A moment after he had finished speaking, a shotgun blast crashed through the glass of the front window, causing glass to rain down onto the floor. The shot missed Caiaphas by several feet, but he ducked behind Florence’s musty, antique furniture anyway. Though he was a demon, Caiaphas remained housed in a mortal body; therefore, he had a lot to lose if he were to be wounded or killed. For one thing, he’d have to be born again and endure childhood and adolescence. No. Anything but that. His face suddenly twisted with rage.
Meanwhile, Natalie, now nearly catatonic, was too stunned to react to the gunfire. The phantom boy pulled her to the ground just in time to save her from being cut in half by a shot that crashed through the front door.
Caiaphas saw this action and was astounded. “Boy! That is not your job!”
More shots rained into the room. Charlie fired back, but his bullets vanished in the sunshine when they left the house, neutralized by the daylight. A shotgun blast quickly hit him with its full brunt in the chest, and he dematerialized into a smoky mist. Caiaphas met the ghoulish eyes of Katie, who dematerialized as well, realizing that there was no use for her in the daylight.
“Cowards!” Caiaphas seethed. He turned back to Natalie and the phantom boy. Natalie looked at him, but her eyes were nearly vacant; he spoke to her regardless, calling over the sound of the gunfire. “This was unexpected! Your friends are clearly psychotic! They’ll likely kill you rather than save you!” More bullets sprayed the room, and Caiaphas knew retreat would likely be his best strategic move. He also knew that if he allowed Natalie to fall into the hands of Cipher, Han, and Father Hurley, he’d anger the most powerful being in the known universe and risk forfeiting his cushy, eternal existence. He was faced with a difficult decision. Despite the fact that he was risking his mortal death, his orders were to kill Cipher and his companions. He stood to his feet, bared his impeccably white, straight teeth in rage, and ran toward the gaping hole where the front window had previously been, then began to unload his firearm.
“Holy shit!” Han called out as he watched Caiaphas leap out of the house and onto the front lawn, only a few meters in front of Cipher and him. Though Caiaphas appeared human, the leap was extraordinary and showcased his preternatural strength and agility.
“Behind the oak!” Cipher called to Han, and the two men ducked for cover behind the gigantic tree that loomed in the front yard.
Caiaphas continued to unload his gun but stopped when it became clear that the oak was too thick for his bullets to penetrate.
Cipher quickly stuck the barrel of his gun out from behind the tree and fired, hitting the lawn, just centimeters in front of Caiaphas, who was on his stomach now.
The demon quickly returned fire, barely missing Cipher and removing several centimeters of bark from the tree trunk.
“Shit! That was close,” Cipher gasped.
“It appears we have a standoff, gentleman!” Caiaphas called to Han and Cipher. He stood to his feet but continued crouching as he crossed the lawn and reached the line of cars parked in front of the house. He got behind an old Toyota Tercel for cover. “Dozens of old ladies are no doubt calling the police as we speak, thrilled to finally be reporting something worthy! The first police cars could be here in a minute or less! Perhaps you should consider leaving!”
“He’s right,” Han said to Cipher. “Run for the front door. I’ll cover you. Grab Natalie and meet Father Hurley at the back.”
“What about you?”
“Let me take care of that motherfucker. You can swing around and pick me off his corpse afterward if you like.”
Cipher smiled and nodded. “I love it when you get homicidal.”
“Roche, where are you, you imbecile?” Caiaphas whispered to himself as he looked at his diamond-encrusted Rolex. He looked up when he saw Cipher running toward the front door. “Blast it!” he cursed as he trained his Luger on Cipher’s back. He wasn’t able to get a single shot off as Cipher turned and began to fire in his direction while Han simultaneously began unloading. The sudden spray of gunfire sent metallic dust and sparks into Caiaphas’s vision and he blindly began to fire his gun in the direction of the oak tree.
