learned much more.
Sister Francis Marie led him past them all to the end of the hall. They entered a small lounge decorated with leather furniture and ancient books. For a moment, Nik wondered how they carried things like this down those narrow stairs before the nun cut off his thoughts.
"Always fighting someone, aren't you Nikolai?” she chuckled. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”
"Nothing serious, just stopped by to see if any of the good Fathers would like to join a game of pick-up in the park." Nik sat on the plush couch.
She smiled and her face softened, offering comfort Nik found himself desperately needing. "You need more rest, a lot more. You should stay here in the cloisters for a while, let us take care of you. We have guest rooms. You know, you don’t have to do everything alone."
“I don’t do everything alone, and I'm thinking not so much with the slumber party. Thanks, though."
She chuckled. "You always were difficult."
"Born and Bred." Nik leaned against the chair and ran a hand through his hair.
“Can I at least get you some tea?”
"No coffee?"
"Ever hear the adage about beggars and choosers?”
Nik had always liked this nun.
She sat next to him, her skirts bundling around her. Finally she looked him over from head to toe. "Definitely more rest, and you need to eat better. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else." She placed a warm hand on Nik's shoulder. "You are needed, even though you're never thanked. The Order is here to serve you, you may not realize it yet, but you are the one in charge."
"I'm doing just fine on my own."
"Yes, I can see that.” She let out a heavy sigh. “It's a dangerous job. You've been called by God and Sin Eaters are a dying breed. You're one of the very few left, Nik, if not the only one."
"You found more people like me?"
She hesitated only briefly. "No, not since Father Losado brought you here when you were young. No others have passed the tests and now fewer and fewer come to learn."
She stood and pierced him with a look that felt like a ruler on the back of his hand. Women in black had always intimidated him. "Father Losado is expecting you in the chapel. The dead souls are rising and you’re the only one who can stop them. But looking at you now, I doubt you'll survive another battle with one of them."
“Dead souls?” Sweat trickled down Nik’s back. Shit just got real.
Chapter Six
Nik entered the ancient underground chapel of the Old Order. The wide, deep room was twice as tall as any of the other rooms in the bunker-like cloisters. Thick, earthen-toned tapestries hung on otherwise bare, stone walls. The back wall contained a larger than life Jesus on the cross with Judas at his feet. For the first time in his life, Nik saw the betrayer portrayed as triumphant and malicious, and not the least bit contrite.
Three tables formed a U-shape in the center of the room, and Father Losado sat in a high, plush chair in the center. High-backed wooden chairs had been lined up all along the outside of the table, forming a larger U-shaped row. Firelight from low-hanging chandeliers and braziers on the walls were the only source of light in the windowless room. The Old Order was more superstitious than old wives. Nik didn't believe half of what they said, mostly because they believed every word of it, no matter how ridiculous. Anyone who believed in absolutes didn't sit well with him. Still, they did know a few things. More than Nik, anyway. The Old Order was more superstitious than old wives.
Father Losado gestured to a chair across from himself, and Nik pulled it out and sat. He had to look up to see the priest, a position of subservience he didn't like one bit.
"I will be brief, Nikolai. I know patience is a virtue of which you are not possessed." He smiled briefly, genuinely warm, but his expression sobered as he began his tale. "Ancient texts have told us much about Sin Eaters. Great battles have been waged over the Earth since time began, battles between creatures of God and those from Hell."
"Father, I have a GED and $35 in my bank account, I'm really not here for a theology seminar. If there's something I need to know to kill these things, just tell me."
The priest gave a heavy sigh and crossed his hands in his lap. "To truly understand what you do, you must first understand why it is necessary. When you left us, you were only just beginning to understand the truth of your long history. Sin Eaters have been in this world since Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, a tool of God to maintain the balance in a world where evil ran free.
"Please, please don't tell me the Devil killed the dinosaurs."
"Nikolai, if you don't take this seriously, you are going to die. You and everyone you love. Evil has no remorse, no mercy. You've been fighting in the dark, despite our attempts to train you, for long enough, but now you must pay attention."
Nik leaned back in his seat and waved for Father Losado to continue, as if giving a subject permission to approach the crown.
"In the days before Jesus Christ, priests did the best they could to exorcise demons. But, more often than not, they were unable to. Eventually, the possessed would be lost to the demon within. When that happened, the only option was to destroy the host body.”
Nik leaned forward, anxious at what Father Losado was implying. “You mean they killed people?”
The priest shook his head. “No, Nik, they killed demons. Once the host’s soul has been completely consumed by a demon, that person no longer exists.”
“So what does that have to do with Jesus? Or me for that matter?”
“God sent his only son to the world of man to save mankind from Sin. Jesus exorcised the demons and even taught his disciples to do the same.
