Eyes alert, I passed the other sculptures, prepared to confront the golems if they should spring to unnatural life. These saints remained where they belonged, rooted in place. The demon had tired of this game. Which meant it was already gearing up for its next surprise.
Go for it. Make your move. I’m ready.
Almost as if the creature had been listening in on my thoughts, sizzling red lightning ignited the night sky, followed by ominous claps of thunder that shook the garden with their powerful vibrations.
More parlor tricks. Feeble attempts to throw me off.
It’s not working, I thought, jaw set tight.
A fiery rage blazed within my soul. Seeing Nora’s bloated, dead features had hit me hard. She had to have been in that water for hours. The beast had murdered Nora and swapped places with her, puppeteering this nightmare while hiding in plain sight.
I couldn’t wait to stare into the demonic impostor’s eyes.
I entered the meeting room and almost instantly spotted Father Ambrose’s broken form on the floor. The demon had grotesquely twisted the defrocked priest’s head by a hundred and eighty degrees, so his dead features now faced me from his back.
I balled my fists and cast my gaze around the chamber, furiously searching for the creature wearing Nora’s face. A shape moved in the candle-lit darkness, and then Nora peeled from the shadows. Her nun’s habit was soaked red where the bullet had punctured her shoulder.
I still knew so little about this demon. What was the creature’s name? What did it want?
Then again, what did it matter?
I knew what I wanted. To strike down the beast, to avenge the dead and set their souls free.
My hand hummed in anticipation, desperate for action.
“Simon, you made it. I was so worried,” the demon said in Nora’s voice. She sounded weak, wounded, and scared.
I gnashed my teeth. Did this abomination believe I was still falling for its tricks? I knew the true nature of the creature in front of me. Why maintain the charade?
“They all betrayed you,” a voice whispered inside me. “Your father, your first girlfriend. Double-faced monsters who hid their allegiance to the forces of darkness. You can end this nightmare. Take your knife and kill it now.”
No more betrayals, no more treachery, no more lies.
I eased closer. Blade held close to my body so as not to give away my intentions. I needed to lull the beast into a false sense of security and then swiftly and decisively make my move.
Nora stepped up to me, and there was absolutely nothing demonic about her lovely features.
I hesitated. There was a strange relief that came with seeing her alive again. Perhaps I had been wrong. Maybe the woman in the reflecting pool was someone else…
Nora reached out for my hand, and then froze. She’d spotted the athame in my hand.
Emotions seethed inside me. I couldn’t stop thinking of drowned Nora. In my mind's eye, her dead features morphed into the face of my father. A man I once loved but who’d betrayed my affections. Mason Kane’s face became that of Caroline, my first girlfriend. She’d tricked me, too, making me believe she cared about me when she was secretly planning on sacrificing me inside my father’s temple.
Rage exploded inside me, my gaze falling on Judas in the giant mural of the Last Supper that dominated the meeting room.
I whirled toward Nora, grabbed her by the arm, pinned her against the wall...
And brought up my father’s sacrificial knife.
Chapter Nineteen
I wanted to ram my father’s knife into this demonic impostor wearing Nora’s face but hesitated. I instinctively sensed that something was off about this whole scenario. How had this entity turned an entire monastery into its demonic playground? Why transform sixty monks into zombies, yet slowly pick off the possessed one by one? How could this monster bring a garden full of saintly statues to life?
There appeared to be no limits to the creature’s powers. As Vesper was fond of telling me, sometimes people didn’t see what was right in front of their eyes. It was a playful dig at my utter failure to realize that the woman of my dreams was just waiting for me to figure my shit out. But she was also right. Perhaps not everything around me was what it seemed to be.
So what game was the demon playing? What did this creature want from me?
Facing the Nora impostor, I answered my own question.
The demon wants your soul. The creature is pushing you to a point where you lower your defenses and give in to your darkest impulses.
No wonder Nora’s corpse had popped up when it did. Talk about a convenient development. This demon was manipulating all the right emotional levers. The beast wanted me to murder the girl I’d once loved, and with my father’s knife. By doing so I would succumb to my deepest insecurities, my worst fears. The monster knew that deep down I was terrified of being betrayed by the people I loved the most. If I gave in to this impulse, I would indeed become like my father.
With this flash of insight, I lowered my athame and took a step back from Nora.
The demon had orchestrated events perfectly up until this decisive moment, yet I’d refused to play my part during the final act. I’d narrowly avoided sealing my own fate.
Nora stared at me with big eyes as a feral bellow shook the meeting room and…
The world around me changed.
I suddenly was back in my seat within the circle where this nightmare began. All the demon’s victims—including Nora and Andara—sat slumped back in their seats. They were still alive, but their blank eyes pointed into space, frozen in a trance.
An instant realization hit me like a tidal wave: everything that had transpired since we first sat down inside the circle had played out in a shared mental dreamscape controlled by the demon. A nightmare world with a single purpose—to conquer our souls.
Personal demons tormented all of us. Andara was obsessed with destroying the demon. Nora had doubted her faith. Liza Hawthorn feared the creature’s return. Maddox battled substance abuse and anger problems, Tomkins his suicidal tendencies. Courtney was terrified of being alone, and Ambrose was afraid of himself.
