by Lincoln Cole
This one was good. Damn good. Trent had every point of ingress covered by between two and five separate security systems to watch for different things. They also had in-depth reaction plans that the team drilled in case of just about any form of attack.
Not a thing for demon attacks, though.
By the end of the night, he had a list of about twenty suggestions for Trent about improvements. Some of them felt like overkill, but that made for the entire point. Move a camera here, adjust a sensor there.
His only complaint came from the system being technology heavy, but they had multiple backup generators linked together and spread throughout the estate in case the power got cut. It would prove nearly impossible to get them all without triggering at least a few external alarms.
By the time he finally submitted the information to Trent, he felt exhausted and didn’t stick around to hear the man’s response. In any case, most of the suggestions wouldn’t be super necessary, so if Trent just ignored them, he wouldn’t mind too much. Dominick just felt glad he’d gotten a chance to see the security system for himself, and it satisfied him that it had proven about as good as possible.
To be honest, now he wondered whether or not Nida would show up at all. The security system remained effective even with only a handful of guards, but bringing in an extra ten would make it nearly impossible to gain access. On top of that, they had tested the local police and riot team response times for the area, and from the first breach to a heavily armed police team on site, it completed in under ten minutes.
To attack this estate would be to take an unnecessary risk. Hell, if he’d met Trent before, he might have taken him to the Council and offered him a job. Trent might have said no, but it would have been worth the shot.
Dominick called Frieda, who answered right away, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I looked over the security. It’s good. Found nothing we can do to help.”
“Any sign of Nida?”
He hesitated. Thought to tell her the truth. However, she didn’t need more things about which to worry. Not knowing if Jun would make it ate at her inside.
“None. You should stay with Jun.”
“I should come and assist—”
“I’ve got this,” he said. “It’s more important that you make sure Jun’s all right. He’s important to you, and you should be there when he wakes up.”
She stayed silent for a moment. “You sure? I could delay a few days, but if you think you’ll need me, I can come tonight.”
“I’ve got this,” he said. “Take care of Jun.”
“All right,” Frieda said. “Thank you, Dominick. I’ll schedule my flight in a couple of days.”
“Sounds good.”
He hung up and then spent some time stretching to loosen up his body. Every inch hurt, but he couldn’t let his muscles tighten. Dominick went to bed that night in pain but slept better than he had since the attack.
***
Four days went by without anything out of the usual, and Dominick believed that nothing would happen. The testing of the defenses still happened at night, but the car had stopped showing up, and things had mostly gone quiet. Nida wouldn’t attack them: not after she’d tested the defenses and realized them so secure.
Still recovering from the fight, he had some bruises but had almost gotten back to normal. After finishing his morning exercises, he sat relaxing in his room. The phone rang.
A glance showed Mitchell’s caller ID, from his shop back in Ohio. No doubt Mitchell had become paranoid and wanted to make sure no one planned to come after him.
Dominick let out a sigh and answered, “Hey, Mitchell.”
“Dominick.” The tone of voice gave Dominick pause, and he realized this call held much more seriousness than he’d anticipated. “We need to talk.”
“What’s up?”
“I … I think I found something.”
“What? Tell me.”
“Not over the phone. How soon can you get here?”
“I’m busy right now. Is it urgent?”
“Very.”
“I’ll see if I can swing by. Let me give Frieda a call and—”
“No,” Mitchell said, breathless. “Not Frieda. Don’t talk to her right now. I just need you to get here.”
Dominick hesitated. “Mitchell, what are you talking about?”
“Look, just trust me. I need you to come to my shop so that I can show you this, but you can’t bring Frieda in on it.”
Dominick stayed silent for a long moment, thinking. It sounded like a trap, and maybe Mitchell had gotten compromised. The man sounded worried, or maybe scared.
Had they found Mitchell and his ties to the Council? Had Nida used this as an excuse to get Dominick out of the picture?
He had no idea. The only thing he did know was that Mitchell was Arthur’s family. If he faced danger, then Dominick shouldn’t abandon him.
Why didn’t he want him to tell Frieda, though? She should fly in sometime in the next day or so. Did Mitchell have something on Frieda? That didn’t make sense.
Dominick almost said no because he’d come here to keep Jill Reinfer safe, but at the last second, he changed his mind. The security team didn’t need him with their level of security, and he felt stir crazy again and didn’t mind checking in on Mitchell to make sure he remained okay.
And, if it proved a trap, at least he would know Nida’s location.
“I’m on my way.”
Chapter 11
Haatim clicked through the various websites somewhat absently, sleepiness creeping in. He had trawled through the information for days and had a mind-numbing headache from spending so much time in front of a computer. Yet, still, had only managed to track down a few of the possible targets Nida might go after.
Four days had passed since he’d started coming to the library with Father Paladina, and the more time he spent working on this problem, the more insurmountable it became.
