Parasite

by Patrick Logan

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  Parasite

  Insatiable Series Book 4

  Patrick Logan

  PROLOGUE

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “Yes, my son. When was your last confession?”

  Carter Duke paused and tilted his head to the side.

  He had to think about that one.

  “Never,” he replied with a shrug.

  Now it was the priest’s turn to pause.

  “Never? And why is that, my son? Have you not sinned before now? Or have you just recently found the Lord?”

  Carter’s lips twisted into a wry smile as he turned toward the dark lattice that separated him from the priest on the other side.

  Look at me, you putz. I want you to look at me.

  But the priest’s head was predictably pointed downward, staring at some supernatural oracle embedded in the floor.

  Okay, don’t look. But you will; you will soon. I promise.

  His smile grew.

  “Oh, Father, I have sinned,” he answered with a chuckle. “I have sinned. But, alas, this is the first time that I have come to confess my sins. And as for finding the Lord? Well shit, I’m still lookin’.”

  He saw the priest’s head turn slightly at the curse, but his gaze remained down.

  “Well, son, there is no time like—”

  “I have fucking sinned, Father.”

  This time the priest turned his head, and Carter smiled at the man’s silhouette. He couldn’t quite make out the man’s expression in the dim light and through the lattice, but he was fairly certain what it was.

  Shock.

  And fear. Oh yeah, he bet there was a lot of fear in the priest’s face.

  “Son, this is the house of the Lord. I am grateful that you have come to this house to share your sins, but please be respectful—”

  “Well, that’s the thing, Peter. I didn’t come to the house to repent; I came to this house to see you.”

  Carter thought he heard the father on the other side of the partition swallow hard. When the man spoke again, his voice had lost the soothing, monotone flavor. Now it was dry and tight.

  “What is this?”

  Carter chuckled again, and he idly scratched at his short, dark beard.

  “Oh, I think you know, Peter. I think you know.”

  “S-s-son, I don’t know what you think—”

  Carter laughed, and he crossed his hands over his lap. Then, to mock the other man, he held his head low, as the priest had done when Carter had first entered the confessional.

  Fine, play it this way.

  “Alright, then, let me tell you my sins, Father. I hope you brought a cushion and some rations, though. This is gonna take a while.”

  He cleared his throat dramatically.

  “When I was nine, I had this friend—”

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Ah, right to the point. I figured as much. You’re a straightforward man, aren’t you, Peter Stevens? So let me spell it to you straight. I have these—how should I say it?—proclivities toward younger men.”

  Carter took a deep breath and let out a dramatic sigh.

  “Ah, hell, why shroud the truth? There is confidentiality here, right? Okay, it’s not younger men, it’s boys… there, I said it. I like little boys, usually around eight or nine years old. Sometimes even as old as eleven, but these are more rare. And, let me tell you, I have sinned with these boys—”

  “What is this? I will not stand for this—for this blasphemy in the house of the Lord. I will not listen to this filth.”

  The priest stood and moved to the door of his confessional, his eyes remaining focused on Carter. Carter, gaze still low, just shook his head side to side.

  “Oh, I think you want to hear this, Father. Or should I call you Daddy? After all, isn’t that what you make them call you?”

  The priest visibly recoiled.

  “I don’t—I don’t know what you are talking about. But I won’t stand here and listen to it. You need to leave. I am leaving.”

  Then he left his confessional, leaving Carter alone, shaking his head.

  Oh, this is gonna be fun.

  “Wha—?” he heard the priest say. “What do you want? Are you going to hit me? I am a man of the Lord, I do not fight. You wouldn’t hurt a priest. I have done—”

  Ah, the good ol’ guilty ramble. Could have predicted that one.

  With that, Carter stood and left his confessional.

  “I see you’ve met my friend Pike,” he said with a nod toward the neatly dressed man to his left, who was blocking the priest’s path.

  Carter was surprised by how thin Father Peter Stevens was; the man was all gray skin and sinew. He had thick lines on his face, and his eyes were so pale that if it weren’t for the way he kept glancing nervously at Pike and his double-breasted suit and pale yellow tie, Carter might have thought him completely blind with cataracts. But no, Father Peter Stevens could see just fine.

  “You have no proof,” the man stammered.

  Carter wagged a finger.

  “Ah, wrong again, Father. For someone instilled with the powers of the Almighty, you seem to be wrong about a great many things. For one, it’s not okay to molest little boys, which—”

  “I don’t have to listen to this!” the priest shouted. He took a giant step to his left, but Pike shadowed his movements and any inclinations of fleeing left him.

  This part always amused Carter, this nearly visceral reaction to as little as a single step from his friend and partner. After all, Pike wasn’t a particularly large man; in fact, he was pretty much average by every measure. About six feet in height, a few pounds shy of two hundred, with neatly parted black hair and a clean-shaven face. Maybe it was the fact that he was always dressed so impeccably, in full, double-breasted suits, irrespective of the weather, indoor or out.

