by P. K. Tyler
Vai merged into traffic on the West Side Highway.
Nik watched as Zeph pulled around them, taking the lead into the city.
"What do you think they're talking about?" Nik nodded toward the car.
"I can only imagine." Vai rolled her eyes.
"One pissed off priest and an angel in the final countdown. Sounds like a party."
Vai snorted and then started to laugh. She laughed so hard, Nik worried she might actually drive off the road.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," she sputtered, hiccuping as she tried to take a deep breath. "I'm just so tired, Nik. I'm running on fumes and my family is dead and you're all 'why doesn't the boy I like, like me' and it's all just so freaking ridiculous."
"I'm sorry."
"No, don't be. It's fine. You should be worried about Zeph. He's going to be fucked up after all this." She quit laughing instantly, all traces of mirth disappeared. "I mean, we're going to have to kill his sister."
Nik ran his hands through his hair and leaned back in his seat.
They sat in silence as Vai weaved through the traffic, following Zeph toward Our Lady of Mercy. Soon, they pulled into the alley behind the church.
Zeph climbed out of his car and slammed the door with a scowl.
His conversation with Anahita must not have been a success.
"Hey," Nik said, approaching his best friend. "Are you all right?"
Zeph shrugged off Nik's hand and glared. "Not even remotely. Let's get inside."
He stormed up the back stairs of the church, which lead to the community meeting room.
Inside, the florescent lights overhead buzzed and flickered and a familiar pain shot through Nik's skull. They're here.
He glanced over to Vai and found her eyebrows pulled together in a wince. She felt it too.
"There's a demon here," Nik stated, halting everyone's forward rush.
"One of Asmodeus' warriors." Anahita scowled before taking off down the long hall at a run.
They followed close behind, Nik pulling the Blade of Christ out of his belt. If they were here, he wasn't going to miss another opportunity to take down Belial or Adel.
Anahita lead the way through the narthex and slammed open the double door to the sanctuary. She stopped dead in her tracks, making the others skid to a halt.
At the front of the grand room, the crucifix Nik had spent so much time contemplating swung gently back and forth, with Father Losado's body strung up over the image of Christ. Nails in his hands and feet secured him in position.
"Father!" he screamed, finding his feet again. He charged forward, but before he could reach the altar a banshee scream came from his left.
A demon flew through the air, slamming against Nik's side and sending him crashing to the ground. It was one of the possessed women they had seen at Ma's. Thick, pungent ichor leaked from a gash in the demon's head. He had to turn his face quickly to keep it from dripping into his mouth. He fought the urge to gag.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nik saw a blur of black wings. Anahita let out a battle cry that ended abruptly with a thud. He struggled beneath the dead weight of the blonde demon groaning atop him.
"You bastard!" Vai's scream echoed through the grand hall but before she reached the demon a man stepped in front of her, a sword in his hand.
This must be the man Father Losado was training to help me. What was his name?
"Nik?" a small voice cried from under the front pew.
He rolled the semi-conscious demon off of his chest and crawled away from her, looking for the sound. Under a pile of black cloth, Sister Francis Marie peered out at him.
"Sister?" He reached for her, but before he could get there something pulled him back by his foot. He slid across the floor and spun around, kicking out behind him until he lay looking up at the female demon. She had regained her strength and grabbed Nik by the back of his shirt, pulling him up in front of her and placing the sharp blade of his own Blade of Christ dagger against his neck.
"Come at me and I'll slit his throat. A dead Sin Eater would be my gift to the Prince of Hell."
Nik grappled, trying to get away, but the possessed woman pulled one arm around his back and held him immobilized.
Sister Francis Marie scurried back under the pews, disappearing into the shadows.
Zeph stepped into view and raised his fist.
Nik's jaw dropped and he felt his eyes bug out of his skull. "Zeph, what the fuck!?"
Zeph swung and Nik couldn't help but flinch.
The open handed blow landed hard against the demon's face, just behind him. A shower of sparkling, red dust exploded into the air.
