Division Zero: Thrall (28 page)

Motionless, the patrol craft hovered fifty feet in the air two blocks away from Faith Pentecostal Baptist Ministries. Daylight grew long as the time crept up on six. Kirsten stared over the hood at the distant building, trying to make room next to her guilt for contempt. Evan expected her to say she was working late again; his lack of complaining hurt worse than a screaming fit.
I hope he knows I have to do this, and I’m not losing interest in him.

“Wren? Have you heard anything I just said?”

She glanced away from the building, facing the spectral rendition of Captain Eze drawn in hologram. “Yes, sir. I’m to wait outside for backup.”

“Officer Logan is upset you asked her to stay behind, you know. I saw that look in your eye; I don’t want you charging in there alone.”

“I’m not alone, I have Dorian with me. Besides”―the frustration in her voice eased to concern―“Nicole already got possessed once today, this guy seems to be able to control weak demons. I’m afraid of what this guy might be able to do to her.” She glanced away from him, out the side window at approaching blue-and-whites. “She’s a close friend, sir. I might hesitate if things go bad. These Division One guys aren’t gonna be much more help.”

“The good Reverend doesn’t just have paranormal allies, Wren. He’s got at least two thugs, and I don’t want a repeat of what happened at the Motte residence. This is as much a show of force as anything else.”

Kirsten grumbled to herself as four Division 1 patrol craft pulled up alongside hers. A touch longer, the primary differences were the color scheme and the vehicle-grade laser in a bubble above the passenger seat. She felt a twinge of jealousy at the fear and awe those cars inspired, while all her black one got was curious looks.

“Be careful in there, Kirsten.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, trying not to sound too much like a scolded child.

“He might have a point.” Dorian waited for the hologram to fade out. “You do have a habit of charging in alone without thinking. You got a little someone counting on you to come home alive now.”

Kirsten waved at the closest patrol craft and nudged hers forward into a gradual descent. The cabin filled with a mechanical thrum as the street-tires unfolded through their protective doors and locked into place. “I know. I just can’t dwell on that when I’m”―she clenched her jaw as she pulled back on the stick, easing into a perfect landing― “out here. Hesitating is just as bad as―”

“You need to stop beating yourself up over that.” Dorian walked forward through the hood of the car, pausing just past the bumper.

Kirsten shoved the door open and patted the helmet back on her head. “Whenever I see Shani, there’s always a glimmer of terror in her eyes for those first few seconds.” She exhaled. “I guess it’s an improvement over running away.”

“Kids are resilient. She knows you couldn’t have hurt her. Give her time.”

“Agent Wren,” said an approaching man in blue armor. “I’m Sergeant Donovan, what’s the situation?”

She found herself eye-to-pectoral with an enormous dark-skinned man in Division 1 tactical armor. In addition to the large ballistic pistol on his hip, he carried a UCF M2402―a compact Class 3 battle rifle chambered in 8mm caseless.
I guess they’re not here to arrest anyone.
The rigid set of his cheekbones gave away his military bearing. Just as she thought him handsome, a pang of unease hit her in the stomach. Kirsten clenched her jaw and hid any outward sign of it.
What the hell is wrong with me now?

“My captain requested you here in the event my suspect has people working for him.” She looked up again, not aware her hand cradled her gut. “I don’t know precisely what he is capable of, but I am certain there are paranormal forces at work in there. To be completely honest with you, Sergeant, I don’t think it’s a good idea for your team to go in there.”

Sergeant Donovan rendered a grim nod, his face caught in the half-grin, half-wince of an NCO in a position to be able to ignore the word of an officer. “Ma’am, Captain Eze said you would try to go in alone. We have orders from him to escort you until such time as we confirm the number of ordinary hostiles in play.”

Kirsten glared at nothing in particular.
Sometimes Eze is too much like a protective dad. Why doesn’t he trust me?
Her eyes narrowed as she imagined his response, narrated in her head in his voice: “It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s the people inside the church.”

With a series of hand signals, Donovan sent two of the patrol officers, Rivera and Polk, around back. “Zahn, Womack, Lewis, you’re with me inside. Edison, you and Simons cover the street.” The four officers advanced on the main door of the wide one-story building, with Donovan taking point. Edison and Simons remained outside, watching the front and sides.

Kirsten, E-90 out, followed close behind.

