by P. K. Tyler
"Get out of the way if you aren't going to be useful." Vai shoved Nik away from Zeph making him feel even more stupid than he had a moment ago.
The strange woman crouched next to Zeph and ran her hands over one of his arms. She pulled her long black hair back and twisted it in on itself so it was out of her way for the moment.
Zeph bit on his lower lip and his face turned a pulsing bright red as she slid her fingers over his shoulder and upper arm, pressing into his body. He didn't make a sound though as Vai grabbed his arm above and below the elbow and wrenched it in an odd angle away from his shoulder.
Zeph screamed.
His voice bounced off every surface of the once sterile room, ripping into Nik's mind and whipping him back into action.
"What the fuck!?" He screamed, grabbing Vai. He turned her toward him and almost lifted her off her feet as he jerked her up in his worry over Zeph.
"His shoulder was just dislocated, you idiot. He's going to be seriously bruised and sore, but look, he's already moving it."
Nik turned and Zeph had a pained smile on his face as he flexed his fingers and experimented moving his arm.
"It barely even hurts now," the priest said.
"I have to do the other one."
Zeph's face fell and if he were anyone else, Nik would have reached out to comfort him. If this were one of the kids he watched over at the flophouse or even some stranger on the street, he'd hold his hand, maybe even sit behind him and hold him while he endured the pain. But with Zeph, he held himself back. Always, holding back.
He watched, horrified, as Vai reached over and reset Zeph's other shoulder.
"I think your wrist is probably sprained, but I don't get the sense priest's need that much." Vai's wicked laugh hit Nik like a slap. She'd even had the audacity to wink at him!
"Are you going to tell me what we saw just now?" Nik demanded as he stood up.
Vai took Zeph's arm and helped him stand. The sight threw a shot of jealousy through Nik that turned his irritation with the woman to fury. She may have just saved Zeph's life, but in Nik's mind, this was all her fault. He'd sent that demon to hell and somehow, between last night and now, it had come back. And this mystery woman who spoke Aramaic and had some magic fire dust just happened to be here? Nik scowled as his distrust swelled.
"Why don’t you tell me?" she asked, tilting her head in his direction with an amused quirk of her lips.
"I don’t know what that was. I'm at the end of my rope with this insanity, so cut the shit. What are you and what was that?"
"I'm the same as you. As for that," she nodded to the ash on the ground, "that's a much longer conversation and I imagine I probably have more questions than answers."
She righted a chair that had gotten knocked over during the scuffle. Zeph sat with a moan, holding his left arm against his body and cradling his wrist.
"You’re a Sin Eater," Zeph said. "We didn't think there were any others."
"Sin Eater," Vai smirked. "I like that. That's a good Catholic name for it. My people call it Bino-Wuzhokh, it's not quite the same but similar. We track the Prikasa, the omens of evil, that lead us to the Beng on earth. They don't belong here, these devils, so we send them back to where they came from."
"You," Nik stepped back, needing the wall for support in order to keep standing. "You do what I do. You're like me? Father Losado said I was the only one they know of."
"Father Losado, is he Old Order? Nothing but hypocrites and liars. You can't believe anything they say. It's all clouded with religious fantasy. Besides, I could never be like you." Vai looked him over and gave the half smile he was starting to hate. "But we're of the same blood."
"And what is that. Who are 'your people'?”
"I'm Roma."
"Gypsy? Now I'm a fucking Gypsy?"
Vai laughed aloud. It was a cruel, sensual sound that sent waves of ice cold water through Nik's system. "You may be of the same bloodline, but those lines go back farther than anyone can remember. No, I don't imagine you are Roma."
"Okay, so Zeph is right and I'm some Sin Eating, blood-oathed, Gypsy child. Great. I can deal with that, it's sure as shit not the worst thing I've been called this week. But what the fuck just happened to that guy?"
Vai shook her head and stared at him with her piercing blue eyes. "Whoever this man was, he died a while ago. There was no soul left within him. No demon either, for that matter."
