The next swipe took his back again, the pain was incredible and he had to call on all that he was to keep from passing out. He could feel the blood running over his skin as he saw the circle in the dirt and jumped into it.
The devil followed and grabbed him by the arms. "Your blood tastes wrong, but I will eat you anyway!" It said, and then suddenly froze in place, immobile.
Mark heard it then; Father Otto was speaking in Latin, flinging holy water on the both of them as he commanded the devil to return to where it came, by itself, and to stay on the lower planes for all of eternity.
He wasn't sure how long it took, but when he finally fell to the ground he almost kissed it.
"Oh my..." Judith started; he was surprised she stopped before she said 'God'. He guessed she had been paying attention after all, but he couldn't get up the breath to laugh.
"Why didn't... you get... the artifact?" He said trying to keep his head clear.
"There wasn't one!" Judith told him. "There weren't even any crosses! Father Otto had to bless the water in my water bottle or we wouldn't have had even that!"
Mark swore, "Go get my jacket." He gasped. "It has my badge in it. The police will be here soon."
Judith nodded and ran off.
"Could you hold this a minute my son?"
Mark looked up from where he was kneeling on the ground, he wasn't sure he could stand yet. Father Otto was holding out his cross, "Sure Father," He said and took it.
"Kiss it."
Mark looked at him strange but kissed the cross, and then making the sign of the cross said, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He handed the cross back to Father Otto.
"What was that all about?"
"I heard what that devil said. I also saw you get hit three times and not drop dead. What are you Son?"
Mark sighed, "We all have our crosses to bear Father, this one is mine."
"Does the Church know?"
"My Confessor knows, the Cardinals know, and God knows."
"Well it is not my place to question the good Lord's will, you are obviously one of his flock. Now let me tend to those wounds."
8
About an hour and several phone calls later Mark was able to get things sorted out. The French Gendarmeries were helpful as always, once their bosses got engaged. France was one of the countries that had the most experience with devils and demons, so there were a lot of officials in the higher ranks who were always more than happy to cooperate.
They had also been kind enough to call out an ambulance and one of the attendants had been kind enough to bandage his wounds, front and back.
"How's your back?" Judith asked as they hitched a ride back to the Cathedral.
"It'll heal. What I want to know it what happened to the gear in the bags."
"Did you check them when we picked them up?"
Mark frowned, "No, I saw that they were sealed and didn't think twice about it."
"Well inventory screw-up?"
"That's a pretty serious screw up!" Mark grumbled.
"Well at least it wasn't my fault!" she said grinning.
Mark smiled back rather weakly, "There is that."
As soon as they got back he did go to the monsignor's office, and checked with the staff who managed the 'special' supplies.
"A person was here yesterday from Spain." The man working in the office said. "He inspected the bags and took a number of things out of them. Said they weren't needed here."
"You're right, somebody does hate you!" Judith said as they walked out of the office. "So what are we going to do?"
"Well Bishop Santos can get us a couple of blessed crosses that will protect us against the lesser devils, holy water we can get anywhere in the building easily enough. Some of the other items we need I can shop around for, this is Paris. But artifacts are hard to come by. They're carefully guarded and tracked."
"Can't you make an artifact?"
He shook his head no, "It has to come from someone incredibly holy and powerful. Usually a Saint, and always someone who is dead. It is their passing that imbues the item with their power."
"Are you sure we'll need one?"
"If we run into anything serious, it's the only way we'll be able to stop it. We were lucky today that we had an older experienced priest with us who knew what we were dealing with and had the holy power to do something about it. That is not something we can count on."
"Well how hard is it to raise these devils?"
"They're not raised, they're summoned. And it's impossible."
"Doesn't look like it to me!" Judith said scowling, "You said once before that these things happened in the 'old days'. Even Father Otto talked about them, and he made that comment about the world 'being smaller back then'. What did he mean by that?"
Mark stopped and looked around, there was an office that was empty so he pulled her inside and sat on the edge of the desk. All this walking around was making him tired and his back and chest were rather painful under the bandages.
"Okay, since God created the universe the amount of power, call it 'mystical' power, in world has been a constant, okay? Think of it as a big swimming pool of water or something."
"That sounds easy enough."
"Good. Now in order to do anything mystical, from performing a miracle to summoning a devil or demon, it requires a set amount of power, or water, from that pool. That requirement never changes. Say summoning a major devil takes five percent of the water in that pool, while healing your cousin's blindness requires one percent. Still following?"
"Yeah, you use power from the pool to change things, and the costs are set."
"Okay, now the contents of that pool are equally divided to every living person on the planet. So if you want something done, you have to get enough people together to gather that much power. So back when there were only a million people on the planet, everyone had like a ten gallon bucket of that power, so ten people together could make a miracle. A hundred could summon a devil.
"Now as the population increased, everyone got a smaller and smaller share, so now instead of a ten gallon bucket, you have say a cup."
"So now with three billion it takes a million to summon a devil!" Judith exclaimed surprised.
