The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1)

by Duncan, Lex

  He blinked. He should have known it was a habit by now. To worry about him. Someone needed to.

  “I'm more worried about you,” he said.

  “Eh, I've had worse.” I paused. Gave his head a little push. “Now answer my question.”

  “Beatrice,” he caught my hand in his and held it tight. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

  Nobody could kill a mood quite like Dante Arturo could kill a mood. Scowling, I yanked my hand away and folded them across my stomach. “Why don't you go first? What's with you?”

  “What do you mean?” He asked.

  Oh, right. Dante didn't get a point unless you beat him over the head with it. Hah. Concussion joke. “You kicked me out of your house. You kicked Max out of your house. You gave neither of us any good reason why, and on Halloween, you come home smelling like you hadn’t showered in days. After being gone. All night. Tell me that doesn’t sound weird to you.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he said: “I found the missing pages. That’s where I was when I came home. It took me all night, but…”

  “Hold on, you what?” I braced myself on the bed and pulled myself up into less of a dead girl position and more of a semi-alive-but-in-pain girl position. My stomach rolled and the room spun, the urge to vomit rising in my throat. I twisted my eyes shut. Took a breath.

  “Beatrice?” Dante said.

  I waved my hand at him. “I'm fine. Just give me a minute.”

  Said minute passed and the vomit urge subsided. I opened my eyes.

  “Are you all right?” He asked.

  “Fine,” I said. As fine as I could get these days. “Where did you find the pages?” We could get back to his weird behavior afterward.

  “The mayor’s office. Locked in a drawer.”

  “Because mailing them to you would have been too obvious.”

  That actually made him laugh. I felt like I needed a tape recorder to commemorate the moment. “Evidently.”

  “What do they say?”

  He slipped his hand into the pocket of his slacks, forked over a square of yellowed paper. “Here.”

  Unfolding the pages as delicately as I could, I smoothed them out on my lap and began with the one dated December 9th, 1800. “God has spoken to me again today,” I read. “He told me how pleased he was to see the church, how glorious it was. It is almost time. Preparations must begin soon.”

  I moved on to the second page, smiling in spite of everything else. This was what we needed. These pages were our smoking gun.

  The second page had no words on it, just a drawing of the seal of the First Sacrament. The third abandoned clear sentences. It was dated December 18th, 1800.

  “I am Elias Cromwell and I am a servant of God.”

  Those eleven words were repeated over and over again until they filled the page. With each new iteration, the writing got all the more messy. By the time he’d gotten to the end, it looked like Elias completely lost his mind.

  The fourth page was undated. Elias’s crazed scrawl haphazardly covered every inch of its timeworn surface. It is done, he wrote. The word done was repeated more times than I could count. Sixty-seven sixty-seven sixty-seven sacrifices for an eternity in Paradise. I have welcomed God into my city. Stone Chapel will be a haven. A beacon for the faithful. I have done it done it done it. By the grace of the Blessed Virgin, I have done it. They do not understand. But they will. Soon, everyone will see.

  Holy shit. This was one helluva smoking gun.

  I put the pages down.

  “Elias was possessed,” Dante said. “He had to have been. The mayor knows this. That’s why he ripped out the pages. That’s why he detained the rest of the Diaries.”

  I didn’t get it. The mayor was pretty much begging to be caught at this point. He was probably the one who sent Henriette’s letter, too. “Why would he…”

  Dante read my mind. “Want to get caught? Cover this up in the first place? I don’t know. Like I said before, we need to figure out who’s pulling his strings.”

  “Are we going to do anything about him, though?”

  “For now, no. I want to see what he does first.” He held out his hand. I folded the pages back up and gave them to him. He slipped them into his pocket. And then everything got real quiet. We’d run out of business to talk about.

