by Michael Todd
It looked like everyone was a bit exhausted from the training they had been doing lately. As she went to leave the room Damian walked in, dressed to leave the base.
Katie smiled at Damian as he walked past, figuring she had no other choice than to give into her tiredness at this point. Damian glanced over his shoulder at Katie, stopping in his tracks and thinking for a moment. He really didn’t want to do this thing on his own, and he knew that Katie was not only gifted, but that she had everyone’s back. He shrugged and turned around quickly.
“Hey,” he called.
“Yeah?” she asked, facing him.
“I have to go meet someone at a church,” Damian explained. “I was wondering if you would join me?”
Katie stared at Damian, really not wanting to go to some church meeting with him. She thought about her options: either she went to bed, or she got out of the house and helped her friend. She really couldn’t say no. He sounded more timid than she had ever heard him before.
“Okay, sure. Let me just change my clothes really fast.”
“All right,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” She smiled, then jogged back to her room.
Katie went through her clothes, trying to figure out what would be appropriate for a church meeting.
She had never really gone to church, so she wasn’t sure what the protocol was.
Finally she just decided to put on her normal black attire as if she were going on a call, but she carried the vest instead of wearing it. She didn’t like to be unprepared. When she was ready, she turned the lights off in her room and headed back out to meet Damian.
“You good to go?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, obviously lost in his thoughts.
Katie nodded and followed him down to the garage. They got in one of the SUVs, and Damian drove away from the base toward the city. They started to get into the busier part of town, and Katie stared out her window as they passed chapel after chapel.
“This isn’t one of the small chapels to get married with Elvis, is it?” she asked, chuckling.
“No.” He took a left. “My meeting is with one of the top officials of my church,” Damian explained. “He apparently has heard disturbing stories about the Damned from one of his outside contacts. I’m not sure what he is going to tell us, but it seemed important.”
“Is his source reliable?” Katie asked. “We don’t want to deploy people for something that may be a distraction.”
“This priest only deals with people he knows he can trust with these secrets,” Damian told her. “I doubt he would have anything to do with crappy sources or people who don’t know what they are talking about.”
Damian stared straight ahead as he drove toward the church. This guy knew a lot about him, and he almost felt bad at that point for bringing Katie into it.
Still, he couldn’t have left without her. He was scared to go alone, and for good reason—there was something in the wind. Something didn’t feel right about the whole situation, but he couldn’t turn down a request from this fellow priest. They only contacted each other if it was a true emergency and met in secret, and he knew that better than Damian did.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” Katie asked.
“Which part?” he countered.
“Me going in with my red eyes, you meeting a member of the church secretly,” she listed. “And the fact that something about this doesn’t feel right.”
Damian took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Katie was right; there was a lot of risk involved in what they were doing, but the meeting had become essential to their fight to keep the demons at bay. At first Damian hadn’t really thought the whole thing was a good idea, but after he considered it further, he realized that it was the right decision to go—just not for the original reasons.
He looked at Katie and smiled.
“I wouldn’t have brought you if I thought it was a bad idea,” he told her. “I know that it feels strange and that this is very risky, but it’s important that we continue to stick together as a community—at least ‘we’ as in the rest of the congregation and my fellow clergy. If the priest really does have important information, it may be key to us beating these demons; sending them back to where they came from. It would be really nice to end this war and move on.”
She nodded silently. Both knew there was a chance that they wouldn’t see the end of it in their lifetimes, at least. They might live and die right there in that town on the edge of nowhere.
Watching the world collapse around them.
Chapter Seven
Damian drove in silence. He seemed more nervous than normal, considering that “normal” was driving toward an operation against demons or spirits.
Or to a bar for a drink.
Katie kept staring out the window as he drove, anxious and surprisingly nervous herself. She assumed it was coming from Damian. His feelings were transferring to her, or perhaps Pandora’s were.
She took a deep breath and tried to push it away, something she had been working hard on; especially lately, with the guys constantly being around the house. The combination of feelings and emotions from her teammates was exhausting her.
Damian reached the edge of the Strip and kept going, making a couple of turns and keeping his eyes straight ahead. Katie wondered how far off the beaten track this place was, and hoped that it wasn’t too far in case they needed backup later.
After about fifteen minutes and five more turns, Damian slowed down and pulled into the parking lot of a small church.
The building had seen better days. It was missing shingles, had graffiti on one side, and a window in the door leading to the basement was broken. The landscaping was unkempt but manageable, so she assumed some kind of service was still held there on a regular basis.
Like, once a year.
While Damian parked, Katie looked at the door, where four men were waiting on them—or on Damian, at least. One was obviously a simple driver, but he was a big man; probably a foot taller than Katie.
Oh, hell no, Pandora squeaked. They can sense me, and I don’t want that to happen.
