by Azure Boone
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Devyn said.
"Well we can't order food." Lucian said it like they were crazy to even think it.
Jessie squeezed his shoulder, hoping to talk him away from that fragile psyche ledge. The angels had put a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. "Why not, Sweetie?"
Again he closed his eyes with a sigh. "I'm no good at this. Sorry, I'm just trying to do my job right, I don't…don't want anybody to get hurt. I'll call…" he seemed to reconsider using the phone. "I'll go down and see what they have."
"Okay, well, that'll give us all a chance to take showers. I'll wait for you. We can take ours together?" Anticipation quickened her breath.
Lucian's eyes cleared and he pulled her into his arms and hugged her. "God that would be amazing."
Jessie smiled into his chest, appreciating the soft fabric of his T-shirt. As far as she was concerned, he should always wear T-shirts
"What am I thinking?" Lucian pulled back a little. "Of course I can't leave the room, we'll just wait."
The panic in his voice made Jessie feel terrible. "Okay, that works fine too, we won't starve."
"What?" Devyn said, "Speak for yourself, I'm hungry, I haven't eaten since…" she paused thinking, "I can't even remember."
"Well," Jessie said, "I'm sure they won't be more than an hour."
Sally flew into the living room and looked around then grabbed her eye. "No, no, no, please," she whispered.
"What's wrong?" Lucian and Jessie hurried to her, emphatic Romanian flying as if the others understood it, while Devyn and Karly joined them.
Sally pushed through them and stumbled into the table and fell. "Help me, it's happening! Help me!"
"What's happening?" Lucian's voice boomed with panic.
"He's pulling me!" Her scream ripped through the air.
Horrible dread slammed up Jessie's spine and her heart raced. Terror for the sister she'd never liked turned her blood to ice.
Jessie dropped to her knees beside Sally, clutching her sister to her chest, adrenalin helping her think. "Where does it hurt? What do you need?"
Sally broke away and bolted for the door, sobbing. She stopped with her hand on it. "He's making me go, it hurts oh God it hurts!" She wailed, both hands on her left eye.
"Let me see!" Lucian went to her and pulled her hand away. "Holy Mother of God," he whispered. Her eye was red, not just bloodshot, but red like blood filled the entire thing, the white and all.
Jessie's heart stuttered. She'd seen injuries to the eyeball during her ER and Trauma rotations. None of them looked like that. Even the iris and pupil looked bloodied.
"He's making me go!" Sally jerked the door open and ran out.
"Shit we don't have a car!" Devyn said as they all ran out.
"We don't have anything," Karly added as they followed.
Sally broke out in hysterics when she encountered the end of the hall. "Let me out!"
"Damn it!" Jessie looked around. "The stairs! Here!" She opened the door and Lucian wrestled Sally through.
"No, not this way!" Sally struggled with wails and grunts to go the other way.
"We can't go through the wall baby." Karly hurried down the stairs. "What the hell are we supposed to do?"
Lucian led them down the stairs. "Kassern! He said just think it if we need help."
"Did that," Devyn and Karly both said at the same time. "You called Dorn?"
"I have." Jessie followed, helping Lucian guide Sally.
Lucian spoke a long string of Romanian as they hurried through the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs and right onto a busy sidewalk.
"This way this way this way!" Sally pushed forward right into traffic.
"Dammit, hold on to her." Lucian's hiss came with a glance all around. "Anybody know how to hot-wire a car?"
"I do," Karly said. "If it's an older one."
"There's a parking garage." Jessie pointed.
They all ran toward it. Jessie waited for somebody to call the police. The way Sally thrashed and fought not to go in that damn direction, it must look like they were abducting her.
"Is she okay?" A woman asked as they dragged her while she fought, kicked and screamed.
"We're taking her to the emergency room," Devyn said. "She's having one of her seizures."
Even as they hurried on, the woman pulled out her cell phone and began dialing. "I can call nine-one-one for you."
