"Dale..." He spared a last desperate glance back towards his foster-brother, then made a dash out the back door.
Tears blurred Gideons eyes as he ran around the side of the house, tearing through Mrs. Foster's fence like it wasn't even there. Shame burned his face, not for what he'd done to his father, but for bringing Dale into their conflict. He'd always tried so hard -- so hard -- to keep his younger brother out of it.
Towards Bill Cermak he felt nothing but a sense of betrayal. Not because the man had tried to shoot him, but because he'd known. All this time, he'd known the truth behind what Gideon was, what the others were, and had resented him, hated him.
Sirens in the distance. Gideon ducked through a few more yards, not sure where to go, where to hide, what to do.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was easy for Delilah to get back into the school library after Mr. Gonzales had locked up. She did have a key, after all. She wasn't supposed to, but Gideon had acquired it for her during her sophomore year. That had been the rough one.
Freshman year she was a novelty. The twelve-year-old prodigy had been too new for Laton's teens to really know what to think. By Sophomore year, though, they'd decided that she was a twerp, a freak, a nerd, a subject for mirth and mockery. Seldom to her face and never in front of the teachers, but she knew what they were saying. She could figure it out. She was, after all, a genius.
Delilah began spending more and more time in the library and on the internet where, the old saying went, nobody knew you were a dog. Or a twelve year old wunderkind.
The only problem was that the computer lab was technically only open during study periods, and kept locked at other times. She'd tried asking Mr. Gonzales if he could let her in to work after school, but he'd only shrugged and said that rules were rules. Delilah had come to believe that the school librarian had a drinking problem, and just wanted to cut out early to hit The Bum Steer, Laton's only bar.
After much deliberation she'd asked her old grade-school classmate Dale's older brother Gideon to steal it for her. He'd always been nice to her, if a bit distant because of the tremendous age difference between twelve and fifteen. The massive crush she'd been nursing made making the request one of the most difficult things she'd had to do in her young life.
He didn't hesitate to agree, seeming to relish the idea of sticking it to "the man," which at the time she had taken to mean that he held a grudge against Mr. Gonzales.
The theft been the start of a beautiful friendship.
She'd taken the key and had a copy made down at Fred's Hardware, then had had Gideon return it, which was apparently more difficult than the theft had been. He managed.
From that point on, the library's computer lab became her refuge. A place of solace, especially after classes, when everyone went home. Her parents never even mentioned her coming home late.
Not that she didn't have internet access at home, but she preferred to stay out as late as possible. Her parents' indifference was harder to ignore when it was right there, in her face.
Of more immediate importance, the school was part of the city's intranet. It was a lot easier to break in here than it would have been at home, and the connection was faster.
She felt a little bad about cutting out and leaving all of her half-siblings behind like this, so she'd see what she could find out from the civic records. She'd look for information about their adoptions, the agency that had placed them, about that town Melchezidek was looking for, about anything.
The work would, incidentally, help distract her from the agony of waiting for Gideon to return.
The security protocols had been changed since she'd logged in to find Lily and her friends' hospital and police records, only a week prior. New passwords. A new firewall to work around. Had they detected her earlier intrusion?
She left the computer lab for Mr. Gonzales's desk in the main library.
A quick glance told her that he had finally started taking the memos about not keeping his password on a post-it fixed to his monitor seriously.
"Feck feck feck."
If he was trying to remember the password, it'd have to be something simple. She drummed her fingers and took a look at his desk. Framed photo of his wife, Maria, and their son, Felipe.
She turned on his computer and tried logging onto the intranet, using MARIA as the password -- Mr. Gonzales had a penchant for the Caps Lock key.
Didn't work. She tried FELIPE. Then MARIAFELIPE and FELIPEMARIA.
"Shiest." Nope.
Hm. Phillipe was what, six? FELIPE2008.
He'd been born in April. The day after Easter, she recalled. Mr. Gonzales had been out that Monday.
FELIPE041708.
Bingo. Delilah settled into the seat, fingers flying over the keyboard as she navigated from the school's main access page to the city hub. Despite his lax security, Mr. Gonzales moonlighted as the city IT expert, so finding anything pertinent should be easy with the tools at her disposal.
Starting with the adoption records. She'd looked up her own before, of course, but--
Huh. Mr. Gonzales's password didn't work.
Well, it worked, but it just redirected to a blank page.
She opened the page's source code in a new window. Whoever had updated the security protocol -- probably Gonzales himself -- had overlooked an error in the php script.
"Sloppy sloppy... what the frick." There was another level of redirect here, one she'd never have noticed if she wasn't digging around in Gonzales's spaghetti code. Another level of redirect, leading to two different databases of records. One that was the records that she'd seen before, and one that was older. One that hadn't been updated in almost a decade.
"Holy crap," she said, scanning its contents, her mouth drying as anxiety rose from her guts to her throat. "Oh my shit."
This was... this was big. Holy crap, this was big.
She just stared at the screen, hands poised over the keyboard, dread welling up from somewhere deep within her soul, trying to deny the implications of what she was looking at.
