by Ann Gimpel
“For what?”
“Believing in me and a good, swift kick in the backside.”
“When the dust settles. And it will, at least this time. You will put in the time it takes to learn about me and being a Shifter. This isn’t anything like being a Vampire. It’s voluntary. If you continue to ignore your gifts and my magic, I’ll break our bond.”
“I deserved that. I will do better. I promise.”
Karin grabbed his forearm and forced him to look at her. Her mouth was still moving.
“I can’t hear,” he told her. “Too many loud noises too close together.”
Nodding, she placed her hands on either side of his head. A warm, soothing sensation flowed from her fingers. He could almost feel it setting damaged cells to rights.
“Better now?” She smiled.
“Yeah. Your voice is still garbled, but at least I can hear. How’d you repair the damage so fast?”
“How else?” Karin grinned. “Magic. Thank you. The trick you did with water was damned impressive.”
He opened his mouth to thank her and say they had to hustle back to the main room where Aura was, but his words never had a chance.
“Get down. Now,” Viktor bellowed.
A gunshot blasted through the church, followed by one more. They undid whatever healing Karin had done for his ears, but Juan didn’t care. He ran through the door. Viktor stood holding the bolt action Remington amid the acrid stench of gunpowder.
The priest lay in a rapidly spreading pool of blood, and Aura was spread facedown, not moving.
Juan covered the space to her prone form in two leaping strides and threw himself atop her body. Pulling her into his arms, he felt for a pulse. “Aura. Jesus. God. Talk to me.”
Viktor hunkered next to them. “She’s all right, mate.”
“Good thing we got here when we did.” Ketha hurried over. “That hell-spawned priest almost had her.”
Juan looked up, drawn by motion from where the priest sprawled on his back. In defiance to every law of physics, the man struggled to a sit, his chest still spewing blood. “Thank you.” Blood burbled from his mouth, staining his beard, but his eyes were clear, dark pools. No trace of madness remained.
Ketha ran to him. “Karin. Help me keep him alive long enough to tell us what happened here.”
Chapter Five: Evil’s Not Dead Yet
Aura clawed her way back from a world scoured by evil. Pervasive darkness had almost snared her. Marked by fire, which yielded heat but not light, and filled with hideous creatures she’d sensed more than seen. The priest’s magic must have been driven by Lucifer himself to be so strong. Or one of the truly evil demons like Grigori or Ba’al.
She’d blown through so much magic, lethargy weighted her limbs. Even opening her eyes required gargantuan effort.
Relieved beyond words for her reprieve, she sensed Juan’s arms around her and heard Ketha ask Karin for help. That last verbal exchange punched through her inertia. If there was information to be gleaned about her near miss with disaster, she wanted to be in on it.
“I’m fine.” She thrashed weakly against Juan.
“Hush.” He cradled the back of her head in his splayed fingers.
“I’m all right. Really. Let me go.” She wriggled out of his embrace. It wasn’t easy. She wanted to remain in those arms and cling to him. She may have escaped the hideous world that had her in its gunsights, but she’d remember what it felt like forever. The sulfur stench—worse than a hundred Vampires—still burned her lungs and nostrils.
Juan’s hazel gaze drilled into her, but he rocked back on his heels.
Karin was still chanting, so the priest wasn’t dead yet. Aura lurched to her feet. Her head spun, and she shook herself from top to toe to focus her mind. Logical thought returned in patches, but she was having a hell of a hard time hanging onto anything for more than a couple minutes at a time.
She made her way to where Ketha and Karin crouched over the priest. A nimbus of glowing light surrounded the trio, which meant the women were bypassing speech, and tapping into the priest’s mind and memories—while he still had them.
Did she have any magic left to join in?
Ha! Not very likely.
Juan’s presence closed from behind her, and he placed his palms on her shoulders. “Let me help.”
His distinctive magical signature probed the edges of her depleted center, the reservoir concentrating her power. No reason not to let him in, but she was slow on the uptake, still weak and worn down. Magic spiraled through her as soon as she opened herself. Her mind cleared along with her vision and her other senses.
