The Exorcee

Chapter Seven

Now, I know what you’re thinking—and you’re right. It is a little silly to bear combat knives and beating-sticks across state lines only to leave them in one’s room during a mission, especially when one is such a vocal advocate of weapon use. In what way, after all, are fireplace pokers and hagiographical statues preferable to objects designed for violence—and why in name of the eternal inferno do I not carry a firearm?

Valid queries. To answer the last one first, I don’t pack a piece because I know I’d use it. I would have blown Norman Grey’s face off back on that rooftop; and I’d be in prison and Ella’s innocent husband would be in the dirt. I mean yeah, I kicked him off a five-story roof and all, but that was different. Those things have a strong tendency to levitate, but they can’t stop bullets.

As for my other armaments, I had three reasons for not bringing them with me tonight. First of all, I wasn’t sure I’d actually find anything; and even if I did, this was only a reconnaissance run. There was no sense engaging until I secured more intelligence about enemy numbers and movements. Second, I had no convenient connections to the police force in this city: if I was going to go forth in arms, I wanted it to be for a quick, surgical strike rather a random street-drift, lest I end up busted for carrying concealed. And, thirdly—remember earlier when I said I was too mature now to get myself in trouble merely in order to feel tough? That wasn’t totally accurate. I hadn’t yet finished disciplining the part of me that wanted to jump blindly into fights just to see how well I’d do when the odds were stacked against me. Even one escrima stick can make a universe of difference, but I guess it was more exciting without that potential equalizer. Stupid, I know. Believe me, I know.

My first stop was an abandoned mill in the squalid maze of the Old North End. I ducked easily through a gaping rent in the chain-link fence and scuttled across a short stretch of barren lawn in almost total darkness. As I got close to the mournful tomb of a building, I could hear something through the broken teeth of the window sockets; it sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to place the awful noise. Then I realized it was meant to be music: death metal, in fact. I almost left right then. Leah from Dunkin Donuts listened to this stuff, and she was one of the sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. The GOB wouldn’t be playing “look at us, we’re so evil” music—more likely quiet ambient stuff, or maybe gnarled “classical” fare like Orff or Alkan. But still, I was already here; might as well stick my head in and make sure. Probably just the goth crowd from the local high school.

I pressed myself against the crumbling façade, crouched down among the old broken wine bottles, and peered through the nearest window frame. The scene inside was much worse than goth kids, but otherwise I was right: definitely not the GOB. It was a crash-pad for needle-freaks—eight or nine of them sprawled in heroin filth, rag-clad and candle-lit, androgynous, emaciated, lost in the cosmos. Followers of Baal were galvanized by hatred, their weakness and dependencies burned away: rape and murder were their sins of choice, not drugs and sloth. I could burst in, tie up these poor revenants, and have the cops here in ten minutes—but what the hell good would that do. I slept in a few such wraith-dens and leper-pits when I was drifting, and one thing they all had in common was that their dwellers didn’t want salvation. Just the next fix.

“Sorry, guys,” I muttered, and turned away.

Next stop was less than a mile distant, in a nicer neighborhood which also contained a graveyard and a Catholic church. This one was an actual house, two stories tall and vaguely colonial-looking. All the windows were dark; but when I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t because there were no lights on inside but rather because the windows had been blacked out with tinfoil. Hardly conclusive, but certainly curious. I slunk up the driveway toward the garage. It was a new moon overhead and there were no streetlights on this block; I might as well have been blindfolded. I dug out my phone again, shielded it carefully with my hand, and lit the screen, aiming it through the garage window.

“Hello,” I muttered. (Muttering ominously to oneself is sort of an occupational hazard for freelance retrieval experts.) There was a Subaru in there, and I could just barely make out a plain green license plate. Too dark to see any soul-poisoning symbols on the trunk lid, but again: curious. However, also again: not conclusive. It wasn’t that odd, after all, that a car would have Vermont plates in Vermont.

Extinguishing my phone, I headed cautiously around to the back of the house. I needed to know, first, whether I was in fact up against something here, and then specifically what I was up against here. Still no heads on poles in the yard. If I were evil, I would have heads on poles. I needed to get inside—but quietly. If Grey was in there, I’d have my hands more than full even without worrying about the demon-cult that was apparently carting him around. And what exactly was the connection there, anyway? Why on earth would a nationwide cult bring a Possessed salesman to northern Vermont, of all places? My impulse was simply to kick in the front door and start strangling answers out of people, but it would be embarrassing if the house turned out to belong to a kindly grandmother with weak eyes and a Subaru.

“Well, well,” a calm voice said suddenly, and a flashlight beam lit me up from behind. I froze. “It seems we have an interloper.”

Oh yeah—that was the GOB, all right. Ordinary crooks don’t say shit like “interloper.” Still could’ve been a concerned homeowner, of course, but every instinct was screaming at me and I knew better by now than to ignore them. I kept my back to the light and slowly raised my hands, although I hadn’t heard the sound of any ordnance. “Hey, uh—I was just lookin’ for some returnable cans and bottles, pal. I don’t want no trouble.”

