“Why figure it out when I can just have you tell me?” I said with a humorless smile.
“Now there’s good ol’ Belphegor talking,” Dante teased.
I shot him a dirty glare.
“Speaking of Belphegor,” said Dante, unaffected, “from him you’ve gained the ability to raise and control the dead.”
“Ugh. Gross. Next.”
“Hey, it would have made your trip through the neighborhood a little more pleasant. And for the record, they weren’t even after you. They only wanted to eat Zoey.”
“Oh,” said Zoey. “Great. As long as it’s just little ol’ me.”
“But anyways,” said Dante, “from Asmodeus, you’ve gained the ability to manipulate and mind-control.”
“That could come in handy,” I acknowledged with a slightly unfriendly glare his way.
“Only on humans, silly.”
“These powers suck.”
“Such a charmer. And lastly, Leviathan has just bestowed upon you the ability to shape-shift. Only in human form though. You can’t turn into a big snaky sea-monster.”
“Are these powers good for anything?” I said, rolling my eyes. “I swear, who made up these rules? Oh yeah, you. Since apparently you created this.” I gestured to myself like I was the next item up for bid on The Price is Right.“Next time you decide to make a Demon warrior, why don’t you give her some powers that are actually useful? Like Demon mind-control, or turning into a dragon, or…I dunno, shooting lasers out of my eyeballs.”
Dante raised a curious eyebrow. “Lasers out of your eyeballs?”
“You know, like Superman.”
“Ah…” said Dante. “Envy sure has made you chatty.”
My words fell dead in my throat.
Dante noticed. His amusement faded. “But I suppose that’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
“It’s…fine,” I said, even though it was anything but fine. “Let’s just get out of here already.”
As I crawled to my feet, Dante extended me a helping hand. I ignored it, pulling myself upright by the window sill. Dante dropped his hand and pretended to brush his pants with it. This room, like all the others, was swallowed in yet another photo collage of Villeneuve’s inhabitants. Words could not express how much I couldn’t wait to get out of this house.
And that was when a sudden, subtle darkness crept into the room. It was accompanied by a…presence. Something unsettling that curdled my insides. It filled the room like the deep resonating buzz of a bass speaker.
Monica…
The whisper emanated from the fabric of nowhere. Just as it had at Hexham Manor.
It was Mammon.
33
Absolution
Do not run away, said the Witch King. If you do…there will be consequences.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Dante. He grabbed my arm and looked me straight in the eyes. “He’s just trying to trick you.”
Was he waiting outside? I remembered all too clearly that Asmodeus and Lucifer had been waiting outside for Dante the last time Mammon did this. Unable to fight my own curiosity, I turned to the nearby window and peered through the curtains. Three women were standing along the side of the house in long-sleeved, black dresses. Matching black veils were pulled over their faces. Dante and Zoey peeked through the curtains beside me.
“Oh great,” said Zoey. “The others.”
By “others,” she obviously meant witches.
I can promise you… said Mammon. …that I have something…you will not want…to leave behind.
“It’s a trap,” said Dante. He didn’t even look at me this time, as if he were simply reassuring himself.
“Come to the front window…if you wish to see proof.”
I glanced at Dante, mostly to see if he would try to stop me. His face was empty. I bolted out of the room. Zoey was close behind, and Dante’s slow footsteps lingered. We backtracked our way through the hallways and living room and past the front door until we were back in the front room where Leviathan had created his photo collage of me. I flung the curtains aside.
The scattered zombies had gravitated to the opposite side of the street. They formed a perfectly still crowd. It was infinitely eerier seeing them so organized—as if they recognized a far greater power at hand. Their glazed white eyes watched the new resident force taking over. These witches had the undead perfectly under their control. There were five more witches, one of which was tight-lipped Principal Marion, dressed like the others but without the veil. It wasn’t until now that I recognized the slight arch of their formation.
They were completely circling the house.
“Great,” said Zoey. “I think my whole coven is here.”
But that wasn’t the worst part. Principal Marion stood beside what appeared to be a massive cage on wheels. The thing looked medieval, with blackened metal and great iron spikes protruding from the top. Who knew where it had come from? But inside were three people. The three people I’d know my whole life.
Mom, Dad, and Casey.
My dad was the only one not moving. His burly form was sprawled across the floor of the cage, incapacitated. Even from this distance, I could see the bloody gash on his forehead. Both Casey and my mom were standing, hands on the bars. Casey was still in a hospital gown, possibly still sedated considering the glaze of his eyes. My mom, like Principal Marion, was clothed in the same witch attire without the veil. Up until that moment, I hadn’t been able to fully fathom her in my head as a witch. The reality of this nightmare was now staring me straight in the face.
And then Principal Marion’s gaze met mine. Our eyes locked. Then, lifting her index finger, she began tracing the shape of a small circle in mid-air. The glass directly in front of my face sliced in the exact same circular pattern. Zoey and I backed away. As Marion pressed her index finger forward, the circular glass disk popped out of the window pane and landed softly on the carpet.
“I have no intention of lying to you,” said Marion. “And as such, I will not hide from you my true form.”
