Graves of Wrath

by Lina Gardiner

  The man’s trolling motor started up, and this time they whizzed along the river fairly quickly, until they’d gone as far as they could go. He stopped the boat close to the shoreline. Again, the riverbank was crawling with demons.

  “How do we get up there?” Britt asked, eyeing the distance from the boat to the bridge itself. “I’m not sure I can jump that far, and I have no light to protect us on the riverbank.”

  “I can,” Jess said, glancing around the boat and spotting a rope near the bow. “May I borrow your rope, monsieur?”

  He nodded quickly, motioning for her to take it. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised that she was going to jump from the boat to the bridge. Odd. But she didn’t have time to think about that right now. She took the rope and jumped. Once on the bridge, she tied the rope to a post on the bridge, then dropped it down for Britt to climb up.

  He managed to make it up the rope and over the side onto the bridge again. A stranger reached out and grabbed his hand, helping to pull him the rest of the way.

  His strength hadn’t been totally diminished, but they still needed him to have every ounce he could muster.

  “I’m glad to see your energy is coming back,” she said.

  “Me too,” he said. “We’re going to need my light to get us into Notre Dame. Suddenly, his strength seemed to flood back. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I can get us there. I should be exhausted, but I feel like I’ve been replenished somehow. Maybe it’s the water.”

  She thought that Britt had more strength than he knew, but this time, it felt like he’d gotten some outside help. “Thank God!”

  Britt nodded.

  She leaned over the side of the bridge and called to the boatman. “Come with us, monsieur. We can get you into the church safely.”

  He shook his head and tipped his hat, then started up his trolling motor and sputtered away under the bridge.

  “That was a bit odd,” she said to Britt. “Shouldn’t he want to come with us?”

  Britt shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe he’s a good Samaritan, hoping to help other fellow Parisians?”

  Jess frowned. “A good Samaritan who didn’t even flinch when I jumped from his boat to the bridge? Shouldn’t he have been shocked by that?”

  They both rushed to the other side of the bridge to look for the man. Strangely, his boat was no longer anywhere to be seen. Who was the mysterious boatman who’d helped them twice, then disappeared? Could he have been another angel sent to help them?

  “What just happened?” Jess asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But, I think somehow, we’re getting help from a higher power. Let’s go, doll. We have a city to save.”

  “If we can,” she said, then frowned again and glanced back at the silent river, hearing not even the slightest sound of a trolling motor in the distance. A sound she should have been able to hear.

  She blew out a breath. “I think you’re right, Britt. We’re getting help. And we’re going to need every bit of it.”

  When he reached out and took her hand, light erupted from his solar plexus, bright blue and powerful, encompassing both of them as if he’d used it for the first time tonight. “Then let’s make a run for it, just in case my energy doesn’t last as long as I hope it will.”

  REGENT SAT AT THE desk inside the water-protected room. Air recirculated inside, and so far, it hadn’t given out. If it did, they’d be finished. That said, he’d noted that someone had put an emergency oxygen supply in the corner with masks. Three of them. Odd.

  “If we can find it, we can get the information to my sister via cellphone. There’s no way we can leave this protected place. We’ll have to be quick though because once the demons realize what we’re doing, it will be easy for them to shut down all the power. I have the feeling that Jess and Britt will have to be a lot more creative in order to stop them.”

  “That’s why we brought you here, Father. After all you accomplished in New York, we knew you’d be able to help us here,” one of the priests admitted.

  “You knew this was going to happen?” Regent asked, frowning at the man.

  “Not exactly. But we’d seen signs of demonic possession increasing. We fought it, but they always seemed to have the upper hand. We needed someone who could fight against evil like a soldier, instead of a priest. When your name was put forward by Cardinal Vasilli, we grasped at it with both hands.” He nodded at Regent, his hands folded penitently on the solid oak table. “You are our warrior, Father. Word of your abilities has spread throughout the church.”

  “I’m nothing without my sister,” he said. “She’s the power behind my abilities.” His skin crawled at hearing Vasilli’s name.

  One of the priests looked shocked by his admission. They knew she was a vampire. So let them be shocked. It was true, after all. If they wanted help, they needed to know exactly where that help was coming from. His sister—his strength, and the most amazing woman he knew.

  Strangely, Morana crossed his mind and guilt flashed through him. He needed to know if she was his sister, as well. Hopefully, Sampson was still safe at Notre Dame and working on the answer.

  But Morana was another matter he’d take care of later. She hadn’t been willing to stick her neck out too far. That might change when the results of her VNA test came back, though. If she experienced sibling love, it might change everything for her. Right now, though, he had more important things to look after, and he continued searching through the texts in front of him. And strangely enough, what he was looking for was suddenly in front of him.

  “Here it is,” Regent shouted. “The final part of the passage. This is what we’ve been looking for all along. It’s a special prayer—one that can send the demons back to hell.” He read it aloud and one of the priests started typing it frantically into Regent’s phone. Regent nodded and the priest hit send. Regent could only pray the message got to Jess and Britt in time.