  I looked at him. He was looking at the door. “Dante,” I said. “Why did you kick me out? Is it…is it because you’re depressed or something? Because I’ve got it too, and I…”

  It took him a long time to answer. When he did, he at least had the decency to look at me. “After what we heard on the radio, I suppose...I didn’t want you to think—…It was a rash decision.” He cut himself off, holding his chin in his hand, thumb grazing his jawline. “Everything is getting so complicated. I…I just don’t want you or Max getting hurt. Any more than you already have.”

  It was a bit late in the game for this conversation. “I know what I’ve signed up for,” I said. “Max did too. And we’re not afraid, okay? You don’t have to do this by yourself. You just need to let us in.”

  “I know.” He surprised the hell out of me by reaching for my hand again. I let him take it. The pleading in his voice only added to the shock. “Beatrice, I need you to give me a few days. Just a few days. Then, I promise, I’ll tell you everything. I know it isn’t fair to you, but I just...”

  “What could possibly need a few days?” I didn’t need to know his entire life’s story right this second, but the least he could do was, I don’t know, give me a real reason for kicking me out. “I just want to know why, Dante. It was so sudden, I didn’t think—”

  “A few days.” He repeated. “Please. I just—I can’t explain right now. But I will. I promise.”

  “You don’t have to protect me, Dante.” I stared down at his hand over mine. He wasn’t grabbing it. He was holding it. I looked back up to his face. There was softness in it, smooth lines instead of the usual hard angles. “I can handle whatever you have to tell me.”

  “I know,” he said firmly. He sounded like he meant it. “But I need more time. A—”

  “A few days, yeah. You said that.” I pulled my hand away from his so I could rub my eyes. I really, really wasn’t in the mood to argue about this anymore. But I didn’t want to let him off the hook, either. “Fine, Dante. A few days. That’s all you’re getting. After that, you have to tell me everything. I mean it. I don’t care if you’re a robot or something, you’re gonna tell me all about it. Deal?”

  When I looked over at him again, I saw that he was smiling. Just a little. “Deal,” he said. “And I’m not a robot.”

  Well, thank God for that.

  We let the sterile quiet drift over us for a few seconds. I studied the bandages on my wrist, a faint spot of red in the middle of all the white. Nurse would probably need to change them sometime today.

  Dante spoke. “Beatrice, what happened to you?”

  “I fell down some stairs.” I said lamely.

  “You don’t get a knife wound like that falling down some stairs.”

  “What if I was carrying the knife and then I fell down the stairs?”

  A sigh. “Beatrice.”

  I wasn't trying to avoid the subject. I just didn't want to talk about it. And, um, I couldn't really remember most of it. The stuff I did remember was blurry at best. A series of shadowy images and sensations of cutting pain. Ropes on my wrists. Laughter in my ear. A word. Started with a C. “I don't know what happened, okay? I was sitting in the chapel and then I got hit in the head. When I woke up, I was tied to a chair.”

  “Did you get a good look at who took you?”

  I remembered three faces. The color black. A knife. The C word. Nothing concrete. Holes where memories should be, scooped out and thrown away. I relayed this information to him and he responded with a thoughtful grunt.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I'll look into it. You need to focus on getting well.”

&n
bsp; I didn't feel too bad, considering. My head hurt and my throat hurt and my face hurt and my wrist hurt, but it could have been worse. I could have gotten stabbed in the chest like Max or possessed like Rosie. Compared to them, I had only minor ailments. “You worry too much. I'll be fine.”

  He grunted again.

  “Nice chatting with you, caveman.”

  The door swung open. Dante leaned away from me and I did my best to look pained.

  “Our girl's awake!” Aralia announced, flinging her arms wide and hitting Max in the face with her coffee cup. “Here, hold this.”

  “Er, okay,” he said, like he had a choice in the matter. He smiled at me. Pushed his glasses up. “Hey, Beatrice.”

  His flannel was a welcome sight. “Hey, Max.”

  “You poor thing,” Aralia hurried to my bedside, shooing Dante out of his chair. “What happened?”

  “Well, I―”

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” Sadie appeared behind Max, a metallic array of balloons stamped with motivational well wishes floating beside her. “Do you, um, do you want me to come back later? I don't want to interrupt.”