Principal Marion’s eyes turned red. Her entire form magnified, not so much growing bigger but rather taller and ganglier—skeletal like Belphegor. Black veins bulged from thick, long fingered hands. Her fingernails grew inches longer, pointy and crooked. Her black dress expanded and decayed into flowing black robes, tattered and dirty. Two thick ram horns curled out of her skull. Her face hardened into a bony mask; her chin was composed of spikes jutting out into a unified point. Jagged teeth splintered across her face. At this point, her Demon form was clearly masculine and almost had Belphegor beat as the ugliest Demon.
“I am Mammon, the Witch King,” he said. He. Shit, he was definitely a “he”. A throaty, resonating whisper—hissing and snakelike.
He extended his right palm. A chunk of bone immediately emerged. It continued to sprout from his flesh, longer and longer. In a matter of seconds, the shaft of bone extended about the entire length of his six-foot height. He adjusted it with his fingertips, allowing it to slide down his palm, and then gripped it at his side as a staff.
“I wish to make a fair exchange,” said Mammon. “Your family…for you.”
“NO!” my mother screamed.
“Monica, don’t do it!” Casey yelled. He blinked, snapping out of his daze. “Don’t listen to—”
Mammon waved his bone staff. The simple gesture ignited a shockwave through the air. Casey and my mom hit the far end of the cage, collapsing to the floor beside my dad. Neither of them moved.
“My followers and I will be summoning an early full moon tonight,” said Mammon. “Lucifer and I will be waiting at Pandemonium. There we will be at the pinnacle of our strength. So you might want to reconsider taking us both on. You and Dante are to meet us there. No one else.”
Mammon began to pacing around the cage with long, slow strides. He eyed my
family like a hungry predator.
“You might want to come as early as the full moon allows. Considering that your brother now belongs to the canine family, I might be just a little worried for your parents. Not that your mother can’t hold her own. Either way, it is bound to be a good fight. The witch or the werewolf—who will win?”
Mammon ceased his pacing. Even though his eyes were blazing red embers, I could tell he was staring directly at me.
“If you wish to know, then please, don’t come. I will gladly send you the outcome of the match in a body bag.”
Mammon gave another slight gesture of his bone staff. He, his witch entourage, and the massive wheeled cage vanished with a WHOOSH and a burst of swirling black mist. The street felt empty, even with the distant horde of zombies. The undead disbanded from their calm, organized throng, continuing their mindless, bloodthirsty meandering.
“Well that complicates things,” said Dante.
There was no way out of this. We had to go. I had to face them. And if, by some miracle, I did manage to kill Mammon and Lucifer...
Either way, I was dead. I had to die.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can talk you into leaving your family behind and saving yourself?” Dante asked hopefully.
“I have to go,” I said.
My voice was breathless. I felt lightheaded. The world was disorienting, spinning mindlessly around me, and nothing made sense. I had to die.
I HAD TO DIE.
There was no other way.
“Even if they didn’t have my family…” I said, “those two would just keep killing people. I have to do this.”
“I knew you’d say that,” said Dante.
He didn’t sound pleased.
“Monica, you can’t!” said Zoey. She shook her head. Her lower lip quivered. “It’s crazy!”
“So what? I should just let my family die?”
“Who’s to say those Demons will even let your family go? If they kill you, they’ll probably just kill your family too!”
“That’s why I have to kill them first,” I said. My throat was so dry, I thought I might choke on my words. Part of me wanted to choke on them before I spoke them aloud. “And then Dante has to be there. To kill me.”
Dante’s eyes widened. There was an unspoken hell burning in his artic gaze. I didn’t know why he looked so appalled. This was his plan from the beginning.
A mascara-stained tear trickled down Zoey’s cheek. She shook her head. “No, Monica. No!”
I reached forward, resting both of my hands on Zoey’s shoulders. At this point, my own arms were trembling. “Dante’s going to take me somewhere,” I said. “And after that, he’s going to take you wherever you need to go. Back to your family…back to the school…wherever. But whatever you do, you need to get out of Villeneuve tonight. If Mammon and Lucifer kill me, who knows what they’ll do to this place.”
“Monica…” said Zoey. She sniffled and now there wasn’t shit holding those tears in.
“I’m sorry, Zoey,” I said. And I was because I could see the hurt in eyes—far more than anything I was feeling at the moment. Still numb. Still shell-shocked. Still mind-fucked. Maybe it was better that way. I pulled her into a hug, as if it would make things better. Which it wouldn’t. “We have to say goodbye now.”
Zoey buried her face in my shoulder. I couldn’t hold my own tears back any longer. I blinked desperately to pull myself together.
“I love you, Zoey,” I said. “You’re the best friend I ever could have asked for. Even if you are a fucking witch.”
Zoey laughed despite her tears. “I love you too, girl. Even if you are a Demon-slaying ginger.”
We squeezed each other tighter. Finally, after the most heart-breaking hug of my life, I was forced to let my best friend go. Zoey reluctantly complied, hopelessly wiping the tears away with her hand.
“Okay, Dante,” I said. “Let’s go.”
