by Sawyer Black
They pounded down the stairs, and a group of four gun-toting cultists popped out of the darkness at the base of the statues at either side of the lobby.
The two at the front held AR-15s pressed into their shoulders.
Looks like somebody’s been going to the range.
They opened fire, and Ramiel’s light exploded into blinding brilliance. Bullets sparked into the disintegrating fire, and Boothe charged with his sword a blur. Flames gouted like blood wherever the dark blade touched flesh, and screaming cultists collapsed to ash.
Charlie was a whirling dervish of color. Unable to track him with his eyes, Henry only knew where he’d been by the howls of the cultists as he rendered them into dog food.
A demon rushed in with his panicked eyes and saw Ramiel rise over Henry and Adam, his feet coming out from under him as he backpedaled. Ramiel dropped in an arc that took him to the demon scampering back on his ass. The Tracker plunged the sword down, driving it through the demon and into the floor.
A clap of thunder, and deep cracks spread out from the impact. The demon erupted in a slurry of black blood that washed across the lobby from wall to wall.
“I’ll be honest,” Henry whispered over his shoulder. “That seemed excessive.”
Adam snickered, and Henry grinned.
First this boy, and then Amélie.
They gathered at the front door, and Boothe still didn’t have a speck of blood on him. Charlie was soaked to the elbows. Ramiel’s entire body was awash with gore.
“Fuck it,” Henry said, and he pushed through the glass door into the sudden quiet in front of the Viazo Grand. Wet air slapped him in the face. Drizzle blew in under the overhang protecting the guests as they exited their vehicles.
They gathered under the roof’s edge. A flash of lightning illuminated a group of cultists and demons standing at the top of a rise twenty yards away.
Henry’s group turned as one to run the other way, and the sky filled with the blended light from a dozen Trackers flying over the hotel to meet them. They froze, and the Trackers dropped to the ground to spread out.
Ramiel dimmed his own light, and they all crouched into a tight group.
The Trackers advanced, and their song spread through the rain. They were covered in blood, both black and red, and their nets were empty. Their song sounded like a lie.
“Back inside?” Henry asked. Golden light descended the staircase. “Motherfucker!”
“Henry,” Boothe said. “You must get the boy away from here.”
“What, just run away?”
Ezra took Henry’s hand in his. “Yes, Master Henry. Take the lamb far away.”
“I can’t take him into the shadows with me. His destiny is too Goddamned heavy.”
Charlie leaned over. “Then use your fucking feet, shithead.”
Ramiel nodded. “They have served you well thus far, Master Henry.”
“This is bullshit.” They were right. Until he could free Amélie, Adam was all that mattered. He reached back and pressed a steadying hand against the boy’s backside, then ran in a crouch to the wall, facing the cultists and demons on the hill. “If any of you fuckers die for me, I’ll find you. And you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m already sorry,” Charlie muttered.
The Trackers drew their weapons. Henry squinted into the darkness at the cultists. “They don’t have a fucking chance.”
A red glow spread across the hill — maybe he’d spoken too soon.
In the center of the glow was the cultist who disappeared from Peterson’s office. Swirling fire flickered from his hands. Hellish light sparkled off the rain. The ground shook, and the Trackers slowed.
The red-robed leader threw his hands into the air, and fire rolled down the hill, arcing from his fingers in sizzling waves.
Shadow demons erupted from the ground in every direction. Screaming with the voices of those they had tortured in hell, they threw themselves at the trackers. Their feet left burning spots of lava as they passed.
They swarmed over the angels like hyenas on a carcass, and the cries from the hill drowned out the screams of the Trackers as they fought. The demons and cultists charged down the hill to end the battle in a rout, but the glass wall of the entry exploded in a shower of sparkling shards as the Trackers inside the hotel burst into the night to defend their brothers and sisters.
Shadows shooting from the ground, trailing dripping fire. Slobbering demons running with weapons raised. Robed cultists firing semi-automatic rifles. The horizon glowing red with evil light. Trackers wasting hoards of the enemy with mighty strokes of righteous intent.
