“Whatever you say, Padre, I’m just here to make sure the girl comes out of this ok.” He glared at me again and then opened the door.
2
The first thing that hit me was the smell. It smelled like dried shit and piss, mixed in with week old garbage. It was worse than the truck stop bathroom I tried to use on the way to Arizona, and that had been some gnarly shit.
The previous occupant had apparently thought that it was ok to use his shit like finger-paint to decorate the entire bathroom. There wasn’t a spell in the world that would make that room sanitary enough for me to step in. I’d left that bathroom gagging up the five-dollar hot pocket I’d bought inside. This time I didn’t have the choice to leave, not if I wanted the girl to live.
Father Anderson was already by the girl’s side as I closed the door to the room. He had wrapped the beads around his hand and placed them on her head while his other hand clung fiercely to his bible. He recited the words that made up the right of exorcism as he desperately willed his talismans of faith to work. If that was his big plan, then it was no surprise that he hadn’t gotten anywhere yet.
Cracking open another cylinder, I laid a line of salt and iron across the door. I painted a pentacle on the door with the symbol for salvation at its center, and the words protego ex malum in each of the outer gaps created by the star. Then I cut my finger again, placing one drop of blood in each of the five triangles.
Father Anderson shook his head in disgust. I’d dealt with him before, and it was never pleasant, but he understood that all I cared about was saving the girl. Maybe it was the blood magic that caused a bigger divide between myself and the church.
Traditionally, blood mages had been considered evil, but for me, it had just been a faster way to harness my power. You’d think a group of people that drank from a cup of Christ’s blood would be a little more understanding.
The priest’s eyes flicked towards the door again, but he should have been focusing on the girl and the demon trying to break her. He hated my hedonistic mumbo-jumbo, but he loathed the fact that he needed me even more.
I motioned for him to turn his attention back towards the girl and continued to move across the room to the large bay window. I ripped open the blinds, letting in the muted light from the street.
The street lights weren’t helping much; their glow had been dimmed even further by the torrential downpour. Ignoring Father Anderson, I painted the same symbol in the center of the window. Confident that the demon couldn’t escape, I turned to face the girl for the first time.
The world seemed to slow down as I turned my attention on the girl. A scream ripped from her lungs, and her back arched off the bed. The only thing keeping her in place was the thick ropes tied around her wrists and ankles. The demon inside of her was gaining strength and testing the restraints that bound it in place. Her frail body continued to buck and writhe against the ropes until finally she went still.
A voice that couldn’t have been human crackled from her throat. As she spoke, the words assailed me from all sides. “You’re too late this time Bozley. The girl’s soul is already mine.”
I ran forward and gripped Gabriella's bare foot despite the filth that coated it. “It’s never too late for redemption.” The demon only smiled at me as I tried to exert my will over it. “Now, tell me your name so I can send you back to hell!”
The large bay window exploded inwards, forcing me to duck down. I kept my hand on the girl’s foot, willing her to fight. Father Anderson hadn’t moved an inch when the window shattered. His face was lined with cuts from the glass, but he had bigger problems to deal with than a few scratches.
While I had been distracted by the window, the girl had broken free of one of her restraints and had reached across the bed to grab Father Anderson by the throat. There was a sound bubbling from her lips that reminded me of the black oil from the tar pits in California, only now the sound had to be the demon's laughter.
Father Anderson was gasping for air. I kept my hand against the young girl’s foot and continued to try and pull her soul back from the brink. For me to have any chance to save her, she had to want to come back, but all I could feel now was the very edges of her tattered and weary soul.
I made one final effort to bring her back, pushing my will further into her and ignoring the gagging sounds coming from Father Anderson. I felt just the faintest of sparks clinging desperately to this plane.
I wrapped my will around them and yanked with everything that I had. “Come back, Gabriella.”
She fought against me for a moment, but then I felt her give in and rush back towards her body. There was still hope for her if we could just make it a little bit further. Golden light seemed to fill the room; we were winning.
Father Anderson’s neck snapped like a wishbone on Thanksgiving, and the girl’s soul spiraled back into darkness. Taking a life was never an easy thing, and the demon knew just what it had to do to finish its ascension.
“I told you that you were too late, Bozley Green.” The demon growled, its voice deep and throaty. Not the kind of voice you would ever expect to hear from a fifteen-year-old girl.
Then again, the girl was gone. The demon bucked and kicked breaking my grip on Gabriella’s foot. The restraints holding her legs in place snapped under the demon’s continued assault. She tossed the priest’s body against the wall with one arm just as easily as I would have been able to throw one of her pillows.
The final restraint tore free, and the demon rose into a crouch in the center of the bed. Her eyes burned yellow as they met mine for the first time. She smiled, and I took a step back. There was something wrong with her mouth. Human mouths didn’t have that many teeth and didn’t open nearly as wide.
There was no hope for Gabriella now, she was lost to us. The only thing I could hope for was to end this before she broke free from this home to reign terror on our city. I’d ask God to save her soul from the pit, but I had my doubts to whether the big guy was actually listening or not.
Reaching under my coat, I easily found what was nestled between my shoulder blades. It was my most prized possession, a soul blade.