“Eze does have a point,” said Dorian. “What if he’s got a dozen fanatics in there?”

She shot him a look of irritation mixed with worry. “Something isn’t right.”

Dorian pulled his sidearm out. “A reverend may be summoning creatures out of the abyss.
Of course
something isn’t right.”

Sergeant Donovan booted in the front door, M2402 raised. Infrared range-finding lasers streaked through the dust, flickering amber rays visible due to the armor’s optics. Donovan’s voice flooded the area, projected from loudspeakers on the side of his helmet.

“Attention: This is the police. We have an arrest order for one Benjamin Gerome Wallis the Third. Be advised this building is now under police lockdown. All occupants are to surrender immediately. Anyone exiting the premises in violation of this lawful detention order is subject to lethal force. All persons are hereby ordered to lie face down upon the ground, arms and legs spread. Failure to comply may result in bodily harm.”

Officer Zahn, the only female among them, fired without warning into the wall to the left. Her rifle spat two three-round bursts through cinderblocks. Daryl, one of Reverend Wallis’s musclebound thugs, slumped out of a doorway and landed dead on top of a long rifle. His dark face held a lifeless stare, streaked with grey dust and blood. His right hand fell away from a pistol under his jacket.

“Never ceases to amaze me how these idiots forget we can see them through walls,” said Zahn with a smirk.

Kirsten’s blood ran cold: both from the casual way in which the officer killed a man as well as the lack of a ghost. Her alarm lessened as she thought he might have been a synthetic, but realized the blood was not white.
Even the ones that transcend right away should be there long enough for me to see.

“Gentlemen, I am sure there has been a misunderstanding.”

The voice emerged from maroon curtains set up behind a pulpit fancy enough to seem out of place in a repurposed commercial building. Reverend Wallis stepped through a gap in the hanging cloth, still in his expensive grey suit and gleaming black wingtips. He had his arms to the sides, palms facing up in a devotee’s gesture. Behind him, four figures in archaic black hooded robes emerged. Like ancient monks, they held their arms folded before their chests, hands tucked into sleeves.

“Reverend,” said Kirsten. “We have some things to talk about. I need to ask you some questions about Julio Ramirez.”

Wallis closed his eyes. His head shifted left as if slapped by a weak phantom. “Ahh, Miss Wren. That is unfortunate.”

“You’re an Astral, Wren, right?” asked Officer Womack, the tallest, while jabbing his rifle through the air at Wallis. “On the ground, Padre, the Zero here can still interrogate your ass as a ghost.”

“Hold on.” Kirsten held up her left hand, keeping the E-90 poised at the followers. “No one needs to die.” She shot an uneasy sidelong glance at Daryl’s body.
Was he even alive? What the hell…

Reverend Wallis drew in a sharp breath, raising his voice in a preacher’s cadence. “Jesus made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” The Reverend swung his arm to point at the Division 1 officers. “I say to you now,
you
are the oppressors. You trade not in coins but in our freedoms. You are the unrighteous trespassing in a house of God. So shall you be driven out!”

At the end of his rant, Wallis’s dark, bald scalp dripped with sweat that meandered through deep ridges in his forehead over wild, raised brows. His eyes burned with the fury of a zealot, though his only weapon was a wagging finger. The four robed figures all screamed at once, flinging their arms to the sides. Knives concealed in their sleeves gleamed in the dim light as they raised them and charged.

All four Division 1 officers fired. Kirsten aimed at Wallis, waiting for him to do something, but all he did was stand there pointing with an imperious sneer. A hail of 8mm slugs shredded the charging fanatics; the closest one skidded to a bloody halt more than six feet away from the line of blue. Kirsten’s eyes watered at the presence of ballistic propellant fumes. Wallis’s sanctimonious expression faded to one of amusement as he lowered his arm and smiled at them through the haze of smoke.

Dorian frowned at the dead, glancing from metal knives to armored officers. “Maybe you had a point about religion and stupidity going hand in hand.”

“On the ground, now!” roared Sergeant Donovan.

Wallis ignored him.

The officers advanced. When they moved among the corpses, dark ethereal wisps surged out of the dead. Bodies lifted skyward as the energy exuded from their backs. Although the officers could not sense the specters, they did see dead men float.