"No, I exorcised the demon from him," Nik said.
"I've never heard of a demon surviving an exorcism by a Bino-Wuzhokh. If you did the ritual correctly, then the man should have been cleansed, free to live his life, his soul recovered. This is something else," she gestured to the pile of remaining ash.
"Of course I did the fucking ritual correctly, I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. And afterward, I was sick as shit."
"Nik," Zeph interrupted. "You were sicker than that, you were almost dead when I found you. And then I had to exorcise you, which has never happened before."
"You didn't consume the evil?" Vai asked.
"I did, but I couldn't expel it. Zeph had to draw it out of me. My body couldn’t process it."
"Where is the evil now?"
"He was dying." Zeph looked to the ground, avoiding Vai's gaze. "Whatever was in him escaped.
"Fuck me," Vai said, "I need caffeine.” She retrieved her dagger and motioned with her wounded arm to the doors they'd entered through and left, leading them down the hallway, past the exit, and into a simply but comfortably appointed lounge.
She grabbed three Styrofoam cups and filled them with coffee. She set the cups on the counter and took hers, sans sugar or cream, to one of the plush chairs lining the opposite wall.
Nik fixed both his and Zeph's coffee without a thought. He'd loved Zeph long enough to know how he took his coffee. Nik loved these moments of unconscious domesticity. It made him forget the distance between them and all the mistakes he'd made. Instead, it was just the two of them together. The way it was supposed to be.
Zeph sat with a groan, his hurt wrist held tight against his stomach.
Vai raised her inscrutable eyebrow when Nik brought Zeph his coffee, but Nik ignored her. He might need answers from her, but he didn't need her approval.
She didn't say anything about it though.
"So how could a corpse without a soul come back? Is it possible some of the evil was left behind? How else could it reanimate?" Nik asked.
"You fucked up, Nik. It's not your fault, you exorcised that thing, but it didn't die and you lost the physical form of the exorcised Evil, I can't call that anything other than fucking up."
“I did the same thing I always do. How is it that I fucked up?”
Vai got up and retrieved a first aid kit. She settled on the couch next to Nik and opened it. She took out a bottle of Tylenol and opened that, too. "Take these," she said to Zeph, setting two on the table.
"Give me your hand," she ordered Nik, taking it off his thigh before he had a chance to reply.
Vai placed his hand palm up on her leg and ripped open an alcohol pad from the first aid kit. As she cleaned his wound, Zeph swallowed the two pills and washed them down with Nik's coffee before handing it to him.
Vai finished cleaning his cut in silence and smeared antibiotic ointment over it before wrapping it tightly.
Zeph turned his attention to Nik. "I know you're not big on learning all this stuff, but this whole thing is a lot bigger than you. I'm afraid if you don't learn, you'll be killed. And then where will we be? Where would that leave me?"
"I don't..." Nik stopped. His friend's plea struck the deepest chord in him. The one wish he so desperately wanted to come true. For Zeph to need him as much as he was needed.
"Fine," Nik said.
"Look," Vai said, "you and I are the same. If there's more of those things out there, we're going to have to work together."
Nik nodded. “I went to the Old Order today. They said the demon I faced was “alma muerta, a..
.”
Zeph interrupted, finishing for him, -- “a dead soul. I’ve read about them, but nothing I’ve ever read would indicate that they could come back. The Sin Eater can destroy them. Only a Sin Eater can destroy them. Of that much, I'm sure.”
Nik felt very tired suddenly, his burden overwhelming for the first time in his life. Religion, gypsies and demons aside, for the first time in his life, he wondered if he was the monster. Having Jacek from the Order along to help started to sound like a good idea.
Vai shifted in her seat, her posture tight. He doubted she’d put much stock into anything the Old Order had to say, but he was now convinced they were right, at least about the dead souls. “That does line up with some of the Prakasa we’ve been seeing, signs that the evil in the world is growing stronger,” she said, “so what went wrong? Why wasn’t the guy saved when you extracted the demon?”
