by Duncan, Lex
The girl next to me giggled again. I glared at her. “You were talking about the Divine Comedy.”
Unless we'd moved on from that in the middle of class, I was at least half right.
“Be more specific,” he said.
Crap.
A slimy voice slithered in from the back of the room. “You were talking about the significance of the forest at the beginning of the Inferno.”
I twisted around in my seat. Ugh. Jason Clark. He had such a punchable face. “No one asked you.”
He shrugged, and in that moment, I swear I wanted to throw my desk at him. “Hey, I was just helping.”
“I don't need your help.”
“That's enough, you two,” Mr. Northrop said. He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He didn't get paid enough for this. “We don't need a repeat of last month.”
“We might,” I grumbled, turning back around. Stupid Jason Clark. He was so...stupid.
I forced myself to pay attention for the rest of class just in case Mr. Northrop decided to blindside me again. No easy task, considering everything else I had to keep me occupied, but I managed. Barely.
When the bell rang, I bolted out of there as fast as I could. I didn't want Mr. Northrop asking any questions and I definitely didn't want to be exposed to Jason's idiocy a second longer than needed. Since English was my last class, I merged with outgoing traffic and went downstairs to catch my ride. Dante's car was parked in its usual spot, glinting in the sunlight. I got in.
“Beatrice,” Dante said.
“Dante,” I replied.
We drove away.
“How was lunch?” I asked. I tried picturing him and Ms. Hayworth sitting in a diner, eating cheeseburgers and sharing a milkshake. I couldn't do it.
“Fine,” he said. Physically, he was here, but mentally? He may as well have been in China. “School?”
“Fine.”
The awkward silence was making me itchy.
I turned up the radio. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was on. I'd have bet my left arm that Dante'd never heard it before. He was in for a real treat.
I hummed the lyrics under my breath, tapped my foot to the beat. Kurt Cobain wailed along with me. Load up on guns, bring your friends, albino, libido, etcetera.
Dante made a face like he just swallowed something he found in his pocket. “What is this?”
This was exactly the sort of reaction I expected from him. “Grunge, Arturo. The angst of the 90s! Isn't it great?”
“The poor man sounds like he's in pain.”
“That's the point. Kurt Cobain was a tortured guy.”
“I can tell.” He turned the music down, his sour expression sobering. “Our friend Bishop wasn't in his office. His secretary said he was at a meeting.”
Sure, and I was the Queen of England. “Is meeting code for something else?”
“I'm guessing so.” He reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope. A symbol was drawn on the front. “Here. The letter I mentioned.”
My eyes widened. I didn't get to just hear about the letter, I was getting to read it! Snatching it out of Dante's hand, I studied the symbol first. It looked kind of like the exorcism seal except the inner circle was enclosed by a square and nothing was inverted.
“What is this?” I asked, brushing my fingertips against it.
“The seal of the First Sacrament,” Dante replied. The spires of the church grew nearer with every turn he made. “Creation.”
“How many Sacraments are there?” I opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. It was fragile as a moth's wings, yellowed with age and covered in the elegant script of one Miss Henriette Lawson. The date was scrawled at the top. December 24th, 1800. “And why haven’t I learned about them in class?”
Dante leaned back in his seat, lifting the thermos he kept in the cup holder to his lips. “Two of the five are taught in entry level demonology classes the world over. It's the other three that are kept...under wraps, if you will.”
“What do you mean?”
Henriette began her letter on a fearful note. Dearest Uncle, she wrote, something terrible has happened. Elizabeth is dead.
“Summoning and banishing. The Third and Fourth, respectively.”
It is all my fault.
We didn’t call them Sacraments in school. We just called them summoning and banishing. Or, rather, banishing and that thing you should never ever do. “The Fifth is exorcism. What are the other two?”
“Creation, as you've seen on the envelope, and Destruction. Hunters have kept them away from public consumption for safety reasons. We tried to do the same with the summoning ritual, but there are still a great deal of people out there who think we can somehow control demons instead of killing them.”
The Prophet came for me two days ago, claiming that God had spoken to him. My time had come, he said, and I needed to fulfill my duties. I was so afraid, Uncle, so very afraid.
“What the hell?” I held the letter up. “This is freaky.”
Dante gripped the steering wheel until his scarred knuckles paled. “Keep reading.”
Elizabeth insisted she take my place. She said it was her duty as my older sister to protect me. I begged her not to go, but The Prophet demanded a tithe.
“What's a tithe?” I asked.
“A payment to the church,” he replied.
I know not what happened at the church―oh, that explained the tithe thing―but what I do know is that Elizabeth is dead and the town has been overrun. The demons, Uncle, they're everywhere. I am too afraid to go outside. I fear that I will die here in my room.
“Holy shi―”
“Keep reading.”
“Who's the Prophet―”
“Please keep—”
I picked out a penny from the empty cup holder and threw it at him. It was meant as a playful gesture, but he looked over at me like I'd stabbed him in the temple. For a guy who didn't watch many movies, he sure was dramatic. “Chill out, Arturo.” I said. “I'm reading, see?”
“Did you just throw a penny at me?”