"However, once exorcised by anyone other than a Sin Eater, demons simply recuperate their strength and return. We priests send as many back to hell as we can, but only a Sin Eater can truly kill a demon.
“Christ was alone in the war and there were none trained in the ways of the Sin Eater. He fought a losing battle. Desperate to find a better solution, he asked his most trusted friends, his disciples, to find a method to destroy demons permanently. He tried to close the Gates of Hell themselves.
"Judas Escariot offered an answer. He told Jesus that, although demons could not be universally destroyed, they could be barred from entering the world of life in the first place. The ritual he claimed to have discovered required the sacrifice of the son of God. He would send all the demons back to hell in a mass exorcism and close the gates of hell behind him, making the world safe for the rest of time.
“Jesus agreed without hesitation, he would sacrifice himself, mankind’s only holy vessel, in the hopes of locking the demons out of the world of life. Just like the traditional story, Judas betrayed him. Through a secret pact with the devil, Judas performed his own rite, killing himself in order to leave a backdoor to hell open just enough to allow demons to slip back through. Over the generations, this door has been forced open wider.
“According to texts written by Mary Magdalene herself, when Jesus rose from the dead, he told her the extent of the damage that had been done by his pact with Judas. Jesus had been sent to protect the souls of mankind from the demons and he did, for a time, but he warned Mary Magdalene that we must keep training and watching for the omens of the day when the
Gates of Hell would be smashed open, harkening the beginning of the end."
He knew the Old Order was full of Zealots who held their own set of beliefs about the nature of Good and Evil. A set of beliefs Nik couldn’t help but share thanks to everything he had witnessed in his life. Nik may not consider himself much of a Catholic, but years of religious school and so much time spent with Zeph affected him more than he realized.
"So Jesus’s crucifixion is the reason the demons are here?"
"No, the demons have always been a part of our world. You've faced countless possessions, demons who merely reside within the host, but once exorcised, the original soul remains. What’s happening now is something else entirely."
Nik slumped in his chair. It all made a sick kind of sense.
"The other day, the man I exorcised, I took the demon, but something went wrong. And it wasn’t just a man. He...changed. He morphed into something else, some kind of hell creature. Even after I defeated it, I was sick, a different kind of sick. I could barely move, and what I purged still seemed alive. Zeph had to perform a second exorcism just to remove it from my body. We tried to destroy it, but it got away."
Father Losado's eyebrows drew downward. When he spoke, it was almost an aside, to himself. "Alma Muertas. Demons strong enough to consume a human soul haven’t been permitted to walk on earth in thousands of years! We have been watching for them, waiting for the day when we would have to take up arms again. What you are describing is a possession by a higher order of demons, more powerful and capable of not only taking a person’s soul but of completely consuming that soul until only their evil nature remains. This is one of the omens Mary Magdalene spoke of. The coming of a greater evil has begun."
"Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“We were waiting for the time when you might come to us on your own, when you might join us in the Old Order.”
“I’m not one of you, but I’m the only one out there fighting. I need answers."
"I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a great many you need. This demon was no ordinary possession, as you already know. This demon was an alma muerta, a dead soul. The soul of the human it fed upon had been completely consumed. The man who was no longer existed. The man was a vessel for the demon, and nothing more. You should have killed the host body."
Nik shuddered as a chill ran down his spine. "I do what I do to save people, not kill them. That goes against everything I've ever believed. Plus, I checked him, he was still alive after the rite, he was fine."
He stood abruptly, the chair scraping along the cold, stone floor.
Father Losado didn't even flinch. "It is the only way. Whatever you left alive is still out there and still evil."
Nik paced the short length of the table, back and forth. He fingered the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, hoping they weren't all crushed.
“How do I kill these things without hurting the people inside?"
“There is no one inside, Nik. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The human soul has been extinguished, it no longer exists. It doesn’t go to heaven or hell, it simply is no more.”
The priest stared at Nik until he stopped pacing. "As you know, the Church has hidden the continued existence of Sin Eaters, fearing knowledge of your presence would undermine people's faith in Christ. Jesus was, for the purposes of Rome, the last Sin Eater, having absolved humanity of their sin and banished the evil dwelling alongside mankind. The true calling of the Old Order is not only to hold the ancient truth until the world is ready to know but also to assist the descendants of Christ, the remaining Sin Eaters, you.”
“Wait, what?”
“You are a direct descendant of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That is how you are able to see the evil within the host body.”
“That’s insane, even to me. Jesus didn’t have kids.”
“You know this because you were there? No. You know this, because it’s what you’ve been taught, because it’s what the Church has presented the world with as the truth. But we have the writings of his wife, Mary Magdelene herself. How else can you explain the things you can do? Mary was the first to train members of the Old Order to assist her children and her children’s children. Time has lost us so many warriors, but now you are here and we are ready to assist you in the coming battles.
