by R. L. King
“What’s wrong with him?” Grace whispered, her own eyes wide.
Already, Stone felt the pull of Archie’s words. He shook his head quickly and turned the man back around. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
Stone pulled the crucifix Grace had given him from his pocket and slipped it over his head and under his shirt. He wasn’t convinced it would work here, but it couldn’t hurt. Instantly, some of the hypnotic cadence of Archie’s “sermon” lessened. “I need to end this,” he said grimly. “It may already be too late for these people.”
“What do you want me to do?” Grace asked, glancing around at the hypnotized crowd.
“Pray, I guess.”
“I’m already doing that.”
“Keep it up, then. And wish me luck.”
Up front, Archie continued pacing, waving his arms and booming his message out to the congregation. “This is what you want,” he was saying, his soothing, powerful voice easily projecting to the church’s back wall without need for a microphone or speakers. “This is what you deserve. Don’t allow the toxic messages of the weak and the misinformed to keep you from what you’re due. This world belongs to you. It’s yours for the taking. The only thing that stops you is the false morality taught to you by weaklings and those who can’t succeed. They don’t want you to succeed, either. Don’t let them win, friends! Don’t let them defeat you! Remember, you deserve what you want. All you have to do is let me show you how to claim it!”
Along with his words, more of the red energy seeped out from him, settling over the crowd, reinforcing whatever spell he was weaving over them.
Stone closed his eyes for a moment and pulled up his protective shield, powering it with one of his crystals. He stepped forward, gently pushing aside two standing congregants. They moved out of his way without resistance.
Stone strode up the aisle between the two sets of pews, stopping halfway up. “Archie!”
The demon stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Ah,” he said. “We have a visitor. A most distinguished visitor.” He returned to the center of the stage, directly in front of the pulpit, and spread his arms wide. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Dr. Alastair Stone. He is an unbeliever—a blasphemer who has come among us like the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, to lure you from your appointed path.”
A low muttering undercurrent began at the edges of the crowd closest to Stone and radiated outward toward the sides and back of the room. Stone didn’t have to look at them to feel the suspicion and unrest aimed at him. He’d have to play this carefully if he didn’t want to end up hurting these people.
“Give it up, Archie,” Stone called, taking a few more steps forward. “It’s over. You can’t have these people. You’re not going to corrupt them like you did the last time you were here.”
Archie chuckled. “See, friends? Do you hear him? He’s afraid—afraid of me, and afraid of you, because he knows you are on the path of righteousness, and his wicked sorcery is powerless against you.” He raised his hands again. “Should we show him the error of his ways? Show him the power of true righteousness?”
The mutters of discontent grew louder. Every member of the crowd, moving almost as one, turned to face Stone with their dead, fixed stares.
“Show him!” Archie cried. “That is your first step, friends! You must cast the unbeliever from your midst! Cast him into the pit where he belongs, and remove him from your place of worship! Do it now!”
The crowd’s torpor broke. “Get him!” yelled a man.
“Cast him out!” cried a woman.
“Drive out the blasphemer!”
They surged forward toward Stone, converging on him. The first few hit his shield and bounced off, but the others quickly took their place, pounding and screaming. Their faces, pressed against the shield’s protective bubble, looked like mad things.
These weren’t dust devils, with their supernatural strength, though—they were a collection of normal people, many of them middle-aged or elderly and in no shape to be exerting themselves like this. Worse, as some of the first to reach Stone had bounced off the shield, they’d fallen in a flail of arms and legs. The next wave of mindless attackers, heedless of what they were doing to their companions, trampled them in their single-minded rush to follow Archie’s orders. Their screams of pain mingled with the rest of the crowd’s angry shouts, while above it all the demon’s voice rose, still fully audible as he continued to exhort his followers.
Stone couldn’t even see Archie anymore—the crazed congregation had surrounded the bubble, burying him nine or ten people deep in writhing bodies. When they couldn’t reach him to pound on the bubble, they pounded on each other, trying to get through. The ones behind pressed the ones in front in a breathless crush against the shield. If this went on much longer, somebody was going to get hurt, or even killed.
He’d have to get rid of them somehow—and do it without hurting them. At least not much. He gathered his energy, focusing on control rather than power, and sent a wave of gentle concussive energy out in all directions, shoving the congregation back and away from him. They tumbled backward over the pews, confused and still shouting, but didn’t immediately regroup and resume their attacks. They weren’t completely mindless, then—they’d recognized that something had happened to them. Several of those who’d been crushed in the initial surge lay on the floor, moaning; some of them were bleeding.
“Have no fear, friends!” Archie was calling to them from the front. “This one is strong and wicked. But he has no power against us, against you! Let me show you what true righteousness can do to the agents of the Deceiver!”
He pointed both hands at Stone and a bolt of energy flew from his fingers, arcing across the church and slamming into the mage. The force of it took down the shield, blowing Stone off his feet and sending him sailing toward the rear doors. He barely got the barrier back up before he hit, but the impact and the psychic feedback stunned him, breaking his concentration. The shield dropped again.
