by D V Wolfe
I grinned at Nigel and he winked at me. “Good luck,” he said, “with...praying that sin off of you.” He surveyed our clothes and he smiled. “And if that doesn’t work, try a washing machine.” With that, Nigel turned around and started pushing his mop bucket back down the hallway away from us. We followed to see him head back down the hallway. We watched as he unlocked his supply closet and shoved the bucket inside. He turned to look back at us and tipped his cap before pushing open the back door and disappearing outside.
“I think he just gave us permission to snoop,” I said.
“Well you heard him,” Noah said, crossing to the first dead-bolted door. “He liked the people that died. Said they were good. And he doesn’t sound like he likes the new church leaders very well.” Noah was right. Maybe Nigel had been waiting for someone from the outside to come along and shine a flashlight up the church’s ass. Of course, Nigel probably didn’t know about demons or other supernatural shit that could be causing all of this. He probably just thought the church leadership were dicks.
“It’s locked,” Noah said.
“You don’t say,” Stacks growled back at him. “I’ll go get the lock picking kit. I’ll be able to get that lock flipped in a second.”
“Like hell, you will,” Noah said. “You don’t even know where the kit is. Have you ever looked in Bane’s toolbox? It’s like another dimension full of severed body parts, hedge clippers, and crap.”
“Severed body parts?” Stacks turned to look at me. “And are those Rosetta’s hedge clippers? I thought you were going to get those sharpened.”
“Both of you just go,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “You’re giving me a headache.
I watched them go and I leaned against the wall opposite the door, thinking. It was a good thing we’d run into Nigel. He might be a perfect spy to have on the inside. I heard the heavy back door swing shut and saw it snag on a rock Stacks must have placed to keep it from closing. I could hear the faint bickering from the two of them and closed my eyes.
Then, from right in front of me, I heard a lock click. My eyes popped open and I stared at the knob on the dead-bolted door as it began to turn.
6
I pushed off the wall just as the door swung open. The office itself was dark and the overhead light from the hall cast the person in the doorway into shadow from the chest down, but I could see it was a man wearing a business suit.
“Ah, a new convert, is it?” His voice rumbled. “Come in and let’s talk about the new covenant you will make as a member of our little family.” My legs were bending on their own, completely disconnected from my brain, bringing me closer to the man. Definitely not Simpson. The muscles in my jaw were frozen and my tongue was numb. I wasn’t able to make more than a gurgling sound in my throat in protest. What the hell was happening? I had heard about compelling demons when I was in the pit, but I’d never been on the receiving end of their hoodoo. It was too advanced of a skill for the high-ring demons we’d been up against lately.
There had been that demon that had rooted Noah to the spot, but that wasn’t really “compelling” him so much as just holding him in place. Was this a low-ring demon that had me unable to move? No footsteps in the hallway announcing the return of Stacks and Noah. They were probably standing outside, still fighting over who got to carry the lock pick set inside. If I made it out of this alive, I was going to ram that lock pick set up their collective asses.
“I can understand a certain...hesitancy,” the man said, his voice velvety smooth and dripping with dark undertones that made everything he said sound like a threat he planned to keep. I was willing my knees not to bend, my legs to lock and stop moving towards him. I was concentrating on my left hand, willing it to reach for the .45 at my back. Blow. This. Bastard. Away. It wouldn’t kill him but it might break his spell on me and do a number on his vessel. My knees locked suddenly and I teetered, falling forward. The man caught me by the shoulders and I got my first look at his face. Red eyes glared at me. Yep, demon. I should have gone back out with the boys and brought in the sword or at least the sawed-off.
The demon smiled at me. “You are so full of resentment and anger. You need to let it all go. Embrace the new covenant before you. Let go of the pain. Embrace peace.” There was a strange rippling sensation rolling over me, numbing my muscles. What the hell was this? “I can sense the guilt and rage was over someone you lost? Someone you could have saved, but didn’t?”
White-hot rage was racing up my spine. I was going to rip this asshole’s head off with my own hands. Well, I was going to, if I could break his hold over me. The man moved closer and with a flick of his wrist, I heard the door behind me slam shut and the click of the deadbolt. So much for the boys stumbling across the open office door and jumping in to help.
“There,” he said. “I always like to give our parishioners privacy so that they can fully... bear their souls.”
He shoved me and I toppled backward. But, before I hit the ground, there was the sensation of hands on my back catching me and lifting me up. Then, I was being carried towards the desk. The room was small and the demon and I were the only ones in it. I really didn’t want to think about what was causing the “hands on my ass” sensation. One of the hands at my lower back found my gun. I tried to twist to keep the gun out of reach, but no luck.
