by Peter Nealen
“So, presuming that it is coming here,” Kolya said, his expression as blank and impassive as ever, “how do we kill it?”
“That’s another thing that Stoker and some of the rest have gotten right,” Father Ignacio said. “Beheading is the only sure way to make sure it doesn’t get up again. There are those,” he continued, a note of doubt entering his voice, “who believe that it is still possible, since the vampire hasn’t actually died, to get one to repent, to redeem themselves before death. It is likely, should that happen, that the demon keeping the vampire alive would then immediately depart, and the human being left would promptly die instantly, since their life had been extended unnaturally.”
“Has that ever been done?” Ray asked, turning in his chair to look at Father with an eyebrow raised quizzically.
But Father Ignacio shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever heard of. Bear in mind, a vampire has essentially crossed over into the Otherworld, with one foot already in the Abyss. It is hurt and repelled by crosses and holy water because it has already twisted and spiritually killed itself to the point that it’s no longer, strictly speaking, entirely human. The very sight of holy things is painful to it, because it has thrown its lot in with the demons. That there is still a tiny spark left over of the person it was before is only the faintest hope. That spark is buried beneath oceans of darkness and sins too horrible to contemplate.”
“So, we plan on beheading it if we can,” I said grimly. “Noted.” I looked around the room. “Does this all seem more than a little orchestrated to anyone else?”
Kolya and Charlie nodded. “Attacks from within and without, guests who seem to be conduits or at least anchors for demonic activity,” Charlie said, his voice low and slightly hoarse. “Yeah, it’s orchestrated, all right. But by who? Or what?”
“You’ve got three guesses,” I said darkly. “And the first two don’t count.”
“You think it’s the same guy who set the Walker loose?” Frank asked.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” I replied. “Whoever he is, he’s got his fingers in everything. I’m pretty sure he was the one who egged Mayhew on in Silverton.”
“Don’t get too fixated on him,” Ray cautioned. “Until we know for sure, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It might have us chasing after the wrong enemy, and ignoring a more dangerous one.”
“Besides, this seems awfully expansive for him, coming so soon after his miscalculation with the Walker,” Father Ignacio pointed out, stroking his mustache. “He tried to bind the Walker and failed. The end result was a running battle for almost two hundred miles. Here we’ve got at least two demonic entities and a vampire—an old one, if it’s got enough Renfields to give Magnus’ guard a serious fight. If he was in over his head with the Walker, I doubt that he’d be able to pull this off.”
“Or he just got sloppy with the Walker, and learned his lesson,” I countered. “From what little Blake could learn about him, he has to have been around for a long, long time, and he’s been careful. Which would explain why we only just got wind of him.”
“Maybe,” Father said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “It’s kind of a moot point at the moment, though. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. I’m not convinced that we’ve seen the last of the demonic manifestations; I’m certain that we haven’t completely exorcised the thing inside Paul. It will be back, sooner or later. And if Magnus is right, the vampire could actually be here to back its thralls up tonight.”
“But if the sorcerer behind it is close,” Frank mused, “couldn’t we forestall the rest if we can find him and deal with him?”
But both Father Ignacio and Ray were shaking their heads. “If he’s involved,” Ray answered, “he can’t have bound the vampire. He’s made a deal with it. Which means it’s going to keep after us until it achieves its goals, whatever they are.”
“If the thing down in the mine is as dangerous as you say, Magnus,” Eryn asked, “why would anyone want to wake it up?”
“Terror,” he replied. “In the chaos it would create, they could glut themselves on the blood and fear of their victims, without fear of interference. They could prey on men more openly than they do now. Or at least, so they believe.”
His eyes got that weird, faraway look again. “And do not forget that many of the creatures of the Otherworld, those closest to the Abyss, delight in thinking that they are thwarting God’s plan. Chaos, death, suffering, bloodshed and destruction…they think that these are triumphs, marring the Lord’s design and defying Him to His face. That alone is reason enough for many of them.”