He just wanted to cry, to crawl inside the sofa and hide from the world. He kept his eyes trained on the floor. Death would be easier to face than the path that lay ahead of him. “Because I didn’t destroy the host body. A dead soul is one that’s been fed upon by a demon for so long that it’s completely consumed.”
When Nik finally met her gaze, Vai’s eyes were wide and her jaw hung open. She just kept shaking her head. When he looked at Zeph, he felt even worse. His best friend, the love of his life, wouldn’t even look at him.
Zeph whispered, just loud enough for them to hear, “So you’re supposed to start killing people now?”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
He finally met Nik’s gaze. “There’s no one else who can. You and,” he turned to Vai, “are there any others? Like you, I mean, who can help Nik defeat these things.”
Vai nodded, but said, “Not like me, but there is someone who can help us. We’ll have to--” the intercom cut her off.
Vai I need to see you in exam room four.
"Shit." Vai stood and ran a hand through her tousled hair. "I have to go back to work. I'm really sorry."
Nik hated to end their conversation. Vai had answers. She knew things he'd never heard of before and despite her attitude it felt like she might actually be willing to help him.
"I need to know more," he said.
"I'm worried too," Vai said. "What we saw here today, this isn't the way it's supposed to work. This isn't the order of things. Something stronger than possession is getting it's claws in people. We have to work together."
Nik nodded and Zeph gave a sigh. Quiet and somber, it worked it's way into Nik's heart.
Vai pulled a card out of her lab coat pocket and handed it to Nik. "Call me. We have a lot more to talk about." She fixed her stare on Zeph again and said, "there are things you both need to know."
Outside, the air bit at Nik's fingers as he and Zeph headed toward the subway together.
Chapter Ten
Adel wove through the crowd in Chinatown, doggedly working closer to her goal. The press of bodies always made her break out into a nervous sweat, but tonight seemed different. A light drizzle fell, sprinkling hats, coats, and umbrellas. Dazzling under the multitude of dim, yellow lights as people passed. She walked against the tide, the sea of bodies offering resistance she quickly became too tired to fight.
She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, and the crowd pushed her back toward home. She only wanted to pick up some lo mein to-go. She didn't feel like cooking. Preparing a meal for one depressed her. But now that she was out on the street, and being hurried away from her goal, she doubted the food was worth the effort.
Adel turned and began the short trek back to her apartment, picking up the pace as the rain decided it liked this area and settled in. In their hurry, the crowd at her back surged, bodies slamming against her. She stumbled and fell, hitting her knee on the concrete corner above a gutter opening. Twisting so she didn't fall on her face, Adel sat hard on the sidewalk. She pulled her knee closer to her chest, instantly regretting the motion that pulled the scrape.
Movement in the shadowy alley across the street caught her eye. She examined the darkness, squinting her eyes to see through the deluge now drenching her clothes, but its depths were impossible to penetrate. Even the streetlight behind her, almost directly across from the alley, didn't cast its soft glow into the forbidding space.
Adel shuddered, the whole thing gave her the creeps. She turned her attention back to the cut on her knee. She took a deep breath and stood. She'd have to get some medicine for the scrape, she didn't have anything at home. The 24-hour drug store was closer. Though the cut was a relatively minor thing, if left untended it could turn to infection, and, to be completely honest, blood made her a little squeamish.
As she limped to the corner drug store she berated herself for being too lazy to cook or shop. Brennan's voice rang out in her head. She could practically see her ex’s face, looking at her ripped jeans and soaked hair with judgment. All because she'd been too busy and couldn't even equip her lonely, barren apartment with a simple first aid kit.
Brennan made a lot of promises he didn't keep, yet always managed to criticize her. They were to be married. They were to be parents. They were to live happily ever after. Then one day she came home from work to a note taped to the fridge and all his clothes gone. He'd gotten someone pregnant, wouldn't say who, and had left to "do the right thing". She shouldn’t even miss him, shouldn’t be so distraught. He wasn’t half the man her father had been. Even with all his faults, he worked hard to provide for his family. He never raised his voice or used foul language. He didn’t have to. She wanted a home like the one he provided, but with happier children. Ones who felt loved, not owned. Brennan was so different from her dad. She had thought that had been a good thing. Until she realized she wouldn’t get the kind of home she wanted with him either.