Henry’s group crouched in the chaos, their backs to each other and their weapons raised. Boothe turned, slinging rain from his eyes. “RUN!”
Henry dug in and sprinted with his head down. The explosion behind him when the armies met under the Viazo Grand’s carriage porch seemed to shake the world. It knocked him to his knees to skid in the mud, but he held onto Adam and pushed back to his feet.
He heard Ezra’s scream of pain, and he ran.
Boothe’s bellow of rage, and he pumped his legs as Adam bounced wildly on his back.
Ramiel’s song turned from comfort to vengeance. And still, Henry ran.
First this boy, and then Amélie. I’m coming, baby!
The fighting receded into the distance behind him, and the ground flattened out before him. He ran faster than he could imagine, the wind deafening as it whipped past his ears.
The rain soaked through his clothes in seconds, and Henry only knew he was crying when he tasted the salt of his tears.
CHAPTER 30
At the edge of the Viazo Vineyards, Henry slowed and turned around, walking backyard into the trees that lined the hotel property. Flashes of light at the top of the hill. Muted thunder. Swells of color. It looked like fireworks or a Phish concert.
“I’m sorry about your friends, Henry.”
“Don’t be sorry yet, kid.”
Henry pulled Adam off his back and cradled the boy in his arms, holding him against his chest and blocking as much of the rain as he could. He tried stretching into the shadows, but Adam became an albatross. He couldn’t keep them in the trees for much longer. They were on the edge of a huge city. The trees would end, and everyone would see the monster. He reached for the darkness again, but instead of pouring himself into it, Henry pulled it up like a blanket across his shoulders.
The mental weight of Adam’s presence in the shadows dragged his shoulders toward the ground, but Henry gritted his teeth and kept planting his feet.
He couldn’t tell how old the kid was. He was so small, but he’d spoken with an odd assurance that made him think of Amélie. She was a negotiator, wielding logic like a rapier. He learned to prepare for situations of discipline like a lawyer trying a case. It didn’t matter if he won, so long as he didn’t end up looking like a dumbass.
More often than not, she would end up with a snackie cake instead of punishment, and Henry would sit at the table with a shell-shocked sort of pride, wondering how the Hell she’d gotten so smart so fast.
She became obsessed with Giggly Girls, a line of knock-off Barbies that laughed when shaken. He thought they all sounded like cackling harpies, but Amélie loved them, swiping through the website on Henry’s iPad for hours. Her collection was soon obnoxious, and it had been a constant struggle for him to get her to clean them up.
It may have been her toy room, but Henry paid the bills, so one day he put his foot down. Five minutes later, he was sitting on the floor with a tiny pink brush, gently removing the tangles from Precious Paula’s red hair.
Samantha had stuck her head in. “Clean your toys up, please.”
Without argument, Amélie put everything away in record time. Henry looked up to realize he was alone, and the room was spotless. Her little voice floated in from the kitchen, chattering away about how she and Daddy had played with her dolls all day.
He stood with a grimace, his hips popping like t
win shots from a cap gun. Then he hobbled over to Amélie’s toy box and spiked that Paula bitch into the pile.
Her hair had looked incredible.
The rain tapered to a thin mist that seemed to appear rather than fall, and the trees thinned to an occasional weed-choked clump. In the tall grass next to the Thompson Turnpike, Henry followed the traffic south-west, cutting through Sheldon and Harbor Square.
His feet knew where to take him, and the boy was asleep in his arms, so Henry kept his head down and the shadows pulled tight against the reflected glare of headlights and streetlamps. He pushed the sound of Ezra’s scream way down, covering it with a memory of Amélie’s smile.
He looked up, and his vision cleared his daydream in a haze of reality. The Burg Spires Church of Hope. The shadow fell from his shoulders, and Henry gasped in relief. Standing under the dripping leaves of a maple tree, he looked both ways like a child readying to cross the street.