A piercing shriek next to Nik's ear felt like it was splitting his head in half, but he spun out of the demon's grip. When he whipped around to face her, she ripped at her skin, tearing long gouges in her face.
Pieces of dark, glinting metal fell from her bloody fingertips, along with chunks of flesh.
Under her skin, tiny dots glowed through as they moved within her body. A few on her face disappeared, darting behind her eyes. Others traveled lower, down her neck and beneath the fabric of her shirt. After a moment, the woman’s eyes bulged and she swelled with a red light, glowing from within, pushing out against the walls of her body until she burst.
Blood and the black essence of a demonic spirit covered Nik and Zeph.
A male voice Nik didn't recognize broke their concentration. "I could use a little help, here!"
Nik turned to spot a man who looked like he'd walked right out of a fucking video game battling a tall man with no shirt and bare feet.
The man parried the demon's attack with a sword that had seen better days, notches ran along its length and the metal muted, but his expert maneuvering made it a deadly tool. He wore a polished helmet through which his face barely showed and a breastplate with an elaborate cross symbol across the center.
Nik couldn't help himself. "I'll be damned, a knight in shining fucking armor."
Black wings whipped out to either side of the demon the man fought. Belial.
With his powerful wings, Belial lifted into the air and leaped back several feet.
The man dropped his blade, pulled his helmet off and tossed it, and grabbed a length of chain dangling from his belt. He mumbled an incantation in Latin as he raised the chain up above his head, swinging it like a lasso.
Anahita charged forward, grabbing the sword off the ground.
Standing side by side, Anahita and the strange knight attacked in unison. As the angel rushed forward, the man released the chain from its controlled rotation, sending it out toward Belial’s throat.
Belial flapped his wings to avoid the blow, lifting into the air, but Anahita sliced at his leg, delivering a deep wound that oozed black.
The chain struck him and wrapped around his arm.
The knight jerked the chain, pulling Belial forward in halting increments. He held another blade, this one somewhat shorter, in his left hand. He raised it as though prepared to slice instead of stab.
Decapitate. Makes sense.
Nik froze, enthralled.
Sister Francis Marie crawled down the center aisle, into Vai’s legs. “Help me, God in Heaven, help us all!” she wailed, clinging to her. Vai settled her into a pew where the nun gripped her rosary and prayed.
Belial leaned back against the hold of the chain, digging the heels of his bare feet into the marble floor, struggling to break free. The marble cracked and buckled under his efforts, but it only bought him seconds.
The man fell back, losing his grip on the chain and the demon, and Belial stumbled a few steps before turning on his heel and leaping into the air, flapping his enormous wings. He retreated to the safety of the rafters high above their heads, black blood still streaming from Anahita’s attack, his gaze focused on the shadows as though awaiting instructions.
"Well done, all of you." Adel strode out of the shadows. Her eyes, solid black without any whites or trace of the Ad
el he once knew, paused to lock gazes with him for the briefest moment. Though her lips never moved, he heard one word just as clearly as though she'd spoken it: Mine.
She spared a loving smile up to Belial before she turned her gaze on her brother. "Zeph, come with me, please."
Nik moved toward her, but Zeph's arm shot out in front of him, holding him back.
"Zeph? Look, I know this hard, but—"
"Stop, Nik. She's my sister." Zeph glanced at Belial, still waiting in the rafters, his powerful muscles not showing any sign of strain from holding his weight.
“Two Sin Eaters, a holy warrior, and an angel. It’s like a comedy act gone so very, very wrong,” Adel taunted.
“Devil!” Anahita shouted, sword high above her head. She charged but Adel didn’t move.
“No!” Zeph ran toward his sister and blocked the angel’s attack with his own body.
Anahita moved quickly, redirecting the blow and withdrawing, but it still glanced against his arm, drawing blood.
“What are you thinking?” Nik screamed. At Zeph, at Anahita, at fucking everyone. At God.
