Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

  Abel accepted the gesture without kissing her back. He stared hard at Elise—a mistrustful look that she readily returned. When Rylie dropped back on her heels, he snagged the keys out of her hands. “If that thing’s getting in the Chevelle, I’m going, too.”

  Shock turned Rylie’s eyes to huge circles. “Abel!”

  “It’s fine,” Elise said, meaning both the insult of calling her “that thing” and Abel driving. She believed that Rylie had nothing to do with the murders. She was somewhat less convinced about Abel, who had stolen files, lied to Rylie, and shot Elise in the face.

  Keep your friends close…

  They got in the car: Abel and Rylie in front, Elise in back. There was a knitted blanket covered in wolf fur thrown over the seats. She pulled it into her lap in case the sun felt like emerging on the drive to St. Philomene’s Cathedral.

  It didn’t. In fact, even if it hadn’t been raining, Elise doubted that she would have seen sunlight on the road to Northgate. The sanctuary was well and truly buried in the mountains. It took much longer to take the slow, winding dirt road through the trees than it did to walk a straight line through the forest.

  Rylie turned in the front seat, hanging her elbows over the back to look at Elise. “These murders—they’re not just doing it because it’s bad PR for werewolves. They’ve been calling the deaths ‘animal attacks’ on the news, so it’s not like the murderers are hurting public opinion. There has to be some other reason they’re killing so many people.”

  Elise watched the trees flashing past the window as she considered the question. Occasionally, she glimpsed a hint of white fur, a flash of metal. Seth and the wolves were pacing the Chevelle. Rylie may have denied that Seth and Abel were her bodyguards or boyfriends, but the pack seemed to be as fiercely protective of her as their leader as she was of them.

  Rylie’s question was interesting. Could there be another reason that someone was killing so many people—a reason beyond sending messages?

  “Could be a typical serial killer trying to blame it on the preternaturals, like a copycat,” Elise said. “Or human sacrifice. Or…”

  “Human sacrifice?” Abel asked without turning.

  Elise had only thrown the option out there because she was thinking out loud. But once she considered the option, it seemed more intriguing. Seven people dead, killed routinely every two weeks. They could be building energy to feed a demon-god. “Or some kind of spellcraft feeding off of human lives for energy,” she murmured aloud.

  “In Northgate?” Rylie asked. “Are you kidding? You won’t find any Satanists here.”

  Maybe there were no demon-worshippers, but Lincoln had told Elise that Father Night had initially moved to Northgate to combat a nightmare demon. There had been evil in the town before. Who knew what might have lingered?

  Nightmares were among the most common hellborn on Earth, but they originated from the darkest pits of Hell. They evoked fear in humans and fed off of it. The strongest of them could pass for human, but not well; at their most corporeal, they were little more than skeletons concealed under a waxy layer of flesh. The most annoying part was that they were impossible to kill—they could only be exorcised back to Hell, returned to their basest form in the pit.

  Father Night was a good priest, but a great exorcist. He wouldn’t have left a nightmare lingering in Northgate.

  Right?

  It was late afternoon when they reached town. Even in the middle of the week, during the hours people should have been at work, Poppy’s parking lot was filled. Cars overflowed onto the street, parked along the curb, almost all the way to the church. The smell of baking pies wafted through the vents when the car drove past. Elise couldn’t help but think of the deputy trapped between her thighs. It would be a long time before she could see cherry pie innocently again.

  Abel passed Poppy’s without stopping, immune to the lure of baked goods, and parked in front of St. Philomene’s. The rain was a constant drizzle now, turning the ground into a muddy slurry. The stack of unattached shutters dripped water like a miniature waterfall. Work hadn’t progressed since Elise’s visit on Sunday.

  Elise pulled the blanket over her head and got out of the car.

  “What, are you the Wicked Witch?” Abel asked. “Going to melt if you get wet?”

  She ignored him. The cloud coverage was good enough that she shouldn’t have needed protection from the sun, but she was still aching from Rylie’s bite, and the diffused light alone was making her skin prickle. Elise didn’t care if she looked stupid, as long as it meant she could focus on the investigation.

