by Peter Nealen
Father Ignacio raised his voice, bellowing the Rite at the top of his lungs, somehow making himself heard even over the roaring booms of our weapons. The thing swiped at us, but jerked its hand back as if burned when Father thrust that big silver crucifix at it. Whatever it was, it was reacting to the sacred exactly the same way that the idiots who had summoned it had.
Which was when I noticed that the three survivors had dropped to the floor as soon as this thing had crawled out of the pile of bodies and body parts. None of them were moving. Which told me that this was the exact same thing that had been controlling them.
As soon as it flinched away from that crucifix, Father started advancing on it, still chanting in Latin. He wasn’t even using the book in his left hand anymore; he had this part memorized. He held the crucifix straight out in front of him. It seemed to gleam palely in the dimness, somehow untouched by the sickly greenish hue of the candlelight.
The thing shrank back with a bubbling snarl, and the three of us stepped forward, flanking the priest. I lowered my Winchester and put my hand to my chest, lifting the crucifix and holding it out at the end of its thong. Eryn and Kolya followed suit.
It kept trying to back away from us, but it couldn’t go far. It had no legs or feet that I could see; in fact, it seemed to be anchored to the pile of body parts in the middle of the pentagram. That was strange. It was almost as if the cultists hadn’t finished their ritual.
Finally, it simply didn’t have anywhere else to go, and Father Ignacio pronounced the final words of the Rite, ordering the thing back into the Abyss, on the authority of the Most Holy Name. With a final, ear-splitting shriek, the thing suddenly dissolved into a splattering mess of dead tissue and blood, falling to the floor in a cascade of carnage.
We all stepped back in unison, trying to keep our boots out of the splatter of blood and meat. It wasn’t just disgust, either. The manifestation might be gone, but that didn’t mean that the spirit behind it had necessarily given up. There can be deeper and even more dangerous side effects than possible bloodborne pathogens involved with contact with human remains used in demon-summoning rituals.
But after a few moments, the inky darkness within the house seemed to dissipate. Sunlight started to filter in through the doorway and the windows. The greenish hue to the candle flames that were still burning started to die away.
Carefully, keeping her shotgun ready, Eryn bent to examine one of the catatonic cultists. “Jed,” she said, “this guy is dead.”
I checked the other two. Neither of them was breathing. They were dead as doornails, and without a mark on any of them.
Kolya was frowning. “Something is strange about this,” he said.
“Well, yeah,” I replied. “A demonic blood monster just manifested in a Bed and Breakfast living room, in broad daylight.” As flippant as my comment was, I actually shared his disquiet. There was definitely something off about this.
“But what was point?” he asked. “Why summon it in first place? It was not very powerful, really. Flashy, but it was stuck in pentagram. It makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Father Ignacio said. “We’ll never know what it promised these people. The Devil is a liar, remember that. They may well have had all sorts of plans that it never had any intention of fulfilling. As far as the Abyss is concerned, their deaths as murderers and sorcerers is a win. It convinces them to conduct the ritual, complete with human sacrifice, then kills them and drags them back to the Abyss with it.”
“Kolya’s right though,” I mused, even as the police started to cautiously come through the door behind us. “Why leave it at that? It was too easy. That thing barely put up a fight. I’ve seen you take hours on an exorcism. This was done in minutes.”
He was looking at the carnage around us as the cops hovered near the doorway, a pensive look on his face as he nodded slowly. “You could be right. This could all be a trap.” He turned to look at the two police officers standing just inside the door. “Give us a few more minutes,” he said. “We need to be careful about this.”
Both cops were looking a little green. I was sure that between crime scenes and vehicle accidents, they’d probably both seen plenty of horror, but this was horror of a whole different kind. One of them looked like he was about to be sick right there on the floor. The other, a thickset young woman, just nodded. “Do what you have to do, Padre,” she said, her voice a little hoarse. She was looking a little pale, herself. “Just be careful not to disturb too much, okay? This is still a crime scene.”
