The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1)

by Duncan, Lex

  “What?” I croaked. One measly bullet couldn't kill him. He was Dante Arturo. Anti-Christ Superstar. He couldn't―no, he wasn't—going to die. He'd be fine, we'd be fine. He'd get up soon and we'd find Rosie and everything would be fine.

  “Beatrice,” Aralia said. “Look at me.”

  “Just get the bullet out.” I choked back a sob. This was all my fault.

  “You have to look at me,” Aralia said again, urgency heightening her voice.

  Dante gasped. His free hand flew up to grab the back of my neck, fingers burying themselves in my hair. His eyes, previously twisted with agony, snapped open. The cinnamon color I was used to was swallowed in black. Dark, glassy, demonic black.

  All at once, everything I thought I knew about him began to unravel. But in a way, it made a certain sort of sense. If Dante was possessed, it would explain the constant exhaustion. The unwillingness to sleep. The agitation when the mayor accused him of hiding something. The anger when we heard that man on the radio. Why he said he'd hurt me. Why he kicked me out under the pretense of protecting me.

  Furthermore, I'd never once seen him pop an iron pill, but he made me take them all the time.

  He'd been lying to me. So had Aralia. So had Max, for all I knew. I couldn't tell if I was mad or just upset.

  Aralia sighed. “I'm sorry you had to find out this way. Hold him down, please.”

  He promised to tell me everything. So long as I gave him a few days to get his affairs in order. If I didn't do what Aralia asked, he'd likely do the human thing and fight her to avoid the pain. The bleeding would worsen. The bullet―it had to be made of iron to affect him so badly―would sink. He'd die, and I'd know nothing. More importantly, I'd lose someone I'd come to care for.

  He lied to me, but I couldn't let him die for it.

  I brushed his knuckles again. Braced my hand on his shoulder. Prepared myself for a fight. “Dante,” I said, refusing to shy away from his black eyed stare. “We're going to get the bullet out, okay? You have to stay still.”

  My experiences with possessed people weren't all that great. Rosie, Mr. Zarcotti, Gershom. Other than their possession, they had one crucial characteristic in common: Wanting to murder me. I waited for Dante to join their ranks. I waited for him to choke me or slap me or punch me.

  He didn't.

  His hand slipped from my neck, muddy fingers grazing my jaw. His lips moved, but he couldn't vocalize the words. The iron poisoned every facet of his being. It took away his mobility, his speech, his strength.

  But it didn't take away his screams.

  They echoed through the trees as Aralia dug her fingers deep into his wound. I held him down as best I could, murmuring reassuring nothings in his ear.

  “Let's never do this again, okay?” I tried to keep my voice from cracking. Wiped the sweat off his cheek. “You need to get better so I can kick your ass for lying to me all this time.”

  “I think I’ve got it,” Aralia sucked in a breath and looked at me. “D'you have him?”

  I nodded.

  She pulled.

  He screamed.

  A moment later, Aralia held up the bullet. A small, mangled scrap of iron that nearly killed the world's greatest demon hunter because, surprise, he possessed by one himself. “There.”

  Coughing, Dante rolled over onto his side, his head resting in my lap. I stroked his hair, not knowing what else to do. I was running on instinct now. Not logic.

  Aralia chucked the bullet into the undergrowth Max was still puking in. “Right, we’ve got the bullet out. Now we need to get him home. Clean the wound before it gets infected.”

  None of us noticed Rosie standing behind us until she spoke.

  She looked like Rosie. But she didn’t sound like Rosie.

  She sounded...

  Vaguely Russian?

  “Oh, no,” she lamented, crouching next to Dante. Bits of unidentified gore stuck to the corner of her mouth. Crescents of dirt lined her fingernails, and clumps of her hair had been ripped out at the roots, leaving behind bald, bloody patches. Her nightgown fared no better, falling to her knees in dirty tatters. “They got you, huh? Papa always said you were reckless.”

  I tensed, clutching onto Dante's shoulder. He groaned. I muttered an apology and Rosie giggled, giving him a poke. I slapped her hand away. “Don't touch him. Just―just stand over there. Away from us.”

  She snorted, raising her hands in lazy surrender. “Don't act like you know him better than I do, versmaash.”