"That isn't necessary." Jessie tossed the words over her shoulder. "I'm her nurse. The doctor is adjusting her medication, and this is a side-effect. He's meeting us at the ER." She could hardly believe how sane she sounded and prayed the woman bought it.
"Well, if you're sure…"
Without turning, Jessie called back loudly, "Yes, thank you, very kind of you." They headed over to Karly who stood next to a not brand new SUV. But not so old either.
"Now what?" Lucian looked around. "I thought you wanted an older one?"
"Yeah well, this is the oldest I could find in ten seconds." Karly darted her gaze all around.
"Move." Devyn stood next to the window and cocked her elbow then seemed to wait for something. "Come. On," she gritted. A ruby blade shot out and she thrust her elbow into the window and it shattered.
"Nice," Karly whispered, staring at the blade.
It disappeared back into Devyn's arm. "I'll be glad when I don't have to try so damn hard."
Karly jerked the door open while Lucian and Jessie fought to hold on to Sally. She seemed to struggle not to scream at least, but her legs and arms suddenly extended and it was like maneuvering a windmill into a tiny square hole without breaking off the blades.
"Get in Sally!" Jessie shoved her. "We're taking you there, help us!"
"Shit!" Karly stared at the dashboard.
Devyn clicked her seatbelt. "What!”
"What? Look at this damn thing, it's not old enough, I can't hot wire this shit without the right tools, that's what."
Sally let out a hurry I'm dying scream that helped them panic instead of think.
"Can't you guys do something?" Jessie had to yell the words even though she leaned her head over the seat between them.
"Like the fuck what?" Karly screamed back, blue eyes huge.
"Karly!" Devyn's voice carried over Sally who took breath only to let another rip. "Let's try thinking of a solution together."
Karly's face crimped with you think? before she seemed to get what she meant. "Let's hold hands."
The girl's grasped each other's forearms and clenched their eyes shut. Ten seconds of concentration, and the vehicle screamed to life, like literally. Every feature in the thing coming on full blast—music, wipers, lights, horn, engine gunning. Holy shitters, wow.
The girls looked around the vehicle with wide eyes then at each other and burst out laughing before going Rambo serious again.
"Holy Saints, you started all the cars!" This from Lucian who looked all around.
Jessie peered out the window and couldn't believe it. Every vehicle she could see had the lights on and wipers going. "Holy shit!"
Karly tore out of the parking space and came to a screeching stop at the street. "Which way is she reaching?"
"Right!" Devyn pointed, frantic all over again with Sally's agonized screaming.
Five seconds later, Sally clawed at the right window. "More right," Jessie said.
"Where are they?" Karly wove through traffic. "Kassern and Dorn, they should have been here by now. Am I right? Seems like it's been an hour."
"No, you're right. Maybe they can't leave yet." Devyn frowned, a faraway look on her face. "They'll be here."
"Left," Lucian ordered, when Sally clawed the opposite way a minute later.
"Can't go left just yet." Karly put on the breaks to avoid a merging vehicle.
Lucian fought to hold Sally. "Well as soon as you can." His voice became harsher every time he spoke as his nerves fr
ayed.
"I think I know that!" Karly yelled above Sally's begging that had once again turned to screams of agony. Her pain levels weren't even chartable to Jessie. She'd never witnessed that except for maybe that one time when a man came into the ER with extensive chemical burns.
Maybe an hour later, Lucian looked around. "This is bad." They drove a hundred miles an hour on an isolated dirt road that hugged a mountain. "They should have been here by now."
Sally was down to moaning and reaching in the direction she needed them to go. "Where in God's name is this place?" Karly stopped the vehicle. They sat at the end of a dirt track with an old looking stone structure off on the left. "A dead end? Surely that's not the convent."
Sally moaned and whimpered, pointing straight ahead before proceeding to climb over the front seat.
Jessie and Lucian pulled her back only to have her thrash and break out into a painful screaming fit. "She's saying it's straight ahead, dammit!" Jessie couldn't stop her own sob. It felt like her sister had been in that much pain for so long. Felt like days.
