Evil Eternal (21 page)

He used his body’s momentum to reach up and slash at the tentacle around his ankle with his dagger. The squid-demon loosed its grip and he was free, somersaulting in midair and landing on his feet. He quickly flicked the dagger into the tentacled demon’s face. It reeled back, blinded, tentacles slashing back and forth in a frenzy. Feeling the other demon approaching from behind, he leapt into the air a split second before his back was impaled. He watched from fifteen feet above as the demon collided with its brethren with the force of two tanks going at full speed. The top half of their bodies exploded, showering the unconscious people around them in a deluge of grotesque meat and blood. It settled into open mouths, ear canals, exposed nostrils and hair. Some would choke to death on it in their sleep, while others, the ones who would survive this night, would never be able to wash the taste and smell from their memories.

When Father Michael touched back down, he drove a pair of crucifix blades into what was left of their deformed skulls, shouting, “Return home to your Prince of Lies!” Gold shafts of light shot from their bodies like spotlights as they shrieked in agony.

Two more demons that had been fast approaching stopped before the light display. Father Michael ran to the pile of rubble by the main entrance to retrieve his trident. If he was lucky, he might get it with a half second to spare.

On the other side of the hall floor, five of the demons from the stage rushed Shane at once. Hoping that Father Michael and Monsignor Stanton were telling him the truth about his unnatural gift, he stood his ground and found himself laughing as they stopped in midstride, bouncing several feet away in a perplexed backwards roll. It was as if they had hit an invisible wall made of rubber.

One of the demons, the one whose head had split in two so a kind of bony circular blade could sit amidst the two halves, spinning and slashing from back to front, howled in pure rage. It was the first to regain its footing and make another lunge, only to be repelled. Before it could try again, Shane drove a dagger into its chest. He watched as the beast split like a cracked eggshell and dazzling, golden brilliance escaped from its rotted cavity. The fleshy bone saw disconnected and skittered across the floor. He had to dodge to his left to escape the bite of its jagged teeth. It settled against a wall and became a font of light before sizzling and crackling in the holy heat.

The other demon impotently tried to attack him from behind as he watched what he would always recall as the ugly-ass-circular-saw-demon dissolve into a bubbling mush.

“That’s damn cool,” he said as the coagulating puddle of demon-human remains dissolved into nothing. The other demons had not stopped trying to break through his divine defenses, pouncing on him the moment they were back on their feet, or in one of their cases, on its trio of foot-wide hooves, only to find themselves thrown about with no effort on their intended target’s part.

This further bolstered Shane’s courage and he feigned a jab at one of the demons with his crucifix. It reeled away in terror, covering its face with arms the size of a man’s thighs, the flesh festooned with boils that leaked large cockroaches. The roaches withered when they made contact with anything other than warm skin. The rest skittered around prone bodies, hissing and clacking.

Shane looked on, disgusted.

Then he smiled. “First, I’m gonna kick your asses. And when I’m done, I’m going for poppa up there.” He looked up towards the stage but Cain and Aimee were gone.

Of course!
Shane was angry with himself.
Cain knows what I’m capable of. He experienced it himself last week. He just used them to keep me occupied while he took off with Aimee.
He looked around but could not find a trace of either of them. All he could see was Father Michael sprinting towards a pair of demons with his trident held aloft like a javelin.

Father Michael and the duo of demons were barreling towards an inevitable impact when he used the trident to pole vault over them. As he landed on his feet, he hurled the trident with all his might. It pulverized one of the back entrances to the hall, a timely maneuver as a dozen security personnel and police were only footsteps away from making their entrance. Some of the prostrate crowd, rendered unconscious by Father Michael’s inhuman wail, were starting to stir. He and Shane had to quickly undo Cain’s handiwork before people regained their senses and others dug their way in from the outside. This infernal carnage was not meant to be witnessed by mortals and time was running out before the church’s darkest secret was revealed. He felt that no matter how hard they tried, there was no stopping what had been set in motion, just as Jesus had to meet his inevitable end on the cross.