“What do we have here?” The man said in fake surprise, the .45 appearing in his hand. “A gun? What an odd thing to bring to a house of worship. It could be dangerous to keep this around. And violence is so seldom the answer. I will keep this for you to prevent any sin it might cause you to commit.” The man took the gun, pulled open one of the desk drawers, and dropped it in. He then sat down in the chair behind the desk and steepled his fingers, looking at me. “Giving your soul to the new covenant is not to be taken lightly,” he said, a self-satisfying grin on his lips. “It is a contract, an agreement with the church. But I have a feeling you may be more unwilling to fulfill this contract than most of our eager members. Perhaps you came here looking for something other than salvation,” he said, his features now hard as he stared into my eyes.
I was fighting an inner impulse battle, trying to stay connected to my limbs, trying to swing a kick up to catch this guy in the face or reel back and punch him. Call him an asswipe. Anything. But my body was silent.
Still.
He smiled at me. “I see the defiance in your eyes, but you are unable to throw off the pull of love and sanctity this holy place has over you, aren’t you?” He slid open the top desk drawer and pulled out a long knife with a curved blade. My mind went cold. I knew what this was. I’d seen it in Hell so often. Everyone downstairs wore these on their belts like dads up here wore cell phones. It was a flayer. A knife used for peeling a human like a potato, with slow meticulous cuts to torture them over and over. The man tested the blade. “Don’t worry, I will be your savior. I will give you salvation.” And he slid the blade across my arm. I felt the scream of nerves being severed as he began to peel my skin. My vision went black and then red sparks erupted behind my eyelids.
I was back downstairs. Screaming and crying filled the air. And the sounds of chains and the crack of whips and the smell of the furnace and singed flesh. I wasn’t going back. Not yet. Not until... A rush of raw-nerve, uncontrollable anger came over me as the memory of Nya’s death and, this time, a laughing Ornias filled my head. Ornias’ face morphed into the face of the demon standing over me with the flayer. I felt something click in my brain. I felt my leg kick out. My vision was beginning to clear and I saw my sneaker connect with the man’s face, right on his nose. I heard the crack of it breaking and the blade dug into my arm. Then the pressure was gone. He’d dropped the flayer to grab his nose.
My arms were moving now, clumsily, but still making progress as I moved them to push myself up from the desk surface. There was the sound of a lock tumbling at the door and it swung open to reveal both Noah and Stacks, unarmed except for the lock picks. I
pried my jaw open. “Run!” I rasped. Blood was trickling down onto the desk from the wound on my arm and my hand slipped in it.
“Come!” The man bellowed at them. I saw them both go stiff and begin the walk towards him, arms pinned to their sides. I could feel the tendrils in his voice now. They were snaking around me, invisible, carried on the sound of his words, but they weren’t paralyzing me. I could move. “Hold her down,” the man said, his voice muffled as he moved away, wiping at the blood running from his nose. I pushed off the desk, but my arm was weak and I stumbled. Noah grabbed me by my right arm and Stacks by my left. My body was mine again, but my neck felt heavy and weak as I turned to look at each of them. Only their eyes gave away the fear they were feeling as they held me firm between them. This suit-wearing demon was going to carve the three of us up like butter sculptures if we didn’t get out of here fast. Fuck this guy. He could be the one that killed Ellie. Did he put her head in that noose? Was he the reason her kids didn’t have a mother anymore? The muscles in my arms and legs tingled, and I could feel the blood rushing back to them as angry heat washed over the back of my neck. I could feel the open wound on my arm pulsing, stinging from the open cut. I tried to pull my arm away from Stacks. His grip tightened to the point I could feel the muscles around my bone shifting as he squeezed. My forearm was starting to turn purple with the blood that was trapped there, unable to circulate.
“I cannot thank you, gentlemen, enough for your assistance in cleansing our wayward...sister,” the man said. I kicked out and he moved away. “It looks like she is resisting the healing purge we are offering her.”
Anger. I was an idiot for not connecting the dots earlier. I needed to get the boys angry enough to throw off his compel spell.
“If we’re talking about who needs a ‘healing purge’ most around here, I don’t think I’d be the winner in that beauty contest,” I said, grasping at straws, trying to think what I could say to distract this asshole but also piss off the guys enough to make them break his hold on them.
“Oh really,” the man said, his face twisted into a sadistic smile.
“Yeah,” I said nodding at Stacks. “He routinely hangs out with hookers and gambles, drinks, steals, sells out his friends....and I literally once saw him take an ice cream cone from a kid and make the kid watch while he ate it.” The man looked bored, his attention still on me.
“But I can see the scars within you,” he said to me. “You’ve killed.”
I snorted. “So has he,” I nodded to Noah. “He killed his girlfriend when she wouldn’t sleep with him. Can you believe that?” I felt heat on my arm under Noah’s hands. A small trickle of smoke was starting to come from his fingertips.