Father just nodded. It wasn’t his first rodeo.
“How much did you see?” I asked the cops. The door had been open, after all.
“More than we would have liked to,” the young man with the shaved head replied. “What was that thing?”
“Something not of this world,” Kolya answered. “Or don’t you believe in such things?”
“I didn’t think I did,” the young man replied. “But after what I just saw…and after I got laid out on the lawn by something I couldn’t see…well. I think I believe that there’s something weird going on here.”
Father was praying and making the sign of the cross over every stain and blot in the room, while Eryn followed behind him, carrying a flask of holy water. Every few feet, he’d stop, trade the book for the flask, and splash a little bit on floor, walls, and furniture. He was being thorough. We didn’t want that thing finding a crack to come crawling back through later. Not that the developer was likely to find much of any clientele willing to stay the night in this place ever again. He’d be better off burning it to the ground and trying to collect the insurance money.
The prayer and blessing took about another half an hour. The cops waited patiently. They’d seen that we hadn’t killed anyone inside, and the corpses weren’t going anywhere. When Father finished, they politely ushered us outside, into the sunshine. I took a deep breath as Eryn stepped up next to me, and put my arm around her. The evil stench was gone from the air, and the sunshine felt clean after the darkness inside.
As soon as we reached the police line, a young man, probably in his early to mid-twenties, his hair disheveled and still wearing his pajamas, broke away from the knot of bystanders and ran up to us. He hesitated a moment, then grabbed Father’s hand in both of his, then went around to each of us to do the same. “Who are you people?” he asked, his voice shaking. “How did you stop that thing?”
“We didn’t,” Father said. “God banished it. We only helped.”
“I’ve…I’ve never seen anything like that,” the young man said. His eyes were haunted. “I was only there to write a review of the place. I’m a lifestyle reporter.” He stopped and shook for a moment. “I woke up in the middle of the night. The room was sweltering, and someone outside was screaming and chanting something I couldn’t understand…then one of them came smashing through my door, carrying a knife. I jumped out the window. Something grabbed my ankle when I was halfway through. And the girl with the knife was still stuck in the doorway.” His eyes cleared as he looked around at us. “Please. Can I come with you, wherever you are going? I’m afraid to stay by myself, and I know that you could protect me. I’m…I’m scared that something from in there might still be…still be around, you know?”
“Of course you can come with us,” Father Ignacio said. He certainly wouldn’t be the first stray we’d taken in after an incident. People often needed time to process what had happened to them, what they’d witnessed. They often found a new level of spiritual life, if not a newfound faith altogether, in the aftermath. Not a few had become Witch Hunters of the Order, themselves.
“Thank you, thank you,” the young man said. For a moment, I almost thought he was going to drop to his knees in gratitude.
As Father forestalled his genuflection, or whatever it was, I suddenly spotted two people, a man and a woman, walking toward us. Both were wearing blue FBI windbreakers. They didn’t look nearly as friendly as the young reporter in his pajamas.
“Here goes neighborhood,” Kolya muttered.
Chapter 2
The woman was in the lead, two steps ahead of the man. She was also half a head taller than he was, with a narrow, severe sort of face, blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail behind her head. She looked around at us rather imperiously, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Who are you people?” she asked. Her voice was clipped and slightly nasal. And her tone immediately set my teeth on edge. “What are you doing here?”
“Who wants to know?” I replied, shifting my Winchester to the crook of my arm as I folded my arms in front of me. I could see the badge on her belt and the big yellow letters “FBI” on her blue windbreaker, so my question was mainly rhetorical. But her attitude put my back up, especially coming after what we’d just done.
“I’m Special Agent Trudeau, and this is Special Agent Miller,” she replied, in the same clipped, arrogant tone of voice. “Now, tell me who you are.”
