by Lincoln Cole
“I didn’t,” Frieda said. “Not exactly. He’s following up leads, and this was his best one.”
“What job is he on?”
No answer.
“Frieda ... I can’t help if you won’t tell me what’s going on.”
The other end of the line stayed silent for a long moment. Would she even give him an answer? Finally, she spoke again.
“He’s hunting a bishop.”
“A what?”
“Bishop Leopold Glasser,” Frieda said. “He’s summoned demons and murdered countless people.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish.”
“Then, Arthur’s on Church business? Why haven’t we called them for help?”
“It goes deep,” Frieda said. “We can’t involve the Church until we know if the bishop is working with anyone.”
“Was that your call, or Arthur’s?”
“Mine,” she said, though not without a slight hesitation.
Garfield hadn’t known how things could get any crazier in this rescue mission, but there it was. The Council had a fickle relationship with the Church at the best of times, and they rarely got asked to help them on such critical Church business as hunting down a wayward bishop.
“Does he have permission from the Church?”
“He’s working with an exorcist investigating this issue.”
Not a proper answer, but Garfield knew better than to press the issue. The thing was, if Arthur had done something like this without the Church’s permission ...
Then they all trod on thin ice.
“Sure,” he said. “Then, I guess I better get there sooner rather than later.”
“That would be best.”
“You said it’s a huge facility?”
“Water treatment plant. Just head to that location I gave you, and you’ll find it with no trouble. How far out do you think you are?”
He glanced at the paper a couple of times and ran some quick math in his head. “About five more hours,” he said. “Give or take. I’ll get there by sundown.”
“Drive faster.”
“You want me to get pulled over? I’ve got enough firepower in the trunk to go after Fort Knox.”
“Just get there.”
“I will,” he said. “Should I know anything else? Should I expect to find this wayward bishop at the treatment plant?”
“I don’t know. But Arthur went looking for Naomi.”
“Naomi Develon?” Garfield rubbed his chin and chuckled. “No wonder he got himself into trouble.”
Naomi had gained notoriety for extreme paranoia. Garfield hated her and refused to work with her because she acted so stuck up and arrogant. She always over-prepared for any situation and broke rules any chance she got.
“Is she a target?”
“No,” Frieda said. “Not yet, at least. Right now, Arthur has only gone after Bishop Glasser. He wanted to find Naomi for information, I think.”
“Why do I know that name?” He wracked his brain. “Bishop Glasser. You keep saying it, and I feel like I’ve heard it before.”
“He’s related to Emily,” Frieda said. “Cousins.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. Then it hit him. “Shit. Then that means ...”
“I told you that this was critical to the Council’s survival. There’s a reason we need this dealt with ASAP.”
“Jesus, Frieda,” Garfield mumbled. “Could things get any worse?”
“The bishop helped murder Arthur’s family,” Frieda said.
Garfield coughed. “I meant that as a joke.”
He remembered those first weeks after Arthur’s family got murdered, and the ripple effect it had sent through their Order. They had all felt terrified after that, suddenly feeling vulnerable in ways they had never dreamed possible.
Garfield didn’t have any kids, but he did have siblings and a nephew named Dominick. If someone had murdered his family the way they had Arthur’s, he didn’t know what he would have done.
Probably something similar to what Arthur actually did do, come to think of it. Anyone he thought might be tangentially responsible for their deaths would lay rotting in the ground right about now.
“Now, you know everything I know,” she said. “See what happened to Arthur and the priest. Everything hinges on this mission. Whatever the bishop plans, it will prove as bad for us as it will for the Church. We need a win, Garfield. Don’t let me down.”
“You think Arthur is down?”
“I don’t think anything yet,” Frieda said. “That’s why I’m sending you.”
“What if I need backup?”
For something like this, it seemed odd that Frieda would have come to him for help. Normally, she would have flown in multiple assets to deal with a threat this large. Especially for Arthur. She knew that the two of them didn’t get along that well, and no doubt, she had to worry that Garfield wouldn’t feel willing to put in a lot of effort to save him.
So, why hadn’t she sent in more help?
“What haven’t you told me?” he asked. “Why am I the only one you’ve sent for something this big?”
“We can’t spare the extra resources.”
“Why not?”
Silence on the other end of the line. Finally, she said, “Just call me when you know something.”
Without giving him a chance to respond, she hung up again, a habit of hers that grated on his nerves. She always liked to have the last word in any conversation.
Garfield thought over what Frieda had admitted to him and realized that things might turn out even more dangerous than she had let on. If the Church had involvement with something like this all the way up to the level of a bishop, then it would spell years of fallout.
Something else Frieda had said clicked for him—he’d heard rumors that Emily Glasser had fallen out of favor with the Council and that they would hold a trial for her sometime in the future, but he had thought those just rumors. The idea that her family had become involved with something like this ...
Still, it didn’t concern him overly much. Not his problem. If things went wrong, it could spell disaster for Frieda and the Council, but it wouldn’t affect him. With his talents, he could always find more work.
