Possess (13 page)

Seventeen

B
RIDGET SPRINTED OUT THE SIDE
door of the church, down the granite stairs into the school courtyard. Demons in the church? That was impossible, right?
Right?

She stopped running and gulped deep breaths of crisp, damp air. Alexa had heard the voices too. She was sure of it. How could she and Alexa possibly be connected by those . . .
things
?

She wanted to confront Alexa, but what was she going to do—march back into choir practice and demand to know why Alexa was hearing disembodied voices in a church? Yeah, that was a one-way ticket to the loony bin.

No, she needed answers. Now.

Bridget whirled around and made for the rectory, throwing the door open with such force that the crucifix in the entryway thumped against the wall in protest. She took the stairs two at a time and barged straight into Monsignor’s office.

“Monsignor, I need to talk to—”

Father Santos was crouched behind Monsignor’s desk. He shot to his feet as Bridget barreled through the door, his face bright red. “Bridget! W-what are you d-doing here?”

Bridget arched an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Yes, well. Yes, of course.” Father Santos stepped out from behind Monsignor’s desk. “I was just, er, retrieving a book. Yes, a book I lent Monsignor Renault.”

“A book.” There was no book in his hand, just a screwdriver he was trying desperately to shimmy up the sleeve of his jacket.

Father Santos cocked his head. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she lied.

“D-did you need to speak with Monsignor? I believe he’s with Ms. Laveau today, down at the doll shop.”

Why was no one around when she needed them?

“Perhaps—perhaps I could be of some help?”

“Oh.” Bridget stopped, taken aback. She hadn’t thought to ask Father Santos, mostly because the last time they had a one-on-one, he had assaulted her. They’d just been having a normal conversation when he’d caught sight of her bracelet and lost his mind. A normal but totally weird conversation about the hand of God and . . . Whoa! That’s where she’d heard about the Watchers first. Father Santos.

“Who are the Watchers?” she blurted out.

Father Santos’s beady black eyes grew wide. “Has Monsignor mentioned them to you?”

“No.”

“But someone has?”

“Yes.”

Father Santos scratched his neck and scrunched up his face. “At the doll shop?”

Bridget nodded.

“How much time until your next class?”

Bridget glanced at the clock on the wall. “Fifteen minutes.”

Father Santos nodded. “All right, then.”

He walked straight out the door and across the hall. Not a word, not a gesture requesting her to follow. When he reached his office, he turned back and noticed she wasn’t behind him.

“Well?” he asked with a sigh. “Do you want to know about the Watchers or not?”

Bridget cast a glance at Monsignor’s desk. There was no doubt in her mind that Father Santos had been trying to get into the locked drawer, but why? The two priests didn’t like each other, but what could Monsignor possibly have that would reduce Father Santos to breaking and entering?

He disappeared into his office. He could tell her what she needed to know, but did she really want to lock herself up in his office again? Or should she just wait for Monsignor?

Nope. This couldn’t wait. She’d have to brave the multiple personalities of Father Santos.

Bridget heaved her backpack higher on her shoulder and followed the priest into his office.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” Father Santos said when he was comfortably seated behind his desk.

Bridget rolled her eyes. Oh, wouldn’t this be fun.

Father Santos held up a hand. “I know what you’re thinking, but bear with me.”

“Fine.” Bridget slumped back in her chair and wondered if coming to him had been a mistake.

Father Santos swung his chair around to an antique cupboard against the wall. Bridget was pretty sure it hadn’t been there during her last visit. He unlocked the cupboard with a tiny key and extracted a box: flat and wooden with a smooth, polished lid and a little brass latch on the side. Father Santos laid the box reverentially on his desk. He whipped out a pair of white cloth gloves, which he pulled on with great care, like a doctor about to go into surgery. Once he was sure the gloves were spotless, he opened the box and removed a plastic sleeve in which rested a collection of papers.

Father Santos slid the worn, yellowed pages from the plastic cover, and Bridget saw that their edges were jagged and frayed, as if they had been torn from a book, and they were written in a highly ornate, embellished scroll in what appeared to be Latin.