"Well there is no more road." Devyn stated the obvious.
"We'll walk." Lucian got out and pulled Sally with him.
Jessie exited the vehicle and got under Sally's other arm. At least she didn't need help walking. She was more like a bull in the gates, strong as one too, and in need of a harness. And judging by the mountain, losing her off the cliff was a terrifying risk.
"This is insane. We're just bringing her into the lion's den." Lucian clearly thought they needed a better plan.
"Bringing all of us." Devyn didn't seem much happier than Lucian. "Where in hell are Troy and Kassern? I've been emergency-ing with my mind for the last hour."
"Same here." Karly looked all around. "It's going to be getting dark soon. I hate this."
Jessie glanced at the sun. "We still have a few hours of daylight and it's not like we have a choice, I mean look at her, she cannot take much more of this, her body should be shutting down, but it's not, and whatever devil has her is going to kill her!" Jessie finished her rant on a sob. God, why is this happening? Please, help us.
"Okay, okay." Devyn's soft voice came like a rescue ship in the rising waters of hysteria. "But we need a plan." She looked at Lucian. "What's the plan?"
His eyes went wide. "Pray we don't die?"
Devyn rolled her eyes. "I mean more than what we're already doing, Choncho."
"We stay alive until they come. Surely they will?" Karly didn't sound at all convinced.
"Kill or be killed."
Everybody looked at Jessie like she'd spoken another language.
"What?" She stared back at all of them. "What else is there to do? Negotiate?"
"Sunteți plin de surprize dulci."
Jessie snorted. "No need to go all Romanian."
He raised his brows at her. "I merely said how full of sweet surprises you are."
Jessie couldn't stop her smile. "Oops."
"Oh shit, what is that?" Devyn whispered, looking ahead. "Please let it not be those things, please please." Her hoarse whisper broke with fear.
Terror gripped Jessie's spine as the dark mass came closer. "Oh shit." She held Sally tighter.
"Here we go," Karly held a set of ruby daggers. "Shit's gonna hit the fan Devyn."
"They are here for Sally, no doubt?" Lucian said.
"Do you think they expected us too?"
"I have no earthly clue," Lucian muttered.
"Dammit, why didn't we get the disappearing trick?" Karly shifted on her feet like the ground was on fire. "We sure need it more than the guy's do."
Devyn's brows shot up. "Maybe we did!"
It only took a second for Karly to catch on and gather them all together into a tight huddle. "All of us think of a location. The hotel?"
"Yes," Lucian said. "On the count of three. One…two…three!" Everything blurred and an odd sense of weightlessness made Jessie more than a little nauseous. Then she opened her eyes. Not the hotel. A huge dark room with a beautiful glowing golden man on a magnificent throne. Sally dropped and crawled on her hands and knees toward him while he gave her a benevolent smile.
"You're on my holy mountain now." The glowing man smiled at each of them in turn. "I wasn't expecting company, but I don't mind improvising. Seems that my loving little pet comes with attachments." He pointed to Jessie. "A sister." He looked at Karly and smiled. "I smell my blood on you." He turned his golden gaze to Lucian and stared until his handsome features turned fierce. "And you." He slid his gaze over his body. "You are unclean, aren't you?" He finally looked at Devyn and seemed to puzzle a moment. "I'm not entirely sure how you've become tangled in my web, but I'm more than happy to have you. I'm sure you'll be immensely entertaining."
****
"No speaking aloud," Dorn instructed telepathically when they reappeared in a dark tunnel.
"What is this place?" Troy looked all around, studying the damp stone walls that looked as if they could collapse at any second. A yellow phosphorescent material encrusted much of the surface.
Dorn's nostrils burned from the evil stench all around them.
"We're under the convent it seems," Kassern said. "Their signal is being scattered. But they're all here. Alive."
"Oh thank God," Troy whispered.
"And thank God you were with us." Kassern placed a hand on the cavern floor. "We would have never known they were in trouble without you hearing Devyn's call. I wonder why the others didn't call."