He cranked up the music, rolled down the windows, and cruised on down the road.
Chapter 10
“How long have we been down here?”
“Too long.” Arthur leaned back against the wall and let out a sigh. The batteries in both phones had long since gone dead, and he felt exhausted. A while earlier, he had taken a short nap, but it hadn’t lasted long before Niccolo woke him. Niccolo’s fear had intensified, and the longer they stayed trapped down here, the worse it would get.
Anyway, being in the pitch-black confines of the tunnel and tasting the stale air didn’t make it easy to sleep. On the contrary, their situation kept his nerves on edge and wouldn’t allow him to relax.
“Control your breathing,” Arthur said. “If you let in the fear, you’ll start gasping. If that happens, you’ll hyperventilate. And then you’ll end up passing out.”
“I don’t want to fall unconscious.”
“That’s why you have to control your breathing,” Arthur said. “Focus only on taking breaths in and out. Let the rest of the world slip away.”
He listened to Niccolo’s breathing. It sounded calm for a few breaths, but then came the rapid-fire inhalations once more, which told Arthur it was a lost cause. The only way to help Niccolo deal with his mounting panic would be to get him out of these access tunnels.
An occasional noise still sounded from outside the door in the hallway, which made it clear their assailants remained out there. At the beginning of this misadventure, he had expected them to try and speak to him through the doorway, but only silence came from the other side.
Not encouraging. Naomi wasn’t a killer, and he expected her to try and open a line of communication. Once she found out that they had Arthur trapped, he had hoped to try and negotiate his wa
y out of this situation.
If she didn’t feel in the negotiating mood—or, worse, if she wasn’t even the one out there—then things would just get worse for the two of them. From everything he knew about Bishop Glasser, Arthur didn’t like their odds of getting any mercy.
Pissed at himself for getting stuck in this situation at all, he hadn’t grown quite ready to blame it on his desire not to kill people anymore. Even if he had his revolver with him, he would still have made the same decisions that got them trapped here. After all, the men in the hallway carried assault rifles and stood ready for war.
It still ate away at him, though. In his line of work, hesitation meant death. He might have just gotten the two of them killed because of his newfound inability to do whatever proved necessary to accomplish his mission.
More than all of that, though, he now worried that Frieda hadn’t sent anyone to come rescue them. A long time had passed, and nothing had changed. Maybe she had sent someone, and they had been unsuccessful. Or, maybe she didn’t know they had gone missing at all. A pretty good chance existed that no help would come, but he didn’t want to let Niccolo know that.
Niccolo barely hung on as it was. The silence and darkness had crept under his skin, and he teetered on the verge of a complete meltdown. The priest wouldn’t last much longer.
“Do you think our air is running out?” the priest asked, suddenly, his voice splitting the silence. Niccolo panted on the other side of the tunnel. Arthur could imagine the terrified man tugging at his collar.
“No,” Arthur said. “The tunnel has ventilation.”
“Are you sure? I mean, it feels like the air has grown thinner. I feel ... I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“Calm down,” Arthur said. “You’re fine. It’s all in your mind. Just try to relax.”
“How the hell am I supposed to relax at a time like this?”
“Deep breaths.”
Niccolo didn’t speak for a few more minutes. Then he said, “Do you think it’s daytime now?”
Arthur estimated, “Mid-afternoon.” After a pause, he said, “Maybe closer to evening. We’ve been trapped in here for about twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours? No wonder I feel starved.”
“It’s water we need. Not food.”
“That too. Has it really been that long?”
“At least,” Arthur said. “If not longer.”
On the other side of the room, Niccolo stood and paced. He scuffed his feet and ran his hands along the walls, and gradually, his breathing accelerated.
Arthur rubbed his face and sighed. “Come on, Niccolo. Try to relax. This isn’t helping.”
“It’s helping me.”
“No, it isn’t. You need to get in control of your emotions and fear. Focus on your breathing and on relaxing. No one has ever gotten more mastery over themselves by letting their emotions run wild.”
“I don’t want mastery over myself. I want to get out of here.”
“Sit down and think about something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. He needed to keep Niccolo talking about other things to distract him from the worry. “Why did you decide to come out here with me? I hadn’t expected that back in Everett.”
“Because the bishop needs to get stopped.”
“He will,” Arthur said. “Whether or not you help me, I’ll take him down. That doesn’t explain why you came out here, though. You haven’t trained for something like this.”
“I’m an exorcist.”
“Demons don’t use assault rifles,” Arthur said. Then he shrugged. “Usually.”
“It’s still my job to protect people.”
“It’s your job to help people. You can’t help them if you’re dead, so why put yourself at risk for something like this? Why not let the professionals deal with it?”
Niccolo fell silent for a long minute. Arthur didn’t know if he stood pondering his answer or panicking, but finally, he spoke once more.
“I’ve wondered the same thing, myself. I guess ... I just wanted to help. My entire life, I didn’t believe things like this had any reality. I became an exorcist who never believed in demons. I felt like, with all this craziness in the world, I couldn’t just sit back and let it be someone else’s problem.”