  But Carter knew that it wasn’t any of these things that gave near everyone pause when they encountered Pike.

  No, there was just something about the man’s face, so very ordinary, yet so unflinching, that was unnerving.

  Unnerving, yeah, that’s a good word for it.

  “—and you’re also wrong about the proof, Father.”

  A look of sheer horror crossed the priest’s face.

  “Oh yes, Father, we have proof.”

  Carter reached into his pocket and pulled out a digital camera. After a contemplative pause, if for no other reason than to build tension, to make the man even more uncomfortable, he held it out to the priest.

  “You wanna see? I have some just beautiful photographs of the church’s basement that you might want to take a look at. The architecture—” Carter held his head high and whistled. “Well, it will just blow your mind, if you catch my drift.”

  The priest’s face, which had been ashen to begin with, turned almost completely translucent. Ironically, at the same time, his oversized ears were turning a deep crimson.

  “What do you want?” he whispered, swallowing hard.

  A smile crept onto Carter’s handsome face, and again he scratched at his thick black beard.

  “The safe?” He nodded. “Yeah, the safe will do nicely, for starters.”

  The man’s eyes darkened for a second, just long enough for both Carter and Pike to take notice. Then a fairly candid look of confusion crossed over him.

  Nice try.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  It was Pike who answered.

  “You’re lying.”<
br />
  Father swallowed hard again.

  “No, no, I don’t know what you are talking about. Really, I don’t—” He tried to put on an angry voice, but it was thin and watery despite his efforts. He settled for obstinate, petulant even. “I don’t know about anything you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying,” Pike repeated.

  Carter shushed him gently, and then started whistling quietly. He turned his attention to the camera, and with the two other men watching on, he began cycling through the images that illuminated the digital screen.

  “You need to leave,” the priest said hoarsely.

  “We’ll leave after you empty the safe,” Carter replied, his eyes fixed on the camera.

  “You need to leave now,” he hissed. His pale hand suddenly shot out, a lame attempt to snatch the camera away. His arm fell way short.

  Carter laughed and Pike spoke up again. As usual, his voice was calm and even.

  “After you open the safe.”

  “Ah, here it is,” Carter said, turning the viewfinder of the digital camera to the priest. The priest looked at the image and then quickly averted his eyes. “More? Want to see more? ‘Cuz I’ve got more… many more.”

  Carter pulled the camera back and scrolled to the next image. He was about to show the priest when the lights suddenly flickered above them and all three sets of eyes angled upward.

  “Ha, looks like your God doesn’t even want to look. But here is another, just in case you thought the first was taken out of context.”

  Context.

  That almost made Carter laugh.

  The priest took another glance and, like before, immediately looked away.

  “I’ll open the safe, if you give me the camera,” he mumbled.

  “What’s that? I’m not sure I can hear you,” Pike said.

  Eyes trained on the floor, the priest repeated his previous sentence.

  “I thought you might.” Carter turned off the camera and tucked it back into his pocket. “Go on now, lead the way.”

  * * *

  There was more money in the safe than either Pike or Carter would have ever guessed. It looked more like the daily earnings of a successful accountant than a church.

  Carter whistled loudly.

  “Whoo-eee! Where’d you get all this from? Were you in charge of the Askergan coffers or what?”

  The pale-faced priest bit his lip, but curbed a response.

  “Put it in the bag, Pike,” Carter instructed. He was nearly giddy. “Put it all in the bag.”

  Pike scooped stacks of cash into the bag, and when he cleared the frontmost row, to both of their delight there was another stack behind it. But there was something else there, too, something completely unexpected in this supposed place of worship.

  Pike picked up a small white baggie, one of several hundred, and held it for Carter to see.

  “Carts?”

  Even Carter, who had seen so much in his thirty-odd years on this planet, couldn’t keep the surprise from befalling him.

  Didn’t see that coming.

  “Please, don’t take the drugs. They’re not mine, they’re—”

  Carter hushed the man by pulling the camera out of his pocket and waggling it back and forth.

  “This just keeps getting better and better! Put the drugs in the bag with the money, Pike.”

  “It’s not mine…” the old man whispered. “You can’t take it. You don’t know what he’ll do to me.”

  “Ahhh, I don’t know about that. I’ve got me a preeetty vivid imagination. Besides, you’re a man of God—the big man will protect you, won’t he?”

  The priest looked up, his eyes blazing.

  “No? Why not? Have you sinned, Father? When was your last confession?”

  “Sabra is not a man of God.”

  Carter shrugged as if to say, ‘not my problem’.

  “Put it all in the bag, Pike,” he reiterated.

  Pike began to scoop the baggies into his satchel, but paused when they heard a bang against the front door. It wasn’t the first that they had heard since entering and locking the large church doors, but it was definitely the loudest.

  Pike and Carter exchanged a look.

  “Please, you have the money, the drugs—can I have the camera back now?”

  The priest was nearly in tears, and for the briefest of moments, Carter almost felt bad for the old man.