The church rose out of the gloom, dark except for a single light at the side door. Only familiar with a few of the rooms inside, Henry couldn’t tell how they translated to the building’s exterior.
A final check to make sure the coast was clear, and he carried Adam to the front door.
Heavy plastic covered the hole where the stained-glass window had been, fluttering and snapping with the swirling mist. Adam stirred and lifted his head to look over Henry’s shoulder.
Ready to draw the shadows around them again, Henry rounded the corner and mounted the front door steps.
The handle turned, and the door swung in on silent hinges. Henry carried Adam inside, half expecting to be heralded by trumpets or light, but nothing happened. He closed the door behind him with a soft click then passed out of the entry and down the center aisle toward the altar.
He sat Adam in the first pew and turned to look at the damage from Peterson’s entry. It was even worse than the day of the massacre, but at least there wasn’t any blood. Pastor Owen’s tired face sprang into his mind, and Henry burned with guilt. “I’ve brought so much pain to that man.”
“Who? To him?”
Henry turned, and Adam was pointing at the statue of Jesus hanging above the empty baptismal pool. “No, that’s Jesus.”
“Oh.” Adam nodded, a line appearing between his eyebrows. “I’m supposed to be him.”
“Huh?”
“Well, maybe not be him, but be like him?”
“I guess, kid. That’s why God wants you.”
Adam jerked his head up in surprise. “God? Wants me?”
Henry shook his head and sat in the pew across the aisle. “It depends on who you ask.”
Adam nodded. “Some people say I am him, already.”
“Or the Antichrist.”
Adam nodded again. “That, too.”
“Yeah, well, people are dumb.”
Adam giggled, and then his face grew serious. “Can I trust you?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Adam pushed off the pew and walked over to Henry. He stood peering up at him, gold and blue light flickering in his eyes like sparks. He reached up and touched Henry’s face.
Memories from the last few months flooded into his senses. Every moment relived with Henry at the center. The awful things he said. The terrible things he had done. Samantha and Amélie. Their pain doubling against his own.
He gasped and pulled his head back, breaking contact. Tears streamed from his eyes, and he heard Amélie’s voice screaming for him. Begging for his help.
Adam cried with him, his lower lip quivering. “You love her, don’t you?”
“More than anything in the whole world.”
“You’ve been through so much, trying to save her.”
Henry nodded.
“And you don’t know what to do now, do you?”
Henry shook his head. Wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. Drew his sleeve under his nose. “Hey, you hungry?”
Adam wiped his own tears away as he nodded.
Henry dug into his back pocket and pulled out the Bacon Bag. “Here. Think of the food you want most of all, and stick your hand in here.”
The child’s eyes lit with expectant joy, and he thrust his hand into the bag. Then he drew it back out holding a huge slice of thin crust pizza. The kind they sold on every corner in town. Floppy and soaked with grease.
Adam folded it in half lengthwise like you’re supposed to, then drew it toward his mouth in anticipation. He paused. “Do you want some?”
Holy shit. This kid.
“No, you go ahead.”
Adam took a bite, and the cheese stretched, steam rising into the air. He chewed with his mouth open, sucking in a breath to cool it before swallowing. He spun in a joyous circle then took another bite and marched to the bottom step leading up to the altar.
He jumped onto it, holding the pizza over his head as he walked down the step’s length like a balance beam. He took another bite, grease dribbling down his chin. “I have an idea.”
Henry leaned back and crossed his arms. The kid’s mindless fun on the carpeted stair made him smile. He wanted to have fun, too.
“My father was a demon named Baelzor.”
Fuck.
“He’s a con-artist. Always called himself a low-level guy. He got caught trying to steal something from a church in Spain. He never told me what it was, but his eyes always got far away when he talked about it.”