Surprise spilled through her, companion to her newly heightened clarity. Somewhere between when she’d taken on the priest, challenging the spirit that had taken up residence in his soul, and now, Juan had learned a few things.
Aura joined Ketha and Karin’s casting, careful not to disturb them. Considering the spreading pool of blood soaking into the priest’s cassock and running across the floor, she didn’t understand why he wasn’t dead yet. His dark eyes were closed, and the drawn, crazed expression had departed, leaving his features peaceful, serene.
Compassion for her adversary tightened her throat. The priest had been a vessel for evil, nothing more, nothing less. He may have fought at the front end of his possession, but playing host to such wickedness would drain far stronger men than him.
Hell, the demon had almost snatched her up. She’d felt its pull and been well on her way along the downhill slide toward possession and obliteration of her free will. She’d misjudged the strength of the evil she stood against and nearly trapped her bond animal in Hell right along with her.
“Apologize later.” Her cat’s tone was laced with acid.
Deep in her mind, she felt Juan’s shocked intake of breath; his fingers tightened on her shoulders as if he never planned to let her out of his sight. She was still tapped out enough she’d forgotten he’d be privy to her thoughts. Apparently, he hadn’t realized how close she’d come to ruin.
Aura refocused fast.
“The priest is gone,” Karin said. “Sorry. I did the best I could.”
“It was enough.” Ketha pushed heavily to her feet. “We got the gist of things.”
“Which was?” Aura asked. “Sorry. I’m not at my best.”
Karin laid a hand over the priest’s forehead and recited the Celtic prayer for the dead before she stood.
“Come on.” Ketha headed for the back of the nave where Viktor, Recco, and Daide waited. “I’d rather only say this once.”
Aura trotted after her, but focused her words on Juan. “I appreciate the infusion of magic, but you can withdraw your power.”
He moved his grip from her shoulder to circle her upper arm. “You took quite a chance.”
Aura stopped and shot a sidelong glance his way. “So?”
A complex array of emotion played over his face. Fury. Relief. Determination. “So. Next time be more careful.”
She ground her teeth. “I’ll do what I think needs doing. We were stuck. We couldn’t walk away from the demon using the priest’s body.”
“I was close. You could have called me.”
“I had things under control,” she insisted.
“Yeah. Until you didn’t.” He let go of her abruptly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be quite so heavy-handed.”
She swallowed around a closed place in her throat. He cared. Worse, she wanted him to care, but now wasn’t a good time. For any of them. The world wasn’t any safer now than when the Cataclysm had them pinned in Ushuaia. Bigger maybe, but not any less threatening.
“It’s okay,” she mumbled to cover her discomfiture.
One corner of his mouth turned up, forming an enigmatic smile. “My cat says we need to practice blending our magic—once we return to the ship.”
Aura furled a brow and continued to the far side of the church where everyone waited for them.
“What?” He walked by her side as the
y joined the others.
“I bet your cat’s been talking with mine.” She tilted her chin toward Ketha. “What’d you find out from the priest before he died?”
The wolf Shifter narrowed her eyes. “About what I suspected. Once Vampires showed up here, they kicked a path wide open for other types of evil.”
“But why the church?” Recco asked.
“Yeah,” Daide chimed in. “I’d have thought this would be the safest place in Grytviken.”
Ketha shook her head. “It’s actually the opposite.”
“I don’t understand,” Recco muttered.
“It is counterintuitive,” Karin agreed. “See, you have to believe in something for it to affect you.”
“I don’t think so,” Viktor growled. “I never believed in Vampires, and look how far it got me.”
Karin scrunched her face into a frown. “I’m not doing a very good job explaining myself. Vampires are different.”
Aura sucked in a measured breath and took a stab at clarification. “Even with Vamps, you have a choice. It might not be much of one because the will to keep on living—no matter how—is strong. But it’s a choice, nonetheless. When Raphael—or whoever—offered lifeblood, you could have refused. It would have kept you out of evil’s clutches.”
