by Jana Oliver
“A heart. Because love is stronger than evil.”
A caring smile came her way. “I’ll do the same, then.”
He performed the anointing, and they were ready to go inside.
Knowing the Gills couldn’t hear her, Riley asked, “Was the house haunted before?”
“The parents say it wasn’t, but sometimes there might be an entity present that they don’t know about. They just moved in over Thanksgiving. The girl began to act odd a week ago. At first they thought she was sick, until things started flying around the room.”
“So the demon could have been here all along,” Beck said.
“Possible. It took several months for the house to sell,” Simon said.
“Don’t worry, we can do this,” Riley said. “We’ve all faced worse than this thing.”
“May God grant us victory,” Simon replied.
The interior of the house was as nice as the outside. A stone-tiled foyer led to a large living room with a bank of tall windows overlooking a manicured backyard. At the far end of the room was a huge Christmas tree, beneath which were countless presents. Three embroidered stockings were tacked to the mantel: Mom, Dad, and Carrina.
“What a hell of a Christmas,” Beck said.
“The little girl is upstairs in her bedroom,” Simon said. “We have to get the demon out of Carrina without harming her. She’s too young to grant it her soul, so the fiend won’t care if she dies.”
“Then why would it mess with her in the first place?” Riley asked.
“Leverage,” Beck replied. “The parents’ souls are its target.”
“What mom or dad wouldn’t want to save their kid?” Simon said. “Father Vonn has been keeping them from taking that final step, but if we fail, one or both of them are going to become this demon’s possession.” He took a deep breath. “Then, when Carrina’s old enough, the fiend will probably guilt her into giving up her own soul because of her parents’ sacrifice. It’s happened before.”
Riley glowered up the stairs, furious. “Then let’s get this damned thing out of here.”
“Her bedroom is at the end of the hall,” Simon said, leading them up the stairs.
It was like every horror movie Beck had ever watched as a kid. What else was he supposed to do when his mother was out drinking all night? The movies had scared him, but he’d still watched them because sometimes the things on television were less frightening than real life.
He’d learned some vital lessons from those movies—never wander off on your own, never turn your back on an open door, and never forget that you’re the prey.
Not this time around.
“Hold up a minute,” he said. As the others waited, he extracted the one weapon he hoped he wouldn’t have to use. The Glock was in a paddle holster, and he attached it to his belt.
“Holy Water bullets?” Simon asked.
“Yeah, Elias sent me some after I tangled with the Archangel. Sort of a ‘congrats, yer still alive’ gift. Haven’t had a call to use them yet.”
“As long as the fiend is still inside her, it’s safe and it knows it.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem.”
After pulling out a steel pipe, he handed Riley his pack. They both knew there’d be spheres in there that she wasn’t supposed to use.
“Don’t argue with me on this,” he warned.
“Not going to,” she said, shouldering it.
The hallway was strewn with refuse. Pieces of cracked wallboard, light switches hanging loose on the walls. Stinking garbage. Like Demon Central, but with a much better address.
“Makes Hell look good,” Riley said, shaking her head. “The demon did all this?”
“Just trying to ramp up the terror. You take over a small child’s mind, then go crazy. The parents won’t harm their daughter, so the fiend can do anything it wants,” Simon replied.
They shuffled through the trash.
“It’s too quiet,” Riley said.
“I was thinkin’ the same thing,” Beck replied.
They were about ten feet from the girl’s bedroom when a glow formed around the edges of the door. It was bright red, and for a second, Beck swore he could see flames. The door rattled, then began to bulge. He remembered this from one of the movies, and instinct took over.
“Get down!” He grabbed Riley and shoved her to the floor, covering her with his body as the portal exploded toward them in a shower of lethal wood. The shards impaled themselves into the walls like spears.
Once the missiles had ended, he called out. “You okay, Simon?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Filthy, but good.”
As Beck regained his feet, he saw the fire in Riley’s eyes.
“You didn’t have to throw yourself on top of me. I’m not stupid. You tell me to take cover and I’ll do it.”
“Sorry, I had no choice.” He looked over at Simon, who was dusting off his clothes. “It’s part of the man code.”
“It is,” Simon replied. “Doesn’t mean you can’t handle yourself. Just means he doesn’t want you hurt.”
Riley frowned, first at her ex-boyfriend, then at Beck, but it didn’t make any difference.
“Next time I might do the same to you,” she said.
“Fine by me,” Beck replied, which was the diplomatic answer, rather than the truth.
Riley was still muttering under her breath about macho pigheaded males as Simon led the way into the little girl’s room. It must have been pretty before the demon came to call, but no longer. The white walls had scorch marks on them, as did the tattered pink-and-white polka-dot curtains. The bed frame was in pieces, each piece an excellent weapon. Sections of the ceiling were now underfoot, as was broken glass and who knew what else.
“It looks like a damned war zone,” Beck said.
“In more ways than one,” Simon replied. “It’ll be impossible to put down the Holy Water with this mess. That was probably its plan.”
“Guys . . . ” Riley said, pointing.
