He nodded slowly, eyes cutting back to me.
“The Host's pet was indeed correct, but our pursuit is noble. This is what we do. His lot, they brought us pain, eons of pain. So. Much. Pain. So we grew, we became stronger, and now we are Legion, for we are many.”
“Which we, Yavetta?” Maggie said, her concentration torn between holding her spell and the conversation. “You, or the demon?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Yavetta said, his voice rising back up amidst the thousands that echoed it. “We do what must be done.”
“So you did this, all this, knowingly?” she said with a nod, as if the picture were becoming clear. “Even killing someone, murdering someone?”
“I did what must be done, to be able to bring it here for this purpose. Now you must do what must be done. Too long have people suffered because of this monster and the Host,” he said.
Maggie stared at him for a long time. She didn’t say a word, just stood there, the knife held besides the rising mist of her chalice. I had managed to force myself to my hands and knees, flame licking over my body with no heat. Alice stared, watching the interchange from both places. Her expression now wasn’t the same look of worried fear I had seen earlier. Now, now it was pure, rabid hatred which rivaled Legion in terrifying intensity.
“That's it, Jack. All of them. All of Legion, in one place. It's stronger now, much stronger than the pieces you fought,” Alice explained.
“What must be done,” Maggie said quietly, and tilted the cup over, letting the water pour to the ground. I felt Alice again, snapping back into me with an almost physical jolt. The flames against my skin winked out. I threw myself against the invisible barrier, fists pounding against it violently. She had stopped the exorcism, but I was still behind the circle, something that could only be broken from the outside. I was a rat in a cage, and of absolutely no use to anyone.
Yavetta screamed, his voice once more lost amidst thousands of others. The rage behind that scream was frightening, almost physical. The pews rattled against each other, the candles around Maggie’s circles winking out.
“Maggie, go! Run!” I yelled.
She listened, or at least tried to. She didn’t have a chance. Yavetta caught her before she could take so much as a step in the opposite direction. His hand snatched in her hair, thick fingers jerking her backwards, staggering her off-balance. He snapped around, grabbing her by the throat with his other hand. Snakes of power writhed under his skin. He lifted her up with one hand, her feet inches off the ground. I heard her let out a choked, panicked gasp.
I couldn’t do anything. I smashed my fists against the invisible wall harder, trying to literally hammer my way through with brute strength. Anger, frustration, rage turned my vision almost red. I was helpless. I was pissed off. I had lost, and once more broken lives were left in my wake even after I had tried to prevent it.
“You will die first, and then the Host and her errand boy,” it growled.
Two things happened then, almost simultaneously.
Yavetta drove a thrashing Maggie down hard into the floor of the church. The polished hardwood splintered from the impact, foot long shards of flooring erupting out from under her. He lifted her again, staring into her face. Blood leaked from her mouth, bubbling with each breath, her eyes narrowed in rage, arms weakly trying to push him off and away. He slammed her again, though it was probably little more than overkill at that point before casually tossing her to the side. She rolled across the floor, limp, little more than a rag doll as she came to a rest against the wall a few feet from Hernandez.
The other, I felt something light, almost like a touch against my shoulder. It was the slightest of impacts, nothing more than a whisper and slight burning sensation across my skin. I heard the clattering of something hitting the floor, and looked down. A rosary stared back up at me. Its beads were polished, though worn to a variety of oblong shapes. It bore the sort of marks that come from years upon years of touch, of being worn down by the fingers of someone seeking comfort in moments of doubt or worry.
I looked back tracing its flight path. Hernandez was staring at me from his place on the floor. He was seated, his back against the wall, broken leg stretched out in front of him. His face was pale, the normally sun-toned brown color of his skin a chalky white. His eyes fluttered and he locked them with mine. He nodded once.
I turned back to see Yavetta staring at me, his face contorted in a mask of rage. His whole body seemed to writhe, to twist under his clothing. There was a stare, a long moment of total and complete silence.
“You picked the wrong fight,” I said finally, pushing all the rage, all the frustration into a cold ball in my stomach. I couldn’t have it now, couldn’t embrace it. It was like prison all over again. It was that first fight in the yard, the one that establishes you, that one where you either get killed or make a statement.