“Shh!” I put my finger to my lips. Two could play the dramatic game. “I'm reading!”
He sighed.
The Prophet claims this is all for the best. That we will soon see the fruits of our sacrifices. I do not know what to believe anymore. Elizabeth is dead. I am alone. The monsters are closing in.
What will happen if he is wrong? Will this darkness consume us? When will it stop?
Please write back as soon as you are able. I miss you, Uncle. I miss Elizabeth. I miss the light.
All my love,
Henriette
“Okay,” I said, flipping the letter over so I didn't have to see Henriette's increasingly panicked handwriting. I didn't care if she'd been dead for two centuries, I still felt bad for her. “Two questions: Who's the Prophet and why is he going around asking for tithes? And why does the church keep coming up?”
“That was three questions,” Dante said.
I threw another penny at him
“Will you stop throwing things at me?”
“Will you stop condescending me?”
We locked eyes. He looked away first. Probably because he had to drive. Still, I won. Muttering something under his breath, he undid his seatbelt and opened his door.
Oh. We were here.
At the church.
My stomach turned. “What are we doing here?”
“Research,” he got out of the car and beckoned me to follow with a crook of his fingers.
I folded Henriette's letter and put it back in the envelope then scurried after him, glancing over my shoulder to see if there were any eyeless dogs following me. There weren't. Yet. “Research?”
He pressed his hand to the dark, faded oak of the church doors. A crow squawked in the nearest pine tree, disgruntled as crows often were. “Do you hear anything?”
“Other than that crow plotting to peck your eyes out? No.”
I didn't want to be here. I really di
dn't want to be here. I just kept thinking about that voice in my head. A dead station in my brain, drowning everything else out. After my parents died, it took years of therapy to make feel like a real person again. The church undid all that work in the space of a few minutes. I shivered.
Dante was too busy mean mugging the church to notice. “Do you feel compelled in any way? Like you did before?”
I shook my head. “No. Can we leave?”
He wrapped his hands around both door handles and pulled. Nothing budged. I took it as a sign from God that we should leave. So did the crow. Cawing furiously, it flapped its wings and dropped down from its perch in the tree, pecking at the ground around Dante's shoes.
He ignored it. “Hm. These doors shouldn't be locked.”
“But they are,” I said, keeping a wary eye on the crow. “So we should leave.”
The crow agreed. It gave another harsh squawk before it launched itself up at Dante in a flurry of rage and feathers. Dante reacted immediately, grabbing the bird by its neck and throwing it away like it was little more than a piece of garbage. The crow tumbled across the grass, but recovered quickly and attempted a counter-attack. Its efforts were thwarted by a gunshot.
“Jesus!” I yelped, slapping my hands over my ears. “Was that really necessary?”
Dante holstered his gun―higher up on his chest, like Humphrey Bogart always did―and walked over to retrieve the crow's corpse. “This bird is possessed.”
“Of course it is,” I said. Because I couldn't go anywhere without demons following me.
“Look,” he held the crow up so that the sunlight could catch its beady eyes. Exposed, milky white veins began to appear like negatives of a photograph. “This bird isn't just possessed. It's newly possessed. Those veins are signs that the entropic process has yet to take place.”
I knew this one. “Entropy, that’s the, uh…”
Dante put the crow down on the walkway and spread its wings. “Entropy is what happens when—”
A lightbulb flickered on in my head. A memory from Demonic Physiology last year. “Wait, wait. I know what it is. When a demon gets into someone’s body, the decay and mutations that happen afterward, that’s entropy, right?”
He nodded approvingly. “Right.”
I got a C in that class. At least all my hard work was good for something.
Dante reached into his coat and came back with a box of chalk. That he had the box with him didn’t surprise me; chalk was a vital demon hunting tool. That he kept so much stuff in his coat of all things was the funny part.
“Now pull an umbrella out of there,” I told him.
He blinked.
“You know, Mary Poppins?”
“…No.”
Of course not. Moving on. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“Yes,” he said. “Perform the banishing ritual, please. I’m going around back to see if that door is unlocked.”
“Sure, boss,” I said as he walked away. Crouching down, I drew the seal and slit my palm with the pocket knife Dante suggested I carry after what happened with Gershom. When that was done, I smeared the blood in the middle of the seal, positioned the crow inside, and began the rite.
It was considerably less dramatic than my first time. Nothing happened. The wind didn't blow, the clouds didn't gather, I didn't feel any pressure in my skull. A trail of leaves skittered along the road, but that was it.
“Is this thing on?” I mumbled, tapping the blade of my knife as though it were a microphone. “Testing, testing…”
Dante appeared from out the back of the church. I shoved the knife in my pocket before he noticed I’d been talking to it. “The side entrance is unlocked,” he said.
“What are we doing with the crow?” I asked.
“Leave it.”
“Leave it? Do you know how much it's worth? The feathers alone―”
“Beatrice,” he said tiredly, “please leave it.”
“I have a hospital bill to pay and―”
“I already paid it.”
“You what?”
He held out his hand. “Are you really going to get angry over this?”