In a corner, Carrina nested in a circle of dolls. The little girl was pretty—her hair falling in golden ringlets, her cheeks rosy, her eyes a deep blue. Her dress had ponies on it, and her shoes were pink with little sparkly bows.
Her smile revealed the one thing the demon didn’t bother to hide: twin rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Beck’s flesh crawled over his bones.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Give it up, demon. We know what you’re doing,” Simon said. “That’s not what she looks like, not with you inside of her.”
The little girl rose from the sea of dolls, cocking her head, studying them.
Then her blue eyes slitted like a goat’s.
“Simon the Betrayer!” she said, though the voice was anything but childlike. More like something from your blackest nightmare, the scrape of ten thousand demon claws against the inside of your skull.
“I hate it when they do that,” Simon said, shaking his head.
“Blackthorne’s daughter!”
“Good. I was feeling left out,” Riley said.
“Angel Killer! Destroyer of Demons! Hated Enemy of Hell!” the thing shouted at Beck.
“Hey, no fair, you got three names,” she said, grinning over at him.
“I earned ’em,” he replied, winking back. “How’s this goin’ down, Simon?”
The exorcist-in-chief took a worried look around them. “We can’t set a protective circle, so we’re just going to have to wing it. If you two could watch my back, that would be good. I’m going to be totally occupied trying to cast the demon out of the child.” He looked over at Riley now. “Once she’s free, get her out of the building.”
“What about you guys?”
“We’ll be okay. Do yer thing, we’ll do ours,” Beck replied.
“Got it.”
Riley took
a position behind and to the left of Simon. Beck was in a similar position to the right. Simon pulled out his gear, held up a large wooden cross, and announced himself to the demon.
“Hear me, spawn of Hell. I am Simon Michael David Adler, child of God, seeker of the Light, believer in the Risen Lord. I know of your evil and I call you forth in God’s holy name!”
In response to his challenge, the little girl shifted in appearance, her hair turning straggly and unwashed, hanging in greasy strands, her pretty dress filthy and torn. There were dried tears on her puffy and bruised face.
For a brief second Riley could see the fear, the desperate pleading in her eyes, and then they changed from the deep blue to a fiery red, the child subsumed by the demon.
The debris began to shift around their feet, moving as if inhabited by snakes. The instant she thought that, a slithering sound began, following by hissing.
“It’s feeding off our thoughts,” Riley cautioned.
Beck nodded and began to hum to himself, no doubt one of Carrie Underwood’s songs.
Riley devoted her mind to reviewing her last Latin assignment. Present tense, fourth conjugation. Remove re from infinitive, add amus to the stem.
The noise in the room settled down, as did the movement at their feet. Simon continued on, Latin pouring forth, still holding up the cross, his arm shaking from the exertion. The demon rocked back and forth on its feet, as if searching for a weakness. Then it stared at Beck and grinned.
The back wall of the bedroom vanished, replaced by a scene she didn’t recognize: a long corridor with things embedded in the walls. Gradually a single figure appeared in the hallway, shuffling away with his back to them.
Even Simon grew silent, caught by the scene playing out in front of them.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Beck said. “Not that.”
“Is that you in Hell, after you killed Sartael?” Riley asked.
He nodded, swallowing hard. Sweat had popped out on his forehead, and he shivered now. Riley watched, riveted, as he slowly dragged his gravely injured body down the corridor. Once, he stumbled too close to a wall, stared at it, then shied away in horror.
“There were faces in the walls,” he said. “They wanted me to set them free. I knew if I did . . . I’d be there with them forever.”
Her time in Hell had been full of demons. His had been stark loneliness. Or maybe not, as now Lucifer appeared in the scene. She couldn’t hear what was being said between them, but she knew what the Prince was offering.
Beck shook his head, then waved the Fallen angel away with an angry gesture. The Prince disappeared, and the man she loved continued down the corridor, dying with each step. She remembered sitting by his bed, holding his hand, praying that he’d come back to her. And he had.
The scene froze, as if it were playing off a disc. Riley knew exactly why it had ended there—the demon did not want Beck to see his mother saving him from eternal torment.
It was time to break the fiend’s hold.
“Hey, Beck? You survived that. This is nothing but a bad rerun.”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Den! Remember that heart on your forehead? That’s what your mother did for you, at the very last. She didn’t have to, but she loved you in her own way. That’s our best weapon against these things.”
The demon didn’t like that and growled at her. “Love is a lie,” it hissed.
“No, it’s not. It’s what you can never feel. So give it up. The girl is ours, and we’re not leaving without her.”
The dolls at the feet of the fiend began to stir, standing up like an army. From the tiniest of them to the biggest, their mouths sprouted teeth and their eyes became as fiery red as the demon’s.
“Beck?” Simon called out. “We need you to be with us now.”
The urgency in their companion’s voice must have reached him. He shook himself, then blinked as if awakening from a nightmare.
“Yeah, I’m here.” He glowered at the fiend. “Lucifer didn’t get my soul then, and yer not gettin’ it now.”
Simon began intoning in Latin again, this time with more strength and insistence.