***
The brisk afternoon air swept over Dante and me. We stood outside a simple white-walled church. Three arched windows adorned the entrance, the tallest of which was in the middle, almost as if it were pointing up to the steeple and its ornamenting cross.
Strangely, the place looked holier than ever with the encompassing streets desolate and zombie-apocalypse-stricken.
“This is where you wanted me to take you?” asked Dante. His tight-lipped mouth tilted to a slant.
“This is the church where we had Cate Mallory’s funeral,” I said. “It just feels—I dunno—right, coming here. I guess.”
“Okay…” said Dante. He cocked a skeptical eyebrow at the looming cross. “I’ll leave you to your churchy stuff then while I go chauffer Zoey around. Thanks for volunteering me for that, by the way.”
“Get out of here,” I said. I pushed him playfully, blinking the last bit of moisture from my eyes.
Dante smiled back and then vanished in his usual swirl of black mist.
Starting up the stone steps, I pushed through the lofty arched double doors. Rows of polished mahogany pews formed a red-carpeted path through the chapel. Circular stained glass windows spilled colorful light across the pulpit. Beyond that emerged an exalted white sculpture of Jesus. This Jesus wasn’t nailed to a cross like the usual morbid depictions. Instead he was extending his robed arms out. They were lowered slightly with his palms open, revealing identical scars.
This guy had already died and come back to life.
Making my way through the chapel, I stopped at the sculpture. Unlike most representations, this one was smiling.
“I don’t see what you’re so damn happy about,” I said. “Have you been outside lately?”
The Jesus sculpture didn’t respond.
“Well in case you missed it, there’s a bunch of witches, zombies, and Demons out there,” I said. “If you’re still up there somewhere, maybe you ought to do something about that.”
I shook my head. What the hell was I doing here? I didn’t believe in this bullshit. I didn’t believe in anything anymore. But I knew one thing.
This was it. I was going to die tonight.
And here I was, trying to make conversation with an inanimate object.
“You had to die too, didn’t you?” My eyes were fixed on his hands. “You had to die for people you cared about.”
Jesus didn’t respond.
“But you didn’t have to go to Hell afterward,” I said. “Not too fair if you ask me. That’s one thing I’ve got on you, huh?”
I kept glancing at the Jesus statue to see if he had anything to say. He just kept smiling.
“I’m scared,” I said. “Like…shitless. If I even do manage to kill these Demons, what’s going to happen to me? I’ll die and be miserable in Hell for the rest of eternity? Is that it?”
My eyes were now fixed on my feet. I kind of got the feeling that the statue’s response would be the same. Now I was feeling sick to my stomach. I could feel the stab of tears gnawing at my eyes.
“I don’t want to die. Not like this. I haven’t done anything wrong! I’ve just been trying to help! And now I have to die for it? Why can’t anyone help me?”
My tear-soaked eyes glanced up to meet his fake sculpted gaze.
“Why can’t you help me?” I said. “If Dante is the son of the Devil, then you have to be real too, right? You should be able to hear me!”
The Jesus sculpture remained as inanimate as ever.
“Stop fucking ignoring me!” I screamed.
I grabbed the first object in sight, a dusty hymnal, and chucked it at Jesus’s face. It hit the wall beside him with a smack and plopped to the floor. My aim was as impeccable as ever. In a sudden outrage, I attacked the pulpit, throwing the Bible into the pews and pushing a vase of assorted red and white flowers onto the floor. The vase shattered, spilling water and dislodged flower peta
ls across the carpet. I collapsed to the floor, falling to my hands and knees, crying harder than I’d ever cried before.
“I don’t want to die!” I said, sobbing. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die…!”
I lay curled there and trembling for several long minutes. My feelings and hurt were beyond words now. My heart was ripped open, spilling into a shitty mess on the floor. Every weakness, every insecurity, every heartache, every bullshit thing—it spilled out into the open because my heart simply couldn’t contain it anymore.
People always talked about your life flashing before your eyes before death. Maybe that’s what was happening now. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel like complete shit anymore. Maybe I’d cried out everything that was left in me. Whatever the case, I felt at least a little bit better. I at least felt capable of functioning, which was more than I could say about myself a couple minutes ago.
“You okay there?”
It was Dante. I turned up from the floor to meet his cynical gaze. I’m sure my eyes were red and bloodshot, but I was beyond the point of feeling self-conscious. I should have figured it wouldn’t take long for him to get Zoey where she needed to go. I sniffed in response.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” said Dante. He leaned down, grabbing me by the arm to help me up. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“No,” I said. I shook my head and resisted his pull. “Pray with me.”
“Huh?” said Dante. “What the hell for?”
“Don’t curse, this is a church. Just do it, okay?”
Dante actually laughed out loud at this. And then he looked me in the eyes and realized I wasn’t shitting him. “You’re serious.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Why do you want me to pray with you?”
“You believe in God, don’t you?”
“Um.”
“If you’re really the son of the Devil, then you have to believe in God. Like, that’s the rule, isn’t it? Don’t even try to deny it.”
Demonica Page 22