That was a shiver-inducing thought. Especially when one considered Magnus’ first-hand knowledge of such things.
“Okay,” I said, “we concentrate on driving the demons away and stopping the vamp. What’s the plan?”
“Our guard is set and ready,” Magnus said. “Though the good Father’s further ministrations may help reinforce our defenses; Renfields are not as susceptible to the presence of the sacred as their master, but if the vampire can be kept at bay a little longer, it may weaken their offensive.”
“I’ll bless the boundaries of the land, after I’ve gone over the house again,” Father said. “The rest of you, pray, prepare, and don’t give in to despair. As long as we hold firm, the enemy can’t get past us.”
“As long as we’re tied up in here, though,” I mused, “the vampire only has to deal with Magnus and his people. And if it can get through them, it can get to the mine.”
Frank was nodding. “So, that’s it. Divide and conquer.”
“I’d be willing to bet on it,” I replied.
“We can only fight the fight that we’re faced with,” Father Ignacio said. “God will provide the rest.”
At that, we broke off to eat. Despite the weariness and horror of the night before, I found I was able to eat fairly well; my body was screaming for food. Eryn’s a good cook, too; she can easily give Ray a run for his money, and Ray’s no slouch.
After breakfast, Father set about renewing the blessing on the house. We were hoping that it would drive away the things that had been tormenting us in the dark, but between Paul and Trudeau, I was afraid that they had anchors aplenty inside.
My fears were somewhat realized when, as soon as Father headed outside to bless the rest of the grounds, Paul started screaming.
We rushed to his room. He was straining against the ropes we’d tied him to the bed with, his back arched, his eyes rolling back in his head. He was shrieking and howling incoherently, but with an underlying note of rage and hatred to the noises. He wasn’t free of whatever was inside of him yet, that was for sure.
I went to the window. “Father! We need you in here, pronto!” He turned from where he was about to enter the woodline, and started hustling back toward the house.
“Paul,” Eryn was saying. “Paul, can you hear me? You’ve got to fight it, Paul. You can’t let it win.”
In a movement that was eerily similar to that of the possessed in Spokane, Paul turned to her as if to look at her, though his eyes were rolled so far back in his head that only the bloodshot whites were showing. He screamed at her, then spasmed again, as if retching.
Fortunately, we’d dealt with enough possessed people in the year and a half or so we’d been working together that she saw what was coming and ducked aside as the stream of black, putrid bile spewed from his gaping mouth to spatter on the wall behind her. It went on and on, like a firehose, for probably about a minute before it subsided.
“He can’t hear you,” the thing inside of him mewled through clenched teeth. The veins in Paul’s neck were bulging, the muscles and tendons distended. “He wouldn’t care if he could. He’s mine!” Then it descended into a vicious and increasingly incoherent stream of curses, vulgarities, and blasphemies.
“Shut your foul mouth!” I snapped, holding up my own silver crucifix. I might not be an exorcist like Father Ignacio, but being a Witch Hunter carries a certain authority of its own,
and that silver cross, as small as it might be, is excruciating for anything so corrupted to look at. I leaned in and held it close, as if to touch it to Paul’s forehead.
He flinched and cringed away, shaking his head violently from side to side, a wordless, muffled moan coming from between lips suddenly clamped shut.
Father came into the room and stepped up beside me. “So, decided to stop hiding, did we?” he said sardonically. “Very well, we’ll begin again. In Nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti…”
I assisted this time. I won’t go into too much detail. Even tied down, the demon tried to do as much violence with and to Paul’s body as it could. The things it said don’t bear repeating; suffice it to say that they were foul and laced with the lowest and most vicious lies. Even when it spoke the truth, it was always with a mind to deceive.
It went on for hours, as the sun reached its zenith and began to sink toward the western horizon. I stayed with Father the entire time, as the rest of the Hunters came and went, offering their support for a time, then retreating to pray on their own, or try to sleep. None of us were expecting to sleep much once the sun went down.