  Oh, Sadie. She'd saved me from bleeding out in a hallway and she still thought she was in the position to interrupt. I waved her inside. “No, hey, you're fine. Come on in.”

  Shyly, she did so. “I bought you these. The, um, the gift shop didn't really have a whole lot so I hope you―”

  “They're great, Sadie,” I said. No one had ever gotten me balloons before. Not even for my birthday. “Thanks. And thanks for not letting me die, too. That was nice.”

  She laughed, finally catching onto my special brand of humor. “You're welcome. Where would you like me to put these?”

  The table with the daisies and the cards seemed appropriate. I had a real shrine going on over there. “The table's fine.”

  While Sadie went to add to my Get Well Soon memorial, Aralia latched onto my arm. My good one. “What in God's name happened, Beatrice?”

  “Aralia,” Dante stepped aside to make room for Sadie. She put the balloons down and scooted over next to Max, eying Dante like he might eat her. “We need to let Beatrice rest.”

  “Oh, go away,” Aralia said. “You get hours with her and when we come back you say we need to 'let her rest.' Honestly, Dante, you're fooling no one.”

  He paled. I threw my hand up to conceal my laughter. Just as no one could kill a mood like Dante Arturo, no one could put him in his place like Aralia Spinosa.

  “I'm going to make a few calls,” he decided, then headed for the door. “But we really should―”

  “Go away,” Aralia deadpanned. “She'll be fine.”

  “I'll be fine,” I said. Not that anyone asked.

  Dante, being the smart man he was, had nothing more to say on the subject. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. So he did the only thing he could do. He left.

  Max had coaxed Sadie out of her shell and they chatted freely about the weather. Nasty storms were supposed to roll through tonight. The weather guy on Channel Ten was freaking out about it.

  Aralia scooted her chair closer to the bed and folded her arms on the mattress. She looked up at me with her usual exasperated expression. It was so familiar to me now that I couldn't help but enjoy it a little. “I'm glad you're awake, darling. Dante's been driving me mad. You should have seen him when I told him what happened. He lost it.”

  It was hard to imagine Dante losing it. He never lost it. He didn't lose it when he had to stab himself in the arm to save Max, he didn't lose it when the mayor was being his typical arrogant self. He was always cool, always calm, always collected. Though, recently, he'd been skewing those boundaries. Coming home at one in the morning smelling like a corpse. “What's going on with him?”

  “Maybe he's finally coming to his senses,” Aralia said, shrugging lazily. “But I don't want to talk about him. I want to talk about you, darling. You gave us quite the scare.”

  A jolt of pain spliced the back of my head, a not-so-gentle reminder of my condition. I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “Yeah, uh, sorry about that.”

  “D'you remember anything?” She asked.

  I told her what I told Dante. I hoped talking about it some more would jog my memory. No such luck. I was just as clueless as I was a minute ago.

  Aralia gave my head a pat. “Don't worry, darling, we'll figure it out. We always do.”

  “Speaking of figuring things out,” I glanced over at Sadie. She wasn't paying a bit of attention to me, so enraptured by whatever it was Max was talking about. It was kind of cute. They were kind of cute. “Have we found anything else out from the book? Has anyone else...”

  “Gotten murdered?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “No, thankfully. Things have been quiet these past few days. Maybe our killer is simply doing the courteous thing, waiting for you to get well before they start butchering people again.”

  “How sweet.”

  “This is, what, the third time you've been targeted?” She counted the ways on her fingers. “There was the church, your apartment, this bit at St. Agatha's.”

  “The house on Halloween,” I added. Still hadn't puzzled the meaning of that one out yet.

  “Yes, about that,” Aralia said. “Before you come home, Dante wants me to make you a ward. I would have made one for you earlier, but we've been busy lately. You understand.”

  I nodded. We'd all been busy lately. Dante was doing his thing, Aralia was doing her thing, Max was running Armageddon Now, and I was...sitting in a hospital bed with a concussion. Go figure. “Do I get a cool necklace or something? A ring?”