Dorn felt so utterly useless of late that he always wanted to dismantle molecules with a reckless fury. "And how is it we couldn't hear our own triumvirate? Surely they called?" He turned to Kassern. "Why did Troy hear Devyn when you could not?"
"Something…" Kassern looked around. "Something is preventing us."
"Or someone." Dorn closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the wavery blue veil over everything told him his pale blue irises emitted an eerie aqua glow. "It's him, I can smell him. That bastard demon. If he's put his hands on her, I'm going to slowly strangle him with his spleen and pulverize his bones then feed his testicles to Max. Oh wait, he no longer has any." Finally. A few fond memories. Dorn ignored Kassern's raised brows and Troy's grimace of disgust.
There was a universe of difference with Dorn, but now wasn't the time to play cutesie about how hard he'd fallen on his face in his grievous miscalculations with nearly every aspect of his human affairs.
"Oh my God, what the hell is this?" Troy stood at a nearby arched opening in the wall. A foul stench, seemingly a blend of sulfur and raw sewage, emanated from the portal with eye watering intensity. It made Dorn want to generate a shield of fresh air, but he resisted the temptation, not wanting to risk missing any vital details.
Dorn and Kassern joined him and Kassern choked on shock. "What in the Seven Universes?" They all stared out at the mass of squirming things packed onto the floor of a stadium-sized cavern. The white hairless infants, roughly the size of human newborns, wriggled and kicked and squalled, mouths in strangely elongated snouts gaping to show deadly looking teeth.
Troy looked at Kassern, horror clear on his face. "They look like a miniature version of those ape men."
Kassern nodded in disgust. "That's exactly what I was thinking. And there's one hell of a lot of them too. We can't leave them to become adults."
"We need to find Sally and the others and get them out of here. Then we come back and nuke this place," Dorn said. "We have to be sure not even a dust mite survives."
They hurried down the narrow tunnel with Troy leading. Dorn paused at another opening in the wall. He glanced nervously at Kassern.
The ruby archangel peered in. "Holy Father," he said.
Troy looked next then turned wide eyes to Dorn. "What the hell is that?"
Dorn's upper lip curled as he studied the nightmarish scene. Fat white maggots covered with glistening slime wriggled about in multiple layers several feet deep on the floor.
Each one at nearly one foot long and almost as thick meant they must have a serious food source. "Some kind of larvae. They've been creating those things longer than we imagined. Surely they couldn't have bred so many in the few weeks since we learned of them?"
Off to the left of the maggots, at least a hundred naked and grotesquely obese creatures were strewn about with smaller larvae, many only a few inches long, suckling between folds of fat. Two of the creatures, on the fringe of the gathering, weren't nearly so large and had black garments covering them.
On looking closer, the covering looked creepily like a nun's habit. Just as he thought it, one of the things turned, revealing a human face and head! Odd colorless eyes were the only remaining human traits of the reanimated hominids. And these were nuns?
Dorn really wanted to fly over the whole mess to investigate, but the risk of the demon detecting them grew with every passing second. The other archangels would have to settle for the limited perspective he could give from the door.
"You think these grow into those other things?" Troy pointed to the previous cavern.
Dorn nodded, unable to tear his eyes from the abomination, Maxwell stirred, tossing his head and snorting, eager to come out and destroy them right then. And convincing him of the need to wait was becoming a monumental feat. "That would be my guess at this point."
"How are they creating those things, is what I want to know," Kassern said.
"Kharef's behind it," Dorn informed grimly. "The opportunity to see into his scheme didn't present itself the first time I came for Sally, but we need to determine that immediately. We can't even estimate how many of those abominations they've spawned already. They don't need any more than what we've seen. We need to annihilate all of them."
They proceeded through the catacombs on Troy's heels while he followed the weak link to Devyn. Dorn tried his connection to Sally and was once again met with a black wall. He would allow nothing to delay their consummation at the soonest available opportunity. Of that he was infinitely sure. Once they were one spirit and one body, nothing could come between them.