  Versmaash? What was that, a type of squash?

  Aralia had been unnaturally quiet since Rosie's appearance. She broke that quiet with a whisper. “It's you, isn't it?”

  “Took you long enough.” Rosie scratched at one of her bald spots. She gave her fingers and sniff, then licked them like they were covered in something delectable.

  I may have thrown up a little in my mouth.

  She carried on unfazed and gave Dante another poke. “Wake up, beroach.”

  This time, he was the one to slap her hand away. She made a petulant noise, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “And to think I betrayed Papa for you,” she said. Her gaze cut to me. “I betrayed Papa for him, you know. And for you, too. You should be grateful.” She paused, a shadow of doubt passing over her face. “He's, ah, he's going to be very mad.”

  I was lost. Rosie looked like Rosie but she sounded like a Russian who'd been living in Italy for a few years. She babbled on and on about Papa and squashes and cockroaches and scratched her head and licked her fingers and, oh, she murdered six people. Seven, counting the guard in the sanatorium. Lost was an understatement. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You should know exactly what I am talking about, versmaash,” she said.

  I knew I had more pressing matters to attend to, but I really wished she'd stop calling me a squash.

  “Did he―” she poked Dante again “―not tell you? Or are you just stupid?”

  Since he neglected to tell me he was possessed, I assumed the former. The latter was also proving to be annoyingly true. “Tell me what?”

  “You two have fun,” Aralia muttered. She stood and went to go check on Max. “I'll be over here.”

  As soon as she was out of earshot, Rosie cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered, “I hate her sometimes.”

  “What did Dante not tell me?” I asked. Yet again. For the second time. He shifted in my lap, hands struggling to find purchase in the mud. When they found it, he slowly but surely pulled himself up.

  Rosie cheered him on. “That's the spirit, beroach. Up, up!”

  “Vaena,” he wheezed, drawing his arm across his chin to catch the foam. His eyes remained a flinty black. “Wh―what have you done?”

  The girl I knew as Rosie, but who Dante named as Vaena, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I saved you, beroach. And your human. And the succubus. And the sick one. All of you.”

  “You murdered six innocent people!” Dante pitched forward in a totally out of character fit of rage, a rage that quickly ended in bloody coughing.

  My supply of sympathy was running low. “I don't mean to interrupt anything here, but who the hell is Vaena?”

  Rosie looked petulant again, glaring at Dante. “You didn't tell her about me.”

  “I didn't think I'd need to,” he rasped. “You're not supposed to be here, Vaena. You're supposed to be far, far away―”

  “Doing what?” Rosie/Vaena asked, face contorted with fury. “Dis is dying, Malnoch. You'd know this if you ever bothered coming home. Instead I find you here in the arms of this human girl, still consorting with that succubus―”

  “Hey!” I could set aside my confusion over the squash/cockroach/Papa stuff for now. What I couldn't set aside was the voice using my best friend's body as a puppet. I grabbed her by the gown and yanked her close. “Who are you? Rosie's demon? Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  Rosie/Vaena wanted to rip my head off. I could see it i
n her eyes, that homicidal glint. Lucky for me, she refrained. Shrugged her emaciated shoulders. “Your friend is dead. She gave up this morning.”

  My hand fell. Gave up. Rosie would never just give up. “You're lying.”

  “Your friend was dying from the moment she was born,” Rosie/Vaena said. “I got rid of the other possessing her before. She fought me at first, but then she…”

  Gave up.

  I wasted so much time thinking I was going to lose Dante when I'd already lost Rosie. She gave up. She was dead. The thing wearing her body was nothing more than a demon. A parasite.

  I wanted to kill her. I wanted to bash her skull against a tree until her brains came oozing out. I wanted to impale her with a branch.

  I settled with blunt force trauma.

  One moment I was sitting beside Dante and the next I was throwing Rosie’s imposter to the mud. I hit her until I could see blood. Then I hit her some more. She didn't hit back. Just tried to block the blows a little.

  I screamed, a dark coil of fury and sorrow tightening in my chest. She could murder my best friend but she couldn't defend herself from me? What kind of demon was she?