  Her heart was still pounding by the time she reached the front door of St. Philomene’s. She slammed her shoulder into the door and stumbled inside. She wasn’t sure if it her face was drenched by rain or sweat.

  As soon as Rylie and Abel shut the door behind them, Elise let the blanket drop to her shoulders, hugging it around her body like a cape.

  Unlike Poppy’s, the cathedral was completely empty, its hallowed walls echoing softly with the memory of reverent prayer. Dust hung suspended in beams of gray light shining through stained glass windows. There was nothing between Elise and the altar but rows of empty pews and the shifting, cloudy shadows on the floor.

  She dipped her fingers in the holy water as she stepped forward, crossing herself. “Father Night?” Elise called, voice echoing off of the vaulted ceiling. She side-stepped a beam of light. “Father Armstrong?”

  Abel and Rylie followed close behind with the stealthy silence of werewolves. The only thing that gave their movement away was the wet squelching of their shoes on the wood floors.

  “I don’t think anyone’s here,” Rylie whispered.

  Elise stretched out her senses. Aside from the two powerful werewolves behind her, the church felt empty of anything inhuman. Even Father Night should have registered like the ringing of a bell. She could always recognize someone that had been touched by evil during an exorcism.

  “You’re right,” she agreed.

  But she still edged along the wall of the church, moving for the back door. She hiked the blanket over her head again and stepped onto the lawn behind the church.

  Behind St. Philomene’s Cathedral stood two mobile homes. One of them looked like it had been standing as long as the church itself; the other was a more recent addition. Both of them were ugly, despite obvious attempts to make the priests’ housing more homey. The path leading to their porches were lined with increasingly soggy flowers; the vegetable beds, already harvested for the season, were a soup of soil and dried leaves. A white cross guarded the place the path split off into two, leading to each door.

  Father Night, having replaced Father Davidek, probably lived in the older mobile home, so Elise climbed the steps to the front door of the newer trailer.

  She knocked on the door.

  “Father Armstrong?” Rylie called, cupping her hands on either side of her face to peer through the window. His lace curtains were pulled back, offering them a clear view into the living room.

  “Anything?” Elise asked.

  Rylie shook her head. “Looks empty.”

  Elise pounded her fist into the door again, louder than before. The door trembled. Nobody responded.

  Her skin prickled unpleasantly, and a wave of dizzying heat washed over her, making it hard to breathe. The blanket wasn’t doing the trick. Elise needed to get inside.

  Lincoln probably would have told her to wait. Get a warrant. Keep the investigation legal.

  Good thing Lincoln wasn’t there.

  “Shout if you see someone coming,” Elise said.

  She crouched on the top step, shrouding her entire body with the woven blanket. The wool was actually leaving faint red impressions on her skin, as though the fibers were made of razor-edged steel. Her body was more than protesting being out during the day. Her skin had gone as paper-fragile as any nightmare’s.

  “What the fuck?” Abel asked as Elise curled into the smallest ball possible, contained
within the darkness of the blanket.

  She kicked the edge of the cloth so that it covered the last gap, leaving her in as near-perfect shadow as she could manage during the day. Elise had made sure not to close the blanket over the bottom crack of Father Armstrong’s door, and now she focused on it as she began unraveling her skin.

  Elise’s lower body misted first, and then her upper half followed. Without a body to support it, the blanket collapsed.

  She slipped under the door.

  For an instant, Elise could see the entirety of Father Armstrong’s home, inhabiting the shadows under his furniture. His bed’s sheets were rumpled. The stink of sweat and semen and lube filled the air. She saw a spider clinging to the drain of the kitchen sink, the loaf of stale bread he had thrown out. She saw faint, muddy footprints on the kitchen linoleum.

  When Elise’s mist touched the Bible under the window, energy shocked through her.