He took another bite of pizza and spun, balancing his way back toward Henry. “They tried to exorcise him, not realizing that the man they saw wasn’t possessed but just looked like that when he was working. So, it didn’t work. They locked him up and asked him where the others like him were. A nun who was supposed to feed him and keep his wounds dressed felt bad for him, and tried to help him escape.”
Adam dropped off the step and offered Henry the last bit of pizza with a half-sneer of disgust. “You want this? I don’t like the crust.”
“Sure, kid.” Henry popped the warm dough into his mouth. Soft and salty, covered with Romano. The best part.
Adam went back to balancing. “They killed her.”
Of course they did.
“Or they thought they did. She was an angel.”
At first, he thought the kid was just describing his mother like any kid would, but realizing the boy was speaking literally made Henry sit forward.
“My dad didn’t know it, though. He came back and killed every last person in that church. And with her gone, he didn’t have anything else to live for, so he tried to kill himself.
“That’s when my mother revealed herself to him. Like a vision. They fell in love, got married in secret, and I was born.”
Such a dry way to put something so monumental.
And then a child was born.
“Some angels found out, and they came to put an end to the blasphemy. That was before they even found out about me. Elioud. Descendant of the sons of God. Higher than the offspring of Seth and the daughters of man. So, they ran away to New Mexico. I never really saw anybody else. Only them, and even though they loved each other, they were always fighting. He was angry all the time, and she was crazy. At least, that’s what they said about each other.”
Adam dropped back to the floor and stood still, looking down at his feet. “Then, a man came. A hunter for the cult.”
“Order From Chaos?”
Adam nodded. “Petrev Obisev.”
“You remember his name?”
He looked at Henry, one eyebrow cocked in question. “Would you remember the name of the man that killed your daughter?”
Patrick Harrison.
“I think so, yeah.”
Adam shrugged with only one shoulder.
So there.
“He’s the man who killed my parents, and I remember everything about him.”
The church was filling with light. Henry’s balls crept up when he thought it was a Tracker, but his heart slowed when he realized it was only dawn burning through clouds.
&nb
sp; Henry swallowed the lump of fear clogging his throat. “All right, kid. You win. What’s your idea?” A useless question. Henry already knew.
“I’ll help you save your daughter if you help me find and then kill him.”
Henry sighed. What’s one more deal?
“Sure thing, kid.”
Adam flung himself into Henry’s arm with a wordless cry of relief. Henry rocked back from the impact and held the boy to his chest.
Now I just need to figure out how to do it.
Henry froze. He pried Adam loose and planted him on his feet. The boy looked up in confusion. Henry rammed his hand into his front pocket and withdrew Mandyel’s phone. “Holy shit! The Holy Hotline.”
He flipped it open and mashed the gold button. He slapped his head and waited for the operator.
“What number, please?”
“Uh, yeah. I need to talk to Nadia. Big lizard, looks like Garbo.”
“One moment, please.”
Click. Hank Williams singing ‘I’ll Fly Away’.
Henry chuckled. “They do like the classics.”
Click. “Mandy’s Export Emporium.”
“Nadia?”
“Henry?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Look …”
“Where are you? Where’s Mandy? I’ve been worried sick. And I’ve heard things, Henry.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you everything, but I need a ride. Can you send Oddjob to the Burg Spires Church of Hope?”
“Oddjob? Oh.” She laughed like music. “That’s funny, he does kind of look like him. As soon as I hang up, I’ll call him. Should only be a couple of minutes, but Henry. You better have a good reason for leaving me in the dark.”
“You bet.” Henry slapped the phone closed and slid it into his pocket. He scooped Adam up and spun, jogging to the front door. Just as he reached for the knob, it swung in and Pastor Owen rushed inside, flinging water from his dripping hair.
He bounced off of Henry's shoulder with a gasp and dropped a bundle that had been clutched under his arm. Brown or red fabric, but Henry couldn’t tell which in the dim light of morning.
“Henry!” The pastor gripped the coat over his chest, panting as he backpedaled. His eyes found the boy, and they widened to their limits, his brow wrinkling up in shock.