  “Beatrice!” Dante shouted.

  A sob hitched in my throat. I hit Not-Rosie again. My vision blurred with tears. Why couldn't I have been born with Faustian Syndrome? I deserved it more than Rosie did. Rosie was good and kind and patient and sweet and I wasn't any of those things. I'd gotten Mr. Zarcotti killed, Dante shot.

  What had Rosie done, other than exist? She was the best person I’d ever known and here a demon was telling me that she gave up. Without even saying goodbye. I couldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t.

  “Beatrice,” Dante staggered his wounded self over and tried to pry me off Not-Rosie with varying levels of success. Every time I slipped away, he managed to grab me back. “She's my sister, Beatrice. My―my half-sister. I'll explain when we get home. Chief Morales is coming. We…we have leave.”

  I tried to twist my way out of his grasp to lunge at Not-Rosie again, but he was still stronger than me even with iron poisoning. “I’m not leaving until she gets the hell out of Rosie’s body!”

  Not-Rosie cowered against a tree and drew her bloodied mouth drawn back in a hiss. “She gave me this body!”

  “Oh, I am going to ki—”

  “Beatrice,” Dante’s ragged breath brushed against my ear. His arm was wrapped all too firmly around my waist, securing me against him. “I know you’re upset, but be quiet for a moment and listen.”

  I probably would have elbowed him in the stomach if he hadn’t been dying a minute ago. My therapist was not going to be happy about this little set-back. “Screw you, I’m not…”

  I hadn’t meant to follow his instructions, but the noise I’d interpreted as far away just a few seconds prior was closer now. What was previously a quiet rustling grew to a loud crashing and the muffled barking wasn’t muffled anymore. By the sound of it, Chief Morales sent an entire pack of dogs after us.

  I guess not being mauled took precedence over my violent revenge fantasies.

  Shoving Dante’s arm away, I stomped over to where Not-Rosie cowered and shoved my finger in her face. “This isn’t over,” I said. Far from it.

  She just hissed at me.

  ***

  The escape to the car and the ride back to the house was one big blur of numbness and grief. People moved around me, but I barely saw them. They spoke to me, but I didn't hear them. They took my hand and brushed their thumb across my knuckles, but I didn't feel them. It was like time had stopped and it didn't resume until we got inside the house. Even then, the flow felt off. Like I was existing in a continuum that wasn't my own.

  Unable to cope with the night I had, I slogged upstairs to my bedroom and buried myself in blankets. The second my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Time had no meaning there. Demons had no power there. People didn't die there. It was a nice place, this dreamless void. I wanted to stay. Wanted give myself over to oblivion.

  Unfortunately, oblivion didn't want me.

  I awoke to sunlight in my eyes and bitterness in my mouth. Last night's grime covered my skin in a filmy layer of dirt. Leaves and pine needles caught in my hair and my cheek was scarred from where I'd cut it on a branch. My muscles ached. My head ached. My heart ached.

  I needed coffee.

  The quiet chatter filling the kitchen ended when I entered. Dante sat at the table coughing into a napkin. Aralia urged him to drink something from the mug she'd brought him but he refused. Max picked at a piece of toast. Mo sat next to Dante, ears perked. Not-Rosie lounged on the counter in one of Dante's dress shirts, stuffing her hand in a box of cereal. Her face was swollen from where I wailed on her.

  How wholesome. One big fucked up demon family.

  The urge to saw Not-Rosie's head off with a butter knife was gone, but I still wanted to hit her a little. A lot. It didn't help that she was blocking the coffee pot.

  “Move,” I said flatly. My eyes ached from crying.

  She shoved a handful of cereal in her mouth like a toddler would and slid off the counter, sitting cross-legged on the floor instead.

  I poured my coffee, put it down on the table, then dragged one of the velvet chairs from the foyer in next to Dante. I sat. Sipped my coffee. “So,” I said. “Talk. Now. From the beginning. Don't leave anything out.”

  Aralia stood and left. She hadn't been able to look me in the eye since we got home. Max left, too, his toast sitting untouched on his plate. He wasn’t one for conflict.

  “I'm not possessed,” Dante began, wheezing into his napkin. “I want you to know that above all else. I'm not possessed. I'm...”

