The man’s dark eyes tracked from the woman standing before him to us. “Can you save her?” he asked.
“No,” EJ said. “I’m sorry. But we can save you and your children.”
“Not my babies. Hers. She live alone, her husband in the war. She been fighting the demon all day. Taking a piece of me bit by bit to save her children.”
The woman turned toward EJ and roared, “Shoot me and contain the demon or all will die!”
EJ fired. She dropped.
The children screamed.
The man rotated over them. Italian words of comfort rolling off his tongue. Donati tossed the man a roll of Stet-wrap to stop the bleeding. It was all they had. Then he grabbed the woman by her feet and hauled her into the center of the street.
“Questa donna è un’eroina,” Donati said, in broken Italian, calling her a heroine, as EJ left her there. “Lei merita di meglio.”
“They all deserve better,” EJ said, his voice grim and rough.
“Novedown,” Donati said, his voice going neutral, “sixteen more.” Softer he added, “Pray to God, no children,” and he crossed himself.
But they both knew it wouldn’t be so easy.
Donati killed more, all adults, the rounds holding the demons hostage, the possessed bodies piled in the streets. They took a chance and tied up four very young children who had stabbed their parents to death and were now happily eating the bodies. They added null head straps that might hold them in place. Once they had more containment vessels, it was possible that they could be transported and the demons forced out and contained rather than the children being killed. One toddler had been saved in this way before. One.
That left the ones trapping the priests, the missionaries, and the faithful barricaded in the church.
According to his unicom, the Oratorio di San Michele was a warren of corridors and rooms, heavily painted with Biblical scenes and saints. It had mostly been a tourist attraction until the war started and a child had been saved from possession within its walls. It had become a calling card for the prayerful of all religions since that time. Now it was a calling card to the demons let loose in the town.
They walked through the streets, silent. EJ and Donati saw a few eyes at windows. Heard the sound of footsteps running away. But no broken music. No sprite attacks.
They reached the medieval church.
Cars had crashed in front of the doors. The stench of gasoline, diesel, chemicals from electric batteries, and hydraulic fluid rode the air, a miasma of fumes and death not nearly strong enough to cover the brimstone and burned-bones-stench of EEBs.
A pile of bodies surrounded the building. Several dozen adults had been killed by those inside, in self-defense, but the demons had body-hopped into others and kept coming.
The city’s law enforcement had fought and killed, trying to protect the hundreds packed inside its walls. In the area before the church, shattered notes clamored. The sprites had gotten smarter, because now most were in the bodies of teenaged girls, their hands to their sides, silent, probably too old to be trapped by shackles and null bands around their heads unless they were already unconscious. They were led by a man. He was dressed in priest’s robes, and by the blood in his beard and down his robes, he appeared to have been snacking on the living and the dead around him.
In each hand, he held a child by the arm. Unpossessed children, dressed for school. The priest stood in front of the church doors, facing them as if in challenge. He rocked back his head and screamed in defiance. Donati shot him. Neck shot. Not clean.
The priest dropped. The child to his left leaped to her feet and raced away, to the other side of the pile of cars. Donati finished the priest and shoved the other child away, shouting, “Run!”
There was a whoosh of blistering heat. Flames licked high. Spread through a dozen liquid fuel trails to the church. Up its walls. Inside the windows. Down and up the street.
Screams from everywhere.
The teenaged girls turned on EJ and Donati, firing weapons that they had hidden in the folds of their school dresses. Guns. Not blades. A trap. Donati went down. Half his head missing.
EJ took a round to the upper thigh. Another to the chest,hammering into his vest. His breath knocked out. He ducked behind a burning car. Shot the girl closest. Then another. One after the other. Until the sound of shattered music was gone, and all that was left were the screams of the dying, the stench of charring flesh in the street, and cries from the church as the trapped burst free and raced from the flames.
He slumped to the ground. He’d lost a lot of blood. As his eyes closed, he heard a voice calling to him through his ear-patch comms. Farther away, the thump of a helicopter, bringing in a cleanup team, now that the threat of possession was neutralized. Hot tears had trickled down his face. He had folded Delta, then Theta, and put the modes away as darkness fell on him.
EJ woke, drenched in sweat, his muscles cramping with fight-or-flight instincts. He was at the kitchen table, facedown in sweat and tears. A dog tongue was lapping at his face. He remembered to inhale and blew out a breath that ached. Gently, he lifted George and placed the heavy dog on the floor. “I don’t know how you got up on the table, Georgie Porgie,” he whispered, “but thank you. I’m okay. I’m okay, boy.”
He stood and stretched against the cramping muscles.
He remembered the smells. The sounds. The sight of young girls as he shot them and contained their demons.
He stripped out of the sweat-chilled clothes, pulled on something warm and dry, and took George downstairs and outside to the patch of grass, now beneath a foot of snow. He kicked a spot clean. George was not a fan of snow, but he did his business and headed inside, leading the way. Back upstairs, EJ ate a serving of yogurt and downed a cup of espresso. Decided that wasn’t enough and finished off two more cups. It still wasn’t enough.