We were all fucked, in one way or another.
Everyone in the circle had fallen prey to their darkness, opened themselves up to the demon and offered their souls to its insatiable hunger—everyone except for me.
Father Andara had originally conjured this demon so we could destroy it together. But something had gone wrong. The ritual had trapped the demon inside the circle, but it had also allowed the monster to invade our minds. Once inside our heads, the monster had played us against each other, weakened our mental defenses, and used every dirty trick in the book.
Now the creature stood revealed before me, and I thought I might throw up. Demons could change their form on this plane, becoming whoever—whatever—they wanted to be. But this demon, once again, had defied my expectations.
I stared at the beast inside the center of the circle and fought back a wave of deep revulsion.
I was looking at a patchwork quilt of a monster stitched together from the souls of the possessed. I recognized Nora’s blue eyes, Sergeant Maddox’s powerful build, Courtney Star’s pale complexion. And its appearance was fluid and ever shifting like some failed genetic experiment, almost as if the demon was trying on each soul for size.
The creature had fed on all of the possessed to build up its strength for its final prize. The son of Mason Kane.
“Impressive, Kane. But it won’t change your ultimate fate. Your soul belongs to me.”
The monster spoke in the voices of its most recent victims, the lilting, haunting speech was both male and female and made my skin crawl.
“Imagine my surprise when these pathetic fools tried to trap me in this circle. I guess going after Andara’s favorite pushed him over the edge. He was even willing to use an occult ritual to settle the score.”
The demon’s gaze turned to Nora’s unconscious form.
“And look at th
is rank amateur who thought she could imprison me in her little circle without any consequences. Did she think I would appear in this room and not put up a fight? Talk about hubris.”
Of course. Nora was the only one here who had the knowledge to create a summoning circle; she had been a devoted student of the occult before her possession. I recalled her praying the rosary during the meeting earlier. Those had not been prayers I now realized. She must have been secretly whispering the words of the conjuring spell.
The creature turned to the exorcist, whose mouth hung slack, his wrinkled features pouchy and sallow. “Ahh, Father Andara. My archenemy. Or at least he likes to see himself that way. This is a life-and-death struggle for the exorcist. To me, it’s a way to pass the time.”
The creature leveled a hard stare at me. The crawling sense of wrongness that it radiated was like a physical force. I had to stop myself from taking a step backward.
“And then we have you. Simon Kane. The son of Mason Kane. The man who carries the mark of Leviathan yet has sworn to fight the darkness. Imagine my delight when I spotted you in this circle. The ultimate prize. Once I control your soul, I’ll turn you into a monster your father would have been proud of.”
Over my dead body, I thought. I’d turn the blade against my own throat before letting this thing possess me.
The patchwork beast regarded me, captured souls pressing against its melting flesh, distorting its barely human form. The monster's features morphed into Tomkins' cynical expression.
“I admire your determination, but I also pity you, Simon Kane. No matter how many lost souls you pull out of the pit, there will always be more who need saving. For every nightmare you conquer, new ones will take their place. The battle between good and evil has raged since the dawn of time. There is no end to any of this. This isn’t a war you can win.”
“Nor one that humanity can afford to lose,” I said defiantly. I took a step closer, angry now.
“No one appreciates your pathetic efforts. Do you think you can ever step out of your father’s shadow? To most people, you’ll always be the ‘Son of the Devil.’"
“It’s not about that. I don’t expect some victory parade in my lifetime.”
The patchwork demon smiled, and it was a terrible sight.
“All that matters to you is that you don’t end up like your daddy. Isn’t that right? How misguided, how pathetic, how sad.”
The creature’s gaze bored into me.
“You can’t escape your fate, Kane. You carry the mark of Leviathan on your shoulder. It’s the promise your father made to the Necrothanix. You belong to us.”
The patchwork features morphed into Andara now.
“Embrace your legacy. Give yourself to the darkness. Let the son become the father.”
I shook my head. “No.”
The demon smiled.
I shuddered as invisible, ghostly fingers raked my mind. The demon was studying me, testing my defenses. I could feel the force of an alien mind flush with the power of the seven souls it had just devoured. How could I resist such a creature?
“You can’t,” the demon answered, having read my thoughts.
A shiver raced down my back, and I shook all over. The demon was inexorably worming its way into my mind. I had to do something—fast.
Seven other souls hung in the balance. These people deserved better. They deserved to live their lives free from fear. I could not allow this monster to win the fight.
Because if I did, the demon wouldn’t stop here. It would cut a swath of destruction, as far and as wide as it could. Maybe all the way to Malibu, where Vesper was waiting for me to come home.
I took a determined step toward the demon. The creature held its ground. Not because of some infernal form of courage. No, the beast remained trapped in the circle.
The entity had downplayed Nora’s occult skills, had psychically breached the circle, but that didn’t change the fact that the creature remained a prisoner. Nora’s ritual would only run its course once the demon had feasted on my soul—or it had been conquered forever.