“How does choice relate to him?” Juan pointed at the priest sprawled in a river of congealing blood.
“It doesn’t. Not directly. He was a believer,” Ketha said. “Which meant he believed in evil as well as good. It’s one of the hallmarks of what it takes to become a priest. Not much point in holding up Christ’s standard if you don’t also recognize the existence of evil.”
“The priest understood what was happening once the demon broke through,” Karin cut in. “Poor bastard. He never wasted energy thinking he was going crazy, but he figured out damned fast he didn’t have enough power to fight the darkness.”
“It made him bitter,” Ketha added. “He begged God for help. Prayed for all he was worth. Didn’t do him a whit of good. He didn’t last a week before the demon took over. The stigmata were a cruel joke. The demon nailed him to a cross and kept him impaled long enough to pound home there was nothing holy about Christ’s trials. It’s how the crucifix ended up on the floor. When the demon pulled the priest down—cross and all—he completed his possession ritual.”
“It’s how evil triumphs,” Rowana spoke up. “By stripping us of our most sacred beliefs and hopes.”
“How exactly does demonic possession manifest?” Viktor asked. “Is it like Vampire draining and resurrection?”
Aura shook her head. “No. For one thing, there’s no mechanism to create new demons. And the person you were prior to the demon taking over gets lost in the shuffle.”
“It happened with some of the Vampires. They drank the Kool-Aid lock, stock, and barrel.” Viktor shrugged. “I never figured out why I didn’t buy into Raphael’s whole shtick, but it always made me feel dirty.”
“Yeah, me too,” Juan mumbled, with Recco and Daide echoing his words.
“It has something to do with how firmly grounded your sense of self was prior to being turned,” Karin said. “With demonic possession, it doesn’t seem to matter much. The priest’s faith was solid, but it couldn’t withstand the demon’s onslaught. He might be dead, but we did him a favor killing him. It was his only way out.”
Aura took a measured breath, still trying to sort and explain something so bizarre it was painful to think about. “Basically, demons weaken the veil between Hell and this world. If many of them locate vessels—like the priest—to dominate, they alter the cosmic balance and not in good ways. Lucifer has a far easier time promulgating his evil agenda when demons are loose in the world. You see it in escalations in violent crime. People lose the ability to be compassionate, but they don’t realize they’ve changed, which makes it even more insidious.”
“Bear with me for a minute,” Juan cut in. “If the priest couldn’t withstand whatever the demon did, doesn’t it indicate most garden-variety men would have the same problem?”
“Of course.” Aura waited to see where he was going with his line of reasoning.
“Which might mean an infinite number of demons have already jumped ship out of Hell,” Juan continued. “With Vamps, there was never just one. Why wouldn’t it be the same with demons?”
“It’s possible,” she replied. Juan’s assumption was logical—and it chilled her to her soul.
“I hate to bring this up”—Viktor cleared his throat—“but what happened to the demon within the priest. Surely we didn’t kill it.”
“No, we didn’t,” Aura replied. “Absent a handy vessel, it retreated to Hell. It might have tried picking on one of us, but it probably didn’t like the odds. One priest is child’s play. Eight Shifters, something else entirely.”
“Mmph. Any relationship between demons loose in the world and the Cataclysm?” Juan eyed her. “Something kept Hell’s minions contained before, and that something changed.”
Aura shivered and glanced at Ketha, Rowana, and Karin. “What do you think?”
“It’s all interrelated,” Rowana said flatly. “The Cataclysm made it easier for evil to flourish. Its energy propelled Vamps out of the shadows and into plain sight. Before, they snatched a person here and another there, but for the most part they remained hidden from human eyes.”
“When Vamps showed up here, presumably after the Cataclysm was in full bloom,” Juan muttered, “it must have opened some kind of channel for the demon that seized the priest.”
“It’s possible,” Ketha said. “Either that, or the demon showed up here first, which lured the Vamps over the mountains.”
