The Forsaken: Part VIII

At first, even Elizabeth was stunned by what happened. Lucas held the girl down, and she drank from the flask filled with holy water as he chanted in Latin. The girl’s little body went into convulsions. A monstrous scream escaped her, and like Elizabeth, a black, viscous fluid erupted from her.

When it was over, Lucas slumped against the ground. He looked down at the sweet little thing, a true innocent. Lucas picked her up and started clearing the goo from her lips. He couldn’t feel her breathing.

Lucas put the girl to the ground and started doing CPR. He desperately tried to pump life back into the poor child. As Elizabeth and the other officers rushed to his aid, one of them pushed Lucas aside, demanding to let them take over.

Lucas crawled to her side, praying for her to wake up. He begged god to spare the poor child and not let one more be a victim to the creature. As the officers frantically tried breathing life back into the little girl, those standing around turned away from her. They were afraid she was gone.

As the officer pumping on her chest stopped, the word dammit escaping his mouth, Lucas stared at the ground. When a slight cough came from the poor child, they all stared in disbelief. Lucas waved his fingers across his chest, looking up to the heavens.

That was when he realized it was over.

“It’s a miracle,” sighed Elizabeth.

“It sure is,” Lucas responded, pulling himself to his feet.

Lucas and Elizabeth looked around them as the fog cleared the park, revealing daylight for the first time in days. The ominous mist that held LeClaire hostage was disappearing. He heard Elizabeth say, “You did it.”

Days later, Lucas was packed and ready to leave. Rested after his final encounter with Aamon, Lucas was moving on to his next assignment or the hunt for the first demon he encountered, the one that started it all. As he prepared to leave, Lucas opened the door to his hotel room and found Elizabeth on the other side.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her.

Elizabeth had an epiphany of sorts. She no longer found herself compelled to want to be the next chief. With what she learned about the world and the things in it, she was considering leaving the police force.

“What are you going to do?” asked Lucas.

“I thought, maybe, you could use a partner,” she hinted.

Lucas put his things down and invited her to sit. Lucas sat across from the girl, trying to find the right words.

“That’s not really how this works,” he told her. “You must be invited into the sanctum, trained, and most importantly…sponsored,” he told her.

“How do I go back to breaking up the occasional bar fight or dealing with rebellious teenagers after all this?”

He’d been there. The life you knew no longer matters. A stunningly new reality changes your perspective. Somehow, you can’t return to the world of the not-knowings. However, he wasn’t a recruiter.

“Before you take off entirely, take a leave of absence. I’m sure Archbishop Rogers will be delighted to meet you, and this will allow for you to give a firsthand account of what you witnessed to the Diocese,” Lucas told her.

Archbishop Rogers would love or hate it, the latter of which was a perk. Lucas chuckled at the idea, imagining the stickler for the rules’s head exploding if it were the latter of the two. While he didn’t like the idea of a partner, he knew someday they would force one on him. Elizabeth was the least objectionable idea of a partner he could imagine.

Elizabeth was all in and ready to go. She’d put her papers in with the city but told Lucas she would only need to make a call to arrange a leave of absence. She knew her place wasn’t with the police, not anymore.

They were eight hours into the drive when Lucas got a call from Archbishop Rogers. They were sending him to a south Texas town. When Lucas pulled over, Archbishop Rogers emailed him a video from a church in Montgomery.

Lizzy and Lucas watched the video, a copy of something that went viral. A statue of the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, stood behind the priest at mass. In the middle of his sermon, the eyes of the stone carving began to bleed.

What surprised Lucas the most was that Archbishop Rogers was coming to Texas himself. In the years he reported to the Archbishops, Lucas recalled only two times one met him at the scene of a case. In both cases, they were out east, and in both cases, political interests were involved.

“Could this be number three,” wondered Lizzy.

After they arrived in Montgomery, it was too late to go to the church. Lucas waited until Lizzy fell asleep. He hadn’t told her, but Archbishop Rogers was in Montgomery. Lucas needed to see him alone, so the two agreed to meet.

There was only one place to meet, the local bar. Lucas found the Archbishop sitting in the back corner booth.

“Jesus, Luke, you look like hell.”

Lucas shrugged it off. Jeffrey Rogers gave him enough grief that it came with the territory. Besides, he was exhausted enough that looking like hell made sense.