Cipher reached the front door and crashed through it. He immediately saw Natalie, flat on her stomach in her towel, a little boy draping himself on her back to protect her. The little boy looked up at Cipher, but Natalie kept staring straight at the pool of blood that had leaked out of her aunt and onto the outdated, well-worn carpet.
“Are you gonna help my Mommy?” the boy asked.
“Your Mommy? Wonderful! Yes, I’ll help her all right. Get the fuck off of her, ghost boy,” Cipher replied as he grabbed Natalie roughly under the arm and hauled her to her feet with one arm.
The phantom boy took offense to such rough treatment of his mother and expressed himself accordingly. His body instantly stretched until he stood taller than Cipher, and his face twisted into an inhuman, monstrous rage as he thrust Cipher back against the wall. “Don’t touch her like that! Be nice!”
Cipher was terrified as the boy pinned his arm and gun to the wall with one supernaturally strong arm and seethed, panting and drooling heavily, his face only inches from Cipher’s. His breath reminded Cipher of his encounter with God. “Sorry, kiddo. No harm intended,” Cipher replied.
The monstrous boy smiled, then shrank back down to size and looked up at Cipher with innocent eyes. “Save her,” he said, before he dematerialized.
“Okay.”
Meanwhile, Caiaphas ran out of bullets while Han continued to unload. The Toyota Tercel had been turned into a rusty pile of Swiss cheese. After a few moments, Han stopped firing. He hadn’t seen any return fire from Caiaphas and assumed his opponent was either out of ammunition, injured and out of commission, or dead. There was, however, a third possibility. He might have been trying to lure Han into believing that he was out of ammunition so that Han would come out from behind his cover. There was one way to know for sure.
“That’s one hell of a nice car you’ve got there!” he shouted out to Caiaphas.
“Oh no,” Caiaphas whispered to himself. Wonderful. Car aficionados. In a city where fabulous vehicles abounded, he now realized that parking the Reventon outside the house was what had tipped off Cipher and Han and precluded their entering the home and falling into his trap. Why didn’t I simply park around the corner and walk? He was instantly aware that he’d chided Roche for just such imbecility. He wouldn’t acknowledge to Roche that he’d made the very same error, however; that was one of the benefits of being a superior being—he never had to admit to a mistake. Where is that cretin anyway?
“You know how badly I’d love to drive that car? You are one lucky son-of-a-bitch!”
“If you surrender I’ll take you for a lovely spin up the coast!” Caiaphas shouted back, stalling for time.
“I’d love to take it for a ride myself, but with all the antitheft shit they put on those things these days, I know I wouldn’t get far. They have GPSes hidden all throughout don’t they? That’s too bad!”
“Well, you know what they say. Life’s a bitch!”
“Couldn’t be truer, but you know what would be even more fun than driving a Reventon?”
“Surrendering?”
“Nope! What’s even better than driving a Reventon is shooting the fuck out of one that belongs to an asshole!”
Caiaphas closed his eyes tightly and suddenly wished prayer were real, because he could use some divine intervention. “Roche, you better be dead,” he said to himself, acid dripping from his words.
At the back of the house, Cipher emerged with Natalie, only to see that a corpulent police officer was training a gun on Father Hurley and had him bent over the hood of their car, his palms flat. He guided Natalie to the back fence and forced her to crouch down. “Stay here,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re safe now. Just don’t move.”
He stood up and quietly unlatched the gate of the fence while Officer Roche continued to bark orders at Father Hu
rley. “Stay perfectly still, Priest! Yeah, I know you! I know exactly who you are, you sick freak! Molesting little girls! You’re just the kinda guy we like to have some fun with in lock up! Just the kinda guy!”
Cipher stepped as quietly as he could toward the back of the fat man’s gigantic carcass. The lane wasn’t paved, and the earth crunched beneath his feet; he knew if he alerted the officer to his presence, the cop might turn and shoot. He just needed to make it a few more steps.