“Lady, unless you’ve got a warrant, which the good police chief over there might object to, given what just happened, I suggest you get a lot more polite in the next five seconds, or you can pound sand,” I told her.
Eryn was giving me that look that generally meant I had utterly failed as a diplomat, which was no surprise to anyone. Kolya had that sort of dead, Russian mobster sort of look on his face. Anyone who knew Kolya would know that he wasn’t nearly as murderous as he looked, but neither of these people knew him, and he had a really big rifle in his hands and a big .44 Magnum Super Redhawk on his hip.
“I’m sorry,” the man called Miller said, brushing past Trudeau and offering his hand. “We’re part of an investigation into the recent events south of here. I’m sure you’re familiar with them?”
He was talking about the swathe of destruction the Walker on the Hills had left across half a dozen small towns. Yeah, we were quite familiar. And I was starting to think that I knew just what had brought these two here.
“We might have heard a thing or two,” was all I said. After Trudeau’s initial approach, I wasn’t going to be any more forthcoming than I had to. I knew a scalp-hunter when I saw one, and I liked my hair where it was, thank you very much.
“As you might imagine, there are some pointed questions being asked about those events,” Trudeau said icily. “Especially since several witnesses, including local law enforcement, described a number of armed individuals being involved, armed individuals who then were nowhere to be found after the dust settled.”
“Did local law enforcement blame these individuals for the events in question?” I asked, keeping my enunciation just precise enough to let her know I was mocking her. Which probably wasn’t all that wise on my part, but she’d thoroughly annoyed me by then. Sheriff Baker hadn’t seen fit to arrest us after we’d had to shoot our way clear of a hypnotized mob in Coldwell; in fact, he’d signed off on letting his deputy, Frank Tall Bear, accompany us in the pursuit of the Walker. And we’d helped the law and EMS personnel in Ophir and Bartram, aiding the wounded, the injured, and the mad, trying to put the pieces back together after the Walker had gone through. This outsider, who hadn’t been in any of those places, coming in and making accusatory insinuations didn’t sit well with me. And I could feel Kolya bristling beside me, too.
“No,” Miller said hastily. “But with multiple corroborating reports of something extremely strange having happened, with that level of destruction involved, you understand how this is of major concern. If we are going to form a coherent picture of what happened, and whether it amounts to a clear and present danger to the country as a whole, we need to get every bit of information we can.”
“We’ve been keeping our ear to the ground for similar reports of…strange occurrences,” Trudeau said. “I expected that you would show up if something like this surfaced again.” She looked pointedly at Father Ignacio. “Some of the descriptions we got from witnesses were quite detailed.”
“Okay,” I said, after Eryn nudged me. She had that “Be Nice” look in her eyes when she looked at me. “You’ve found us. What do you want?”
“First, I want to know who you are, and what you’re doing crossing a police line on an active crime scene,” Trudeau snapped.
“Why don’t you ask the Chief of Police? The guy who let us cross?” I asked. “We’re consultants. We deal with these sorts of things.”
“What kind of consultants?” she demanded. She really wasn’t going to let this go with the easy answers.
“The good Father here,” I said, jerking a thumb at Father Ignacio, who was still wearing his stole over his biker leathers, “is an exorcist. We provide physical security.” In reality, we provided a bit more than that, but what she didn’t know wasn’t going to kill her. At least, not where we were concerned.
“Look,” Miller said before Trudeau could say anything more, though the look in her face spoke volumes of what she thought about the concept of exorcism, “we just have a few questions we need to ask you. That’s all. None of the first responders we talked to had anything bad to say about you.” Trudeau’s expression got even more arch and skeptical at that, which I hadn’t thought was possible, but Miller really seemed to be trying to smooth the waters. He was edging ahead of his colleague, as if trying to block her hostility out. I didn’t think she was getting the message, though. “Please. Something outside of the realm of what we can explain happened, and we’re just trying to put the picture together. If there’s something new on the horizon that’s getting that many people killed, we have to know what it is.” He took a deep breath. “We just need to talk to you. That’s all.”