Okay, Katie replied.
She dropped down in Katie as she had done when Damian had first tried to figure out what type of demon she was. She made herself as small and meek as she possibly could, and though Katie knew it was necessary, she didn’t like it at all. She felt exposed; unprotected, and downright vulnerable to everyone around her.
Damian came around and helped Katie out of the truck, looking down at her with nervous eyes and back at the church.
“Let me do the talking, okay?” he asked. “This is one of my bosses, who has asked to speak with me.”
“No problem,” Katie replied. “I never was very good at talking to church people.”
“Neither was I,” he said with a wink.
“Oh.” Katie grabbed Damian’s arm and whispered, “I thought you should know that Pandora has made herself look like a little baby demon.”
Damian frowned and looked at the group. The men stared back, waiting for them to approach. There was a chill in the air, something Katie hadn’t felt before, and between that and Pandora shrinking herself, Katie felt fear of the unknown for the first time in a very long time. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but she wasn’t going to move a muscle until Damian asked her to.
“Why don’t you join me?” he asked. “And do you have backup?”
“Damn right I do,” she told him. “Smith & Wessons, but I spell them P-a-n-d-o-r-a—which is pretty much all I need in this world to get past a human or a little demon in human flesh.”
“Don’t underestimate these men, Katie. I don’t know if any are infected, but I do know how powerful they are, Damned or not. This is my archdeacon, but he is also a decisionmaker within the priesthood of my religion. He, like me, was formerly a Jesuit.”
“Right.” Katie shook her head. “Still, I’ve got Pandora.”
That’s right, bitch, P
andora whispered in her mind.
Katie smiled and pulled her leather jacket closed over her red t-shirt and jeans. Beneath her jacket were two pistols; snugly tucked away, but accessible when she needed them. She wasn’t going to take any chances. She didn’t care if they were part of the church or not.
Not being a religious person, as far as she was concerned they were nothing more than powerful people, and they were upsetting her friend and coworker. It wasn’t okay, and she wouldn’t stand by and watch for long.
She followed Damian, looking around the parking lot and at the street. The church guys apparently had their backup right there with them. Katie didn’t sense or see anyone else in the area, but she could never be too cautious.
Damian’s anxiety level had increased, but you couldn’t tell by looking at him. He was just as ominous as usual, but with these men he had to force a smile to move across his lips. She knew it was fake, but there was nothing she could do to help him.
Gravel crunched beneath their feet as Katie and Damian approached the front of the church. Damian smiled and put out his arms, hugging the people waiting for them.
He was acting like he was happy to see everyone, but no one looked happy to see Katie.
In fact, she got the feeling that her arrival had not been in the plan, but that was okay. The last thing she wanted was for them to go through whatever plan they had—not without her starting to trust them, which, given the looks on their faces, was not in the cards.
Damian talked to the men, leaving Katie standing there behind him.
She didn’t know what else to do at that point, so she smiled brightly. She could feel the pistols pressing against her sides; they would afford her enough protection if she had to act quickly. She felt like she was in a western and had just walked into a strange bar.
“Damian.” The archdeacon swept an arm away from the group. “Come talk to us in private.”
Damian looked back at Katie and winked before walking over to join them at the top of the stairs. Two of the four church members led Damian toward the graveyard on the edge of the property, while the third man and the driver stayed with Katie. She didn’t like how they were staring at her, as if they were bullying her without words. She smiled at them again, but they just stared at her with blank expressions. Katie could tell they were up to something, but she couldn’t figure out what since Pandora was hiding instead of where she needed her to be—which was front and center, ready for action.
Katie shifted uncomfortably, clearing her throat and looking down at the gravel. She scraped the toe of her shoe through the gravel and looked back up at the men standing with her, then took a deep breath and turned toward the driver as she tried to figure out the best way to start a conversation. She had always hated moments like that, where you knew you should talk, but you didn’t know what to say.
“It looks like it’s going to be another hot day out here,” Katie began.
“It does,” he replied. “It’s a lot drier heat than California though, so I am okay with it.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Katie asked.
“I lived in San Diego for a while,” the driver said.
“It’s nice there,” Katie replied. “Really beautiful, but expensive as hell.”
“That is definitely true.” He laughed, but quickly straightened his face when he glanced at the other church member.
Katie tried to keep up the small talk while watching Damian and following their conversation. It had started out just fine, with hugs and smiling. However, as time began to wear down, Katie could see the situation getting dimmer by the second. Damian was no longer smiling, and the archdeacon was asking a barrage of questions. Damian wasn’t saying a word, just standing there. After some time spent refusing to answer any questions, he finally gave up and shook his head.
“How dare you!” the archdeacon yelled. “I am your superior, Damian. You will obey me, and tell me what I want to know.”
“I will do no such thing,” Damian snapped back.