***
"Mom? Dad?" Lily dropped her schoolbag on the couch on her way to the kitchen.
Dad was at the counter, making himself a sandwich. He smiled at her over his shoulder. "Hi, Pumpkin."
"How was school?" Her mother's voice came from the laundry room.
"Fine."
Her dad tied off the bread bag. "Was that Derek dropping you off? Is he coming in?"
"He's got practice," Lily said.
"Don't you have track?" Her mom asked.
"I wanted to talk to you guys, if you have a moment?"
Dad clucked his tongue. "You shouldn't skip practice. Not if you want to compete at your best."
"Please," she said. "This is important."
Her mother entered from the laundry room. "Of course, darling, you know you can talk to us about anything."
"I'm just saying that if track is important to you, you can't skip." Dad punctuated his words with air-jabs from his mustard-coated butter-knife. "It's not like you couldn't talk to us this evening."
"Dear," Mom said.
"I'm just saying."
"Go on, honey."
Lily sat on one of the stools along the kitchen island. "I was just wondering. You know. About how I was adopted."
Her father slathered his bread, while her mother stood, leaning back against the counter.
"I was just wondering... you know... about my birth parents."
"What about them, dear?" Mom asked.
"I just..." Lily made a vague gesture, trying to figure out how to articulate herself. "I just wanted to know about them. You know."
"You know as much about your birth mother as we do," Mom said.
Lily had heard the story when she was twelve, and first asked her parents about it. She'd known she was adopted, of course. Her parents had never made a secret of that, and had even walked her through the concept when she was six, explaining that while their family was different from the others in La
ton, even though she didn't look like them the way her friend Jessie looked like her parents, they didn't love her any less. Lily had never doubted that.
Her birth-mother was a woman named Delores, who had come to town pregnant and given birth. She didn't stay, and couldn't take care of a baby, so she'd left Lily with the hospital. They were going to send her to an adoption agency in Odessa, but Tom and Lisa Baker had quickly fallen in love with little Lily and taken her as their own.
"Why did she come here to have me?" Lily asked. "That never made sense."
Her mother opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of sweet tea. "Things are different now, darling, but you need to remember that people haven't always been kind to women who find themselves in that situation. It was unusual in the nineties, but young pregnant girls leaving town and coming back without babies used to be the way people did things."
Her father reached past her mother to grab a tomato out of the fridge. "Nobody talked about it, but everyone knew what it meant."
"But why here? Why Laton? Wouldn't she go stay with relatives?"
Her mother grabbed three glass tumblers out of the cabinet above the sink. "Sometimes relatives are the least understanding of all."
"Like Nana Paxton." Her father said.
"Be nice to mamma," Her mother punched her father playfully on the arm.
"But why here?" Lily asked again.
"She was a member of the Church." Her father picked up the serrated knife and started slicing his tomato. "From one of the other branches."
"You know her?" Lily asked, a sudden jolt of hope rushing through her.
"I know who she is. Was." He sounded guarded.
"Can I meet her?" Lily asked.
Her mother poured three glasses of tea, one for each of them, while exchanging a glance with her father. "That's not up to us, dear."
"Mom--"
She slid one of the glasses over to Lily. "I know you're curious, sweetheart, but you can't just intrude upon another person's life."
"It's my life too!"
"Of course, sweetie, but that doesn't give you the right to disrupt someone else's. Not when she'd already made her choice."
Lily's eyes dropped to her drink, then rose back to her mother's concerned face. "Can you ask? For me? I won't bother her if she says no."
Her father stepped from the counter to the table, putting his plate next to his glass. "We can ask. I can't guarantee she'll respond, but we can ask."
"Thank you, Daddy."
He smiled and took a big bite out of his sandwich.
"Why the sudden curiosity, dear?" her mother asked.
Glancing between her parents' concerned faces, Lily was torn. More than anything, she wanted to share her news with them. She wanted to share her fears with them. But how? Mom, Dad, I'm the Devil's own? My father was the Devil, and government agents are trying to find me and other half-demons? They'd think she was nuts, and lock her up. She hated keeping this from them, keeping anything from them, but she didn't feel like she had any other chocie.
Her gaze dropped to the table. "I'm almost out of high-school. An adult now. The next phase of my life, you know? I need to know where I come from if I want to know where I'm going. And I want to know about my birth father."
"You come from here." Her father tapped the counter. "We raised you, darling. You're a Baker. Whomever your birth parents were."
"No, I know," she said. "You're my parents. You're my mother. You're my father. The ones who chose to be a part of my life, and that means a lot to me. It means everything. But I need to know the rest. It doesn't change who I am -- you made me who I am -- but it's important. I need the closure."
Her father chewed his sandwich.
Mom pulled her in for a hug. "Oh, Lily. We'll do what we can."
"Thanks, Mom."
"But I want you to be ready for disappointment. Don't expect her to agree to meet with you. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Don't get your hopes up."
"I won't."
Lily took a long slow sip from her glass, mostly to avoid blurting anything out. Holding back from her parents was so not like her. They were both always open and honest with her, and lying to them was never easy. And lying about something like this -- it felt like a betrayal of the greatest magnitude.