“My crusade is a pure one,” thousands of voices said, speaking all at once.
I paced out of the circle, broken now thanks to Hernandez. I moved slowly, keeping my distance from Yavetta. Our eyes were locked and I could see Legion now. Really see it. Behind that green glow was nothing but hatred, the sort of hatred that fed on pain, on suffering and death. It was something untarnished, something pure and vicious. There was an honesty to it which almost floored me.
So much of it made sense, and for a brief moment I almost felt sorry for the Rabbi who was now Legion. His hatred for the things that preyed on mankind for millennia had brought him to this. To traffic with the thing he hated, above and beyond the Ordo’s use of us as tools to combat the darkness. It had twisted him. He had given himself to that hatred, and it had turned him into exactly what it was he wanted to destroy.
“I expected the vampire to kill you.”
“He made a damn good go at it, I’ll give him that,” I said. It explained a lot about how Adam had found me. The bastard had sent him after me, which just opened up a whole lot of questions that I didn’t have time to sort through.
“It’s a moot point now. You will die, and the Host with you,” he said in a thousand voices, all once. None of them sounded anything like Yavetta. The ones from earlier, Essie, those had simply been a few of the many. The coffee shop, they’d been separate entities, but they were all spawned from him. It explained how it was able to exist in several bodies, to bounce back and forth. It had never possessed them entirely. They were all puppets, little pieces of a larger whole. This though, this was all of them, all of them so far and so many more, all concentrated into one body.
I didn’t respond. Instead I just kept up my slow pacing, watching. When Yavetta moved, it was faster than anything I could fathom. I hadn’t managed to realize he had moved until he hit me. I went airborne, my jaw radiating with cold, stabbing pain. I could feel teeth in my mouth, sharp and jagged, broken from the impact. I was blinded in one eye, either from swelling or brain damage. I didn’t hit the ground. Instead, I felt a hand, heavy and calloused, wrap around my upper arm. He had grabbed me before I even had a chance to land on the ground. He was that fast.
I slammed into the wall with jarring force, my shoulder wrenching out of its socket with a loud pop. Sparks of light erupted behind my eyes and were accompanied by a loud ringing sound in my ears. The force was akin to getting knocked down by a moving train, I assumed. My breath snapped out of me, waves of pain radiating across my back and through my ribs. I was lifted again and thrown across the church's interior, finally crashing into the stacked pews at the opposite wall. Blows rained down on my body as the long wooden benches fell, each one a few hundred pounds of blunt force trauma against my already battered body.
I pushed the pews aside, fighting my way back to my feet. I spit out a mouthful of blood and broken molars on the floor. Yavetta stared at me, eyes distant and radiating green light. He walked towards me, no superhuman speed this time, carried solely by ego. He knew he could beat me, that this was going to be a walk in the park. He was toying with me, same as Adam had. He hadn
't killed before now, because like Adam, it took a lot to put me down, a lot more than a normal person. The pieces hadn't had the strength to do it. The whole sure as fuck did, without question.
“You foolish little man,” Yavetta said. He was in front of me now, less than an inch away. I could smell the reek of demon rolling off him. It was a combination of sulfur, sweat, and all things sour and forbidden. He reached down, wrapping his hand around my throat, easily batting away my attempts at stopping him. He leaned close, eyes narrowed, leering into my face.
“A criminal hiding a criminal. An outcast mated to an outcast. Nothing more,” it growled.
I spit in his face.
He lifted me up by my neck, extending his arm upwards until my feet were at least six inches off the ground. I grabbed his wrist, pushing against it, fighting to relieve some of the pressure in my throat. He just squeezed tighter, allowing me only enough oxygen to stay conscious, but not to speak.
Fair enough.
I snapped my foot upwards, into his jaw in a good old-fashioned kick. I connected, the wet snap of impact followed by broken teeth, a little retribution for my own now fucked up grill. I wasn’t going to be the only with a pretty smile because of this little altercation, damn it. He staggered, and his grip weakened for a split second. I drove my fist into the crook of his elbow and he dropped me. I landed on my feet, reached back and grabbed the first thing I could swing.