The trouble was, for most of the possible ancestors, too many possible descendants existed to narrow down anything. A quick search through ancestry related websites showed innumerable possibilities of people Nida could track down to acquire the blood she needed.
And that came from looking to defend only one bloodline from her attack. Worse, that bloodline they believed to have become extinct hundreds of years ago, which meant the records proved nearly impossible to parse through. No way could they possibly keep all of them out of Nida’s grip.
In addition, most of them probably weren’t related, and their blood wouldn’t suffice for the ritual she wanted to accomplish. Most of them dead-ended, but verifying that became almost impossible. And protecting them all didn’t make an option, either. They couldn’t put guards on all the potential descendants of the Otolan bloodline, and no way could Haatim predict with any accuracy how his demon-sister would pick her targets.
No, he needed to narrow down the list to the most likely candidates, but that meant a lot of searching, cross-referencing, and guessing. Haatim hated that it proved so difficult to attain accuracy, and his mind felt numb from the work.
But, he couldn’t afford to stop. Father Paladina had gone out as well, chasing down leads and trying to find out if anyone knew more about the extinct-but-not-extinct bloodline. So far, that had turned into a dead end, too.
He hadn’t heard from Frieda in a couple of days but knew she could be en route to help Dominick protect Jill Reinfer in Pennsylvania. The last report he’d received had said that Jun would be all right, but it would take a long while before he got well enough to leave the hospital.
From the sounds of it, the woman that Dominick had gone to protect seemed a likely target for one of these last two bloodlines, so Frieda wanted Haatim to focus solely on the Otolan line.
To that end, he stayed there scrolling through articles and websites, looking for any clue that might help narrow down his list of two-hundred possible targets. He felt fairly certain that he could c
ross half of them off the list, but he didn’t want to make any broad-stroke decisions that could bite him in the butt later.
The whole thing seemed like a waste of time but better than the alternative of worrying about what would happen now with the Council destroyed. The more occupied he became with menial tasks, then the better.
The idea that Nida had five of the seven bloodlines already and had come close to releasing Surgat proved terrifying. When Haatim got initiated into this world, he had viewed the Council as an ancient organization, powerful and all-knowing. What a silly idea—the more he thought about it—but he had believed them untouchable.
First hand, he had watched while Nida and her team murdered and destroyed them, and now almost nothing remained. He wished he could have done something to help; to keep the attack from happening or being so successful.
Of course, maybe, he could have. If Father Paladina were to be believed.
***
As well as searching for names from the Otolan bloodline, Haatim also looked for information about what Father Paladina had told him about himself and people like him.
Each morning when he got up and finished eating and getting dressed, a car picked him up out front. Father Paladina met him at the empty building in the Vatican slums with the demon in the basement. There, he would confront the demon, face it, and face his fears.
For the first couple of days, nothing happened, and it felt like a waste of time. They would spend hours in that dank basement, face-to-face with a dead man rotting in front of their very eyes. It seemed hopeless, and it annoyed him that Father Paladina insisted they spend so much time there. Time that he could better spend trying to solve their other problems.
But, then, he felt something. It happened all at once on the third day. A sort of heat in his chest, which imbued him with a sense of purpose and rightness. It gave him a clear knowledge that the demon would not be allowed to hurt him if he didn’t allow it himself.
It seemed like tapping into something, an essence inside him but normally unreachable. And touching it that first time felt like a light-bulb moment, and once he knew where to look, he could do it over and over again. It seemed like a switch had gotten thrown.
Still, though, he couldn’t control the power. It came in waves; there one moment and gone the next, but he could feel it. The idea that he could recreate the power that had happened at Raven’s Peak struck him as awe-inspiring.
Father Paladina made an excellent teacher, spending hours with him in the room facing the demon, and letting him learn in a controlled environment made it much easier to deal with.
So far, he couldn’t actually do anything, but Father Paladina said that it would just take time. He could cross over, as the priest described it, and that made for the hardest part. With practice, everything else would just come.
Of course, they didn’t have a lot of time to spare. The old priest had also given him numerous ancient texts to look into, which explained the abilities—old documents that described the power and great things people had done with it.
Detailed accounts of different periods in history when seemingly ordinary people had performed “miracles” filled the documents. Things like walking out of crashes or accidents unscathed to surviving terrible injuries. They even held accounts of healing people with only a single touch.
In the stories—or historical accounts; Haatim couldn’t decide if he believed them or not—such people could use the power to go so far as dragging demons directly out of hosts and dismissing them back to hell.
A few years ago, he would have dismissed all of this as simply fantastical information spread by the Church; rumors they created to encourage the lay people to believe more firmly in divinity. But now, he knew that anything was possible. The world had become a lot bigger and more complex than he’d ever imagined. He’d witnessed demons, rituals, and any number of terrible occurrences in these last few months, including the possession of his sister.