“A lecherous sinner who resorts to violence and murder to make up for his own inadequacies,” the man said, studying Noah with intrigue. “Your own purge would be one of glorious release and you would be forever free of that whorish woman’s hold on your own spirit. What a pathetic excuse for humanity you make, boy. A coward running, useless to all. Time to embrace your desires and forge a new covenant to yourself moving forward.”
While the man monologued, Noah’s fingers had started twitching on my arm. When the man had said, “whorish woman”, Noah’s hold had loosened. I could see the man’s hold over Noah starting to crack as the anger literally burned inside him. The man paused in his speech and Noah dived at him. By this point, Noah’s hands looked like they were covered in glowing red embers. He clamped them around the man’s neck. The man let out a scream as smoke started to roll off his flesh. Noah head-butted him and they toppled backward to the ground. They rolled around, singeing the carpet until Noah ended up on top, putting all his weight behind his grip on the man’s neck. I turned to Stacks to see him blinking at me, confusion changing to disbelief and horror on his face. He quickly let go of my arm.
“Get the door!” I yelled at Stacks before turning back to Noah. They were grappling again. They were both on their sides and the man had pinned Noah pinned against the bookcase. His thumbs were in Noah’s eye sockets, a thin trickle of blood starting to leak from the corner of Noah’s left eye. My stomach jerked and I had a flashback of Noah in St. Louis, lying still, tied to that credenza. I jumped off the desk and came down with both feet on the side of the man’s head. I heard crunching cartilage and the man went still. The black cloud of gnats rose from the man’s crushed nose. I moved off him and pulled the desk drawer open to retrieve the .45. I glanced back down at Noah on the floor. He still hadn’t let go. The man’s dress shirt was on fire and his skin had been completely burned away around his throat.
“Noah!” I barked. Noah glanced up at the sound of his name and for a second, Noah’s eyes still seemed to be burning with anger. After a moment, he seemed to come to himself and he glanced back at the man. He jerked his hands off his neck and scrambled back from the body, still on his knees. Noah was staring at his hands and I heard the smoke detector overhead go off.
Great.
I grabbed Noah under the armpits from behind and got him to his feet. “We’ve got to go!”
Noah and I stumbled into the hall. At the end of it, I could see Stacks holding the back door open. We made it back to Lucy. Stacks piled in next to me so that Noah could put his, still smoldering hands, out the window.
We were quiet as I drove us away from the church as quickly as I could without drawing attention to ourselves. I drove to the westernmost corner of town, weaving in and out of neighborhoods just in case we were being followed. Not likely. But thinking about the fact that if we did have a tail, we would have lost them, did something to calm my pounding heart rate. We made it back to the Jeep trail and I pulled behind the stand of evergreens next to the tunnel entrance. I killed the engine and we sat still, listening to the soft clicking sounds of Lucy’s engine cooling off.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Seconded,” Noah and Stacks said together.
7
“So what did this little field trip tell us?” I asked.
“Well there’s nothing churchy actually going on in that church,” Stacks said. “Or you would have melted. I mean you splashed around in the baptismal font.”
I nodded. “Agreed. So obviously something supernatural is going on there. Our friend in the suit was definitely a demon.”
“Really?” Noah asked. “But, I mean, he was using, like, mind control on us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You remember the demon that had you glued to the pavement on our fist SUV of Demons encounter? This was sort of a more advanced form of that spell. Demons, some of them, the ones who study really hard in demon school, I guess, can ‘compel’ people.”
“Whoa,” Noah said. “Do you think that’s what happened to those three that killed themselves? Do you think that guy told them to do it?”
“Could have been,” Stacks said. He turned to narrow his eyes at me. “How were you able to throw him off?”
I shrugged. “I was pissed. And the more he talked, the more pissed I got and then I kicked him in the face.” Stacks looked surprised so I continued. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. I was trying to get the two of you pissed off so that you could throw it off but,” I glared at Stacks. “You just stood there like a kid in detention, not getting riled up by all your past crimes that I was insulting you with.”
“What can I say?” Stacks said with a shrug. “I’m a pacifist. And everything you said was true anyway, so where’s the flag on the play?”
I turned to Noah. “Well, I’m not sorry for airing Stacks’ dirty laundry, but I’m sorry for...what I said about you.” Noah was studying his hands, not wanting to meet my eye.
“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled.
I opened my mouth to say more but Stacks cut me off. “Ok,” he said. “So now that we’ve all kissed and made up, what else did we learn?”
“That the demons are probably using their offices as demonic arts and craft supply closets,” I said. “Anyone want to put some green on the bet that they’re d
oing some bad ritual-type shit after dark when Nigel leaves?”
“No bet,” Stacks muttered.
“So what’s next?” Noah asked. “What if all the demons here can do the mind-control thing?”
Stacks put his hands up to cover his eyes. “Even if all the demons in leadership there have the ability to compel, there’s no way they could compel everyone at the same time, all the time. If they are all using a ‘compel’ spell to control the congregation, they must be using something like a fulcire.”