“Stay back, Nikolai,” Adel’s caramel voice said. “I can’t promise to keep him safe if something like that happens again.”
Adel ran a finger along the wound on Zeph’s arm and then brought it to her lips, tasting the blood. “Still a virgin, brother? I would have thought our Nikolai would have had his way with you by now.”
“This isn’t you, Adel.”
“Why aren’t we killing this thing?” the shining knight demanded.
“Kill me and you’ll see what my son is truly capable of.” Adel smiled sweetly up at Belial, whose feathers ruffled in response.
Zeph nodded by way of acknowledgment. Zeph glanced over his shoulder at Vai. "You two help Nik if he moves."
"She'll kill you, Zeph. You know that."
It was too late, though. He just shook his head. "No, Nik. She's my sister."
This is it. He's going to say goodbye. He's finally letting go, for his sister. No, for what he thinks is his sister.
A more stubborn man there never was and Nik loved him all the more for it. He couldn't move to stop Zeph as he turned to Adel.
He couldn't even breathe.
Chapter Eleven
Zeph and Adel stood toe to toe. His clear voice rang out, floating over them all, high above the pews, and into the rafters.
"Adel, come back to me. Help me cast this demon out of you." His voice lowered, but still carried across to Nik. "Help me save you."
Warm tears pricked at Nik's eyes. Zeph's hope, even after all he'd seen Adel do, would be the death of him the moment he finally let go of it.
Unless she killed him first.
“Why haven’t you killed this thing?” the knight demanded, only to be hushed by Vai. Even Anahita kept her peace, seeming to understand that this moment, this confrontation, was necessary for Zeph.
Many voices tumbled from Adel's lips, one of them distinctly male. Another, her own. "Adel Asmodeus is mine. I am Adel Asmodeus. There is no part of me that she he hasn't consumed from within, and no part of her him I haven't saturated. Body. Mind. Soul. We are one."
Adel had inadvertently given Nik all he needed to take the beast inside her down. He screamed the name aloud, his voice scaring even him with its ferocity. "Asmodeus, leave this child of God at once."
Nik strode toward them and felt the rush of air from Belial's wings as he descended upon the others behind him.
Nik ignored them, trusting that they had enough manpower to fight the beast long enough for him to expel this demon from Adel. "Asmodeus, the Blood of Christ compels you to leave this sacred vessel."
Adel's twisted voice, intertwined with the demon's, laughed. "You're too late, Sin Eater."
Nik reached Adel, and his hand shot out to grab her throat, but Zeph deflected the blow and shoved Nik, hard.
He landed on the ground, his pride hurt more than anything else. "The fuck, Zeph?"
"She's my sister. I will save her." Zeph turned back to Adel just as Nik stood up and Vai screamed.
The three warriors circled Belial, who swiped his long, sharp claws.
Vai ducked and rolled away.
The knight leaped backwards, out of Belial’s reach, while Anahita wove between them, dancing in and out of range, delivering cuts and blows to Belial’s form, but nothing so serious as to slow him down.
Behind him, Zeph plead with Adel. "Asmodeus, please. What could you possibly want with her? Take me, instead."
Nik spun around. "Zeph, no!"
Adel's mouth twisted into a malicious grin.
Vai shouted, pulling his attention in two directions, "Nik!!"
"Join us, brother. All you have to do is come with me."
Nik heard the air whoosh out of Vai and turned just in time to watch her fly through the air, clutching her stomach and rolling into a ball before she landed between two rows of pews. The loud thud echoed in the empty room. The silence that followed was worse than hearing her screams of pain would have been.
Sister Francis Marie rushed forward, climbing over the pews with an agility that would have made Nik laugh in another context.
"Vai!" Nik ran toward her. "No, no, no—Vai, please be okay."
Something slammed into him as he ran, sending him sprawling through the air against the stairs to the altar. Anahita crumbled next to him, the amber light in her eyes dimming and a soft glow shining where her aura should be.
“You can’t go yet,” Nik pled. “We still need you. We can’t do this alone.”