  She crashed back into her body, falling to her knees on the living room floor. She gasped as her hands flew to her neck. Elise struggled to breathe, like her esophagus was gone again—a bloody wound shredded by werewolf jaws—but her neck felt intact.

  Her fingers traced the circle of puncture wounds on her skin.

  Still unhealed.

  “Elise?” Rylie’s voice came muffled through the wall. “Where’d you go?”

  Elise struggled to her feet and jerked the curtains shut, blocking out the light. It took all of her strength to get that close to the glass. She sank to a crouch, pressing her forehead to her knees, and tried to control her breathing.

  How the hell was she supposed to hunt a murderer without working during the day?

  “Elise?”

  She stood. Father Armstrong’s door had three locks on the inside in addition to the one on the handle. That was a lot of security for a man that lived in blissful, devout Northgate.

  She flipped the deadbolts and opened the door.

  Abel stood on the step, hand in his jacket—undoubtedly on the verge of drawing his gun. He looked shocked to see Elise. Rylie was a few steps behind him.

  Letting the light in made Elise ache all over again, heart speeding and skin prickling with sweat. She stepped aside. “Come on in,” she said. “Quickly.”

  Abel hesitated. “It’s not right to break into a priest’s house.”

  “Now,” Elise hissed.

  Rylie shoved Abel inside. They slammed the door.

  Elise glanced around, taking quick inventory of the room now that she had human eyes and a human mind again. It was easier to make out detail when she wasn’t omnipresent. The ugly brown carpet matched the cheap fake-wood wall panels and was slicked into muddy spikes by their footprints. Father Armstrong’s couch looked secondhand. Everything was thrift shop cheap, with the aura of furniture that had lived a dozen lives in a dozen homes.

  “Bet there’s a special place in Hell for people that fuck with priests,” Abel said, shifting uncomfortably on his feet by the door, as if reluctant to move deeper into the room.

  “No, but there’s a place for thieves, child molesters, and guys who shoot other people in the face,” Elise said, opening the refrigerator. Eighteen eggs, three drawers filled with fresh produce, local raw milk. He might not have cared about his trailer, but he cared about his diet.

  Abel smiled unpleasantly at Elise. “You didn’t take that personally, did you?” She closed the refrigerator, folded her arms, fixed him with a glare. “You shouldn’t have been lurking in my territory.”

  “That didn’t sound like an apology,” Elise said.

  Rylie rolled her eyes. “Save it, guys.” She managed to make that casual command sound like an actual order—like there was no doubt in her mind that everyone would always do exactly what she told them, when she told them.

  Surprisingly, Abel didn’t say anything else.

  Elise reached into the sink. The spider’s long legs scrabbled uselessly against the drain, unable to get traction. She allowed it to crawl onto her finger, then deposited it on the windowsill. “There’s also a place in Hell for liars.”

  “Hey,” Rylie said sharply.

  “I’m not talking about you guys. I’m talking about Father Armstrong.”

  There was a laptop sitting on the arm of the couch. Elise opened the lid and tried to log in. It was password protected.

  “What do you mean?” Rylie asked.

  Elise wasn’t sure yet, but there was an unpleasant taste on the back of her tongue, a lingering headache. She didn’t think that it was from exposure to the sun.

  She set the laptop down again, opened the bedroom door. The rumpled bed was the only messy thing in the entire house. He must have left in a rush that morning.

  Elise whipped back the comforter. Blood stained the fitted sheet in palm-sized patches. Father Armstrong liked it rough.

  Or the woman in his bed wasn’t willing.

  “What are you even looking for?” Abel asked.

  Elise wasn’t sure. She had been kind of hoping to find the coroner, Stephanie Armstrong—or proof that she was connected to Father Armstrong, at least. She would have liked to find a pit bull chained up in his closet even more. Any smoking gun. But the blood on his sheets wasn’t enough on its own. When Elise had a one night stand, her bed was usually bloody by morning, too.

  “We’ll have to come back later,” Elise said reluctantly, stepping out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Rylie sniffed the air. “What’s that?”