My hand settled against the hilt of the soul blade, and I felt as if the weight of this situation had been lifted from my shoulders. It wasn’t the outcome that I had been hoping for, but the soul blade was the only option I had left. It took me ten years to track it down in an alley market that was tucked in the slums of Bangladesh, but the journey had been worth it.
In my hand now was the only thing I had ever found that could send a demon back to hell once it had taken full possession of a human body.
I’d been forced to use the soul blade eleven times before, but never on a child. While it sent the demon back to hell, it killed the host. It was a steep price to pay, but doing nothing would be worse. My palms were sweating, and my heart was racing. I could do this; I had to do this.
The demon flinched at the sight of the blade. It seemed to glow in the darkness of the room. Rain cascaded in from the shattered window, but my wards still held. This demon wasn’t going anywhere as long as I was still alive. I dropped my bag to the floor and got ready for the demon to pounce. Instead, it just smiled at me, tilting its head like a dog seeing something interesting for the first time.
“What an interesting toy you have there.” The demon almost seemed to purr. “It’s too bad you have to kill the girl for it to work.” More of the bubbly tar laughter issued from the demon's throat.
“Her soul is already lost to this world. Killing you before you can pervert her body would be a kindness.”
The demon shifted and moved slowly around the bed before springing to the wall and shuffling to the ceiling. Gabriella’s matted hair hung down around her head framing her face. “I wonder, Bozley Green, how many souls you have condemned to hell with that blade?”
Now the demon was just playing dirty. There was no way to pull a soul back into the body once a demon had taken over the host. Every text I had ever been able
to get a hand on said as much. Even the ones nestled deep inside the walls of the Vatican’s libraries. Could it truly be that killing the demon with the soul blade trapped those innocent souls in hell forever? It couldn’t be true, it had to be a trick.
I pivoted slowly, keeping the demon in front of me as it circled around the ceiling. “All you know how to do is speak in riddles and lies.”
The demon smiled as it shuffled towards the window. It tested the ward I had placed there and shuffled back over the bed. It was hard seeing the young woman’s limbs bent at impossible angles as the creature moved. It was easier to call her demon and believe that the time for saving her had passed.
I flexed my knees and waited for the demon to leap at me. It was inevitable that it would strike. The beast couldn’t leave the room until my wards were down, and the only way to make that happen was to kill me.
Spittle dripped from the demon's mouth as it spoke. “Maybe you should tell that to Samantha Carter, or Devin Smith. I bet Tara Ballner or Christopher Aumick would love to hear your side of the story. Maybe if you ask me real nice, I’ll pull one of their souls forward so you can listen to them scream.”
My heart skipped a beat before kicking back to its already frantic pace. How did the demon know those names? All of them were people that I had stabbed with my soul blade after the demon was in full control. Were the souls of the people that I killed really trapped in hell? No, it had to be a trick. Fucking demons would say anything to rattle your cage.
Despite my resolve, the tip of my blade dipped as the weight of the demon's words pressed down upon me. In my moment of weakness, the demon attacked. I threw myself backwards and stabbed upwards with the blade. The girl’s fingernails ripped across my chest as the blade plunged deep into her. There was a small spark, and then her body was still.
I pushed what remained of Gabriella off of my chest and climbed back to my feet. My chest ached where her nails had shredded my jacket and shirt before leaving six-inch-long trails across the skin on my chest. The demon had been the strongest of any I’d faced to date. To change the girl so quickly implied power I had only read about.
The girl on the floor moaned and began to shake. That had never happened before. She reached out with one hand holding it up like a lifeline before her eyes closed and it fell back to the ground with a thud.
Sobs tore through me as I fell to my knees beside her. “What have I done?” The words came out as a whisper, but inside my soul was screaming. I’d just killed a fifteen-year-old girl.
“No, no, no… no!” The words tumbled from my mouth as I ripped off the lower part of my shirt and pressed it to the wound on Gabriella’s chest. The blood soaked the shirt in an instant, but her eyes were already lifeless before I reached her. “I’m sorry I failed you, Gabriella.”
Her hand gripped mine, and she started to talk. “They said you could have saved me if you wanted to, Bozley. Why didn’t you want to save me?”
The demon’s laughter filled my ears as the girl's soul finally left her body. I condemned her to an eternity of torment. I pulled her limp body into my chest and shook as tears streamed down my face. The rain outside started to taper off as I rocked back and forth on the floor covered in Gabriella’s blood and filth. I heard footsteps approaching the door, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even flinch when Benny kicked the door open and charged into the room with his service pistol out.
“Holy mother of Christ!” Benny exclaimed. He bent to check Father Anderson for signs of life and holstered his pistol.
“I lost her, Benny, I lost her.”
Gabriella’s mom burst into the room and paused for just a moment at the sight of the destruction. Then her eyes found her daughter’s lifeless body in my arms, and she let out a wail that I knew would haunt me for years. The pure agony of that sound was enough to snap my heart in two. She fell to her knees by my side and clutched at her daughter.
Standing, I gently placed her daughter in her lap and said a something I knew wasn’t true. “She’s in a better place now.”