Get up, damn you! He struggled back to his feet quickly, fighting the explosion inside his head, and once again recast the shield. Where was Grace? He couldn’t see her in the dimness.
Archie flung another bolt at him, but this time he saw it coming and managed to dive sideways, slamming into a group of suddenly docile parishioners milling around behind the last pew.
“You can’t win, Stone,” the demon called. He was floating above the ground now, looking even more like some kind of avenging angel than he had before. The only thing he was missing was wings. “The wicked shall never prevail. These people will not be denied what is rightfully theirs.”
“Oh, put a sock in it,” Stone muttered. Pulling power from one of his crystals, he unleashed a torrent of pure magical energy at the demon. Then he dived behind a pew and pulled up an invisibility spell.
The bolt hit Archie, but once again dissipated against an unseen shield. The demon laughed. “See?” he called to the group. “He cannot prevail. See how he thinks he is hidden from me? Evil can never hide from the eyes of the good.”
Almost casually he sent another blast, not toward the back of the church where Stone had last been visible, but off to the right side, halfway up the far aisle—directly at him.
Stone had no time to get his shield up—he’d been counting on Archie not seeing him until he’d managed to get closer. He dived forward; the bolt hit the pew behind him and shattered one of the windows, sending wood splinters and glass shards in every direction. Stone hit the ground hard and rolled, bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts. He ducked behind another pew, panting.
This wasn’t going as he’d hoped. Not at all. Grace’s presence didn’t seem to be deterring Archie in the slightest—he hadn’t attacked her, which was a good thing, but he seemed to have no problem attacking Stone. That wasn’t a good thing.
A worse thing was that
not only did it appear Archie could see through his invisibility spell, but he couldn’t pierce the demon’s own shields with his magic. Was Archie really that powerful, even in his corporeal form? If he was, then Stone was in trouble. That last bolt had been one of his strongest—if it couldn’t get through Archie’s defenses, he didn’t have a lot of other options.
He could always try Harrison’s magic again. That was his ace in the hole. It had been effective when nothing else had—but what if that were only true on Archie’s plane? He scrambled forward, these thoughts whirling through his mind as he moved. If he was wrong—if he tried Harrison’s magic and it didn’t work, or it didn’t take Archie out completely, he’d be defenseless. Grace might be able to help, but he doubted she could keep them both safe from that level of power.
What about the crucifix? If he could get close enough to the demon, maybe he could use that. With Grace’s faith magic behind it, it might be strong enough to do some damage. But Archie would never let him get that close.
The pew next to him and the ones directly in front and behind it suddenly rose up off the floor, wrenching free of the bolts holding them down, and sped toward Stone as another of the church’s windows blew out. At the last second he leaped upward, his levitation spell taking him above the pews barely a second before they crashed, one after the other, down on the place where he’d been hiding. He flew higher, coming to rest on one of the wide wooden rafters high above.
Archie laughed again and pointed his hands upward. “Watch and be amazed, my friends!” he cried. Energy gathered around his upraised hands.
“NO!” cried another voice.
Stone clutched the upright beam and whipped his gaze back toward the rear of the church. Grace was striding up the middle aisle, her crucifix held in front of her, her expression resolute and fixed on the floating Archie.
Archie smiled. “And what’s this? Stone’s little girlfriend, all pious and full of God’s holy fury?” He glanced up at Stone. “You shouldn’t have brought her here. Now you can watch her die before I kill you. And it will be your fault, just like all those others. Or maybe I’ll kill you first and skin you in front of her.” He addressed the crowd. “What do you think, friends? What should I do with the unbelievers?”
The crowd began their muttering again, shuffling slowly toward Grace. They didn’t seem as focused as before, but Stone could see the dawning of fresh anger in their eyes.
Grace ignored them. “Begone, foul demon!” she called in a clear, confident voice. “Begone in the name of Jesus Christ! Go back to the pits of Hell and trouble us no more!”
Archie shook his head, still smiling, but the smile didn’t look quite as cocky as it did before. He waved his hand and two more pews moved in front of Grace. “Stay away from me, bitch,” he said. “Friends, you know what must be done. I will attend to this other blasphemous wretch.”
Without even looking at Stone and so fast that the mage didn’t have time to react, he pointed his hand upward and blew out the entire section of rafter that Stone crouched on. It cracked and shattered, sending him tumbling toward the ground a good twenty feet below.
He got the shield up, but this time, while it certainly saved his life and cushioned the blow, it didn’t entirely protect him from the consequences of the fall. He crashed, shield and all, into another section of pews—it felt like what he imagined it must feel like to experience a head-on collision inside a van padded with mattresses. Once again the feedback exploded in his brain, sending jagged patterns of white static cascading across his thought processes like a hail of knives.
No, no. You have to get up. There was a reason he had to get up, but he couldn’t remember it. Every time he tried to remember it, something pulled gauzy curtains across his mind.
Something about someone getting hurt…
Think!
“Begone! I order you to depart, demon, in the name of Jesus Christ!”
It all snapped back into place. Grace! Her voice still sounded strong, but not as strong as before.
