The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) (27 page)
Read The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) Online
Authors: Lex Duncan
“Give me twenty minutes,” I said, and ran.
***
I could hear Chief Morales yelling after me, but I didn't care. I couldn't stop until Rosie was safe. I crashed into the forest, the undergrowth snagging at my clothes, stray branches clawing at my cheeks. The darkness cloyed my senses. I slowed my pace to a jog to make up for my lack of sight.
“Rosie?” I yelled, tripping over an exposed root. I caught myself on the nearest tree and yelled out again. “Rose? It's Beatrice! You don't have to hide anymore!”
“You didn't have to follow me,” I said, though I was glad she did. Her night vision would come in handy.
“Any sign of her?” Dante's voice entered the fray, followed by Max's grunt. He didn't like nature, either.
At least the gang was all here.
I pushed forward. “Rosie!”
“Oh my God,” Aralia grumbled.
I ignored her. Kept my puny human eyes peeled for police officers or attack dogs. The trees were so tall and so voluminous that looking up offered no glimpse of the sky, just more blackness. The canopy allowed little moonlight through, so I had to rely on my other senses to navigate.
My other senses and Dante, that is. Every time I stumbled too close to a tree he grabbed me and pulled me in a safer direction.
“Thanks,” I said after the fourth save. My fingers ached with the cold. I flexed them into fists to keep them from getting stiff. Had to find her, I had to find her. “Rose―Hey!”
Without any sort of warning, Dante grabbed me and shoved me into a nearby bush.
I fell flat on my ass in the mud, spitting out a leaf I'd somehow eaten. “What the hell was that for?”
He ducked beside me and inclined his head to the clearing about fifteen feet in front of us. Yellow beams of light cut through the shadows, occasionally catching the stilted movement of something. Some
one
.
I gasped. Rosie. Had to be.
“We have you surrounded!” A voice said, sounding so much like every cheesy cop movie in existence that it was almost comical.
Too bad I needed them to go away. They couldn’t talk Rosie down like I could.
Abandoning reason, I lunged out of the bush.
“No!” Dante caught my hand and tugged me back. “Stop. It's dark. They're nervous.”
“So?!” I whispered fiercely. “They're going to shoot Rosie!”
“They'll shoot
you
if you aren't careful.”
“Don't be stupid, Beatrice!” Aralia said from behind a tree. Max crept around, looking for a place to hide. He accidentally found it when he tripped and fell behind a dead log.
The noise was enough to send the flashlight beams zooming our way. Shit.
“Max, you bloody idiot,” Aralia shoved him so hard that when he tried to get up, he fell down again.
The figures of no less than six police officers advanced forward. Some held flashlights, others held guns. One of them demanded we come out to where they could see us.
Dante went first, his hands raised above his head. “I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding.”
“Quiet!” The officer barked. He had a gun
and
a flashlight. The gun was pointed at Dante. The flashlight was pointed at me. “The rest of you! Out here! Now!”
“You have to let us go,” I begged. We were so close to Rosie. She was in that clearing somewhere, I knew it, I
saw
her. “Please―”
“Get your hands in the air!”
“But―”
The gun swung from Dante to me. I froze. That simple action was scarier than any demon I'd faced so far. Demons were made for killing. They were hunters. Predators. That they made it a point to attack me all the time wasn't surprising. It was what they were supposed to do.
To have another person―a police officer, no less―point a gun at me and essentially threaten me with death if I didn't do exactly what he said exactly when he said it was
terrifying.
Even more terrifying was that he could have gotten away with it all because he was wearing a badge. For the first time in my life, I truly thought I was going to die.
“Hands!” The officer screamed. “Now!”
“Beatrice,” Dante said quietly. “Do what he says.”
I wanted to. I really did. But I was the deer to the officer's headlights. And it wasn't because of the gun.
Another figure appeared behind the row of officers, and I knew exactly who it was long before my eyes could figure it out.
“Rosie,” I said hoarsely, moving to take a step. I'd forgotten the gun, forgotten the officer. She was there. Right there. “Rosie!”
“Beatrice, don’t—”
A shot rang out.
In that instant, everything went to hell. I expected pain. I’d never gotten shot before, but I had to assume that it hurt. Nothing hurt.
Nothing hurt because
I
wasn’t the one who got shot.
Gasping for air, Dante collapsed to the ground. Aralia rushed to his side.