It just so happened to be one of the ten-foot long pews that had battered me into the floor a few seconds before. I swung it baseball bat style, throwing every bit of weight and strength I had into it. The pew exploded in the center on impact sending wood and the few hymnals that had managed to remain in the little cubbies whizzing through the air in every direction. Yavetta staggered and fell to the ground. I tossed the four-foot length of pew that was left over to the side and picked up one of the longer shards of wood, roughly the length of my arm. One of the ends, where it hadn't broken, was a perfect ornate square. It had been one of the legs I guessed.
Yavetta sprang back to his feet and I flipped the piece of wood around, so the broken end was in my hand, leaving the squared edge to serve as a club. I hit him before he could mount any sort of offense, bringing the club down on the side of his head. It hit with a dull, wet thud, and Yavetta dropped face down to the floor. I rained blows into his head, hammering him with the length of wood until it snapped. I took a step back, the body at my feet broken and twisted, the back of its skull a lumped mass of blood and hair. I was panting, out of breath and sweating. Yavetta twitched, so I did what any rational person would do in my situation.
I hit him until he stopped.
“Fucker,” I said, breathless.
I turned around, staggering over to check on Maggie.
I got two steps before my legs simply refused to work any more. I mean, my brain was telling them to move, put one foot in front of the other, they just weren't. An arm closed around my neck, light and airy, almost like a lovers embrace. I looked down, saw the black coat sleeve, the battered and broken hand. I looked down further. A flat piece of wood as wide as my thigh protruded from my bare stomach, a few inches below my ribs. There wasn't any pain whatsoever, oddly enough. The flesh around it was torn and ragged. Blood stained the wood, painting the light yellow a darker brown. Blood pumped out of the wound in time with my heartbeat. I reached down, putting my hands around it, my brain riddled with shock. I couldn't feel my legs. The only thing holding me up was the demon possessed Rabbi. The pain was completely distant and fading with every arcing gout of blood that left my body.
For a strained moment, confusion wouldn’t allow me to wrap my head around exactly what had just happened. The length of wood had to be a joke, some sort of weird hallucination from lack of sleep, or running too long on fumes and adrenaline. I had killed the Rabbi. I mean, it had looked like he'd died. Yet, here I was, with him holding me up and legs that didn't want to listen to me anymore.
“We told you, you and the Host were to die.” I heard Yavetta’s weird oscillating voice whisper in my ear. There was a finality in it which I found strangely comfortable.
Around me, the church started to darken. There was a slow creeping shadow that seemed to bleed out of the corners, through the doors, up through the cracks in the floor. It moved across the floor like the shadow of storm clouds, slipping over Maggie, over Hernandez. I knew exactly what it was. It was death coming to collect a long overdue debt. Hell, I'm kinda surprised the man himself hadn't shown up to take me personally out of this mortal coil. It's not everyday someone slips that noose, so to speak.
Yavetta dropped me, my hands still around the shard of wood that had been used to impale me. My mouth hung open, failing in an attempt to vocalize a useless protest. This was it. This was the end of the line and there was no rest in sight. I lay on the floor watching the darkness slide closer, shapes, slightly humanoid reached for me with dark, spindly fingers made from pure darkness.
Alice appeared next to me. She stared into my face and then sat down, Indian style, primly arranging her dress about her knees.
“Jack, my poor Jack,” she whispered.
Chapter 32
The darkness had surrounded us, pure and complete. I could see faces, hands grasping in and out, expressions painted by shadow and highlighted only by darker and lighter forms of darkness. A circle had settled around us, Alice standing over my body in the center. Pain had become phantom. It was there but it was something ephemeral and distant. I could feel it, but it didn’t seem real. The ridged texture of the wood that pierced into my back, that ran through my chest and exited just below my ribs was tactile, but it was like feeling it through gloves. I could see my breath, small little bursts of white against cold air, but I felt no cold.
“You’re dying, Jack. Again,” she said.