They chuckled behind me: three of them. Couldn’t get a read on how strong they were without looking directly at them, but I didn’t want to show them my face if I could avoid it. I was all warmed up from the hike, and would’ve bet my—well, my life, that I could outrun them. But outfighting them would be more useful. It’s surprisingly difficult to interrogate people when they’re chasing you down the street. The one with the flashlight, evidently the group leader (since no one else was speaking), came pacing toward me. “I’m afraid you picked the wrong house, my good man. But don’t worry, we have a very important use for you. The Lord will provide.” The other two chuckled again. Regular peanut gallery. “Turn around.”

He was right behind me—stupidly—and a cloud was passing over the few celestial orbs in the misty sky. I came to an instantaneous decision, spun, and snapped out a crescent kick that shattered the flashlight and plunged us into pitch blackness. I’ll throw Hail Mary head-kicks at demons because they don’t understand corporeal combat, but when fighting normals it’s a good rule of thumb never to kick above the waist, both to maintain balance and to avoid exposing your groin. As I kicked the leader’s light, he shouted angrily and clutched at my shirt, and I brought the same foot back down and stomped on his kneecap so hard I felt it pop out of the skin. He screamed in agony and dropped like a rock: one down.

The other two came at me, waving blindly and bellowing threats, but I now had the ultimate advantage. I can’t see in the dark any more than the next man, though I try to eat my carrots—but I can still sense qi. In the blank unlit space in front of me, two luminescent forms were stumbling around like patches of summer sun. As long as I didn’t run into a wall or trip over a sprinkler, I could track them and pick my strikes with an accuracy amounting to leisure. When goon number two came in range, I blew out his knee with another stomp-kick; and when goon number three approached—why mess with a winning formula?—I did the same to him. I’m not going to lie to you, folks; it feels God-damned good to break your enemies in battle. I tried to make sure I only beat up bad guys, but I wasn’t convinced that qualified me as one of the good guys. On the other hand, the paralysis of self-doubt accomplishes nothing. Even the big JC implied that cold is better than lukewarm.

So, I grabbed the man with the weakest personal energy, lifted him by the lapels, and slammed him against the side of the house. “Where’s Norman Grey, you son of a whore? Tell me!”

He blubbered. “They, we—I don’t know, he’s—”

“Be silent, Uther!” the leader yelled, still prostrate. I got my hip into Uther’s center of gravity and flipped him into the air, dropping him right on the leader’s midsection and knocking the wind out of both of them. Two birds, one hip-throw.

“Just tell me this, Uther,” I growled. “Is Grey in the house or not? You lie to me, I’ll cut the eyes outta your head.”

“N—n—” He retched for air. “Not here, I swear. Please. . .”

“Shut up! Where is he?”

Another flashlight beam hit us—no, several. They must’ve heard the commotion inside the house. Time to test that outrunning hypothesis. My knee was already planted on Uther’s solar plexus in a working approximation of a runner’s crouch, so I launched myself over him and headed for the sidewalk at a jackrabbit sprint. I heard footsteps right behind me, and somebody shouted, “Freeze!” Yeah, sure. At least he didn’t say, “Hey, get back here!” As I went tearing down the street with an unknown number of homicidal devil-worshipers on my tail, I suddenly found myself grinning. This right here, the smash and scramble, the broken wall between thought and act, the hinging of your life on being better than the other guy—this was it, this was what kept me pushing myself when the holy quest had ceased to matter (if it ever really had). This was the good stuff.

I kept my lead for a couple of blocks, until I saw my goal: Mount Hope Cemetery. The high gates gloomed ahead, their tops wrought with black steel roses; all beyond was wrapped in shade. I leaped onto the nearby fire hydrant at top speed and then sprang across and caught a hold of the gate, swinging my legs up and over in a move I’d been using to get myself in trouble since I started climbing stuff at age zero. Mom used to call me her little monkey. As I hit the frozen turf and rolled to my feet, I spotted one of those ultra-thin slate grave markers a few feet away and threw a flying cross-body block at it, knocking it right out of the ground. Then I hoisted it over my head just as the first of the cultists cleared the gate and landed behind me—and, in that perfect moment when both his hands were busy breaking his fall, I swung the stone and shattered it on his astonished face. Two more guys cleared the gate a second later, and I heard a fourth clambering up after them, so I turned again and ran like hell. Not one of them stopped to help their whimpering comrade.

Getting tired now. Always been a good runner. Not Jesse Owens though. Panting for breath, pounding the earth. Dodging through gravestones, ducking through ancient elms, hurdling an archangel with a marble sword. Good news was, they weren’t Jesse Owens either. I was starting to put some distance between us. Bad news was—they had guns. A chunk of mausoleum exploded, almost in my face, as I plunged around the corner, and I heard the crack of an automatic. Nine millimeter, most likely. Hello, Death. Haven’t seen you since Tuesday. How’s your week? I was practically giggling now; adrenaline makes me loopy sometimes.

“Hold your fire, you fool!” one of them shouted. “Sophia desires him alive.”

“I’m just gonna kneecap him.” Another shot—not a good one. Hit a tree five feet to my left. “Sumbitch’s fast!” Someone else fired, the throaty boom of a big caliber—.357, maybe. Blew the wing off another angel. Aiming for the kneecap between my shoulder-blades, apparently. More gates ahead. Another shot—even worse, off by ten feet or more. They were too tired to aim by now. “Damn it, he’s gettin’ away!”

“Let him go.” That was the fancy talker, another authority figure. The footsteps behind me slowed and finally stopped. “We’ll be seeing you again, my friend!” he called after me. “Count on it.”

Then I was over the gates and gone.