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Jared opened the duffel bag pulled out a semiautomatic paintball gun. Priest grabbed the Punisher and dropped to the floor, aiming the massive weapon at the demon.
Andras took another drag and walked toward us slowly, his brown leather, work boots squeaking across the concrete floor.
Lukas and Alara scrambled for the bag, but Jared and Priest didn’t hesitate. They both fired, and a hailstorm of ammo ripped the air. Paintball cases exploded against the demon’s chest, the salt and holy water cocktail inside burning right through the canvas coat. The Punisher’s crowd control rounds pummeled the demon’s torso, and he stumbled back.
Lukas reached for his crossbow and a handful of cold-iron bolts.
“You can’t use those,” I yelled over the ammo. “You’ll kill the guy he possessed.
“Right.” Lukas shook his head as if he should’ve known better and tossed the weapon on top of the bag.
Priest peered over the Punisher’s sight. “He’s not going down.”
Andras glanced down at the smoking holes. “I hope you have something more than this.” His voice didn’t sound anything like the demonic voices in horror movies. It was deep, and deceptively human.
Bear charged in front of us snarling.
The demon flicked his cigarette across the floor and responded with a growl of his own. The dog dropped onto his belly, whimpering.
Alara knelt on the floor and used a black marker, which never left her tool belt, to draw an octagon. I recognized the beginning of the protective voodoo symbol etched into the necklace around my neck.
The Hand of Eshu.
Between my eidetic memory and artistic abilities, I could draw the symbol more accurately than Alara. The demon watched, mildly interested.
Elle and I sprinted toward Alara and dropped down next to her. “Let me do it.”
She held out the marker, her hand shaking. I worked fast, drawing three of the perpendicular lies, the tiny pitchfork shapes, and the slanted cross in the center.
“In the Labyrinth, names have power,” he said.
He’s talking about hell.
“Alara,” the demon pronounced her name slowly, “Means ruler of all. I command 6,000 legions, and you do not even rule this Legion of black doves. Tell me, Alara, Ruler of All, when the nightmares come, what do you fear?”
Footsteps echoed from somewhere beyond the shipping containers.
“Alara?” a girl’s voice called out.
Alara’s eyes darted around the room. A girl a few years younger than her stepped out from a dented metal aisle of shipping containers. She was tall and thin with dark corkscrew curls, and she shared her sister’s striking features.
“Maya,” Alara whispered. She stumbled toward her younger sister, the person she had sacrificed everything for.
My eyes darted to Andras, but he was gone. A moment later, he stepped out from between the containers where Maya was standing.
The demon’s eyes were blue again, disguising his true nature. “Hi Maya. I’m a friend of your sister’s.” His formal tone and speech pattern had changed, replaced by a more casual one.
Maya gave him an open smile. “Hi.”
“Don’t go near him!” Alara yelled, racing toward her sister.
Lukas and Jared were already closing in from the sides.
When Maya saw the terrified expression on Alara’s face, she took a step back. But she wasn’t fast enough. Andras was behind her in seconds, and the huge hands of the man he’d possessed closed around the girl’s throat.
Lukas raised his crossbow as Maya struggled for air.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Andras said. “You won’t hurt me, but one of those bolts could kill her.”
Lukas lowered the crossbow slowly.
Jared inched closer. Andras noticed, and tightened his hold on Maya’s neck.
“Please don’t hurt her,” Alara pleaded.
“You never answered my question,” Andras said. “When the nightmares come, Alara, what do you fear?”
Alara fell to her knees, tears running down her cheeks. “I’ll tell you anything you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
The demon’s irises turned black, the color seeping out from the center of his eyes like ink. “Wrong answer.”
Andras lifted Maya off the ground by her neck. He looked right at Alara and twisted his hands in a sharp motion. Maya’s neck turned unnaturally between his palms, and her body went limp.
18. THE EYE OF PROVIDENCE
Jared and Lukas charged Andras, as he let Maya’s body drop onto the concrete floor.
“No!” Alara let out a piercing scream, the sound so raw and guttural it made my skin crawl. She collapsed on the floor sobbing, and I threw my arms around her.
Elle’s eyes went wide. “Oh my god.”
Andras stepped away from the body, moving slower than before.
Jared knelt next to Mia’s body and reached out to close her eyes. When his hand touched her skin, it slipped right through. He swept his arms over the spot where Mia’s body had fallen. Her faded silhouette remained for a moment, before it vanished completely.
Alara stared at the chipped wall behind us, her expression blank. I grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “It wasn’t real. Andras created some kind of illusion. Maya was never here.”
“She’s right.” Priest knelt down beside her and pointed across the room. “There’s no body.”
It took a moment for the words to register before Alara stole a glance at the spot where Mia had fallen. Alara rubbed her swollen, red eyes and looked again. “Where is she?”
Jared and Lukas rushed back to where we sat huddled on the floor with Alara. Bear chased after them.
“It wasn’t real,” I repeated.
“Somehow he manifested your fear,” Lukas said.
Alara frowned and stared at Lukas for a long moment before she responded. “How are we going to fight him?”
“If
our physical weapons won’t work, let’s see how he handles a spiritual weapon.” Priest opened his journal, flipping through the pages. When he found the page he was looking for, he recited the words:
“We exorcise you, every impure spirit
every satanic power, every incursion
of the infernal adversary, every legion
every congregation and diabolical sect.”
I recognized the Rites of Exorcism from Rituale Romanum.
Priest was still reading:
“Thus, cursed demon
and every diabolical legion, we adjure you.
Cease to deceive human creatures,
and to give to them the Poison of Eternal
Perdition.”
The demon laughed. “I have shed blood on the sword of an angel and battled demons in the cages of hell. I do not fear you.”
Priest’s voice rose:
“Go away, Satan, the inventor and master
of all deceit, the enemy of
humanity’s salvation.
Be humble under the powerful hand of god
tremble and flee—I invoke by
us the sacred and terrible name
at which those down below tremble.”
“I am the Author of Discords, and I have faced exorcists stronger than you,” Andras said. “But in the cages of hell, they called me by another name. Maker of Nightmares. Allow me to make yours, Owen Merriweather.”
Jared, Lukas, Alara, and Elle looked around. It us all a moment to realize the demon was talking about Priest.
Andras raised his arms in the air, and a spray of black liquid the consistency of motor oil, rose toward the ceiling. The liquid splashed against the rafters above our heads, twisting into thick ropes on its way back down.
Not ropes.
Snakes.