“Jeff, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re paranoid,” announced Lucas as he motioned for the waitress.

Lucas ordered them each a scotch before he said anything else. When the waitress stepped away, Lucas looked at the Archbishop. His quizzical gaze gave him away.

“I’m going to meet one of the church’s biggest donors. I was requested,” he explained. “But, I’m sure you can use a restocking.”

Archbishop Rogers was annoyingly right about everything, including needing to restock supplies. The cash supply he traveled with was getting low, as was ammunition, holy water, and various other things. The Archbishop pushed a bag across the table.

Looking inside the bag, Lucas was shocked. He looked into the bag. There was one hundred thousand dollars in the bag. Rummaging around the bag, Lucas found over one hundred thousand in cash, new passports, two new sidearms, ten boxes of ammo, and ten flasks.

“Thank you, sir!” Lucas exhaled.

“So, what happened? How did you become the hero of LeClaire?” asked Archbishop Rogers.

Lucas flashed back to the small Iowa park. He remembered approaching the little girl, making quips about taking children, and then Aamon chatting him up before surrendering. Erily, he remembered her hugging him and what she whispered in his ear.

“I copied the ceremony, doused the beast with holy water, and expelled the creature back to where it came from. That was it.”

Lucas looked at Jeff Rogers, hoping the priest believed what he said. He didn’t want Archbishop Rogers to know what she shared. Worse, he didn’t know why.

“There wasn’t anything else, anything you wanted to tell me?” asked the Archbishop.

“Not that I can think of,” Lucas lied.

Jeff Rogers took a long drink before setting his glass down and staring across the table. He hoped Lucas would break down and be honest. After several moments, it seemed Archbishop Rogers would have to do that for his colleague.

“Good, then the hotel for two was a mistake.”

He looked at Lucas, giving his counterpart the judgmental gaze of a clergyman. For a minute, Jeff Rogers wanted to forget who he was and scream in Lucas’s face. Gathering his dignity, he shook his finger back and forth.

“Lying to a member of the church, how dare you?”

“Okay, I guess I do have something to tell you. We were going to address you in Seattle. Then, we were rerouted,” explained Lucas.

Jeff warned him against getting accustomed to the term ‘we.’ It took approval from the Diocese for an inquisitor to take on an apprentice.

“She was going to do it anyway,” explained Lucas. “I didn’t want to leave her to her own devices, not with five more members of the Princes of Hell on the loose.”

Jeff nodded, then realized Lucas said five.

“What do you mean, five?”

Lucas looked confused. His anxiety spiked. Lucas felt his heart racing. In no time, a small drop of sweat trickled down his brow.

“The girl told me something. That all seven would rise before it was over. This was number two,” explained Lucas.

Archbishop Rogers shook at the thought. Should all seven arise, that meant the first were preparing for Asmodeus. The name rang in his mind, a name learned at the Vatican.

“The seventh prince means the breaking of a seal,” explained Jeff.

“And,” said Lucas, wondering what he was missing.

When the Archbishop opened his bible, he pointed at a passage. Lucas took the book and read to himself. Then, he knew why Jeffrey Rogers, a man of no fear and great faith, was so shaken.

“We have to stop this,” said Lucas.

“My friend, it can’t be stopped,” sighed the Archbishop.

“We’ll see,” Lucas snapped at the holy man.

Lucas stormed out of the bar, walking into the darkness of morning. He stopped outside and lit a cigarette, staring up at the stars. What the priest shared had his heart racing and his blood boiling. It couldn’t be true, thought Lucas.

Jeffrey Rogers ran out into the darkness, calling for his friend. Lucas was nowhere in sight, so the Archbishop walked to his rental. Pressing a button on a fob, Jeffrey planned to let Lucas calm down before they spoke again. After two brutal cases, he sensed Lucas wasn’t in his right mind.

He pressed a button on his cellphone and dialed Lucas’s number. Of course, Lucas wouldn’t answer. When the prompt told him to leave a message, Archbishop Rogers spoke.

“Luke, it’s Jeffrey. Maybe having the girl around would be a wise idea. I’m sorry I freaked you out. I want you to be careful. There’s something bigger happening, bigger than anything I’ve ever seen before,” Archbishop Rogers promised. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

Just miles from Montgomery, outside Tango’s Truck Stop, a twenty-three-year-old girl walked across the lot from her Civic. She wore heels, fishnet stalkings, a short skirt, and an Aerosmith teeshirt. The girl’s name was Jennifer, and she slung a small handbag over her shoulder as she strolled the lot for clients.