"More like a hundred million, though the one we saw today probably only took twenty or thirty million. But that's why it is impossible. How do you get that many people together to pray for a devil? And without anyone noticing? That is what we're up against."
"Didn't the report say they thought this was something that had been summoned back in the days of the Nazi's and trapped here?"
"Then why are we the only ones finding them? And why are they targeting us in particular instead of running around causing general mayhem? If the Nazi's had left them, they should be trying to kill everyone; not just me and you. And that doesn't even begin to explain what happened on the airplane.
"No, someone is summoning devils that no one should be able to summon and they're going after the Church's teams. I suspect they'll go after the ones from the other religions next, but we're the biggest and the most organized. This has to have been planned."
"Well at least there's only one of them," Judith said frowning.
He blinked surprised. "How do you figure that?"
"Typical criminal behavior. One guy does one crime at a time. If there were more than one of them, they'd be doing several at a time."
"Huh," He said impressed, "I hadn't thought of that."
"Nice to know I can pull my own weight around here!"
"Oh you're not quite there yet!" Mark said with a smile, "But you do seem to be well on your way. Let's go find Bishop Santos and get our gear replaced.
Unfortunately for Mark they were intercepted in the Bishop's office shortly after meeting with him.
"Sir," one of the office staff said to him, "I have a phone call for you from a Father Flores?"
Mark rolled his eyes and the Bishop smiled at him, "Go talk to your superior. I'll see to
your things."
"Yes Father."
Mark followed the staff member out of the room to the outer office and picked up the phone at the desk he was brought to. He had been carefully avoiding Flores for several days now.
"Yes Father?"
"What are you doing in Paris Mark?" He could hear the anger in Father Flores voice. "Why are you not back here in Spain?"
"We had an issue on our flight out of the US. This was the best I could do on short notice, so I decided to spend a couple of days asking questions as long as I was here Father."
"I told you not to do that, did I not?"
Mark looked up at the ceiling and tried not to swear, he was glad Father Flores couldn't see the expression on his face. "I asked permission from the Bishop. He thought it would be fine. I did not run off without asking permission."
"May I remind you that Bishop Santos is not your superior? That is my job." Father Flores said rather hotly.
Mark bit his tongue. He really wanted to say something nasty, but he could tell that Father Flores was really angry. Angrier than he could remember, so he questioned a witness, why should he care? "I'm sorry Father," he lied.
"Well I want you to get on the next flight here, understand?"
"As soon as I'm cleared for travel Father."
"Why can't you travel now?" Father Flores demanded.
"I'm wounded. I was attacked by a devil and got clawed up."
"Really?"
Was he being paranoid or did Father Flores suddenly sound pleased?
"Yes Father. I'm bandaged up pretty good from the waist up. I was pretty lucky it seems. I think they're still trying to decide if they want to stitch up the gashes or not."
"Well how soon do you think you can get here? I still haven't met your new recruit and there are a lot of things that have to be taken care of."
"Three days, maybe four." Mark said thinking fast. He didn't want to go back to Spain just yet. There were still a few things he wanted to investigate. "Unless the doctors order me to stay in bed longer."
"Okay. You've got four days, then I want to see you in my office."
"What about the doctors?"
"We have doctors here too. Four days Mark. That's an order!"
"Yes Father." Mark said and hung up the phone.
"Well that didn't sound good." Judith noted from the doorway.
"It wasn't."
"So where can we go but still make it back there in four days?"
"I like the way you think," Mark said smiling. "But right now I need some food and a nap, before I pass out on my feet."
Judith nodded. "I'm surprised you're still upright with those wounds."
"Yeah, me too..."
% % % % %
Hope showed up almost every day after that, sometimes for a little while, sometimes for hours. Mark found himself telling her all about New York, and himself. The day she showed up completely naked still surprised him though.
Hope laughed at his expression. “I took the shorts back to the cabin last time to be washed, and forgot to bring them with me.”
Mark looked a little confused.
“I leave them hanging in a tree about ten minutes from here. I only put them on when I get close.”
“You walk all the way here naked?”
“Yup. Let’s go down to the stream, you need a bath!”
“Unnn...”
“Mark?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t make me drag you. Bring your dirty clothing, we can wash that too.”
Mark gathered his things, he had gotten used to Hope’s nearly naked state, but she still gave him a hardon half the time. And now she was completely naked. What would he do when he got to the stream?
“And don’t worry about your erection;” Hope teased almost reading his mind, “I’m sure the cold water will deal with that soon enough!”
Mark blushed and tried not to drop anything as he followed her down to the water. He was definitely having a hard time keeping his eyes off of that perfect ass. It had been a long time. A very long time.
Hope’s only comment when he stripped was: “You need to eat more.”
They cleaned the clothes first then got into the water and cleaned themselves.
“Here, let me get your back,” Hope said moving up behind Mark.
“Un, wait...” Mark said worried.