I studied him for a moment. The others had sort of stepped back and let me take the lead, probably because I’d opened my big mouth first. Eryn was the closest, with that attitude about her that suggested she was about to try to drag me away if I got too hostile.
“Given your partner’s attitude, Mr. Miller,” I said calmly, “I find that slightly hard to believe. Do we need to call an attorney?”
“Are you saying you have something to hide?” Trudeau asked sharply. Miller actually closed his eyes for a second, a look of complete and utter frustration and exhaustion on his face.
“How…chekist-y of you,” I said. The blank look I got from her suggested she didn’t understand what I’d just said. “As jaw-droppingly unconstitutional as that question is, the answer is no. But you obviously have an ax to grind, though I’m blamed if I know why. Unless you’ve decided that we somehow hypnotized all those cops and EMS folks into thinking we were the good guys, or something. Which is absurd.” I was fairly sure I had an idea why Trudeau was acting the way she was. And if I was right, she was going to neither like nor accept the answers they were looking for.
Her eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to spit her reply at me, but Miller cut her off. “Karen, just let me handle this,” he snapped. “You’ve done enough already.” He turned back to face me, taking a deep breath. It might have been an act, but I didn’t think so. I’d dealt with enough law enforcement officers in my time that I had a pretty good feel for them, the good ones, the bad ones, and the unbelieving ones. Considering how many of our cases get started with what might look like an ordinary crime, Witch Hunters have to be able to deal with the cops.
“Look,” he said, “we got off on the wrong foot, and I’m sorry. We are investigating the…occurrences in a series of small towns to the south, occurrences that you are apparently intimately familiar with. You are not being accused of any crime. We just need to talk to you, to get as much information about what happened as we can. This is a matter of national security, as I’m sure you’ll agree. There are a lot of people dead, we don’t know why, and you folks are witnesses. Note I said ‘witnesses,’ not ‘suspects.’” He gave the distinct impression that he was throwing those last words over his shoulder at Trudeau.
I glanced over his shoulder. Chief Garvey was standing at a decent distance away, but still within earshot, his arms folded across his ch
est, his face impassive. He met my eyes, and there was a moment of unspoken communication. The Spokane Police Chief hadn’t been a credulous man, until his own officers had been thrown around by things they couldn’t see right in front of his eyes when they’d tried to storm the house. He was a believer now, even if he wasn’t sure just what he believed in, and he knew that we’d just helped him out. He wasn’t happy about the FBI’s involvement at all, and even less so about Trudeau’s attitude.
He was still impeccably polite when he stepped forward and spoke. “We can provide a conference room where you can ask your questions at the police station,” he said. “It will be nice and secure.” He glanced at me when he said it, and I took his meaning. The cops would be on our side if Trudeau started getting froggy.
If Miller got the message, he didn’t show it. “That sounds good, if it’s all right with you.” He was looking at me. He was definitely trying to smooth over any feathers that Trudeau had ruffled.
Probably a day late and a dollar short, bud, I thought. Trudeau had already laid the battle lines. We weren’t going to trust her farther than I could throw her. Or her car.
But we couldn’t just blow them off entirely. The Order generally worked around law enforcement where possible, with them when there was no other choice. We preferred to work around; a lot of moderns don’t believe in God or the Devil, much less the Otherworld, and when you start talking about fighting monsters and demons with prayer, holy water, and big, silver-jacketed bullets, such people start getting antsy. But when you can’t work around them and get out unnoticed, you’ve got to be up front and hope that you can get through the wall of unbelief before too many more people get hurt.
This was going to be an “up front” sort of situation, regardless of how adversarial it had started out. We couldn’t afford an adversarial relationship with the FBI.
So, I nodded amiably. “We’ll put our gear back in our trucks and meet you there, then.”