She took my head in her lap, hands stroking through my hair. Her fingertips felt warm, radiating a comforting heat that sunk into my skin, pushing the aches, the pain further away. She cradled me like that, her fingers sliding over my cheek, brushing my hair back from my eyes.
“You know what happens when you die.”
“Hell.”
She nodded. “Yes. Hell.”
“I don’t want to die, Alice,” I said. I could feel the tears streaming down my face. I had lived with the threat of death constantly, abiding with the certainty that there was no redemption for me, that Hell was my final destiny. I had more than once, risked death, gotten arrogant with what Alice had given me. Now though, staring it in the face, I was scared. No, I wasn’t scared. I was fucking petrified.
“I know, Jack,” she said, and the corners of her lip folded up into a small, kind smile.
“Please don’t let me die,” I said, and started to cry, full on like a baby. The wood piercing my body turned the shuddering of my sobs into something better resembling convulsions.
“Shh, Jack. You don’t have to die,” she said. “I told you you’d have to make a choice.”
I looked up into her eyes, tears turning it into a kaleidoscope effect. Colors danced around her face. At that moment she looked absolutely beautiful. Her white skin, her hair, the way her eyes formed two milky pools, it all seemed to practically sing out with pure radiant beauty.
I tried to wrap my head around her words, to find their meaning in the simplicity of their syllables. I didn’t have to die. It was one of the same things she had said to me when we’d struck the original deal that had bound us together in the first place.
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to die,” she said again. “Not like this. You’ve given me your soul. Give me your life, pledge the body with the soul. That is your choice, the one I’ve told you about. Are you willing to sacrifice more of yourself for them?”
The second part of a Becoming was the body. You pledge it to the demon, and it’s used like a tool. The emotions you feel feed the demon, the pain you cause fuels it, makes it stronger. You become the instrument. You still have
your freewill, but some of the demon's essence, its wants, they start to bleed over making you less than human in a lot of ways. After that, it was only one more deal, one moment of desperation on the mortal’s side and the demon would have total control, leaving you as just a bystander in your own head. You'd essentially be existing in Hell and in your head simultaneously, watching both places, touching neither.
“I... What?” I asked, feeling strength slipping from my limbs. Around us, the darkness had settled in closer, thick pools of black almost touching the hem of Alice’s dress. I could feel the cold now, settling into my bones. I was weary, tired. My eyelids starting to grow heavier with each weakening breath. I knew how this worked. I’d close them, fast as blinking, and when I opened them, I’d see Hell. Really see Hell for the first time, not just as some hulking shape on the horizon.
She sighed. “There’s not a whole lot of time left. Give me your life. Let me sustain it.”
I turned it over in my head, trying to chase down the exact meaning of her words. Let her sustain my life, which is what I thought she had been doing since the beginning. I closed my eyes, and as much as I didn’t want to, I opened them again. My lungs, even my heart felt tired. I heard the rhythmic thump of my heartbeat, so close, growing more and more distant with each passing moment. My lungs relaxed, one last breath, carrying a word and pushing it up through my throat.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
I didn't listen and I saw Alice for what she truly was. Not Alice, but Alikel - a thing of pure, radiant beauty. She was a woman, not a child. Her hair, still the purest of whites hung almost to her waist, seeming to sway around her like she was underwater, gently ebbing and flowing around an athletic frame. Her dress, once something little girlish had become a simple wrap around her waist, reaching down to her ankles. She was shirtless, her stomach a perfect flat plane that led to small, modest breasts. Her arms were toned, a perfect mixture of grace and athleticism that ended in a doll's fine hands. She lifted her head slightly, eyes still the purest white, and looked around as if seeing the world for the first time. Her mouth opened slightly, her perfect lips separating to let out the smallest of contented sighs. Wings, massive feathered wings, sprouted from her shoulders. They were spattered and soaked with red, broken in places, feathers torn and scorched black at the tips. Blood leaked from scattered cuts and wounds beneath the white feathers. She held a sword in her hand, a simple cross hilt style longsword. The same whitish blue flame that had poured from the sigils carved in my body during the exorcism wreathed the blade, sputtering and flickering, seeming to threaten to simply go out at any moment only to flare to back to brilliant life.
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