The officers fell one by one, their ends coming in the form of sickening cracks as their necks were snapped. The man who pointed the gun at me didn't get such a merciful death. I watched on in terror as a branch was driven through his midsection. Blood erupted from his mouth. His eyes got so wide that I could see the light die from them when the branch twisted. His hands gripped it in one last attempt to save himself.
He failed. Joined his fellow officers in the mud.
I breathed. Swayed. Someone caught me.
“Beatrice!” Max said. “Are―are you okay?”
I shook my head. Stared blankly at carnage in front of me. It stared back.
Max followed my gaze. Blanched. “Holy shit,” he choked. “Holy shit. They're dead, they're all dead!”
“It's all right, darling,” Aralia's soothing croon mingled with Max's panic. Dante kept gasping for air like he couldn’t get enough of it. “You'll be all right. Just breathe, try to breathe. I know it's hard.”
Max stumbled away to puke in a browning patch of undergrowth. His heaves snapped me out of my daze. I needed to move. I―...I needed to do something to fix the mess I created. Shaking, I crouched next to Dante. A dark red stain bloomed on his chest and blood ran from his nose. The muscles in his arms and legs twitched, clumps of scarlet foam bubbling at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh my God,” I pushed the hair from his eyes and took my jacket off, pressing it gingerly against his wound. He groaned. “O-oh my God. Dante, I―I'm so sorry. This is all my fault, I―I should have―”
“We don't have time for this,” Aralia said briskly. She shoved me aside and pressed down harder on my jacket. Dante’s groan turned into a scream. Sweat dripped from his forehead despite the freezing temperatures. “We need to stop the bleeding and get the bullet out as soon as possible.”
A goal. We had a goal. A tangible goal. Okay. “Wh―what do you need me to do?”
“Stop acting like you’re the one with the bullet in your chest and hold him down.” She grimaced. “This is going to hurt.”
I took Dante's hand and leaned down to press my forehead against his, making an effort not to close my eyes. It was my fault he got shot. I needed to see his pain to make sure I never made the same mistake again.
“Shh,” I said feebly, brushing my thumb across his bloody knuckles. “It's okay, it's okay. You're going to be fine.”
Aralia removed my jacket from Dante's wound threw it in a bush. “Keep him distracted. Do everything you can to keep his mind off the pain. The bullet went in deep. We leave it in there any longer and it will kill him.”
“
What
?” I croaked. One measly bullet couldn't kill him. He was
Dante Arturo.
Anti-Christ Superstar. He couldn't―no, he
wasn't
—going to die. He'd be fine, we'd be fine. He'd get up soon and we'd find Rosie and
everything
would be fine.
“Beatrice,” Aralia said. “Look at me.”
“Just get the bullet out.” I choked back a sob. This was all my fault.
“You have to look at me,” Aralia said again, urgency heightening her voice.
Dante gasped. His free hand flew up to grab the back of my neck, fingers burying themselves in my hair. His eyes, previously twisted with agony, snapped open. The cinnamon color I was used to was swallowed in black. Dark, glassy, demonic black.
All at once, everything I thought I knew about him began to unravel. But in a way, it made a certain sort of sense. If Dante was possessed, it would explain the constant exhaustion. The unwillingness to sleep. The agitation when the mayor accused him of hiding something. The anger when we heard that man on the radio. Why he said he'd hurt me. Why he kicked me out under the pretense of protecting me.
Furthermore, I'd never once seen him pop an iron pill, but he made me take them all the time.
He'd been lying to me. So had Aralia. So had Max, for all I knew. I couldn't tell if I was mad or just upset.
Aralia sighed. “I'm sorry you had to find out this way. Hold him down, please.”
He promised to tell me everything. So long as I gave him a few days to get his affairs in order. If I didn't do what Aralia asked, he'd likely do the human thing and fight her to avoid the pain. The bleeding would worsen. The bullet―it had to be made of iron to affect him so badly―would sink. He'd die, and I'd know nothing. More importantly, I'd lose someone I'd come to care for.
He lied to me, but I couldn't let him die for it.
I brushed his knuckles again. Braced my hand on his shoulder. Prepared myself for a fight. “Dante,” I said, refusing to shy away from his black eyed stare. “We're going to get the bullet out, okay? You have to stay still.”
