Chapter 4
Howard Kane knelt upon the pristine, tiled floor before the altar of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church and listened intently, waiting patiently for God’s instructions. God had been speaking to him since he was a young boy, guiding him and directing him through life. Though many people had claimed they’d heard God’s voice, he felt confident only a select few had. The rest were narcissists who lacked the discipline to hear anything more than their basest impulses. He was not like others who had alleged to hear God. Howard had heard God clearly, and the Lord’s voice had not caused him to indulge his desires or whims. To the contrary, he felt more rooted to his beliefs, compelled to dedicate himself fully. He needed God, and God and his fellow worshippers needed him.
With his hands pressed together in prayer, he paid close attention to every subtle sound in the hallowed building, opening the sincerest, humblest channels to his soul to foster God’s voice. In a near-meditative state, he heard many things. Sounds of settling creaked and crackled intermittently. Dried leaves rustled from a treetop beyond the stained-glass windows, likely caused by the departure of finches or sparrows that had remained too late into the fall. But his Maker’s instructions did not echo in his head, did not breathe through him like a warm spring breeze caressing tender blooms as it had in the past. All he heard was the sound of his own breaths, and the rhythmic pulse of his heartbeat.
Days had passed since he’d heard God’s words, long days of strained silence. But he felt neither frustration nor anger. God would invariably speak to him. He always had, and Howard doubted He would ever stop.
With his hands still clasped in front on him, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and focused more intensely. When concentrating as he was, his senses seemed to heighten. Sounds were amplified. His sight became sharper, and his sense of smell more distinct. He filled his lungs, drawing in air through his nose. Strong notes of pine infused the air and mingled with the slightest hint of lemon. The average man would not have noticed the fresh, clean scents surrounding him, their subtlety; their depth. But he did. He had a divine appointment. His followers knew of his blessing and one of them had undoubtedly scrubbed and polished the altar hours earlier. His many gifts were not secrets he kept from his congregants, and they responded accordingly, heeding and abiding the ancient adage that cleanliness was, in fact, next to godliness. He was, after all, the closest a human being could ever be to God, and his followers knew that. For that reason, every surface of the church was cleaned daily in his honor, as well as the Lord’s. As founder and leader of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity congregation, in addition to having divine influence, Howard was the heir to a kind of sight only a select few in his family had possessed; sight that the naked eye was incapable of perceiving. He could see evil, sense it as clearly as the notes of pine and lemon in the air. His vision, his divination, enabled him to lead his congregation.
He preached daily at the consecrated dais he knelt before, reached out to his flock, shared his vision, and spread the word of God. But God’s word was not as simple as other groups claimed it to be. It went beyond Commandments and Sacraments, surpassed feasting, fasting and offerings. His unique vision offered his devotees a singular experience. It offered them opportunity to seek out and eradicate evil. Other sects downplayed the evil that roamed the earth, romanticized it even. But he did not. He knew the truth. He had the gift.
His gift empowered him and the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity to obey the Lord’s commands and protect the world from the vile minions of Satan. God ordered them, through Howard, to root out servants of darkness. They were anointed soldiers of light. The devil had created warriors that roved about and wreaked havoc on humanity. Howard and his followers were charged with destroying them before their numbers grew unmanageable and threatened humanity. His church had become powerful with hundreds of devoted disciples worldwide, all committed believers in his mission, God’s mission.
Fighting evil was in his blood, quite literally. His ancestors had been fighting the devil’s slaves for nearly three centuries. Their battles dated back to the days of the Salem witch trials. It was his ancestors who had orchestrated the destruction of countless witches and had rescued humankind from an uprising of catastrophic proportions before it began, before the number of witches had proliferated and innumerable covens had been formed. The witch trials of Salem had since been held as a benchmark of brutality brought on by mass hysteria. But what the ignorant masses could never possibly understand, what their fragile minds could never comprehend, was the truth. An uprising of evil had begun, but was thwarted by the Lord’s soldiers. He, and his descendants before him, had fought and continued to fight to preserve light on Earth, the slaying of each fiend a result of his divine sight and orders from God.
Howard breathed deeply and enjoyed the purity of the air, of his surroundings. He found that reflecting on the successes of his predecessors relaxed him and filled him with indescribable peace. Remembering the sacrifices and trials of those passed opened the channels between him and his Maker. He felt confident that his work, and the work of his servants, had been far-reaching and considerable. Many witches had been exterminated. They had been of little consequence, however. Some had even claimed unawareness of their power. Of course, he did not believe them. Witches were liars, all of them. Awareness of one’s power was unavoidable. He was living proof of it. To believe that a witch was unaware of her power was as ridiculous as believing a muscled man did not know of his strength; it was preposterous. He knew the demons were conscious of their abilities, and that a herald walked among them. She was referred to as the Sola in his ancestor’s scriptures. Sola, or one who walks alone, had been long considered a harbinger of humanity’s demise, but she had not arrived yet. For more than three hundred years, her arrival had been predicted, her power and capability for chaos warned about. The Sola had been prophesied to possess the capacity to unite every witch on Earth and create an army of evil. But no one had ever sensed her. No one had felt her presence. But of late, Howard had begun to feel her.
In recent months, he had sensed her, felt her foul presence among humanity. He was drawn to her in a way that contradicted reason, and instead of repelling her, as most polar opposites do, he was attracted to her. His pull toward her felt almost magnetic in nature. And each day that she lived, he could feel her growing stronger. Her power was rapidly gaining strength, signifying that she’d either become of age for her powers to manifest themselves, or she had made an enormous stride in her dark art. Either way, the potency of her energy had changed dramatically in recent weeks. Her essence was connected to his. His task of killing her pulsed and throbbed in him, summoning him with all its majesty. God had linked him with the Sola to simplify the greatest challenge in his mission, so he could eliminate her, and the threat she posed against humankind could end.
He had been close to her many times in months past. He had been on her trail. But she had eluded him. He wondered whether she, too, felt his presence, that the fear of the Almighty existed within her instinctively. After all, they were heritable enemies.
He pictured her in his mind’s eye. Though he had no idea of what she truly looked like, he envisioned a raven-haired enchantress with black eyes and tan skin capable of seducing and charming with wickedness. He imagined her raven hair enveloped in flames, her black eyes weeping as fire consumed her. Her death would be his greatest tribute to the Lord. The day could not come soon enough. In the meantime, she still lived and retained the potential to join all evil on Earth.
Howard shivered at the thought of the damage the Sola could cause. If she were able to do as his descendants predicted, he worried he and his followers would not be able to stop it, that she would overtake humanity. He rose to his feet slowly, but not before touching his hand to his forehead. His fingers lingered there long enough to graze the charred and puckered skin, the same scarred skin that co
vered his entire face, before he dropped his hand to his navel, crossed it to his left shoulder then his right. He breathed a quiet “Amen” and genuflected before heading down the center aisle of the church, out the door and to the vestibule. There, he dipped his fingers in the basin of holy water and crossed himself again. He left not because he doubted God’s voice would fill his head, but because he needed to find her. He needed to destroy the Sola. And he believed he would succeed. The worry and doubt that had plagued him earlier was a test, one of many tests he’d been subjected to throughout his life. God would fortify him with the strength he needed for his task, as He always had. God would not allow him to fail.
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