  But then he remembered the tears in the young boy’s eyes in the photographs.

  Fat chance of that.

  “When we get outside,” he lied.

  It was obvious that the priest was dubious, but what choice did the man have? He was too old and frail to think of trying to pry it from Carter’s hands, and even if he somehow managed… well, he had Pike.

  And Pike was enough.

  “Get up,” Carter instructed, and the old man slowly brought himself to his feet. It was as if the man had aged a decade or more since he had angrily burst from the confessional. Pike stood next, and he slid protectively between Carter and the priest.

  “Move,” the man in the suit ordered. Shoulders hunched, the priest led the way out of the small office and toward the altar. For a second, Carter thought that the man was going to cross himself as he passed by the old, wooden bench and the even older-looking candleholders on top.

  Carter glanced behind the altar, his eyes focusing about ten feet above their heads on the plaster of Paris Jesus affixed to what looked like a plastic cross. But Father Stevens didn’t cross himself; instead, he made an abrupt turn and staggered down the aisle between the pews.

  Such shitty props in a place with so much cash.

  There was another series of bangs at the door, and the lights in the ancient church flickered again.

  “Sabra,” the priest nearly moaned, but Carter paid this comment no heed.

  He had heard of Sabra, of course, and the particularly brutal way that the drug dealer punished those who failed to pay. But this didn’t concern Carter; he didn’t plan on sticking around in this Podunk county for any significant period of time.

  Nevertheless, they had to get out of the church, and there was something out there. Carter pulled a small pistol out of the back of his jeans and clutched it in his right hand. Pike noticed this motion and glanced over at him.

  They exchanged nods.

  The gun probably wasn’t necessary; after all, he had Pike, and that was almost always enough.

  Still…

  Carter squeezed the butt of the gun.

  When they made it to the door, the priest hesitated, and Carter slowly slid off to one side. Pike moved to the other side of the door.

  “Open it,” Carter said. “Open it slowly.”

  The priest’s hand was shaking as he brought it out to the slide lock. When he hesitated, Carter repeated his previous request.

  Sabra is a just a mid-level drug dealer with a penchant for dramatic ways of torturing those that don’t pay up. He isn’t a clairvoyant… he couldn’t be here already. Could he?

  Father Peter Stevens moved the slide bolt back slowly with his narrow fingers and opened the door a few inches. The man took a deep breath and hung his head. It was clear that he’d expected Sabra to reach his fat hand through the two-inch gap and grab him by the throat.

  But this didn’t happen.

  Nothing happened.

  Now that imminent death had been avoided, the man seemed imbued by something akin to courage, and he pushed the door a little wider. When still nothing happened, the priest threw it all the way open.

  Carter leaned out and chanced a peek.

  The sky was a strange orange color, an odd dusk-like glow that seemed wholly out of place during this early dawn hour, but other than that, he could see nothing else out of the ordinary. Just the same dirt expanse that he had rolled in on.

  When the priest turned to face him, Carter could see that the old man had been crying, his tears following the deep grooves in his face like water drying in ravines.
<
br />   “The camera,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  Carter’s expression turned smug.

  “I don’t think so.”

  The priest’s face contorted.

  “But you said—”

  Carter looked skyward.

  “Oh, I said a lot of things—I say a lot of things. Problem is, Father, that you did a lot of things. And these are things that even your holy God can’t forgive. And if He can’t forgive, how would you expect a thief, a conman, an imposter such as myself to forgive?”

  He turned to Pike.

  “And Pike? Do you forgive?”

  Pike remained stone-faced.

  Carter shrugged and pouted his lower lip.

  “Nope, sorry padre, he doesn’t forgive either. Maybe you should—”

  Before Carter could finish his sentence, something struck the priest in the back of the head and he stumbled a few feet back into the church. As he did, he passed Carter, who was still off to the side, and he glimpsed something round and flattened stuck to the back of the man’s head.

  To Carter, it looked like some sort of crab.

  Pike quickly stepped in front of the priest and held his arms out, ready to intercede should the man continue into the church.

  The priest moaned, and his hands went to the back of his head. He started pulling at the creature, trying desperately to tear it off, but it seemed almost glued there. And with each one of these yanks, his balance became more and more unsteady, and when he stumbled forward again, Pike shoved him backward.

  The push was strong enough that the man’s direction completely changed, and he receded several feet onto the gravel walk that led to the church’s entrance, backtracking so quickly and stirring up so much dust that he almost seemed cartoonish with whirlwind legs.

  Carter squinted into the dawn light, his eyes darting from Father Stevens’ head to the dirt walk. He spied a few more of the crab-like creatures, all perched high on knobby legs and scrabbling toward the priest. When it looked like the man was about to fall on his ass, Pike quickly took two aggressive forward and grabbed for him. While his hand missed Father’s body, his fingers managed to wrap around his collar.

  Gripping that white collar, the only thing keeping Father from falling to the ground, Pike turned to face Carter.