“Who told you?” I slapped the chalk down in his open palm. “Was it Max?”
“Does it matter?” He pocketed the box and buttoned his coat the rest of the way. “You needed the money, I had it. I cashed the check I mailed you, so technically, you paid for it.”
I was torn between relief and irritation. Relief, because Rosie was safe for a little while longer. Irritation, because I was put in his debt yet again. I knew my pride wasn’t the point, but still. “You didn't have to do that.”
His gaze met mine, always serious, but now with a shade of sympathy. “I know how much Rosemary means to you.”
I lost the staring contest this time around. “Thanks.”
“I find it odd that whatever compelled you before is seemingly gone.” He said, graciously changing the subject. He looked up at the church’s many towers, putting his hand to his forehead to act as a visor against the sun.
I shrugged. His point was a good one―an important one, I supposed―but I didn't want to think about it. Being possessed by a church once was enough. Didn't need to relive it to make it twice.
“Maybe this place is cursed,” I mumbled. This whole city was cursed. Cursed with rain, cursed with crime, cursed with demons. Someone needed to put that on the travel brochures. “Maybe this Prophet was doing what Gershom wanted to do. Maybe he was sacrificing people. Why else would you herd them here? For a nice potluck?”
I thought maybe Dante would dismiss my theory, but he didn't. He turned and led the way to the back entrance. “I was thinking much the same thing. If Henriette was correct, people died here, in this very building, for reasons we have yet to understand. For reasons history sought to bury.”
“And now it's happening all over again,” I said. The dots had connected and the picture they made was a scary one.
Dante paused at the doors, watching me expectantly.
“I mean, you said it yourself. None of this stuff is coincidental. It can't be. Five people were found dead in a warehouse branded with the same symbol drawn on an envelope containing a letter that basically said these other people were being sacrificed right here in this church.” I was out of breath by the word church. Then came my second wind. “Not to mention what happened to me, not even a day after the bodies were found. And then there's Gershom and the mayor and the missing book and everything else!”
“Beatrice,” Dante snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Breathe.”
I breathed.
He pulled the door open, then stepped inside. “We need to focus on one thing at a time. Finding that book is my first priority at the moment. I think it―”
He stiffened, his shoulders going rigid. His dark eyes stared straight into the bowels of the church, brow furrowing in an expression that could only be described as totally unreadable. Which is to say, more unreadable than usual.
I tapped him on the arm. “Dante?”
“Ah, Mr. Arturo,” a voice mused from within. It was a voice I'd heard countless times before. On television, radio, and most recently, at press conferences. “Fancy seeing you here.”
I peeked around Dante's motionless form to confirm what I already knew. There, past the elaborate stone altar, at the end of the first pew on the right, was Stone Chapel's illustrious mayor.
Fifteen
Dressed to the nines in a three piece suit, Mayor Michael Bishop looked the part of a movie star, and when he smiled, he turned into a politician, all smarm and charm.
“I wouldn't have marked you as a religious man,” he said, propping his leg up on his knee. His eyes were a startling shade of blue, his silver hair slicked back like Clark Gable's. He motioned to the empty cavern of the church. “Peaceful, isn't it? I like to come here when I need time to think.”
Dante was quiet. A patchwork of sunlight filtered in from the tall arched windows, patterning the
floor. Dust motes danced between the beams and the shadow of the great iron cross that dominated the altar draped itself upon the mayor's shoulders like a protective cloak. He'd need it once Dante was through with him.
The mayor raised an eyebrow. “Don't be shy, Mr. Arturo. I'm sure there are plenty of things you wish to speak with me about.”
Dante snorted softly. He took a few stiff paces past the altar, leaving a healthy distance between himself and his adversary.
“I have questions, Mayor Bishop,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back.
“Then, by all means,” the mayor replied.
I hung back near the altar, not wanting to involve myself in their feud. I kept busy with the sights instead―and there were plenty of them. A lot could be said about this evil church, but the one thing that couldn't be said was that it was ugly. Elias Cromwell and his followers made sure of that when they built the place.
They also made sure you could see it from space.
It must have been at least a hundred feet from the floor to the ceiling, arched windows rising to sharp points. Giant iron chandeliers hung down from the vaults in the ceiling, hoisted by thick chains. Rows of pillars and arches opened to a network of velvet lined pews, twenty-five on each side of the aisle. Red silk covered the altar and candles surrounded the cross while two stone staircases led to the upper floors. All the light that came in was natural and golden, no artificial fluorescent to be found. We used to have to read psalms by candlelight when it rained.
“Did you request Cromwell’s Diaries from the high school today?” Dante asked, standing as still as one of the gargoyles outside.
Where he was all stiffness and seriousness, the mayor was the opposite. His smile didn't hitch. His gaze never narrowed, never wavered. The picture of relaxed. “I did, yes.”
“Are you aware one of the volumes is missing?”
“I am, Mr. Arturo. I hope it’s found soon. It would be a shame to lose such a vital part of the city’s history.”
Dante crossed his arms over his chest. Tension coiled like a spring between him and the mayor, waiting for the right moment to pop up. A bizarre Jack-in-the-box of a conversation.