All she had was an empty apartment and a throbbing knee.
Feeling miserable and incredibly sorry for herself, Adel stopped to lean on the corner of a building and catch her breath. Hobbling along the wet sidewalk had her winded, but the residual fury over being left with no warning, not even the courtesy of a conversation rose up and pushed her into action. She took two steps, then froze in front of the alley to her left.
A man came into view from the shadows and approached with a shuffling gait.
The fine hairs on Adel's neck rose and goosebumps raced along her flesh. She couldn't move, even if she could run with her injured knee. She couldn't even scream. All these people on the street and she was alone. Everyone had their heads tucked to avoid the rain and something about the man made people want to turn away.
His pitch-black eyes glared at her, reaching down into her very soul. His voice, a low, malicious whisper, grew stronger with each repetition of a name.
A name Adel knew well, though she didn't hear it often. The name of the man who got her brother Zeph sent away. The man who caused her father’s focus to shift from Zeph to her. He was the root of all her problems: years of torment at the hands of her father and even the nightmares she had now.
“Nikolai Grekh.”
EPISODE THREE
Chapter One
Asmodeus kept to the shadows where he felt the most comfortable. He forced the woman’s body to move, her scraped knee complaining every step of the way.
The wound no longer bled. Instead, it oozed a thick, black goo that cauterized the scrapes in her skin as it passed. Even the leaking stopped as the wound hardened to an unnatural black scab.
In the early morning light, he pushed Adel’s body through the city, keeping to alleys as often as he could, turning corners and crossing roads all the way from Chinatown back to the church where her brother was a priest.
He’d been watching those two for a while.
He entered Zeph’s church through the rectory.
He paused mid-stride and listened. A powerful voice resounded in his mind. Lucifer, the greater whole of which he was but a part, called out to him.
I will have the nun. Her corruption is inc
omplete but her body ripe. Prepare her for my coming.
A flare of light burst into his mind, then his vision went black. An image of a fetus within the nun’s body slammed into the demon’s mind, followed by a montage of images of Lucifer himself visiting the human plane, burning through his host’s body as he filled the nun with tainted seed. The evil within her would provide them a direct vessel for Lucifer’s son.
With a malicious smile, Asmodeus moved further into the church and found Delphina sleeping under a thin sheet, legs splayed with a thick candle resting in her hand.
He hiked up Adel’s short skirt and pulled her black lace panties down her slim legs, tossing them in a pile of the nun’s habit. Asmodeus carefully climbed atop the nun, raising the skirt high enough to reach her cunt and gently pressed his vessel's knee against the nun’s pussy for pressure. He hovered over the nun, enjoying the heat of her cunt against his knee and the tingle of excitement he felt in his host body. He greatly enjoyed fucking as a woman, and this host body certainly didn’t seem to mind it.
Leaning forward, the demon moved the sheet low enough to expose the nun’s breasts, taking one of her nipples into his mouth and rubbing the other with a palm.
The nun arched up with a moan. The demon possessing her body had placed her in a deep trance, allowing the baser instincts of her body to surface. Asmodeus had done the same many times. He reached out with his mind, connecting with the essence of the demon within the nun. He kissed Delphina and linked with the demon inside her, Naamah.
Asmodeus thrived on spiritual dissonance, and the lust coursing through the body under his control had him reeling.
With Delphina panting and moaning in her sleep, Asmodeus moved lower, pulling the sheet down with him. He pressed his lips to the nun’s cunt, stroking her lips and opening her with his tongue. He tasted the sanctity of her chastity and the thick, heady flavor of her need. It enraged him, intoxicated him. He teased her clit, eliciting a scream from the already desperate nun, then moved his hand down between the host's legs and stroked his clit, too.