“Then you will feel my wrath, and the girl with you shall be the first to go.” He chuckled.
Damian narrowed his eyes, staring into the archdeacon’s.
She tilted her head, surprised by his expression. Slowly he reached into his trench coat, moving his hand toward the special cross that he carried around with him. Katie unobtrusively started to back away from the two men, realizing that he might be reaching for the cross because the archdeacon had been possessed.
She slid her feet apart and kept her hands tightly at her sides, waiting to react if Damian did what she thought he was going to do. Both men looked at Katie suspiciously, but they had yet to catch onto what was happening.
The air was almost perfectly still around them. Katie could feel her heart beating wildly in her chest.
She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt this nervous during an incursion, outside of her first two.
This was different, though. These were men of the cloth, and very important to society. Damian slowly reached forward and grabbed the archdeacon’s hand, and pressed his cross into the man’s flesh.
It sizzled, and the archdeacon let out a bloodcurdling scream. Katie knew that was the sign to act. She threw a hard right hook, which clipped the driver’s jaw. She stood back and he dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“I’m really sorry.” She winced. “But you never leave someone at your back.”
The driver groaned as Katie turned to the other church member. The two of them did a little dance, reaching for guns but not shooting yet. She wasn’t even sure he had a weapon on him, but she sure as hell did not want to find out if she didn’t have to.
Slowly they circled each other, eyeing each other from top to bottom to size up the competition.
When they had turned in a complete circle, the guard lunged forward, trying to take her down. She dodged and pulled out her gun, smacking him hard in the back of the head. He groaned and fell on top of the driver, out cold. Katie winced again, knowing that was going to hurt badly when he finally woke up. As she straightened up, a bullet whizzed past her head.
Katie ducked, and turned to see what was going on with Damian and the other man. Damian was fighting the archdeacon, and the other man had aimed his pistol right at her. She grabbed a knife from her side and threw hard. The guy was thirty yards away, but she hit him squarely in the thigh.
“Don’t kill anyone,” Damian yelled. “Tie up anyone who is unconscious or hurt. We need them to stay alive for now, and I need you to make smart decisions.”
Katie nodded and looked down at her hands. Before she could even think of calling Pandora back into the situation, there was an ear-splitting scream from across the lawn. The guy who’d had the knife thrown into his leg was reacting to the metal, so Katie knew that he too had been infected. He went down a second later.
Damian blocked as the archdeacon’s arm crashed down on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Katie’s eyes widened as she headed toward him, determined to help him. As she got closer, though, he put up a hand and shook his head.
“This is my fight,” Damian snarled.
Katie slowed down and finally stopped, understanding how delicate the situation was. She watched as Damian stood back up and growled in anger—not at the archdeacon, but at the demon who had taken his body.
It was obvious to Katie that Damian cared for these people, and that watching them do such terrible things was really hard on him. He moved to the side, letting the archdeacon’s arm glide past him before grabbing him by the shoulder and punching him in the gut. Damian’s knee rose as the archdeacon’s head went down.
Katie winced when the two connected. The archdeacon went down just like his driver had; a giant pile of man on the ground, completely and totally unconscious.
Damian put his hands on his knees and looked at the ground, breathing heavily. All the demon-infested humans were unconscious, but Katie had no idea how long they would stay that way. When Damian had
recovered somewhat, Katie went to him.
“We need to get these people tied up and out of harm’s way,” Damian said. “Go get the rope out of the truck, and we will move them inside the church.”
Katie nodded her head and jogged back to the SUV, grabbing the rope from the back and helping Damian carefully carry each of the men into the lobby of the church. Once they were tied up securely, he checked each of them for a demon. Sadly, all were infected.
“I just can’t believe that these leaders of our religion could be overcome in their faith,” Damian growled, shaking his head. “It makes me so damned sad on so many levels.”
“I know.” Katie put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Damian. I know this must be hard for you.”
Two of them have very sneaky demons in them, Pandora explained. And the third never believed in the first place.
“Damian, would the archdeacon—the man you know—would he rather be alive with a demon, or dead?” Katie asked.
“I would have thought dead, but now I am not so sure,” Damian replied.
“Don’t lose faith, Damian.” Katie cracked her knuckles. “We don’t know the story yet, but we will very soon.”
Chapter Eight
Katie watched the men as they began to stir, growling and pulling at the ropes binding them.
Damian stood to the side, not wanting to hurt any of them and trying to figure out a way to get them back without killing them.
These men were important to the church and to Damian personally, and it was his duty to make sure as best as he could that they returned safely to where they had come from. Katie walked toward the archdeacon and squatted in front of him. He growled and snapped at her, his eyes growing larger by the second.
It wasn’t anger in his eyes, or even fear. It was recognition.
“You!” he hissed. “You are a wanted demon, my dear.”