  He crossed himself. There were millions of demons teeming in the city. How could a single prayer help them? There had to be more to it. He prayed there was another solution, one they’d find before it was too late.

  Chapter Nineteen

  BRITT RACED ALONG the sidewalk with Jess. His strength had to have come from a panicked need, because his light was dimming. He knew it, and Jess did too. But they still had a block to go.

  Notre Dame loomed ahead of them like a huge Gothic harbinger of death. Rather than looking like their salvation, the Gothic lines of the building reminded him of darkness and fear. Why was he thinking this way? Was he being affected by the millions of demon shadows? If so, that meant they were they starting to break through his defenses.

  “Hang on, Britt. We’re nearly there,” Jess shouted. As if sensing his weakening state, she pulled him along now.

  His heart pounded in his chest and his lungs burned like fire with every exhalation.

  As they crossed the last few feet to the main doors of the church, weakness made his feet move as if they were mired in devouring mud. Each sucking, tearing step wrenched at the muscles of his legs. With his light waning, the demons were grasping, clawing at his boots. There was no time to check and see if they were getting through the leather again.

  “Hurry,” Jess shouted, turning back and looking at him with something akin to panic on her face.

  She’d never have that kind of expression for herself, only for him. That made his heart swell and his light encompassed them again, just long enough for them to burst through the huge doors of the church. The demon shadows stopped a foot from the door. They couldn’t get any closer.

  He fell to the floor, and Jess dropped beside him.

  His light blinked out. Had he lost it forever? Not even a spark lingered inside him, or at least it seemed that way.

  It didn’t matter. They’d made it inside the church.

 
He took a quick glance at Jess and realized this church didn’t hold the same fuzzy feeling for her. She looked pained when she finally pushed to her feet.

  He crawled over and grabbed onto a wall to pull himself up. His legs felt so weak, they barely supported him.

  “You going to be okay in here?” he asked.

  “I’ll manage,” she said through her teeth. “Better odds than the streets.”

  Britt scanned the weary and terrified people in the church behind them. This was the most holy, and probably safest, part of the church, but it was also the most deadly for Jess.

  “Let’s find Regent’s office. It’s in one of the distant sectors of the building.” The farther they got from the center of the church, the less devastating the effect on her. He hoped.

  He hobbled down a hallway toward Regent’s office. He’d only been here once before, but it was fairly easy to find. “Sampson must be in there, since I didn’t see him in the church itself,” Britt said.

  Jess clutched Britt’s arm and gritted her teeth against the pain of this blessed building. Britt wanted to wrap her in his arms and carry her, but he could barely keep himself upright now. They were both in a damnable fix.

  Suddenly, Jess sighed and stood straighter. She was less affected here. But as good as that was for her, it might also mean the shadows could creep in. Britt looked around the area. There wasn’t a flicker of movement on the walls or ceilings. So far, at least.

  “That’s his door,” Jess said.

  “How did you know?” Britt asked, considering that she’d obviously never been inside.

  “I can smell his things. He’s even got some of those damnable herbs in there.”

  Britt grinned and knocked before opening the door slowly. “It’s just Britt and Jess,” he called out, in case someone thought demons were breaking in. He wouldn’t want to be shot by a terrified person inside.

  “Get in here, you two,” Sampson shouted. “I just received the email from Regent. I’ve been working on the logistics of distributing the rites they found in a previously lost book of the Bible.”

  “What? A lost book of the Bible?”

  “Yeah. Lost.” Britt rolled his eyes. “At least they knew enough to pull it out when we needed it.”

  They gathered around the computer and read the script. It was in Latin. Even though Britt had never spoken the language before, he could speak it now. It flowed off his tongue with an energetic resonance. And once he’d recited the words, they were stuck in his memory—all of them. Weird. Maybe his angelic DNA could maintain such things?

  “We have to test it first,” Sampson said.

  Jess tried to say the words, but they obviously pained her even more. “Guess it’s not going to be me who sends the devils back to hell.”

  Britt already knew exactly how it had to be done. “Someone has to step outside and try it.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” Jess said, sounding panicked. “There has to be a better way. You have no light left. Britt, you’re not going to . . .”

  He leaned in and kissed the top of her head. “I am. I’m the only one who can.”

  “But you’re weak. Maybe you should wait until your energy returns?”

  He shook his head. “We can’t wait. Too many people’s lives are at stake. We heard the screams out there on the streets. There’s not a moment to waste.”

  She lowered her head and her silky hair fell forward. “I know. I just don’t want to lose you,” she said.

  “You won’t.” He straightened then tested his wobbly knees. This has to be done. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Jess and Sampson followed closely behind him. He reached the main doors, grabbed the oversized handles, and ripped them open. “Stay inside, no matter what happens,” he said to Jess. “You too, Sampson. If this doesn’t work, someone else needs to figure out a way to utilize the words.”

  Sampson nodded, his expression one of deep concern. “Good luck, Britt.”