“Bring it, demon,” Beck said, beckoning.
The dolls went mobile, springing into the air, claws and teeth extended as they dive-bombed Riley and the others.
She stepped closer to Simon, bashing the flying bodies with her pipe. Beck was doing the same, trying to keep the dolls away from their friend. One clamped onto her arm, biting through her jacket. She tore it off and threw it against the wall.
How could they stop this thing without hurting the little girl?
For a moment, Riley was free of the aerial menaces, and she stepped back to regain her breath. Simon might eventually break the Hellspawn’s hold, but right now they weren’t winning this battle.
Beck shot a glance in her direction, pulling another doll off his chest and stomping it with a boot. “Any ideas?”
She shook her head. “It’s not backing off.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something shift in the debris near the bed. Whatever it was rose slowly above the ruined mattress and hovered in the air. It was diaphanous, the walls of the room visible through it. In some ways it appeared angelic, but the serrated claws and long, sharp canines put an end to that comparison.
“Heads up, we got a second Hellspawn in the air,” she said.
Simon hesitated for a fraction of a second, then carried on, his focus solely on the fiend in front of him. Beck shot a quick glance her way, then turned back toward Simon.
“Can you handle it?” he asked.
“Got no other choice,” she replied.
Riley dug out a Holy Water sphere. The Guild might find out, but right now, that didn’t matter. Getting dead just wasn’t an option.
As Simon’s voice rose in a punch of Latin and he swung the aspergillum in an arc, the air demon shrieked and dove right at her. Desperate to time it right, she waited until the last moment, then threw the sphere straight at its face. It veered but the glass shattered against its shoulder. Wounded, the fiend went into a spin, sweeping Riley off her feet and into the trash on the floor.
She rolled away from the claws, regained her feet, and bashed the thing across its head with her steel pipe. Her blow hit true, and the fiend shrieked in agony and fell, stunned. Riley pulled another sphere out of Beck’s pack and slam-dunked it into the demon’s face. Its eyes blazed with pain, then it melted into the floorboards, a gray sludge that made her stomach churn and nearly empty.
Her chest heaving and her heart pounding, Riley readied herself for the next assault.
“You okay?” Beck called out.
“I’m good.”
Simon took a deep breath. “Foul spirit, hated by all angels in Heaven, I cast you out of this child in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!” he cried. “Be gone, dweller of the pit, spawn of Lucifer! I command you in God’s holy name!”
Something shifted in the air, like a pressure change before a massive storm. Riley’s ears popped and her head spun. The demon roared in fury, though it still looked like the little girl.
“She’s free!” Simon called. “Get her out of here!”
“Where the hell is she?” Beck said.
“Carrina?” Riley cried. “Honey, where are you?”
A faint whimper came from the mound of covers that had once graced the bed, now piled in the corner. Riley dove at the pile and unearthed a small, pallid face with two dull-blue eyes, surrounded by a tangled mop of blond hair.
“Carrina?” she asked. Are you real, or another demon?
The girl raised her head, tears flowing freely. “I want my momma!” she cried. Her thread was weak, a mix of slimy gray and pink. It didn’t feel like an illusion to Riley, but what if she was wrong?
Trust your gut, h
er father’s voice echoed in her head.
“I’ve got her!” she shouted.
A furious bellow filled the room as the demon shed its glamour, growing to some seven feet in height, its skin purest black and its eyes filled with billowing Hellfire. Nude, it was impossible to ignore that it was male.
Ohmigod. She’d never seen a fiend like this before.
“Blackthorne’s daughter!” it bellowed. “Give me the child!”
“Get screwed, demon,” Riley shouted, taking a cautious step backward. “No way you get this girl again.”
The walls quaked around them. “Give me the child, Ori’s whore. Give me the child or I shall rend the flesh from your bones. I shall cleave my body into yours and—”
“We’re done,” Beck snarled. The gun barked twice as he put one bullet in the fiend’s head, followed by one in the chest.
The demon shuddered, stunned, its eyes widening. When it hit the floor, the room shook. A cloud of choking brimstone rose as it died in writhing agony.
Riley shielded the little body in her arms, feeling the child shiver in terror. Making the sign of the cross, Simon slowly turned toward them, his face ashen. As his shock lessened, he reached for his phone and sent a text, no doubt letting Father Vonn know the child was safe.
Still glowering, Beck walked to a window and shoved it open, taking deep breaths.
The fresh breeze reached her and Riley inhaled deeply.
“How did you know she wasn’t another demon?” Simon asked. “Was it because of Heaven’s mark?”
“No. I just trusted my instincts.” Thanks, Dad.
Once the air cleared, Riley realized the child in her arms was very stinky, and though she doubted Carrina’s parents would care, she knew what she had to do.
“Guys? You need me for anything?”
They both shook their heads.
“Carrina needs a quick shower. She smells too much like that thing, and I don’t want her parents seeing her like this.”
“I’ll go on down, tell them everything’s okay. That’ll buy you some time,” Simon replied.
“I’ll wait up here for you,” Beck said.
Always the protector.