The pair of monstrosities he had high-jumped over stood side by side, growling to gain his attention, their fleshless arms touching. He watched as their bodies melted into one another, forming one giant beast. It stood well over eleven feet tall with undulating tendons and muscles. Its face had morphed into an immense, heavy-lipped mouth with razor-sharp teeth and a forked tongue that, when flicked, shot deadly shards of dart-like bone. One of the bone darts caught Father Michael in the face, slicing through his cheek. Another imbedded itself in his shoulder.

“I thought you could fight,” the creature bellowed from its awesome orifice. “Come on, you little Christfucker, fight!”

The serpent’s tongue worked even faster, calling up an endless supply of organic projectiles. Father Michael ducked, rolled and jumped to avoid the blizzard of darts. He was struck many times from head to toe. When he tried to retrieve a crucifix-dagger from his pocket, his hand was impaled to his hip. Yowling in pain, he yanked it free with his other hand and turned his back on the demon. His back was peppered with sharp shards of deformed tooth and bone. The demon laughed over the furious motions of its tongue.

“Turning your back on me won’t make me go away!” it cackled.

It stomped its foot and the entire building shook. A large fissure started at its feet and raced out towards him in a jagged, concrete and metal streak.

Father Michael danced over the crevice and dropped to the floor. He tucked his knees hard into his chest and rolled directly at the demonic aberration. Contact with the floor drove the darts deeper into his flesh but he was oblivious to the pain. He spun between its legs and hacked at the thing’s Achilles tendons as he broke from his crouch behind it. The demon screamed and began to fall backwards, massive arms lashing at the air.

He had just enough time to thrust his arm upwards so the dagger plunged through the falling demon’s back. The weight of it as it fell onto him helped the blade pass through its body and crash past its rib cage. Father Michael’s arm was buried in the creature up to his bicep. His muscles tightened as he struggled to support its weight. He felt its insides burn white-hot and quiver with release. It didn’t take long for it to disintegrate to a heap of mucilaginous waste.

He rose from the backwash of filth and shouted to Shane, “Hurry boy!”

Shane had two demons trapped in a corner. They knew it was no use trying to attack him. One retained its human body but had the head and penis of two albino cobras, while the other was a pulsating blob of bursting pustules with long daggers for hands and feet.

The cobra heads hissed and spat a milky substance that crackled when it hit the floor. The one with the daggers dragged them across the carpet, much like a bull pawed at the dirt before making a deadly pass.

He had to find Aimee, which meant he didn’t have time to fuck around with their theatrics. There was nothing they could do anyway, so it was all just nonsensical posturing.

“Say good night, motherfuckers,” he barked and plunged a pair of daggers into their chests until his hands were immersed inside each. They flopped about as if they had hit an electric fence and Shane’s Dirty Harry veneer melted away. Frozen with disgust and fear, he kept his arms rigid and shook with their death spasms. Mercifully, they putrefied in seconds, freeing the daggers and his hands, but leaving an inky residue. His stomach heaved and he doubled over, emptying everything he’d ever eaten onto the floor.

He felt a hand tug on his jacket and he went rigid. It was Father Michael. He was pointing at the grotesque deformity that had been Patty Wilson. “She’s yours, son. I’ll deal with them.” Two more demons had charged behind the stage and were trying to wrest Father Michael’s trident from the rubble.

Shane approached the sow-beast, figuring it would be an easy kill as it looked incapable of movement. He had been hoping to save it for last but Father Michael was running the show. Pulling his arm back as far as he could, he hurled a crucifix-dagger at the creature. With lightning reflexes, it swatted it away with one of its leaking teats.

“What the hell?”

He ran at it instead, his dagger held high and ready to strike. A thick stream of bile rocketed from a giant, gray breast and sent him sprawling. The beast sniggered as he collided with several dazed bodies on the floor. He screamed in pain. The black-and-maroon fluid that covered him burned like acid. “You’re not so invincible, are you, street boy?” it bellowed.