  As Britt stepped outside, he heard the monumental wail of a million shadows encompassing the city. They were growing exponentially. How could one man shouting a prayer stop that, angelic DNA or not?

  He tried to activate his light. Nothing happened.

  Not more than a foot away from the door, the shadows gathered—waiting for him. They seemed unable to come any closer, and that gave him a tiny advantage. He could shout the prayer from here without being attacked, hopefully.

  He looked back at Jess, watching through the open doorway, and saw her smile. He knew she was in excruciating pain, but she pushed herself past it. She always did.

  He could do the same. He turned and began reciting the Latin in the loudest voice he could muster, and the words took on a magic of their own. At first, he heard a low moan from the nearest shadows, as if they were gathering strength for attack.

  It felt as if the words projected an energy he didn’t understand, but that didn’t matter. That energy was strong.

  He repeated the Latin verse over and over again until he was chanting in a deep, methodical cadence that he could feel in his bones.

  That’s when it started.

  The demons began screaming and bursting into flames. One by one, and then dozens by dozens, they disappeared, but only within a fifty-foot perimeter of him. He couldn’t shout loud enough to be heard by all of them.

  No sooner had he banished the thousands around him than new shadows bled back in, ready to rip him to shreds given the tiniest break in his protection.

  He repeated the procedure three times, and each time, the demons were banished, then more of them filled the space where the others had been.

  Finally, he stopped. The prayer worked, but only as far as he could shout. He went back into the church and Sampson pulled the door closed behind him.

  “It works, up to a point. But I can only affect those within the vicinity of my voice,” he said, trying not to let his lack of hope show. “We’ll never stop them this way. There are too many of them, and they just move in the second the banished are sent back to hell.”

  “That means we have to come up with a way to reach all of them at once,” Sampson said.

  The second he said that, the power went out in the church. Britt peered onto the streets. The city was in complete darkness, other than the occasional fires burning in the distance. Fires that firemen could never reach, not with demons roaming the streets. “It already looks like hell out there,” he said squinting against the darkness. “Any ideas, Sampson?”

  “Not without power. We could have used television, Internet, and radio, but now that’s impossible.”

  “Can we find a way to turn the power back on?” Britt asked.

  Sampson looked frustrated. “Even if you could, it wouldn’t last long. Not long enough to send out a signal everywhere. We need a source that is strong enough, and high over the city so your voice, through sound waves, will hit everywhere.” He shrugged. “Looks like we’re back to square one,” he said in a haggard voice.

  Jess bent over and grabbed her midriff. For a second, she thought she might scream from the pain.

  Britt grasped her on one side and Sampson on the other. They half carried her, half dragged her away from the front doors.

  By the time she got back to Regent’s office, she couldn’t bear the pain caused by being too close to the main part of this powerful church. Most vampires couldn’t enter a church at all, since it burned them as quickly as holy water. Her partial soul gave her the ability to enter this holy place, but it didn’t stop the terrible pain that came with it, reminding her that she was a soulless vampire who could never gain salvation. She slumped onto a chair in Regent’s office. They needed a plan and quickly. Britt and Regent had been too busy with demons to pray for her as often as she needed, and the pain was an indication that she was closer than
ever to becoming a monster.

  Britt paced back and forth in front of her. “The good news is that the words work,” he said. “Maybe we need to find the highest place in the city where we can blast sound out for miles.”

  Jess’s cell phone beeped, and she extricated it from her pocket. “How am I getting a message with the power out in the city? Is there a chance the cell phone towers are still working?”

  “I doubt it,” Sampson said. “The blackout seemed pretty pervasive.” He checked his phone. It was dead.

  She read the message and jumped out of her seat. “Eiffel Tower! It says Eiffel Tower!”

  She paced back and forth, and Britt moved aside for her. The only light in the room came from the fire burning in the fireplace. “A message that can’t be sent. A boatman who disappears.” She looked at Britt and watched the smile of acknowledgement spread across his handsome face.

  “We are getting help.”

  “Help?” Sampson said anxiously. “From where?”

  “That’s a good question,” Britt said. “But we’re going to accept it, with the grace it was given. The Eiffel Tower is a radio transmitter, is it not?”

  “I think so,” Jess said, excitement bursting inside her. “And it’s tall enough to be able to send radio waves over the city. Theoretically, we could send out a blast of prayers that everyone would hear . . . if we had the technical expertise to do such a thing.”

  She slowly turned to look at Sampson. “Weren’t you in the military as a radio technician before you became a doctor?”

  He nodded, though his expression looked pained. “I wasn’t very good at it, Jess. That’s why I changed professions.”

  “You’re better than Britt or I could ever be. We’ve got to get you and Britt to the Eiffel Tower. Now.”

  “And how do you propose we do that? My inner light is exhausted. Even if I use the words to protect us along the way, I can only shout for so long before I lose my voice. I’ll need to save it for the tower if we hope to have any chance at all,” Britt said.