“Jesus, Bozz,” Benny said. “What in the hell happened?”
I picked up my bag and headed for the door. “Later, Benny. Find me later, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“You can’t just leave; this is a crime scene,” he said with a frown.
“I can if I was never here, and trust me it’s better for both of us if I was never here.” He frowned at my back, but he didn’t try to stop me as I left the room. I needed to get home and get straight. My head was all over the place. If what the demon said was true, and I believed that it was, then I was an even bigger bastard than my father told me I was.
I stepped out of the house, and David pulled the car up. Jumping in the back before David could get the car in park, I slumped into the seat. “Get me home.”
For once, his mouth didn’t open to spew out a million useless questions. I was thankful for the silence, but it didn’t stop me from seeing the concerned looks he kept shooting my way in the rearview mirror. He’d been with me long enough to know that when I was like this it was better to just let me sort it out on my own.
Fuck, I was a mess right now. Mentally and physically exhausted and in dire need of a drink.
3
SIX MONTHS LATER
The sound of Mrs. Garcia wailing as she cradled her dead daughter against her chest was enough to pull me out of a slumber brought on by half a bottle of vodka with beer chasers. That little nugget had been a nice gift from my subconscious that I didn’t need right now. The last thing I wanted to do was remember the night that I learned I had doomed twelve innocent souls to hell.
My shoulders shook again, and it finally hit me that David had been the one to pull me out of my nightmares. Thank God for that man, or I’d never have made it from my desk to my bed. There was a god-awful beeping sound coming from somewhere near me, but my eyes refused to open far enough to help me track the source.
“Little help,” I asked David, each word pounding between my ears.
“If you get to the point where you start shitting yourself, I really am going to leave.”
David picked up my hand as the wailing call of my phone continued to pierce my soul. He dropped my hand on top of my phone, and I heard him walk back to the other side of the lab. I flipped open the phone and then snapped it shut effectively cutting off the wailing noises and hanging up on whoever was calling.
I didn’t do that anymore. Working exorcisms was something you needed to call someone else for. Actually, I didn’t do much of anything anymore unless you counted drinking. Eventually, that would stop as well, but not until my credit card started to decline.
My eyes finally cracked open wide enough for me to see last night’s suspect perched on the edge of my desk. If I was right, and normally I was, then that suspect needed a little more questioning.
With a force of will that would make the most dedicated Marine smile, I willed my hand to stop shaking and reached for the bottle. Once I had a good, firm grip on the bastard, I looked across the rest of my cluttered desk for a cup.
The only mug on my desk read “World’s Greatest Dad” and had the butts and ashes of a few cigarettes at the bottom of it. Which was funny for two reasons: I didn’t smoke cigarettes, and I never had kids. I dumped the mess at the bottom of the cup out on the floor and started wiping the inside of it with the sleeve of my shirt.
“Really?” David exclaimed from behind me as he noticed the mess on the ground. “I swear it’s like dealing with a child. Use a fucking trashcan next time.”
Damned if the man didn’t have a point, but looking for a trashcan would have required effort, and I wasn’t sure I was up for that just yet. Still, I did my best to ignore the daggers David was staring into my back as he bent down to clean up the mess. There was some work that needed to be done.
I ripped the cork out of the bottle and tossed it on the ground, earning me a swat on the leg from David. With my mug filled, I took the first sip of the day and felt
as if the weight of my dreams had fallen off of my shoulders. Hell, it was five o’clock somewhere, right?
The first sip was still burning in the back of my throat when I took the second. Two more quick sips and my vision started to clear, and after the fifth, I felt my headache fading away. Then the beeping started up again. What in the hell was up with this person? Couldn’t they catch a fucking hint? I didn’t care who it was; they were seriously starting to damage my sense of calm.
“Maybe you should just answer the phone. They’ve been calling all day,” David said as he finished sweeping up the ashes and emptied them into the trash.
“Fuck em.” I managed to croak out.
God, my mouth tasted like the inside of a dumpster after Mama June tried to cook in it. When had I started smoking again? The fucking cancer sticks were the worst, made everything smell like death.
Somewhere around the third mug of vodka, everything seemed like a good idea as long as the memories didn’t come back. But the morning was already awash with self-regret and guilt. How had I become so arrogant that I didn’t see what was right in front of me?
The soul blade not only killed the host but condemned them to an eternity in hell. It all seemed so much simpler when I thought their souls had already been lost to the pit.
Demons would use the truth just as often as lies if they knew it would cut you deep enough. Well, Gabriella’s demon had shaken the foundations of my faith until it was little more than rubble strewn across an empty lot. All it took was a fifteen-year-old girl dying in my arms for me to finally see the truth. She hadn’t deserved that. She had been counting on me to save her, and I had let her down.
Twelve innocent people I had condemned to damnation for eternity. Sure, my actions had saved more lives. If any of those demons had been set free in our city, the destruction they caused would have been catastrophic. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to sleep at night when I all I could do is hear Gabriella saying, “Why didn’t you want to help me,” before the light left her eyes forever.
Possessed (Bozley Green Chronicles Book 1) Page 2