Finally, about mid-afternoon, the demon subsided again, though it still hadn’t departed. The fight wasn’t over yet. This one was tenacious. And I was beginning to suspect that it was telling the truth when it claimed that Paul had willingly given himself over. The exorcism shouldn’t have taken this long, otherwise.
Weary and laden with dread of what was sure to be coming once night fell, I went to our room and collapsed on the bed, hoping to get a few hours of rest before the nightmare began again.
I was in a hospital. The lights were flickering, leaving most of the hallway in darkness. People were screaming all around me. An orderly stumbled out of a room just ahead of me, took one look at me, eyes big as saucers, and ran away, down the hall, panic in every line of her body.
I watched her run away, and I laughed. My face hurt, I was grinning so widely. I looked down at my hands and saw that they were soaked in blood to the elbows. I was similarly splashed with the stuff, all down my front. I could taste the coppery tang of it in my mouth.
Looking behind me, I could see my own bloody footprints leading back down the hall. From the looks of it, I had gone from room to room until I had come to where I was now standing.
A horribly mutilated body was lying halfway out of the last door. Sightless, empty eye sockets stared at me. I knew that the gory remains of the hapless young man’s eyeballs were still under my thumbnails. His throat had been ripped out, after his eyes had gone. I could still feel the rubbery texture of his tendons and the cartilage of his larynx between my teeth.
I jerked awake with a start. Ordinarily the Hollywood trope of someone sitting bolt upright from a nightmare, soaked in sweat, is a cliché that doesn’t really happen. But the dream had been so horrific, so unutterably vile, that I found myself sitting straight up in bed, dripping with cold sweat, gulping for air, trying to suppress the nausea that was twisting my guts.
“Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” I began in a hoarse, shaking whisper. It took five times through the Pater Noster before the shaking started to subside. Even then, the horror was still gripping my heart and mind with icy, constricting fingers.
Eryn was still asleep beside me. The blue light of twilight was in the window. The sun had only just set maybe an hour before, probably less.
It had been unbearably vivid. I had been there, reveling in the most gruesome of crimes. I had thought that the nightmares the Walker had sent had been bad. They had been playground games compared to that. That vision had come straight out of the Abyss, unalloyed and raw.
I had just swung my legs out of bed when Eryn awoke with a strangled scream. I turned back and wrapped my arms around her as she started to sob hysterically. She fought me at first, until she realized where she was, and that I wasn’t part of the dream. Then she clung to me tightly, her body wracked with horrified sobs.
She was still shuddering and shaking as she started to pray between the weeping, her face still buried in my neck. I joined her. Every little bit helped. I was still caught up in the aftermath of my own nightmare.
“Oh, Jed,” she whispered, once the worst was past. “That was so, so very bad. I’ve never had a dream like that before.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You were doing something unspeakable and taking gleeful, unholy pleasure in it?”
She nodded jerkily. “I was…I can’t even say what I was doing. But it was so horrible…” she started to cry again.
I held her close. “Same here,” I said. “It wasn’t us,” I assured her. “It was that thing, or one of them. It might even have been the vampire; I don’t know for sure. Doesn’t matter. It was only a nightmare. Whatever sent it, it was just trying to mess with our heads.”
She sat up. “Jed,” she said suddenly, “if we just woke up from the nightmares, then that means…”
“The next attack’s coming,” I finished for her. We looked at each other for a moment, realizing that we had to get ready.
She suddenly leaned in and kissed me. “I love you,” she said. “Whatever happens tonight.”
“I love you, too,” I replied. “Let’s go.” With that, we swung off the bed and scrambled to get dressed and ready.
“You should probably grab some extra ammunition,” a voice said. “The Renfields are coming in force.”
I looked at Eryn. She was staring at me, her green eyes wide. “That wasn’t you, was it?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t,” I replied. “That’s…disturbing.”