Jennifer was a grifter and part-time prostitute. Since settling in Montgomery, the Illinois native hadn’t had any fun. She enjoyed the party life. Jennifer enjoyed it so much that she chose it over all that was good. She’d forsaken the mundane life goals like family, children, and a career. Instead, she enjoyed the thrills of methamphetamines and the touch of strangers in exchange for money.

She insisted she set the rules and was in control. That pushed her to Montgomery, a small town without a police force. Small towns were good places to hide. They were even better places to look for lonely men they could dupe into caring for them as long as they kept tight and pretty.

That was what she’d done. She duped a down-on-his-luck rancher who didn’t question who she was, where Jennifer came from, or that she had no history. Jennifer started a new life and escaped the worst of her sins. Something inside her wanted to return to her old life.

She wouldn’t have to worry about Brian. She took care of him before leaving home. After two years of letting the old fart crawl on top of her twice a week, Jennifer enjoyed ending the misery of his grimy hands all over her body. She wanted someone younger, someone more attractive, but the truckstop would do.

Walking into the truck stop, Jennifer stood by the magazine rack until one of the passing-through drivers noticed her. Dressed like she was, flipping through the pages of a girly magazine, she was practically an advertisement. The advertisement read, ‘open for business.’

The first fellow that approached her got her to smile. She could smell the two days without a shower stench rolling off his body. The vile thing standing before her had a pocket full of cash. It served him right, what she imagined doing to him.

“Sure, honey. I’ve got a place a few miles from here. You wanna ride with me?”

The trucker’s name was Eddie Cone, and Jennifer took him back to the ranch with a playful, good-natured banter. Eddie felt her hand running up and down his thigh, exciting him. The intoxicating aroma of her muskiness and an eighty-dollar perfume and pheromones filled the car. Eddie got lost in her trance.

The Civic screeched to a stop in the gravel as Jennifer looked at her new friend, sexily biting her lip. She got out and motioned for him to come hither, swaying her hips as she walked slowly and seductively toward the house. Looking over her shoulder, she sensed a moment of hesitation in Eddie and slid her hands up the front of her body.

Eddie sped up, catching up to her as she walked inside the front door of the well-styled home. Jennifer kicked off her heels and turned to catch Eddie staring her up and down, his intense gaze revealing his nasty intentions. Electricity filled the air between them.

Jennifer stepped forward, putting her hands on Eddie’s chiseled chest. She kissed Eddie on the neck, gliding her tongue from his clavicle to his ear. She opened his plaid shirt, running her hands over his body. Jennifer had Eddie wrapped around her little finger.

“This almost never happens to me,” Eddie said, through heavy breathing.

“There’s a reason for that,” purred Jennifer.

She began to sway, side to side, as her arms wrapped around his thick neck. Eddie reached behind her, unzipping the zipper on her skirt. She wiggled her hips, helping him push it down her silky smooth thighs.

Jennifer undid Eddie’s belt, looking up and asking if he was ready. His guttural moans told her to continue. She unzipped him, fishing his manhood out as she pushed his jeans down and around his hips.

She looked up at Eddie, a smile on her face. He caught the look in her eyes as they seemed to change in front of him. Eddie shook his head, unsure what was happening to his seductive new friend. Her hand on his most sensitive parts distracted Eddie from what she was doing with her other hand.

Jennifer reached into her garter, pulling out a silvery object. Her eyes glazed over, turning a bizarre coloration of red and yellow. She flipped her wrist, opening a straight razor. She heard Eddie moan as she pulled a guy’s favorite body part outwards, her other hand moving quickly in a slashing swipe.

Eddie didn’t fall, not before Jennifer was covered in a shower of crimson, reveling in her deed.

Father Giovanni was the Montgomery priest. He coached the kid’s baseball team, didn’t charge the usual wedding fee, and his chili won the local cook-off three years in a row.

The priest walked into the church early in the morning. He kept the budget down by doing most of the work himself, keeping the place clean, tidy, and maintained. As he walked in, a toolbox in hand, he froze in the doorway, shocked by the ghoulish nightmare hanging from the ceiling.