“We have continued training those who we've found worthy, but there have been very few. We have a trained holy warrior ready to go with you. His name is Jacek."
Nik shook his head before Father Losado could finish. "No, I fight alone. I can't keep someone else safe and do what I have to."
"You cannot face the alma muerta alone, Nikolai. Surely you must realize this by now?"
"It wasn’t the demon that almost killed me so much as the exorcism that followed. Zeph can help me with that." Nik stared directly into the old priest's eyes. The height of his chair not nearly as intimidating now as it had been when he first came in.
"I don't know if that will be enough."
"Exactly, you don't know. This was a great story, but it doesn't change anything.."
"You will need him, eventually you will find that there are evils in this world well beyond even your abilities. Please, take Jacek with you," Father Losado said.
“No. Absolutely not,” Nik said, rising from his seat and raking a hand through his hair. Nik’s head spun. He needed to eat, needed to sleep and definitely needed to shower. But more than anything, he needed someone to talk to, someone who could help him work through all this. There was only one person he trusted, only one he even wanted to talk to.
He needed Zeph.
Chapter Seven
Sister Delphina stumbled to her room and landed on her hands and knees. Exhaustion nipped at her heels, but she managed to turn around and close the door. She didn't lock it and thought it odd that she'd even thought she may need to. Her mind seemed to be playing tricks on her. She crawled over to her bed, pulling her habit and dress off as she went.
Her room smelled of cinnamon incense and vanilla. What little daylight trickled in through the only small window cast a soft glow upon everything. She counted three shafts of sunlight lighting her small bed like a holy beacon.
She climbed under the covers but soon felt too hot, so she tossed them aside.
Delphina lay on her back on the small bed, dressed in nothing but her undergarments. Sweat pooled beneath her heavy breasts, so she removed her bra and tossed it aside, not even caring to keep her little room tidy, despite the discipline trained into her at the convent. She deserved at least one day of total rest.
She dozed off and on, dreaming of a time when soft lips met her own, and her heart raced. He'd been lean, like the strange young man who spent so much time with Father Zeph. She'd met him at the creek near her parents’ home every day that magical summer. At first, they held hands. He'd trace the lines of her palm with his fingertips. His hands wandered up her arm, sending shivers through her body as he grew bold.
Through the flimsy material of her swim suit, he rubbed the little peaks of her breasts, licking his lips and staring in awe as they hardened.
Sister Delphina moaned in her sleep, lost in the dream. She brought her hands up to caress her now full breasts, already breathing heavily.
Her young lover took his time exploring her body, always stopping when she grew wary. Persistently, he eased her out of her top and used his mouth instead of his hands to caress her body.
Delphina's eager fingers emulated his tongue laving her hard nipples. She arched in her bed, clenching her thighs.
After weeks of him working her up to fevered panting, she'd finally let him touch her down there. His long fingers, strong and calloused from years of playing guitar, stroked her lips. Though the ribbons of pleasure were sweet, they tortured her. Something was lacking and by the end of summer, she needed more.
So she let him have her. She laid back and spread her legs just enough for him to move between.
He pushed only the tip inside her,
gentle at first. He rocked in and out in a shallow rhythm until she writhed beneath him and begged him for more. With her cunt dripping wet, he thrust fully into her and the pain was drowned by her pleasure.
Delphina woke with a desperate start. Her dry throat managed a single word, his name, Cain, as her eyes frantically searched her barren room. Lost in the phantom touch of his fingers gliding in and out of her, she reached down, urging her pleasure to heights she hadn't known in over two years.
Her foggy gaze glanced over the photos on her dresser, and she took instant inventory of the few items she possessed. Her mind had become lost in the memory of his touch and her body needed to feel him. She had nothing that would even come close to emulating the feeling of her young lover entering her wetness. The longing overwhelmed her, pushing rational thought and decency aside.
Her vows meant nothing in her half-asleep state, when her body ached and her dream lover remained out of reach.
She swept her gaze around her mostly empty room until it lit upon the altar facing the single window in the eastern wall.
There, a white candle stood stiff, its girth broader than her lover had been. It was a thick, two-inch pillar, seven inches tall at least.
Her whole body shook with the thought. "Yes," she sighed.
She rushed from her bed to collect the candle, climbed back on her mattress and pulled the covers up over herself in a poor attempt to hide her act.
A momentary pang of guilt struck her, she had taken a vow of celibacy, to dedicate her life to God. But when a wave of euphoria washed over her she swore she could feel her lover's tongue gliding across her pussy, returning her to her state of desperate need. Her legs shook, but the candle in her hand was too dry. She returned to the altar for the anointing oil, and crouched down right there, leaning against the wall for support. Delphina added a bit of oil to her own fluids, slipping more fingers inside herself.
She moaned and crouched lower, legs spread wide. Delphina slathered oil over the candle, rocked her hips forward and pushed it in just a little.