Before I could say anything else, Paul started howling again, a roaring, blasphemous shout from outside shook the house, and the skinnies’ warbling, hooting cries began to echo from the woods. The night’s battle was on.
Chapter 12
We burst out of the room and into the hall. Father Ignacio was back in Paul’s room, his craggy face looking even more haggard than usual, his long hair lank, his mustache seeming to droop wearily. Even if he’d managed to get any sleep, between trying to keep Paul’s demon down and blessing the rest of the grounds, I doubted he’d been spared from the harrowing nightmares. A glance around at the rest revealed haggard faces and haunted, horrified eyes. We’d all experienced something of the same thing.
Frank, Kolya, and Ray were in the living room. Charlie was huddled in his doorway, shaking and holding his head in his hands. The nightmares must have been especially brutal for him. He was armed, but he wasn’t moving.
“Come on, Charlie,” I said, taking him by the arm and hauling him to his feet. “You’ve got to get up. You’ve got to fight. It’s the only way you’re going to get any better.”
He moaned. He really was in a bad way. But he got up, even though he was shaking like a leaf, and his head was bowed to his chest. I grabbed his hand and put it on the silver crucifix hanging around his neck.
“Remember who you are, brother,” I told him, almost shouting in his ear to be heard over the noise of the assault all around us. “Remember Who you belong to. None of these things can touch you, not if you hold fast to Him.” I grabbed him around the shoulders and shook him. “Remember that!”
He nodded jerkily. He was afraid, but he began to mouth the Lord’s Prayer, though he didn’t have the voice to make it heard. His shaking began to lessen.
The shadow demon was still outside, even though its counterpart was still howling and shrieking through Paul’s vocal cords. It was screaming and shouting, rattling the windows and shaking the door with the booms of massive impacts, even though there appeared to be nothing there. And the sounds of the battle in the woods, between Magnus’ and his kin on our side and the skinnies and the Renfields on the other, though faint, were getting louder.
So far, there was no sign that the thing outside was getting in. Every candle and lantern in the house was lit, and Kolya had a fire roaring in the fireplace. All three Hunters in the living room were praying, splash
ing holy water on the doors and windows, and the crucifix above the fireplace was shining in the firelight with a curious intensity that I had seen from time to time in such situations. So, I went back into Paul’s room to help Father Ignacio.
His initial howling having stopped, Paul was quiescent, simply lying limp on the bed, still tied to it, his eyes rolled back in his head, and a ribbon of bloody spit running from the corner of his mouth. I crossed myself as I entered; after this many times around, I wasn’t going to be fooled until we had proof positive that the thing inhabiting his body was gone. Father didn’t look at me, but was focused on Paul, murmuring a minor litany, pausing every now and then to make the Sign of the Cross over Paul.
It wasn’t a litany I’d heard before, but it seemed fitting. He wasn’t trying to rebuke the demon, not just then. He was praying for Paul, that he might be granted the grace to fight back, to claim his place as one of God’s children.
Paul’s head snapped up, faster than his neck should have allowed. His eyes were no longer rolled back in their sockets, but they still didn’t look normal, either. They were strangely glazed, and there was a hint of something unnatural swirling in their depths. “You’re wasting your breath, priest,” he snarled, in his own voice for once. “It’s over.”
“It is never over, my son,” Father Ignacio said tiredly. “Not until the Final Judgement. Only then will it be over.”
The whites of Paul’s eyes turned red. Not just bloodshot, as if a few more capillaries had broken. It was as if they had been suddenly flooded with blood. He spat at Father, who sidestepped the vile effluvia easily.
The only response Father Ignacio gave was to raise his silver crucifix and intone, “In Nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti.” Paul snarled and twitched backward, as if trying to escape the nearness of the crucifix. He strained against the ropes holding him in place, his feet scrabbling without purchase on the soiled sheets beneath him.