She hoped they'd forgive her.
CHAPTER SIX
"Got the glass cleaned up nice," Reverend Baker said, nodding at Reverend Ross's kitchen. "I'd never know anything happened."
"Patio door is cleaner than it'd been since we moved in," Ross gestured towards the patio door with his beer.
Baker chuckled. "Betty still using that home-made glass cleaner?"
"Her great-great grannie's recipe," Charles Ross said. "Bet it stunk then, too."
Reverend Baker looked out into the darkness of the back yard. "New shed yet?"
"On order from Fred's."
Headlights flashed by from the front of the house.
"That'll be Bill," Ross said with a sigh.
"What happened?"
"Something to do with his boy. Didn't say over the phone. Called from the hospital, though."
"Christ almighty, what now."
Ross put his beer down and headed towards the living room and the front door. "We always wondered if raising them with compassion was going to make a difference. Guess Bill gave us a control case."
He opened the door before the town Sheriff could knock. The man looked terrible, eye blackened, face swollen, arm in a cast, neck in a brace.
"Jesus, Bill," Ross said. "What happened?"
"That shit-fuck you had me raising is what happened," Bill said through swollen lips.
"Gideon did this to you?" Baker asked.
"Beat the tar out of me like it was nothing," the Sheriff said. "Almost went after my boy."
"Is Dale alright?" Ross asked.
"Sirens chased Gideon off a'fore he could hurt my boy. I called for backup soon as I figured he was headed home."
Reverend Baker sat heavily on the couch. "Damn."
"Didn't see this coming?" Bill asked. "Surprised? I wasn't. Knew this was coming since you dropped that little demon off at our place."
"It's not like that," Baker said quietly.
"It is now," Ross said. "He almost killed Bill."
"What do we do?" Reverend Baker asked.
Sheriff Cermak threw his hat onto the couch. "You know what comes next."
"I have no idea."
Reverend Ross handed the sheriff a beer. "Yes you do, Tom."
Baker stood up. "No, wait. It's just the boy. My Lily, your Jessie, the girl the Kleins are raising--"
"Have you been reading the Kleins' reports?" Ross asked.
"I haven't seen anything incriminating."
"You've read their recommendations."
Baker rolled his eyes. "That's just being the Kleins being the Kleins. You know how they are. They're not even members of the Church."
"Bob takes their reports seriously," Ross said. "Delilah is too smart to be controlled. She can't be kept in the dark forever. And she's close to Gideon."
"You read the last report?" the Sheriff asked. "They've been meeting. Even the Carter boy."
Reverend Baker froze. "I didn't know."
"Colluding," the Sheriff said. "Could be about anything."
"That doesn't mean--"
"I've already sent my own report to Bob," Reverend Ross said. "After you called me, Bill."
"Praise Jesus," The Sheriff raised his good arm, then winced, holding his neck.
Baker's voice dropped to a whisper. "Without me? What did you tell him, Chuck?"
Reverend Ross's voice was flat. "Look, Tom, I'm not going to lie. You're not looking good in all this."
"Forget me," Baker said. "What did you tell him?"
"Everything."
Baker's face went white. "We agreed to--"
"Look at Bill!" Reverend Ross pointed. "Look what Gideon did to him. They're out of control. Might
just be the one now, but you know as well as I do that it won't stop there."
Reverend Baker lowered his face into his hands. "Oh, God, Chuck, what have you done?"
"My duty," Reverend Ross said. "My duty to God, to the church, to all of humanity. I love my Jessie, Tom, and don't you even say I don't, but it's done."
"Fucking Halleluja," the Sheriff said.
"What did you do?" Baker's voice gained a warbling treble.
"It's over."
"What did Bob say?" Reverend Baker's voice was almost a whisper.
"He's sending Porter," Ross said. "The matter is handled."
Baker stood up, hands tangled in his hair. "Porter? Oh God."
The Sheriff also stood. "Goddamn, I better get my men ready. When's he coming?"
"It's Porter," Ross said. "Tomorrow. Next week. Maybe he's already here."
"What have you done?" Baker stumbled to the door, sagging against its frame. "Charles? What have you done? What have you done?"
Ross called out into the night as his friend made his way to his car. "I did what I had to, Tom. You stay out of it, or it'll end poorly for you, too."
***
Upstairs in her room, Jessie stood from the chair near the heating vent. She didn't know what her father, the other Deacon, and the Sheriff had been talking about, but she could tell that it was both dreadful and important. Something about that name -- Porter -- filled her with an almost inexplicable deep-seated dread. Maybe it was the context, or maybe it was her gift. A message from her dark father Lucifer.
The only thing she knew for certain was that something awful was about to happen to her and her half-siblings.
The desire to warn them, to go to them, to run, warred with her devotion to the Church and the sixth commandment: Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.
She was adopted. The Ross's weren't her biological father and mother, but they had raised her, and that was the same thing, wasn't it?
But God was her creator.
Lucifer was her father.
Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) Page 13