“What the fuck!” yelled Zahn, as she pumped more bullets into the corpse. Gore spattered about as the energy seep leapt through the azure muzzle flare into her chest.

“Get away!” Kirsten shrieked, attempting to gather her psionic energy to latch on to the nearest one.

It slipped through her fingers and jumped into Officer Womack, right in front of her.

Donovan whirled about, taking a step away, but one of the shadows swam into him from behind. He stiffened, rose up on his toes, and staggered down to his knees. The fourth officer, Lewis, an average-sized man, roared with panic and fired just over Wallis’s head as another spirit flew into his chest with enough force to knock him over backwards.

Dorian turned on his heel as Zahn pivoted her rifle around in a suicidal orientation. He leapt onto her, wrestling the entity inside her for control of the weapon. “Kirsten, they’re…”

Kirsten dove away from Womack’s attempt to smash her over the helmet with his M2402. Sergeant Donovan grabbed her from behind and lifted her off the ground, holding her for the tall officer to shoot. She growled, more angry than scared.
This is exactly what the fuck I was worried about. I hope Eze is watching this shit in real time.
The lash unfurled from her left hand; the sight of it at last brought an end to Reverend Wallis’s imperious laughter. She flicked it to the rear, wrenching it through the semisolid mass it found. It flowed through her own body as a not-altogether-unpleasant sensation of coolness, drawing a howl out of Sergeant Donovan as though she had lit his nether bits on fire.

He fell to the side, vomiting black ichor with such force his nostrils became spray nozzles painting the inside of his visor. Womack fired at her. The lash sucked back into her hand as she shifted her mental exertion to her suit. Feeding from her energy, the Psi Armor empowered itself with a kinetic field. Dull grey stripes along the arms and legs of the gloss black material glowed bright violet. The slugs hit her in the chest, knocking her into a flat, bouncing slide as the near-frictionless interaction between the force field and the floor did nothing to slow her down.

Gasping for breath from the impact, Kirsten spiraled legs-first into the front wall. Sergeant Donovan gurgled something unintelligible as he reacted to Womack and Lewis both aiming at Zahn, who appeared to be having a seizure while wrestling with Dorian. Kirsten scrambled to her feet as Donovan jumped at Lewis while firing a single shot into Womack’s thigh. The slug bounced off the armor with a loud click, though the impact shoved the leg out from under the big man. Donovan bowled into Lewis as Dorian caught Zahn with a leg sweep and knocked her down.

Kirsten sprinted and dove on Womack as he stood back up, feeling like a twelve-year-old trying to wrestle a pro Gee-ball player. She wrapped herself around his weapon and kept it aimed away from the other officers. Sergeant Donovan manhandled Officer Lewis, tossing the average-sized man around like a toy. Dorian knelt on Zahn’s back, punching her repeatedly in the head and ribs.

“Dorian, what are you―” Womack spun her into a column, knocking the wind out of her. She did not lose her grip.

“I’m hitting the entity, not her.” He changed his grip, foiling Zahn’s attempt to bring her sidearm to bear on Donovan. The pistol went off, adding two new spots of daylight to the ceiling.

The Reverend, hands folded, watched the fracas with an amused smile. He made no move to involve himself in the goings-on, nor did he leave. Kirsten tried to glare at him, though it was all she could do to keep Womack from machine-gunning his squad mates. Twice she tried to call the lash, and twice she went face-first into wooden pews.

Helmet… good.

“What the fuck is this?” yelled Donovan.

“This is why”―Kirsten raised both legs to absorb another attempt to smash her into the wall― “I wanted you to wait outside.”

Her boots ground into the drywall as she pushed against Womack’s much greater strength. She squirmed around, staring at the side of his rifle. A tiny telekinetic nudge hit the magazine release, dropping his remaining fifty-something shots to the ground with a metallic clatter. She squeezed his hand, forcing him to fire the round in the chamber into the wall.

“All units do not, repeat, do not enter!” Donovan yelled into his comm. “Contain anyone trying to leave, but do not enter the building under any circumstances until Zero okays it.”

“Thanks, little late but thaaaaa―”

With the rifle useless, Womack hauled it (and Kirsten by virtue of her being wrapped around it) over his head and slammed her down on the floor. The hit left her paralyzed for an instant in the center of a dust cloud. A weak gasp slipped out of her as he went for his sidearm.