Only one of us would be leaving this circle.
The sensation of alien feelers exploring and probing my innermost thoughts and secrets increased, but I pressed forward, knife out, driven by a singular purpose. I thought of Vesper, of Nora and Courtney and Liza. Even an obnoxious jerk like Maddox didn’t deserve such a fate.
I tapped into my righteous anger, drew strength from the emotions churning in my guts.
I couldn’t let them down.
The demon exerted renewed pressure on my mind. My mouth twisted with agony as the pain grew unbearable. Still, I pressed on—one excruciating step after another.
Blood shot out of my nose. My skull throbbed, yet I refused to give in to the pain.
There was only one way out of this. I had to destroy this hellish abomination.
And then I was upon the demon.
Employing my last reserves of strength, a cry of unbridled anguish exploded from my lips as I drove my athame into the nightmarish creature.
The blade slid inside the belly of the patchwork monster, and its flesh began to sizzle.
A bellowing shriek reverberated inside the meeting room, and the demon’s clawed fingers closed around my knife hand. The monster applied enormous pressure on my wrist, and I yanked out the athame with a scream just before the bones would have snapped.
Green blood shimmered on the silver blade.
The demon unleashed another roar and flung me across the room. As I sailed through the air, my athame went flying in the other direction.
I slammed hard into the ground. Blearily, I watched as, one by one, the imprisoned souls disappeared from the demon’s form. As they did, everyone in the circle instantly woke up from their trance-like comatose state.
For a frozen beat, the possessed just stared at the nightmare at the center of the circle. The first strike with the blessed blade had weakened the demon and liberated their souls, but the monster was far from defeated. And despite my best efforts, I failed to find the strength to get back on my feet.
I had started this fight. But others would have to finish it.
Fortunately, the circle of the possessed was more than willing to pick up the slack.
Maddox was the first one to react. He spotted the knife and jumped to his feet. A moment later, he had scooped up the blade and was tearing toward the demon.
With zero concern for his own safety, Maddox rammed the knife into the demon’s throat. Green blood sprayed, and the monster tossed the Navy SEAL aside like a rag doll.
Once again, the knife went flying. But others joined the effort now.
Courtney Star, of all people, snatched the athame next and followed Maddox’s example, puncturing the demon’s chest with a little shriek. She danced backward, clearly horrified by the goo splattered all over her designer duds.
Andara’s original plan was playing out the way he’d intended. The possessed were getting their chance to destroy the demon.
And every time the knife broke the demon’s skin, the creature grew weaker.
It was withering and shrinking, the triumphant expression on the monster’s now reptilian features turning into a mask of defeat.
At last, it was Father Andara’s turn. The exorcist stepped up to the weakened demon, little more than a shriveled-up version of its former self at this point, and delivered the killing blow with a prayer on his lips and a look of victory in his eyes.
As the creature evaporated in a stinking fog, the entire room shook one final time, almost as if the desert was releasing one last quake to send the creature back to Hell.
A grave silence descended over the room. To my surprise, it was Maddox who offered me his hand and helped me back to my feet. I swapped a grateful glance with the SEAL, then let my gaze wander to Nora.
She regarded me with a mixture of shame and gratitude. I gave her a thin smile, one that promised to let bygones be bygones. The horror was over.
The
possessed had conquered their demon.
Chapter Twenty
My rental Jeep cut through the New Mexico desert in a cloud of swirling dust. I wasn’t looking forward to the flight to Los Angeles, but I couldn’t wait to be back home and hold Vesper in my arms.
Following the destruction of the demon, none of us had wanted to hang around the monastery. Even though we’d won this battle, the possessed had experienced their own deaths. They were forced to face their darkest fears. Little surprise that the survivors were eager to close the pages on this latest chapter of their lives.
I prayed they might find the peace that had so long eluded them.
Both Andara and Nora had been grateful for the role I’d played in our final battle, but I also sensed their shame. Our conversation had been kept to a bare minimum following our victory. They sensed I wasn’t happy about being kept in the dark. They should have told me what they were up to. A lot of pain and suffering might have been avoided if I’d known what their plan was. Then again, I would have tried to talk them out of it.
As the monastery receded in the Jeep’s rear-view mirror, I chewed over some of the demon’s most disturbing words.
“You can’t escape your fate, Kane. You carry the mark of Leviathan on your shoulder. It’s the promise your father made to the Necrothanix. You belong to us.”
I’d never heard of the Necrothanix before. “Necro” meant death—never a good sign. I couldn’t begin to guess at the full name’s meaning, but I sensed it wouldn’t be anything pleasant.
My latest confrontation with the demonic drove home a grim truth about my past. Even though the world called me the Paranormalist, I knew very little of the occult mysteries my father had tampered with. And even though I’d won this latest battle with the supernatural, I also sensed the confrontation was simply a preview of greater horrors to come.
The demon had wanted my soul badly enough to risk everything by walking into Andara and Nora’s trap. It had failed, but how many more would try? Why did they want so badly for the son of Mason Kane to join their side?
The Possessed (The Paranormalist Book 5) Page 10