“You’re never alone, Nikolai. You never have been,” the angel said before closing her eyes. The white light gathered over her and a face he’d never seen before, one so beautiful he could barely stand to look at it, smiled at him before floating up and disappearing.
Father Losado’s blood dripped down on the carpet next to Dika’s body from his position on the cross.
The room spun. His grief surprised him. He’d come to like the gruff angel and without her, without Ma and Dika, without Father Losado, Nik felt completely alone.
Before him, a battle like nothing he’d ever seen waged between the holy warrior and Belial. Somehow, both Sin Eaters had been knocked down and an angel killed, but this warrior of God continued to fight. He battled the blur of Belial's black wings with nothing more than a ridiculous outfit and a sword.
Nik couldn’t see Zeph and, after that blow to his head, keeping his eyes open made his stomach crawl up his throat. His fingertips found a sore spot at the back of his skull and came away wet.
Zeph's voice broke through the fog. "I won't leave Nik. I love him."
"You know it's wrong, Zeph. How can you turn your back on your family for him again?" Adel said
"I love him."
"You would turn away from me?" Her voice deepened and trembled.
"I love him."
For one moment, Adel's voice was again her own: meek, pleading, distraught. Nik wanted to scream for Zeph not to fall for it. "You won't even leave him to save me?"
"I love him."
She's going to kill him. Nik rubbed his eyes and forced them open. He sat up, fighting through the nausea of his head injury. Zeph. The need to save his other pulled him up to his feet, his vision clearing.
Zeph stood with his back to Nik, arms hanging limp at his side.
Adel's face grew dark, she leaned close and spat out, "Fine. I'll see you both in Hell soon enough. You'll spend eternity watching one another suffer in torment. Enjoy your deaths together."
Nik yelled Zeph's name at the same time Adel called for her escort. "Belial!"
Lucifer's son lifted up off the ground, disengaging from his battle with the holy warrior.
Belial somersaulted through the air, twisting like a cat with an infallible compass, and landed gracefully behind Adel. He wrapped his arms around her, blood trickling from gashes across his hard chest and down his arms. He leaped high into the air.
With Adel bundle
d in his arms, he flew over their heads, keeping out of reach until they reached the stained glass windows behind the altar. He beat his black feathered wings and crashed through the colorful mural of glass and light.
Pieces of Tiffany art rained down around Father Losado’s corpse, landing on Anahita’s empty host with a crash.
Zeph crumpled into a heap on the floor and Vai lay somewhere in the pews.
“Nik!” Sister Francis Marie called. “I’m so sorry Nik, but your friend... So much death.” The nun looked around the room her eyes glazed over.
“Sister? What are you saying?” Nik couldn’t allow himself to even consider that Vai could be dead, that the death toll was still racking up and they hadn’t even slowed Belial down.
The knight ran toward Sister Francis Marie while Nik stood still.
Zeph approached and knelt beside Dika’s body. He crossed himself and closed her eyes, whispering the Latin he relied on to help make sense of the world. But this world made no sense.
Still on his knees, Zeph looked up at Father Losado’s body, hanging from the desecrated cross. Sobs broke through his stoic exterior until his body shook with their power.
He looked up into Nik's eyes. "I won't let you kill her. She's my sister. Even after all of this, I know she’s in there. I have to save her."
"God damnit, Zeph." Nik dropped to the ground next to him and pulled him tight in his arms. Furious at Zeph’s stubbornness but relieved he was alive.
From the pews, Vai groaned.
Nik turned to see the knight, Jacek, that was his name!, now without his helmet, with an arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her to standing. He had a strong jaw and dark, thick hair. In another setting, Nik would find him quite fuckable, but there was a lack of humor in his eyes, a predatory hardness Nik found unsettling.
"Jesus, Nik. Think you could have stepped in for a second there?" Vai gave him a half smile but grimaced before it reached her eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Sister Francis Marie muttered. Her hair stood out all over, blood matting it down in places. She looked like a character in some horror farce about the church.