“Maybe you’d like to get molested for a little while, huh? How would you like that, Priest? How would you like some pig sausage in your—”
Cipher fired a single shot, point blank, into the back of Roche’s head, killing him instantly and spraying a bucket of blood onto Father Hurley’s back. The priest turned around in horror, just in time to see Roche’s faceless head before he tilted to his right and then fell like a downed redwood in the forest. Cipher was running toward the gate of the fence. He reached around and retrieved Natalie, and then returned to the car. “You just murdered a police officer!”
“Get in the car, Father!” shouted Cipher.
Father Hurley jumped into the car but slid over to the passenger side so Cipher could get behind the wheel after he haphazardly pushed Natalie into the back seat. Natalie still hadn’t spoken, but her horror-stricken countenance remained.
“We’ve never killed a person before,” Father Hurley said, dumbfounded by Cipher’s actions. “It was a police officer, no less.”
“He was one of them,” Cipher said as he hit the gas and sped down the alley.
“No he wasn’t! I saw his eyes! He was a regular man!”
“If he’s helping them, then he’s one of them! There’s no difference, Father. What’s the Scriptures say about serving two masters?”
At the front of the house, Han exposed the barrel of his shotgun, aimed for the Reventon, and whispered to himself, “I’m sorry, baby, but any man with ammo would shoot to save you.”
“Wait!” Caiaphas shouted before standing. “Okay! I surrender! I surrender! Let’s talk about this!”
Han smiled before he pulled the trigger and sprayed a shotgun blast that hit the back of the car where the engine was housed and ignited the gas tank. The car caught fire, then quickly exploded into a raging inferno. “Yep. He’s out.” Han got up and aimed the barrel of his shotgun at Caiaphas.
Caiaphas, though furious, didn’t have time to hurl insults or threats toward Han. He was an unarmed man facing an armed man, and that meant there was only one course of action while he still had time. He turned and sprinted down the street away from Han, looking behind him as he did so in case Han attempted a Hail Mary shot from a distance. Indeed, Han aimed at Caiaphas as he ran down the road, but knew he didn’t have a shot. “Next time,” he whispered as he heard Cipher and Father Hurley screech around the corner and speed toward him; police sirens were beginning to blare in the distance. The door was flung open as they approached and Han jumped in. When he looked back up, Caiaphas had vanished, having ducked into a hedge. “Cops are closing in,” he told the others. Suddenly, he noticed that Father Hurley was drenched in blood. “What the hell happened to you?”
Father Hurley turned around and regarded Han with wild eyes, nearly in shock. “A policeman...” he began, speaking between breaths as he hyperventilated, “He...wanted to rape me.”
Caiaphas emerged from behind the hedge into which he had launched himself and walked toward the flaming ball that used to be his pride and joy. Police sirens blared in the background, and he knew that they would be on the scene in a matter of moments, yet they’d arrive too late. The Reventon burned, and Caiaphas had failed for the first time in three millennia of service. He conjured an image of Han in his mind and clenched his teeth as he shook, squeezing the grip of his Luger. “You’ll pay. You will pay.”
1
The car rolled over the uneven, unpaved road toward Father Hurley’s cabin in the deep woods, about an hour north of the city. They’d been able to escape the city before the police could form their roadblocks and send photos of them to the media. They were safe now, thanks to the forward thinking of their eldest member.
“How did you pull this off?” Han asked the priest.
“Like you, I’ve benefited from Cipher’s skill at accruing money. I saved for a few years, then used forged documents to create a completely separate life for myself—one that couldn’t be connected to my real one.”
“You’re telling me you have a secret identity?”
“Yes.”
“Shit,” Han responded, shaking his head, “for the first time ever, I am actually jealous of you. I wish I had a secret identity. What’s the name of your other self?”
“John Angel,” the priest replied, matter-of-factly.
“Ha-ha! Oh my God! That’s the gayest name I’ve ever heard!” Han laughed mockingly, nearly choking on his saliva.
“Why would you name yourself Angel?’” Cipher asked, adding, “Wouldn’t Smith have been better?”