He clutched at the top of the pew and pulled himself painfully up in time to see the crowd converging on Grace. They hadn’t reached her yet, shambling like slow-moving zombies, but they would get there in seconds. From where he was, he couldn’t use his concussion spell to knock them away from her, since they were all around her. Maybe at his best he’d have that kind of control, but not now.
Archie was laughing. He still floated there at the front of the church, watching the proceedings, his arms spread wide.
Stone blinked blood out of his eyes and struggled to think. Were they lost? Would the demon-bewitched crowd take Grace down, and with her his last hope of defeating Archie? Did he even have enough power to hope to injure the demon? So far, even at his best he hadn’t been able to—what made him think he could do it now?
The crowd had reached Grace. They raised their hands and their mutters grew louder, turning to angry shouts.
Grace screamed.
Stone was about to force himself to leap up and make one last stand to save her when he saw it.
There, behind Archie.
Hanging there on the wall.
Stone spat blood and grinned. It would either work or it wouldn’t—but if it did work—
He focused past the floating Archie and put all his remaining power into moving fast and punching hard, ripping the upside-down crucifix from the wall behind Archie, orienting it so its bottom shaft faced the demon’s back, and sending it flying with every last bit of magical strength behind it.
For an instant, he didn’t think it would work. It couldn’t work. It was absurd to think it could. Surely the demon would have guarded against—
The crucifix hit Archie square in the back. His scream as the pointed end impaled him and continued out the other side rocked the church, rising up into the rafters and echoing around the walls. Like a bizarre replay of the scene from the demon’s own dimension, the church’s remaining windows blew out.
Archie crashed to the ground, the crucifix’s bloody point poking up out of his chest, the rest of its long shaft keeping his body from fully lying down. He writhed, screamed, and clawed at the thing, shrieking incoherently in a language Stone had never heard before that hurt not only his ears, but his soul.
And then, abruptly, the shrieks and the thrashes stopped. Archie’s body went stiff and then his bloodstained white clerical robes fluttered and collapsed in on themselves. The crucifix likewise fell, laid out flat on the ground. It still pierced the robes, but now, aside from a large quantity of dust and a few lumps—including a quivering, gore-streaked pink brain where the demon’s head had been—nothing remained within them.
Almost nothing.
Heart and head pounding, Stone forced himself to move. He vaulted over the pews and ran to where Archie had fallen. “Ms. Ruiz?” he called without looking back.
“I’m—okay.” Her voice shook, but she didn’t sound injured. “But—the people—they’re—”
Stone risked one quick look over his shoulder. Every one of the parishioners had collapsed where he or she stood, forming a disorderly heap of bodies on the floor.
“Check them,” he ordered, already turning back to his own task. He plunged his hand into the bloody robes, hoping he was wrong.
But he wasn’t wrong. In the midst of something cold and spongy, his hand fell on something warm that pulsed faintly as he touched it. He wrenched it free and stared at it, already knowing what he’d see: a human heart, blackened and impossibly ancient, shot through with veins of glowing red. Despite the fact that the crucifix’s shaft had passed directly through where it should have been, it remained unscathed. It felt profoundly wrong in Stone’s hand, as if he were holding a small, rotting animal carcass or a handful of excrement.
And he could already feel it trying to reach its vile tendrils into his mind.
“Ms. Ruiz!” he called. �
��I need your help here, please.”
She came bounding over, breathless. “They’re alive,” she said. “At least the ones I checked are. Just unconscious.” Catching sight of what he held, she recoiled in revulsion. “Is that…his heart?”
“Yes. And as far as I know, we can’t destroy it—though I’m going to give it my best go before we decide what to do with it in the meantime. I wish we had the box, but I’m afraid we’ll have to settle for second best for now.” He removed the crucifix she’d given him and offered it to her. “Let me wrap this up and find something to put it in. We’ll put that on top of it, and hopefully it won’t get up to any more mischief before—”
“Dr. Stone?”
Stone turned at the sound of the unexpected—and familiar—voice.
Simon Beal stood there, just inside the double doors, dressed in his old-fashioned suit and carrying his briefcase. He stared at the scene, eyes wide and expression incredulous. “What’s—happened here?”
Stone frowned. “Mr. Beal? What are you doing here? Didn’t you go back to Los Angeles?”
Beal hurried up, gingerly stepping over the unconscious bodies of the parishioners. “I was going to, but then I got a line on another angle for my research! I was trying to contact you because I thought you might be very interested in—what is that?” he asked as his gaze fell on the heart, now nestled in a handkerchief Stone had pulled from his coat pocket. “And what on earth has happened to all of these poor people? Should we call someone?”
“Long story. Not really one we can go into right now.”
“I’ll go call someone,” Beal said, looking worried. “But first, let me give you this information I found. I think you’ll find it very helpful.” He opened his briefcase and reached inside.
“Mr. Beal, I don’t think this is the time to—” Stone glanced down at Archie, half expecting him to be reforming his body, or stealthily crawling his dusty remains away. Then something occurred to him. “How did you know where I was?”