“Damn!” Recco made a sour face. “And here I was thinking Vamps were shortlisted for the evil bastard of the universe title. Turns out they’re not even at the top of the heap of badasses.”
Aura closed her teeth over her lower lip, thinking. “We don’t know how this works,” she said slowly. “Not really.” She stood straighter. “We understood how things fit together before the Cataclysm, and we believe we know why it happened. Developing a more complete picture of the post-Cataclysm world will have to wait until after we’ve gone a few more places, possibly found survivors with information.”
“I agree,” Ketha said. “We’ll do ourselves a disservice if we make assumptions based on incomplete data.”
“Jesus, but you sound like a scientist.” Aura rolled her eyes.
“It’s what I am, sweetie.” Ketha leveled her golden gaze Aura’s way.
“Look on the bright side. We all survived to fight another day. We should get him out of here.” Viktor strode toward the priest.
“I’ll help.” Juan followed and grabbed the dead man’s arms.
“What are you going to do with him?” Recco asked.
Viktor hoisted the priest’s legs, and he and Juan shuffled toward the door. “Burial at sea, I guess. He can join the whalebones littering the seabed in this cove. Be sure to grab the saber and the rifles.”
Aura picked up the Remington and followed the men out the door. She didn’t want to spend another minute in the church; it had nearly been her doom. Another shudder racked her.
“What’s wrong?” Ketha fell into step next to her, the saber clutched in one hand.
“Nothing. I’ll get over it. Was the hunt good?”
“Huh?”
“When we left you, you were headed for a lab to collect the esoteric equipment you love so much.”
Ketha snorted. “Yeah, the hunt was good. Recco and Daide had just gotten back when we picked up Juan’s call for help. Vik and I dumped everything we’d collected in the bottom of the raft. Damned convenient not to have to carry it all the way back here.”
Breath whistled through Aura’s teeth. “Crap! Speaking of rafts, we need to get back. The women on Arkady must be worried sick about us.”
“They’re okay. I used telepathy to let Zoe know.”
“Did you tell her how bad thing
s were?”
“Of course not. Only that we’d be a little longer than she might expect.”
Aura screwed her face into a grimace. “We have to let them know what happened.”
“Sure. We will once we’re all back.” Ketha’s eyes developed an unfocused aspect, which probably meant she was talking with someone.
Aura considered listening in, but her magical well was still perilously low. “Who were you talking with?” she asked once Ketha’s attention was front and center again.
“Viktor. He’s become surprisingly adept with mind speech. Anyway, he said for us to all get into the other raft, and they’ll meet us at the boat.”
Aura glanced around. Recco and Daide were a few feet behind them, but Karin and Rowana were nowhere in sight. “Goddammit! Not again.”
“Not again, what?” Ketha asked.
“Karin and Rowana.”
“They told us they were detouring through the gift shop,” Recco said. “Sorry. Meant to say something, but Daide and I got caught up in conjecture about the Cataclysm.” He grinned crookedly. “From a scientific perspective, it’s a fascinating topic.”
Rowana came into view, angling toward the Zodiac with her arms piled with clothing. Similarly burdened, Karin walked behind her.
“Talk about the hunt being good.” Ketha smothered a laugh. Cupping a hand around her mouth, she called, “Did you leave anything behind?”
“Not much,” Rowana yelled back.
“I never could resist a good shopping opportunity.” Ketha flashed a thumbs-up sign. “Meet you at the raft in a few.” She gave the saber to Recco and angled toward the gift shop, running fast.
Aura hurried to Karin and Rowana, holding out the arm not wrapped around the rifle to take some of the loot. “Neither of you ever said, but how the hell did you end up in the church in the first place?”
Color splotched Rowana’s face. “Erm. It’s kind of a long story.”
“Yeah, we weren’t careful,” Karin said. “The demon laid a magical snare in the gift shop. Probably to assure himself nothing human would set foot in Grytviken he didn’t have first dibs on.”
“Do you suppose he knew the Vamps were imprisoned below the barracks?” Aura asked.