“Do what they aren’t expecting,” Father Hurley replied. “The last thing they would expect is for me to name myself after one of those nasty creatures.”
“Are we almost there?” Natalie asked weakly. She was still in her towel, but she now had Father Hurley’s overcoat on top of her shoulders. Her hair was tangled but dry, and her face was still extraordinarily pale.
“We’re nearly there, my dear,” Father Hurley replied, turning to her and putting his hand gently over hers. His face was filled with sympathy.
“And when we get there, you’re gonna tell us what the fuck it is you know about all of this!” Han asserted in a distinctly unsympathetic tone.
“What?” Natalie responded, frazzled and confused.
“Han! Stop it!” Father Hurley shouted.
“No way. We just risked our necks to save this bitch. Satan says she knows what’s going on, and I want to know now.”
“Satan? I-I don’t know anything. All I know is I’m seeing things,” Natalie protested before her shoulders began to shake and she began to cry.
“Damn it, Han! Have you no decency?” Father Hurley scolded.
“Me? We nearly got killed to save this bitch. Cipher’s chest was burned to shit to save her and then some demon shot at us and you almost got raped by a cop. I’m all out of decency and patience.”
“I think you’re out of drugs! I think that’s what you’re out of and that you can’t live without them. You’re a miserable miscreant now, thanks to your drug use. I told you boys to stay away from them, but you wouldn’t listen,” Father Hurley retorted as he stretched his body around so he could reach Natalie’s shoulder with his hand in an attempt to provide her with some comfort.
“Drugs? What? Are you gonna preach at me that they’re immoral now, Priest? Don’t let that collar go to your head. You’re supposed to know that’s all bullshit.” Han retorted with a scoff.
“Even without a God, there would still be morals, Han! There still exists good and evil, and for your information, I still believe that there is a good and loving God!” Father Hurley replied defiantly.
His words shocked Han and Cipher, and for a moment, only the steady sound of the tires working their way over the uneven earth and Natalie’s soft crying filled the inside of the car.
“Run that by me again?” Cipher said at last.
“I believe in God,” Father Hurley repeated.
Han scoffed and shook his head. “You know, you’re right. I can’t live without my drugs, and I really need a hit of something right now.”
Cipher chose his words carefully. “Father, how can you say that? We’re all doing everything we can to kill God.”
“That thing that we are trying to kill is not the real God. It’s just a...monster. It’s an impostor and nothing more.”
“You’re telling me that after everything we’ve all been through, dying, nearly being sucked into the light by homicidal angels, and being shot at by God’s agents, you still think ther
e’s a real God out there somewhere?” Han asked, disbelieving.
“Yes, and these experiences have only strengthened my faith.”
“You’re the most fucked-up person I’ve ever—”
“Shut up, Han!” Cipher shouted before quickly continuing, “Father Hurley, with all due respect, we’ve seen for ourselves what the reality is. We’ve actually seen it. How can someone who has seen the truth for themselves still believe in the lie?”
“You’re right, Cipher. We have seen the truth, haven’t we? Unlike the vast majority of people, everyone in this car knows there truly is an afterlife.”
“Some afterlife, having your soul eaten by a gigantic succubus,” Han added.
“But it isn’t blackness. It isn’t nothingness. Everyone here knows that’s true. And when we kill this thing that calls itself God, what then? Where will our souls go then?” Father Hurley asked. Cipher and Han were silenced. “For years, you boys have been so consumed with the thought of killing God and saving the afterlife that you haven’t dared to let yourselves contemplate the mystery of what might happen if you’re successful. Where will our souls go when they are free?”
“If you still think there’s another God out there, then why the fuck isn’t He doing anything to help us? Why is He letting all these people be consumed?” Han demanded, becoming steadily more incensed at the thought of having been abandoned.
“Maybe He is helping us. Something calling itself Satan has brought us to Natalie and given us a course of action and hope. How do we know the true God isn’t behind all of these events?”
The God Killers Page 11