My experiences with possessed people weren't all that great. Rosie, Mr. Zarcotti, Gershom. Other than their possession, they had one crucial characteristic in common: Wanting to murder me. I waited for Dante to join their ranks. I waited for him to choke me or slap me or punch me.
He didn't.
His hand slipped from my neck, muddy fingers grazing my jaw. His lips moved, but he couldn't vocalize the words. The iron poisoned every facet of his being. It took away his mobility, his speech, his strength.
But it didn't take away his screams.
They echoed through the trees as Aralia dug her fingers deep into his wound. I held him down as best I could, murmuring reassuring nothings in his ear.
“Let's never do this again, okay?” I tried to keep my voice from cracking. Wiped the sweat off his cheek. “You need to get better so I can kick your ass for lying to me all this time.”
“I think I’ve got it,” Aralia sucked in a breath and looked at me. “D'you have him?”
I nodded.
She pulled.
He screamed.
A moment later, Aralia held up the bullet. A small, mangled scrap of iron that nearly killed the world's greatest demon hunter because, surprise, he possessed by one himself. “There.”
Coughing, Dante rolled over onto his side, his head resting in my lap. I stroked his hair, not knowing what else to do. I was running on instinct now. Not logic.
Aralia chucked the bullet into the undergrowth Max was still puking in. “Right, we’ve got the bullet out. Now we need to get him home. Clean the wound before it gets infected.”
None of us noticed Rosie standing behind us until she spoke.
She
looked
like Rosie. But she didn’t sound like Rosie.
She sounded...
Vaguely Russian?
“Oh, no,” she lamented, crouching next to Dante. Bits of unidentified gore stuck to the corner of her mouth. Crescents of dirt lined her fingernails, and clumps of her hair had been ripped out at the roots, leaving behind bald, bloody patches. Her nightgown fared no better, falling to her knees in dirty tatters. “They got you, huh? Papa always said you were reckless.”
I tensed, clutching onto Dante's shoulder. He groaned. I muttered an apology and Rosie giggled, giving him a poke. I slapped her hand away. “Don't touch him. Just―just stand over there. Away from us.”
She snorted, raising her hands in lazy surrender. “Don't act like you know him better than I do,
versmaash.
”
Versmaash?
What was that, a type of squash?
Aralia had been unnaturally quiet since Rosie's appearance. She broke that quiet with a whisper. “It's you, isn't it?”
“Took you long enough.” Rosie scratched at one of her bald spots. She gave her fingers and sniff, then licked them like they were covered in something delectable.
I may have thrown up a little in my mouth.
She carried on unfazed and gave Dante another poke. “Wake up,
beroach.
”
This time, he was the one to slap her hand away. She made a petulant noise, crossing her arms over her chest.
“And to think I betrayed Papa for you,” she said. Her gaze cut to me. “I betrayed Papa for him, you know. And for you, too. You should be grateful.” She paused, a shadow of doubt passing over her face. “He's, ah, he's going to be
very
mad.”
I was lost. Rosie looked like Rosie but she
sounded
like a Russian who'd been living in Italy for a few years. She babbled on and on about
Papa
and squashes and cockroaches and scratched her head and licked her fingers and, oh, she murdered six people. Seven, counting the guard in the sanatorium.
Lost
was an understatement. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You should know
exactly
what I am talking about,
versmaash
,” she said.
I knew I had more pressing matters to attend to, but I really wished she'd stop calling me a squash.
“Did he―” she poked Dante again “―not tell you? Or are you just
stupid
?”
Since he neglected to tell me
he was possessed
, I assumed the former. The latter was also proving to be annoyingly true. “Tell me what?”
“You two have fun,” Aralia muttered. She stood and went to go check on Max. “I'll be over here.”
As soon as she was out of earshot, Rosie cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered, “I
hate
her sometimes.”
“What did Dante not tell me?” I asked. Yet again. For the second time. He shifted in my lap, hands struggling to find purchase in the mud. When they found it, he slowly but surely pulled himself up.
Rosie cheered him on. “That's the spirit,
beroach
. Up, up!”
“Vaena,” he wheezed, drawing his arm across his chin to catch the foam. His eyes remained a flinty black. “Wh―what have you done?”
The girl I knew as Rosie, but who Dante named as Vaena, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I saved you,
beroach.
And your human. And the succubus. And the sick one. All of you.”