Shane pulled off his jacket and wiped his hands and face with the inner lining. Red blotches dotted every exposed inch of his skin. His mohawk faintly smoked as even hair was eaten away by the vile lactate.

Another lesson learned. The demons couldn’t physically attack him, but there were other, more indirect ways to get their mitts on him, or in this case, acid milk.

Anger eddied inside him and he let fly with another dagger while diving for cover behind an upturned table. The blade was again flicked away and the table rocked with the force of a blast from one of its nipples. He could hear the wood sizzle as the fluid ate it away.

Spotting another table, he lunged and pulled it down for cover. With raw, trembling hands, he extracted a small pouch from his pocket and emptied its contents in his palm. He needed to get close to the demon and to escape its geyser attack. The table slammed into his back as it was hosed down, the wood crackling as its veneer corroded.

His hands shook as he looked at the powder in his palm. Father Michael had told him he would know the right time to use it. Shane hoped he was right.

Once the stream had stopped, he shouted, “Hey, Patty, did you like that song, ‘Disco Inferno’?”

The beast became silent for a moment. Shane seized the opportunity, jumped up from behind the table and made a mad dash towards it. He saw one of its nipples become engorged and double in thickness. In another second, he would be bathed in acid. He skidded to a stop, opened his palm and blew grains of fine black powder onto the demon, then ran for his life behind it and out of its sight and the range of its deadly breasts. He felt the heat of the flame on the back of his neck.

Engulfed in an eerie, silent blue holocaust, it writhed in torment, teats and breasts flailing about and spewing their deadly broth in every direction, coating some of the people on the floor and reducing them to simmering masses of flesh and bone.

“Burn, baby, burn,” Shane murmured without joy.

Two fiendish bodies flew through the air just over his head and crashed into a pillar with a loud cracking of bone. Father Michael was right behind them, slamming his trident into their broken bodies. They twitched as amber light sprang from their demolished vessels of malformed flesh and bone.

The blue flame around the Patty Wilson demon had extinguished itself by the time the priest joined Shane’s side.

“Are you okay?” Shane asked breathlessly, inspecting the dozens of bone-like objects sticking out of the man’s body. He wasn’t in much better shape. The kiss of air on his burned flesh brought an unending tide of pain.

“Where are Cain and the others?”

In response to his query, the two remaining demons of Cain’s unholy apostles came shrieking towards them on enormous, silvery bat wings. Father Michael and Shane hit the ground to avoid being decapitated as the bat-demons swiped at them with forearms that had been honed down to sharp scythes.

“Your time is nearly up, gentlemen,” Cain’s voice echoed throughout the hall. Try as they might, they could not locate him.

He was right. Many of the people from the convention were starting to pull themselves up, though still in a thick fog. Father Michael couldn’t let loose with another wail for fear of killing them. Normally, he would have done so without a moment’s hesitation, as it was part and parcel of the brand of exorcism he had been created to perform. Tonight had changed that, and in a great sense, he was relieved.

“Take this,” he ordered Shane, handing him his trident. Following the priest’s lead, he got up and ran to the stage. The bats circled overhead and made a beeline towards them.

Father Michael crouched, then propelled himself straight into their flight path. He pitched a dagger at the one on his left, piercing its wing and sending it crashing to the ground where it tumbled into the podium on the stage, smashing it to splinters. The other canted to avoid the airborne priest, but not before he grabbed hold of its hair and hauled himself onto its back.

“Shane, now!” he shouted as he rode the bat like a bucking bronco, guiding it to Shane who stood ready with the trident pointed at them. Driving his knee into the bat’s back, Father Michael felt its spine crack and it dropped like a shattered skeet. He jumped off just before it landed with a loud
thwack
onto the trident. Shane, the bat and the trident skidded in a heap off the stage.