“Eighth century,” Father Santos said, tracing the intricate border work with a gloved finger. “All that remains of the Skellig Manuscript, transcribed by the Augustinian monks of County Kerry. The Vatican obtained these after they were smuggled out of Ireland during Cromwell’s invasion, and they have remained in the archives ever since.”

“They just let you take this from the Vatican?” That didn’t sound like the Catholic Church she knew.

Father Santos cleared his throat. “I, um, have special privileges.”

“Right.” Of the five-fingered discount variety. Great: he was weird, schizophrenic,
and
a klepto.

“As I was saying,” Father Santos said quickly. “The Skellig Manuscript tells a very unique version of how a group of angels fell from grace, a version that had never been told before, and never since.”

Bridget arched an eyebrow. “Hello, Catholic school? I’ve heard this about a bazillion times.”

“Do you want me to tell you about the Watchers or not?”

“Fine.”

“Good. Now there was the first fall, when Satan led a rebellion against God and was defeated by the Archangel Michael. That’s the one you learned about in school, no doubt. But there was another fall from grace, a second fall. The angel Semyaza led two hundred angels to Earth, where they had, um,
relations
with human women.”

“Ew.”

Father Santos laughed nervously. “Yes, well, Semyaza and his angels were banished for all eternity, where they became Satan’s kings of Hell.”

Bridget had to stifle a yawn. Her head was starting to spin with all the biblical nerdery. “Okay, sure.” Why not?

He smiled in understanding. “Don’t worry, this is where it gets interesting.”

Bridget sure hoped so.

“According to the apocryphal books of the Bible, Semyaza and his followers were known as the Watchers.”

Bridget sat upright in her chair. That was not what she’d been expecting. “No way.”

“Way. And their human mistresses bore a race of half angel–half human giants known as the Nephilim.”

“But why would the demons in the doll shop accuse me of being a fallen angel? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m getting there. The Nephilim were evil, and they spread their corruption throughout the world of man. Eventually, God sent a great flood to rid the Earth of the Nephilim, but . . .” Father Santos carefully turned over the first loose page of the Skellig Manuscript and pointed to a line on the next page. “According to this, the Nephilim survived and remained loyal to their banished forefathers. To this day, they await the opportunity to summon the kings of Hell to Earth and take revenge upon God for their banishment.”

Bridget was getting a little lost. “And that’s bad, right?”

Father Santos cocked his head to one side. “Yes, that would be bad.”

“Oh. Okay, got it.”

“Here is where you come in.”

Bridget grimaced. “If you tell me I’m in that book, I’m going to throw up on this desk right now.”

“Heh.” Again Father Santos carefully flipped another page of the manuscript. “Some of the Watchers,” he continued, “showed repentance for their lust and wished to make amends to God. But an angel, once fallen from grace, cannot repent his sins. Instead, God took pity on their offspring. He separated the Nephilim into two groups: the Emim, descendants of the unrepentant fallen angels, and the Watchers, the children of the penitent angels tasked to succeed where their fathers had failed. God granted certain powers—the touch of God—to the Watchers, which allowed them to hold dominion over the Emim. It was their job to prevent the Emim from summoning their demon forefathers from Hell.”

It all sounded so ridiculous. Bridget laughed out loud.

Father Santos looked hurt. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re trying to tell me that I’m part angel? Is that it?”

Father Santos laced his chubby fingers together. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“How do you figure?”

“Look, that’s a cool story and all, but I don’t believe I’m the latest in a line of biblical demon slayers. That’s a little too Buffy for me, okay?”

“Then how do you explain what has been happening to you?”

Hormones. Depression. Maybe she was crazy? Any of those options made more sense than Father Santos’s story.

“You can’t explain it, can you?”

Bridget threw up her hands. “But it doesn’t even make sense! This is like a fairy tale, a bedtime story.” She pointed at the Skellig Manuscript. “Things like this don’t happen.”

Father Santos pursed his lips and flipped to another page in the manuscript. “Oh, really? Then how do you explain this?”