“You murdered six innocent people!” Dante pitched forward in a totally out of character fit of rage, a rage that quickly ended in bloody coughing.
My supply of sympathy was running low. “I don't mean to interrupt anything here, but who the hell is Vaena?”
Rosie looked petulant again, glaring at Dante. “You didn't tell her about me.”
“I didn't think I'd
need
to,” he rasped. “You're not supposed to be here, Vaena. You're supposed to be far,
far
away―”
“Doing
what?
” Rosie/Vaena asked, face contorted with fury. “Dis is dying, Malnoch. You'd know this if you ever bothered coming home. Instead I find you here in the arms of this human girl, still consorting with that
succubus
―”
“Hey!” I could set aside my confusion over the squash/cockroach/Papa stuff for now. What I couldn't set aside was the voice using my best friend's body as a puppet. I grabbed her by the gown and yanked her close. “Who are you? Rosie's demon? Where is she? What have you done with her?”
Rosie/Vaena wanted to rip my head off. I could see it in her eyes, that homicidal glint. Lucky for me, she refrained. Shrugged her emaciated shoulders. “Your friend is dead. She gave up this morning.”
My hand fell. Gave up. Rosie would never just
give up.
“You're lying.”
“Your friend was dying from the moment she was born,” Rosie/Vaena said. “I got rid of the other possessing her before. She fought me at first, but then she…”
Gave up.
I wasted so much time thinking I was going to lose Dante when I'd already lost Rosie. She gave up. She was dead. The thing wearing her body was nothing more than a demon. A parasite.
I wanted to kill her. I wanted to bash her skull against a tree until her brains came oozing out. I wanted to impale her with a branch.
I settled with blunt force trauma.
One moment I was sitting beside Dante and the next I was throwing Rosie’s imposter to the mud. I hit her until I could see blood. Then I hit her some more. She didn't hit back. Just tried to block the blows a little.
I screamed, a dark coil of fury and sorrow tightening in my chest. She could murder my best friend but she couldn't defend herself from me? What kind of demon was she?
“Beatrice!” Dante shouted.
A sob hitched in my throat. I hit Not-Rosie again. My vision blurred with tears. Why couldn't I have been born with Faustian Syndrome? I deserved it more than Rosie did. Rosie was good and kind and patient and sweet and I wasn't any of those things. I'd gotten Mr. Zarcotti killed, Dante shot.
What had Rosie done, other than exist? She was the best person I’d ever known and here a demon was telling me that she
gave up
. Without even saying goodbye. I couldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t.
“Beatrice,” Dante staggered his wounded self over and tried to pry me off Not-Rosie with varying levels of success. Every time I slipped away, he managed to grab me back. “She's my sister, Beatrice. My―my half-sister. I'll explain when we get home. Chief Morales is coming. We…we have leave.”
I tried to twist my way out of his grasp to lunge at Not-Rosie again, but he was still stronger than me even with iron poisoning. “I’m not leaving until
she
gets the hell out of Rosie’s body!”
Not-Rosie cowered against a tree and drew her bloodied mouth drawn back in a hiss. “She
gave me
this body!”
“Oh, I am going to ki—”
“
Beatrice
,” Dante’s ragged breath brushed against my ear. His arm was wrapped all too firmly around my waist, securing me against him. “I know you’re upset, but be quiet for a moment and
listen.
”
I probably would have elbowed him in the stomach if he hadn’t been dying a minute ago. My therapist was not going to be happy about this little set-back. “Screw you, I’m not…”
I hadn’t meant to follow his instructions, but the noise I’d interpreted as far away just a few seconds prior was closer now. What was previously a quiet rustling grew to a loud crashing and the muffled barking wasn’t muffled anymore. By the sound of it, Chief Morales sent an entire
pack
of dogs after us.
I
guess
not being mauled took precedence over my violent revenge fantasies.
Shoving Dante’s arm away, I stomped over to where Not-Rosie cowered and shoved my finger in her face. “This isn’t over,” I said. Far from it.
She just hissed at me.
***
The escape to the car and the ride back to the house was one big blur of numbness and grief. People moved around me, but I barely saw them. They spoke to me, but I didn't hear them. They took my hand and brushed their thumb across my knuckles, but I didn't feel them. It was like time had stopped and it didn't resume until we got inside the house. Even then, the flow felt off. Like I was existing in a continuum that wasn't my own.