  “You'll get whatever I decide to make you,” she flashed me a prim smile. “But I suppose I can take requests.”

  “In that case, I want a crown.”

  “Of course, Queen Elizabeth, I'll get right on it.”

  We laughed, and as our laughter died down, I realized something about her. My third (fourth?) brush with death had me ruminating on my mortality, on the people I surrounded myself with. Aralia and I had been through so much together this past couple of months. We watched movies together, we lived together, we hunted together. We were friends. Good friends. I didn't even mind her thinly veiled insults anymore because I knew they were coming from a place of humor.

  If that wasn't friendship, I didn't know what was.

  “Beatrice?” Dante opened the door and poked his head inside.

  I settled back against my pillows. Being knocked out for two days was exhausting work. “Yeah?”

  “The police are here,” he said. He sounded none too thrilled about it. “They want to speak with you.”

  Twenty-Six

  Chief Morales asked me a long series of questions, half of which I had no answers to. Who would want to hurt me like this? Why was I in the chapel in the first place? Did I remember anything? Did I want to press charges?

  While the others went for a coffee break, Dante hovered like a hawk in the corner. He didn't try to speak for me, nor did he try to protect me. He simply watched. And when it was over, he returned to his chair at my bedside.

  “That went well,” he murmured.

  I yawned. “Whatever. I just wanna get some sleep.”

  “Would you like me to leave?”

  “I mean, if you want―”

  “Would you like me to leave, Beatrice?”

  “No,” I admitted. I didn't. Now that we were finally working on busting through that invisible wall, I wanted to enjoy the freedom doing so provided. He promised to be open with me. He promised to tell me everything. In due time. But that didn't mean I couldn't ask him about things that had nothing to do with our current situation. “You can stay. And you can tell me all about how freaked you were when you thought I was dead.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest in a typical Dante pose. “I'm glad you're amused.”

  “Did you cry? Scream? Throw a plate against a wall?”

  “No.”

  “No what? No crying? No scr
eaming?”

  “I was very upset, Beatrice.”

  Good. He needed to be upset, especially after how he treated me on Halloween. “It's perfectly okay for men to cry, you know.”

  He sighed.

  I sighed right back.

  We were getting good at this communication thing.

  “You really do need to rest,” he said.

  “So do you,” I replied. Technically, I'd been “resting” for two days straight. Dante had probably been awake for most of it. “I wasn't kidding when I said you looked terrible.”

  “I'll be―”

  “No, no,” I held a finger up to silence him. “We're not doing this. I'll let you stay in here so long as you promise me you'll go to sleep.”

  “But―”

  “Are you seriously going to deny a hurt girl her one request? I thought you liked me, Arturo.”

  “Beatrice―”

  He gave me no choice. I had to do it. I had to manipulate him. Sticking my bottom lip out, I turned toward him and I pouted. I pouted like I'd never pouted before. “Pretty please?”

  There was something incredible about watching someone you liked melt because of something you said. Doubly so if that someone usually had the emotional range of a rock. Upon feeling the full force of my pout, everything about Dante softened. His posture, the lines on his face, the shadows in his eyes. Even his voice had lost its edge. “Fine. Please don't do that again.”

  “Do what?” It was hard talking with my lip jutted out like a rudder, but I managed.

  “That,” he gestured to my face.

  “Oh,” I set my mouth right and slapped my hand down on his shoulder. “Sure thing, Dante.”

  Again, he sighed, but this sigh was tinged with a smile.

  Score one for Beatrice.

  I tried to make myself as comfortable as my bed would allow. I didn't know how Rosie managed it all these years. Endless hospital rooms, endless hospital gowns, endless hospital beds. She had to endure a lifetime of it. Two and a half days and I already wanted out.

  “Do you know if the sanatorium called?” I asked. They were used to me visiting weekly. Calling daily. Surely they'd have noticed my absence. Surely Rosie, despite her current state, noticed. She must have thought I abandoned her.