Bridget followed his white-clad finger to the next page of the manuscript. It was a map, supposedly of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as best she could tell, though the topography was all wrong. Several of the land masses were labeled with titles Bridget didn’t recognize, with arrows coming from the area around the Holy Land and sweeping north, south, and east.

“This is an eighth-century map of the known world, showing emigration patterns out of the Holy Land. The Emim did not care to be held in check by their cousins. Though they could not physically touch or harm the Watchers, they could use their influence over men against them. The Emim raised human armies that slaughtered hundreds of Watchers. The surviving Watchers fled, scattering themselves throughout the barely habitable regions of the world, forgetting much of who and what they were in the process. Nordic Europe, the barren deserts of Africa, the northern plains of China.”

“China?” Bridget gaped.

“Yes,” Father Santos said, flipping to the last of the manuscript pages. “The line of Watchers, listed here by their clan names. How’s your Latin?”

Bridget cringed.

“Then I’ll translate.” Father Santos didn’t even look at the page; he apparently had the manuscript memorized. “A tribe of Watchers moved to the east, to the kingdom known as Han, to the protection of the ruler of the Han, Emperor Gaozu, also known as Liu Bang.”

Liu? “But that would mean my dad . . .” Her voice faltered.

Memories flooded her mind: her dad asking if she ever heard monsters in her room at night, reminding her if she ever had anything she needed to talk about, something she didn’t understand, that she could always come to him. And her bracelet. That damned charm bracelet, which was, apparently, an amulet of exorcists going back a couple hundred years. Had he known what she was? Had he known because he had the same power?

“He would have told me,” she said at last.

“Not necessarily. You only discovered your talents in the face of a demonic infestation, which is rare, to say the least. It’s difficult to estimate how many Watchers never have an experience like that. Also, we aren’t entirely sure whether the powers exist in each generation or only manifest randomly throughout a family line.”

Bridget gripped the arm of the chair. Her hands trembled.

“He was k-killed last year,” Father Santos said gently. “Wasn’t he?”

“Killed” was an insult. “Murdered.”

“Er, yes. By the man who broke into the sanctuary here at St. Michael’s?”

Milton Undermeyer. Bridget nodded.

“Your father h-h-had seen Mr. Undermeyer on several occasions, and was in the process of diagnosing his mental capacities, correct?”

Father Santos knew way too much about the Undermeyer case for someone who had just shown up from the Vatican. It made her nervous.

“What’s your point?” she said.

Father Santos stared at her with his small, dark eyes. “Schizophrenia is a common misdiagnosis for demonic possession. If your father was a, well . . . was like yourself, don’t you think it rather odd that his death should coincide with such a case?”

“But—”

“Have you ever wondered why Milton Undermeyer, the school janitor, would have had to break into the church? He had a key to every door at St. Michael’s.”

“He was crazy.”

“Or maybe he was possessed. And he knew something, something he never told anyone else. Something that made him break into the church that night.”

Penemuel’s words flooded her mind.
“The messenger was sent. His warning was not delivered. You must find the messenger.”
A message from her dad. A message from a Watcher.

Bridget closed her eyes. Could she really deny it? Could she really keep pretending that this wasn’t happening?

“They called me a traitor,” she said.

“Who did?”

“The demons at the doll shop. This is what they meant.” She felt trapped. “I’m a traitor because I’m one of them. I’m a demon too.”

“That’s not true.”

Bridget jumped to her feet. “Isn’t it? If you’re right, then we come from the same source, those demons and me.”

Father Santos yanked at his collar. “Well . . .”

“So this thing I can do? This ability that you and Monsignor seem to think is so great? It’s a big hot mess for me. Do you get that?”

“Bridget, let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“Monsignor said that demons are evil. Pure evil. Like, they have no other goal than spreading that evil through our world. How am I not a part of that?”

Father Santos sighed. “Honestly? I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair and drew a hand over his brow. “But since you have the ability to banish evil from our world, it would make sense that you’re not a part of it.”

Like any of this made sense.