  “The blood?”

  “No, that other smell. Like…herbs or something. Do you smell that, Abel?”

  His hand was in his jacket again, probably on the butt of his gun. Tension corded his neck, his shoulders. “We shouldn’t have come here.”

  Rylie crossed the room, standing over the Bible. It was on its own table in front of the window, almost more like an altar, and it looked like the oldest thing in the house: heavy leather-bound cover, yellow pages, and a fraying ribbon as bookmark.

  She rapped her knuckles on the cover.

  It sounded hollow.

  “Stand back,” Elise said, pushing Rylie gently aside.

  “What do you think it is?”

  Elise placed a hand on the cover. Her headache intensified as a strange flavor flooded her mouth—musty and dry and dirty, like licking a cellar door. Or the lid of a coffin.

  She opened the Bible.

  And then she disappeared.

  Sheriff Dickerson was four feet, eleven inches of terrifying. She was stacked like a brick house, all straight lines from shoulders to hips, with the kind of legs that could crack skulls. Her unsmiling face was granite. Some of the deputies joked that her sports bra had consolidated her bosom into a solid mass thick enough to stop bullets. If violent crime ever found its way to Northgate, the sheriff already had bulletproof breasts.

  When she was in the office—which was seldom, because she preferred to prowl her town like a cougar protecting her cubs—trying to avoid her withering attentions was always high on Lincoln’s priority list.

  But there was no sign of her Medusa glare today. Sheriff Dickerson had rushed into the office late and was all smiles, obsequious and oily. She did everything but drop a fucking curtsy. “Thank you for coming here today, Father,” she said, hands clasped to her heart.

  Father Night returned her smile with one of his own, soft-eyed and kind. The shepherd admiring his sheep. “It’s my pleasure, Sheriff. Where would you like to…?”

  “My office, please,” she said, holding the door open for him.

  Lincoln poured himself another cup of water at the cooler, watching the two of them over the rim. They were, more than likely, discussing the case again. It was the only thing that the sheriff’s office seemed to care about anymore. They had dedicated all of their manpower to it.

  All of its manpower except Lincoln.

  Father Night glanced at Lincoln as he shut the door.

  Was that pity lingering around his eyes?

  Door cl
osed.

  Lincoln fisted his hands at his sides, crushing the paper cup into a tiny ball. That damn priest knew more about what was happening than Lincoln did.

  He flung the cup into the wastebasket and stormed into his own office.

  A man was waiting for him there.

  Lincoln almost backed right out again, terrified that Orpheus had come to make good on his threats. But his moment of panic faded when he realized that this man was too short, his hair red, and he wore a collared shirt much like Father Night’s.

  “Father Armstrong,” Lincoln said, leaving the door open as he stepped forward to offer a hand. The priest shook it. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I’m actually here to help you, my son,” said Father Armstrong.

  Lincoln blinked. “Okay. Take a seat.”

  The priest shut his office door before sitting in the chair across from the desk.

  “You’ve been seen around town with a visitor,” Father Armstrong said. No beating around the bush. Straight to the point. “A young woman.”

  “A college friend,” Lincoln said.

  “A private investigator with the Hunting Club.”

  Well, he hadn’t been expecting that. He shuffled the papers on his desk to give himself a moment to think, pretending to sort everything into his inbox and outbox. “Like I said, a college friend. Her employment back home is none of my business.”

  “You were at the crime scene with her earlier,” Father Armstrong said, with a tone of paternalistic admonition.

  Lincoln had been expecting to hear about that. Someone was bound to have noticed that he had gone to the morgue and a crime scene with her. But he had been expecting to earn the wrath of Sheriff Dickerson over it. Not the priest in training at St. Philomene’s.

  “Pardon me, Father, but I can’t discuss official business,” Lincoln said.

  “Official business? I thought you said that she’s a college friend.”

  Was it hot in the office? Anger was clawing at the inside of his throat, climbing his tongue. Lincoln stacked the papers again, neatening the edges so that they were aligned.