  “He's a bastard,” Not-Rosie said. She shoved more cereal in her mouth and licked her palm clean of the crumbs. “Sort of. Go on, beroach. Tell her.”

  He cut her a silencing look, which she shrugged off. “I'm something called a cambion. My father is a demon. My mother was human.”

  Cambion. I'd heard that word before. Somewhere. “Okay. Go on.”

  “Vaena,” he craned his head toward Not-Rosie, “is my half-sister. Her father is my father. We…don’t get along very well.”

  “You were always his favorite, though,” Not-Rosie muttered.

  “I never wanted to be.” Dante wiped his mouth, coming away with a spot of blood.

  “What's Dis?” I asked. “Gershom mentioned it at The Inferno but we thought he was just rambling. He wasn't just rambling, was he?”

  Dante shook his head. “No. Dis is the demonic realm. Every demon on Earth originated there. This place…it calls to many of them. All this energy here, it’s tantalizing.”

  I'd graduated from sipping my coffee to gulping it. It burned, but at least it was a feeling I was familiar with.

  “They lose their physical forms when they cross the Veil,” Dante continued. “Which is why demons must possess a body to survive here.”

  Not-Rosie snorted, lifting the cereal box to pour it directly in her mouth. “You don't lose anything, Malnoch. You have no idea what it's like.”

  “Malnoch's your real name?” I guessed.

  He nodded. “Yes. The one my father gave me, anyway. My mother named me Dante. Arturo was my grandfather’s name.”

  I sank in my chair, digesting this new glut of information. Dante was a half demon, a cambion. His demonic name was Malnoch. The theory about demons coming from another realm was true. The Veil was real―not just some intangible thing to guess at. Not-Rosie's name was Vaena. She was Dante's sister. All right. Next topic. “The note in your office mentioned that you suspected your father was involved in everything. How long have you thought this and why?”

  He stared down at the napkin he’d been coughing in, a faraway look in his eyes. “I…made the assumption when you and I met for the first time. I couldn’t be sure until the incident at Mr. Zarcotti’s. Combined with the murders and the symbols and Henriette’s letter and you, I…”

  “It
didn’t occur to you that maybe you should say something about this serious stuff until now? You—you could have…We could have done so much more about this but you decided keeping secrets was the better option?” Had I not been grieving Rosie and nursing a massive headache, I would have been yelling at this point. I knew Dante was hiding something. I could somewhat understand hiding the cambion thing—half the world would want him dead if it got out—but this? He needed a damn good excuse to keep me from “accidentally” spilling my coffee on him.

  “It occurred to me countless times, Beatrice, but I—I was afraid. I never wanted any of this to happen.” He looked up to meet my gaze. That fear he was talking about made his voice quiver just enough for me to (grudgingly) believe him. Mayor wasn’t lying about his acting skills. “My father is ruthless, Beatrice, he won’t stop until he get what he wants, and I—I didn’t want to believe that he was...That he’s looking for me again. I’m sorry for lying to you, and I know I shouldn’t have, but please...Please listen to me. I need you to listen to me. Please.”

  This had to be the most he’d ever said to me in a single go. Even more startling was that he legitimately sounded terrified. Of his own father. I didn’t want to think about what happened between them to scare him that much. It sure as hell wasn’t baseball in the yard. “…Okay.”

  “Okay?” Some of that terror sounded more like relief.

  “Everything. I want to hear it all.” I put my coffee down and reached across the table to take his hand in mine, hoping to reassure him that I wasn’t going to duck and run. I was Beatrice Todd, I didn’t duck and run from anything. Kazraach notwithstanding.

  Twenty-Nine

  Dante dropped his used napkin in the trash and plucked another one from the holder in the center of the table. With the pen Vaena tossed him from the drawer above her head, he wrote a name in the middle of the napkin. “Amarax. That is my father's name. I suppose you could say he rules Dis. He’s extraordinarily powerful, charismatic, persuasive...”

  I nodded along, scooting my chair closer to him so that I could see what he was writing. He didn’t try to shift away from our close proximity like he would have before. When our knees accidentally brushed, he only paused for a fraction of a second, then carried on. We were making progress.