Hope grabbed an arm and steadied him as she examined his back, using the small washcloth and the special camping soap Mark had brought. This was her whole reason for today, she wanted a better look at his wounds that she had noticed when spying on him earlier.
Mark was surprised at the strength of her grip, he had forgotten about his back. After so many months he’d grown used to the dull pain of it.
“What happened?” Hope asked softly as she carefully scrubbed his back. They were claw marks, she’d seen enough of those to know what they looked like, but whatever made them had an odd shaped paw. Not a cat, or a wolf, or even a bear. And they weren’t healing. They looked the same now as when she’d spied them on him almost two months ago.
“I, I’d rather not talk about it.” Mark said softly.
“You got into something really bad, didn’t you?” Hope whispered into his ear, moving against him, pressing her chest into his back.
“Please, don’t.” Mark said closing his eyes. He could feel that sumptuous body pressing against his, her hands were now on his chest, her arms wrapped around him. Cold water or not, he was rather rampant.
“I think I’m going to spend the night,” Hope whispered huskily into his ear.
“I...” Mark sighed and smiled, “I’d like that.”
Mark woke with the birds just before sunrise; Hope was lying beside him, her eyes open and smiling. He hadn’t slept so well without being drugged in a very long time. Then again he hadn’t been laid in a very long time. Hope was a very enthusiastic and demanding lover. She had worn him out more than once last night.
“So tell me about it,” She said leaning forward to give him a kiss.
“It’s not easy to tell,” Mark protested.
“You saw something that scared you and you can’t explain it, am I right?”
Mark started a moment. “How did you know?”
“You’ve all but said it with the way you’ve been acting. Now talk to me.”
“Why?” Mark was curious now, “Why do you want to know?”
“Because you’re my lover, that’s why.” Hope said smiling and started to run her fingers through his hair.
Mark gave a shrug and told her.
"We were out on a routine patrol, when we made contact with what we thought was the enemy. There had been reports of the Taliban in the area and people had been disappearing. So we took off after them.
"We followed them into a building that was built into the side of a large rocky hill. Once inside we got attacked, but we were ready for it and we managed to kill most of them, some escaped deeper inside and our squad leader decided to pursue.
"That was when things started to get freaky.
"The next group we encountered was a group of fanatics. They were hard to put down, and didn't seem to want to stay down. We lost two of our team at that point. Also at that point there was a collapse behind us, so we couldn't retreat the way we had come.
"Two rooms later we got hit again, there were only four of them, but it was bad, real bad. Bullets hardly slowed them, and they were strong, hella strong. The front two guys in the squad had their necks snapped like twigs, and we were all running our guns on full auto by then. I could see they were getting chewed up, but it wasn't enough, there were only five of us left at that point.
"One of them grabbed our sergeant, and holding him tight bit his neck, there was blood everywhere. A second grabbed another guy, Jeff I think, and suddenly a grenade hit the floor, the spoon flying off. Not sure who dropped it, I guess someone wasn't too keen on becoming a vampire. Probably Jeff, he was into those stories.
"I was closest to
the door and was able to jump out of the room behind some shelter. After the grenade went off, there was no one left alive. Even the four bad guys were shredded."
Mark paused a moment thinking about it. Until he felt Hope snuggle up to him.
"So was that it then?" She asked.
"No, it was just the start," he sighed. "I gathered up all the ammo I could find, pushed the remains in to the center and tossed a bunch of flares on it to start a fire and grabbing the SAR continued on."
"SAR?"
"Squad automatic rifle. Basically a big ass machine gun.
"I continued to run into people as I went deeper in, but a round or two from the SAR blew most of them away.
"Then I came to the Monster's room. He looked young, I think he was British actually, but he oozed power and one look at his eyes and I just pulled the trigger and ran the entire ammo can into his body. That messed him up good, but it didn't stop him. He came at me then and I dropped the SAR and drew the door breacher and put that to his chest and pulled the trigger.
"Door breacher?"
"Shotgun with special rounds. You use it to blow the hinges off a door, or blow out the locking mechanism. Very nasty at point blank.
Hope nodded.
"That made him pause so I jammed it in his mouth and let him have the rest of the shells that were in it. That blew the top of his head off and he started to flop around on the floor. So I stuck a grenade in his mouth and dove for cover. After that I set fire to the room and grabbing my rifle started trying to get out of there along a different path.
"I'd hoped they'd give up, with their master dead. Boy was I wrong about that. Took me probably another day to get out of there. I had to retrace my steps once to scavenge more ammo from the room where everyone had died. It was like being in a nightmare and not being able to wake up. I kept thinking any moment I'd run into another one of the monsters and die. I think I killed forty or fifty more followers or zombies or something before I was able to find my way out of the maze of tunnels and onto the roof of the building.
"I didn't even realize what had happened to my back until I woke up in the hospital. I'd been stabbed, shot, hit by shrapnel, burned, pissed myself and crapped my pants I don't know how many times.
The Hammer Commission Page 11