A few passages of the tomes stuck out to him in particular, along the lines of what Father Paladina had described to him as a form of channeling—something that exorcists practiced and used on behalf of the Catholic Church while dealing with a demonic presence, whereby they could willingly become an instrument of God’s will.
Or, at least that was how the accounts described such. If Father Paladina could be believed, less than one percent of all operating exorcists in the world could even manifest such abilities at all, and those made for a minuscule population of self-selected priests out of the larger population of the world. The overall impact of such an “ability” would prove negligible within the greater society, and even those that did have it could rarely do anything influential with it.
To Haatim, it sounded like even if this were possible, it probably had little to do with the Catholic Church or the Abrahamic God at all. Maybe it did come from God as a form of divinity, but not in the sense of any particular religion. Much like the demons: they became easy to describe through the lens of Christianity but existed beyond it.
In fact, when he searched around on the internet, he discovered similar accounts from all over the world and by people from every background imaginable. People from many different countries and religions described similar amazing feats that could be prescribed to what he sat learning about channeling.
Same powers, different lens.
If he believed one version of the abilities, he decided, then he might as well believe in them all.
A few hours later, while he still sat browsing down the rabbit hole of channeling, Father Paladina returned to the library. He looked weary when he sat down in the chair next to Haatim.
Haatim leaned back in his seat and rubbed his face. “That bad, huh?”
“I spoke to my colleagues,” Father Paladina said. “But no one knows anything about the Otolan bloodline, and I’ve been unable to verify any of the names on our list.”
“I have had no more luck than you, I’m afraid.”
“We could defend a few of them, but I’ll not send anyone out while our list remains this long. It would prove a complete waste of resources.”
“I know,” Haatim said. “Any word from Frieda?”
“She’s meeting with Dominick to defend the Reinfer residence. Currently, she’s in flight over the ocean.”
“No attack yet?”
“No. But if something is to happen, she believes it will be soon. Dominick reported the all quiet, but Frieda feels that doesn’t indicate safety. Something will happen.”
“Unless Nida has blood from the Reinfer bloodline already, and this is just a misdirection.”
“True.”
“I should be there helping.”
“You’re helping here.”
Haatim sighed. “Barely. We haven’t found anything useful, and I still can’t channel consistently.”
“It takes time.”
“We don’t have time.”
Father Paladina frowned but didn’t respond. They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the laptop in front of Haatim.
“Have you looked over the book I gave you?”
Haatim hesitated. “I’m still not convinced.”
“That it’s real?”
“That I can do it,” Haatim said. “You told me I had more of a gift than most, but when I reach out, I barely feel anything.”
“You’ve felt it, though. It’s like an unused muscle. The more you use it, the more you can call upon it to aid you.”
“So, it’s like energy. I’m tapping into my energy to do it.”
“In a sense.”
“What happens when I run out?”
Father Paladina stayed quiet for a moment. “Bad things.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s more akin to tapping into your soul. When you deplete it …”
Haatim paused, then said, “Point taken.”
“In any case, now that you can do it, you will grow stronger in a short time. Already, you’ve felt the essence, an
d now it is simply about directing it.”
“I felt something, but the accounts in this book describe some crazy things happening.”
“Not all of them are real. Some of them, the Church fabricated, and it’s difficult to tell them apart. I didn’t expect you to believe all the accounts. I only believe a handful. However, I have seen powers before, similar to what you described, and I can sense them in you. You remind me of someone I knew long ago, and he had the abilities.”
“Who?”
“A man named Father Reynolds.”
“What happened to him?”
“He passed away.”
“How?”
“It isn’t important.” Father Paladina pursed his lips. “He was a dear friend.”
Clearly, he didn’t want to discuss this topic, so Haatim changed the subject, “These seven families we’ve been tracking down … why are they so important? What’s the demon trying to do?”
“Frieda hasn’t told me.”
“But you have some idea,” Haatim said. The more time he spent with the man, the more he realized that Father Paladina put on an unassuming air while knowing everything going on. “I know you do.”
The priest frowned. “They were the original seven from the Council of Chaldea. The founding group. Most of them went their separate ways over the years, but the ritual linked their blood.”
“What ritual?”
“The binding ritual the demon wants to undo.”
“Everyone keeps saying that, but you won’t tell me what they bound. Frieda said it is a demon named Surgat.”
Father Paladina nodded. “Except, not only Surgat. The demon was bound into a human, a vessel he attached himself with, and the vessel got trapped as well.”
“So, they sent a human to hell?”
“More or less. I know little else. Surgat has been accounted for throughout history, but from what I’ve gathered, no one has learned the demon’s true name. From all accounts, what the Council stopped was a true integration, the type only experienced a few times in history.”
“So, something bad.”
The priest chuckled. “Yes, something bad.”
They sat in silence. After a moment, Haatim reached forward and closed his laptop. He turned to face Father Paladina. “Why did Frieda send me here?”