“Fair enough.”
“Why do you do it?”
“I just always have,” Arthur said. “It’s a part of my life.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You mean you did this as a kid?”
“I mean as far back as I can remember,” Arthur said. “And, yes, I started training at about fourteen years old. I never had an alternative path.”
“What would you have done if you didn’t do this?”
Arthur didn’t have a good answer. He’d never stopped to consider how his life might have unfolded if he’d never become a Hunter for the Council.
“I don’t know,” Arthur said, after a pause. “My brother, Mitchell, is my only real family, and he got me involved in this life when I was still in middle school. I never even considered another career. Plus, I became good at it.”
“That isn’t a proper answer.”
“No, I suppose not. I guess if I had another option, I would most likely have joined the Church.”
“Become a priest?”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “I always wanted to be a Reverend. Reverend Arthur Vangeest.”
“You still can.”
“No. The Church would never accept me. Not with what I’ve done.”
This time, Niccolo said nothing, which didn’t surprise Arthur. He took the man’s silence as assent with his assessment. After all, only a few weeks ago, Niccolo had considered Arthur to be a mass murderer and a danger to society. Truth was, Niccolo had it right. He doubted if Niccolo considered him worthy of the Lord’s forgiveness.
“Just relax,” he said into the silence. “Try to keep your mind occupied with other thoughts and don’t worry about what waits outside that door. Someone will come to rescue us.”
“Really?”
Arthur lied, “Definitely. For sure, help is on its way as we speak.”
Chapter 11
It didn’t take long for Garfield to locate Arthur’s rental car outside the water treatment facility to which Frieda had sent him. As she had said, the buildings proved impossible to miss out in the middle of nowhere. It looked like they had been set up with the intention of forming a town around them and then simply become abandoned.
The car sat parked off a dirt road only a short ways west of the facility, and easy to spot since he knew for what he should search. Naomi and her crew would also have found it easy to spot, though. And seeing it out in the open like that only further annoyed Garfield. Arthur tended toward carelessness and always seemed in a hurry, and it put him in bad situations all the time.
It stemmed to the root of his personality. The man always rushed and made mistakes. Arthur would never have walked into that occult den in West Virginia if not so rash and impatient, and one day, that attitude would get him killed.
Maybe today was that day.
Garfield, on the other hand, would have taken the time to find a better place to stow his car or keep it further away from the treatment plant. Most of their job dictated staying one step ahead of the enemy, and he took that seriously. Any patrols of the area would have had little trouble spotting this and giving away Arthur’s incursion, and it had cost Arthur the chance to end the Wendigo once and for all.
Now, Garfield had to clean up Arthur’s mess. It sickened him because Arthur had been elevated to the status of a legendary Hunter after what he’d pulled in West Virginia. The shining example of what their Order could achieve, and yet here he had ended up, trapped in a water treatment plant by a seedy underworld dealer and a wayward bishop, of all people.
Some legend he had turned out to be.
Garfield suppressed the thoughts. Part of his dislike for Arthur stemmed from jealousy, though he would n
ever have admitted as much aloud.
He pulled off the road and into the woods behind Arthur’s car—much farther out of sight—and parked. Then, he circled to his trunk. He popped it open and surveyed his collection of guns, explosives, and other death-dealing instruments. Enough firepower lay in there to match any survivalist’s wet dream.
Garfield had something for all occasions, depending on what sort of situation/monster he had to deal with. He liked to prepare for any occurrences.
For now, he grabbed a pair of pistols, a sawed-off shotgun, and a couple of knives. From Frieda’s estimation of the situation, it sounded like Arthur had gotten himself caught by plain old humans, which seemed even more embarrassing than something supernatural.
He closed the trunk, covered the car in branches and leaves to camouflage it a little, and then began the cautious trek toward the closest treatment facility building. Arthur would have gone there, he figured.
It was a fairly open and hilly area just outside of California, which meant that mostly empty terrain and wooded areas surrounded him. Nothing lurked nearby to offer solid cover, so he became entirely exposed as he made his way forward. However, he didn’t see anyone in the vicinity. That meant little, though, because an enemy could have stood a mile off with binoculars in just about any direction and watched his approach. At least the sun had set, and he didn’t have to walk in broad daylight.
He kept his eyes peeled for any signs of movement, but the entire place remained quiet. No one showed up to stop him, nor did any alarms get set off. Had Frieda led him wrong? Might he have come to the wrong place?
When he reached the door, however, he knew he was on the right path. A huge chain lay discarded on the ground nearby, and it looked new. Someone had come this way recently, and something lay inside that they wanted to hide.
One final time, he checked his weapons to make sure everything remained in working order. Satisfied, he pushed the door open and went inside.
EXTREME DARK AND QUIET met him inside the huge and sprawling facility. He waited just inside the doorway for a moment, listening for any sounds and giving his eyes time to adjust to the dimness. A smudge of light filtered in overhead from high windows, but not enough to pierce the black.