The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) (26 page)

I let my arms flop to my sides in defeat. “No group hug, then. You guys suck.”

“Well, Beatrice,” Mother Arden spoke up to alleviate the sting of my group hug rejection, “it seems like you're in good hands here. Do you need anything else before I go?”

I thought about it for a second. Came up blank. “I don't think so―Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Would you, uh...Would you happen to know where all my stuff is?” Being in the hospital had really distorted my spatial awareness. Everything happened so quickly that I hadn't much time to regain my footing. The concussion didn't help.

Mother Arden's mouth quirked in a wry smile. A smile that said she knew something I didn't. Her gaze lifted past me to rest on Dante. “Ask Mr. Arturo.”

“Mr. Arturo?” I turned on him, batting my eyelashes. “What's she talking about?”

“You'll see,” he said cryptically.

“I'd better,” I replied.

“I should leave you to it, then.” Mother Arden turned to leave, but before she went, she redirected her smile to me. “Please remember to call me if you need anything. I love you, Beatrice, and I'm glad you've found home.”

Home. That funny word that never fit right in my mouth. Home, a concept seen only in movies and on television screens. Home, a thing orphans heard about but rarely had.

It took a bit of trial and error, but I was here now. With Dante, with Max, with Aralia, with Mo. I was here. I was safe. I was home.

***

“Close your eyes,” Dante instructed shortly after Mother Arden took her exit. Aralia and Max were gone, too, leaving Dante and I alone in his study. I figured this was part of his overreaching plan.

No matter. I could play along. I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands to enhance the effect. “Okay. Now what?”

His response was his hands on my shoulders. He steered me forward, his lips at my ear as he spoke again. “You'll see.”

“
You'll see
,” I parroted, hoping to conceal how freaked I was by his close proximity. It was the good kind of freaked, but freaked all the same. “Where are we going?”

“You'll s―”

“I'll see, yeah I gathered that. Now why don't you just tell me because surprises stress me out especially if they make noise. This isn't going to make noise, is it?”

He chuckled. “I hope not.”

“You
hope
not?” What kind of response was that? “No offense, but that didn't really make me feel better. Can't you just tell me? Please?”

“Relax, Beatrice.”

“I can't relax. Haven't we had this conversation before?”

A door opened. Er, it sounded like a door. It sounded like a familiar door.
My
door.

“All right,” Dante said, “you can―”

I'd opened my eyes before he gave the okay. Sure enough, we were in my room. And it looked...exactly the same as it did when I left it. Huh. “Gee, Dante, I'm glad you let me move back in and all but, uh―”

“Check the nightstand,” he said.

“It's a very nice nightstand,” I nodded. And it was. Very…woody. Old. Dusty because I didn’t clean.

“Inside the drawer, Beatrice.”

“Oh.” That made a lot more sense.

I crossed the room and opened it. What I found was a card. Not a greeting card, not a get well soon card, but an identification card. A permit. Issued from Washington DC, stating that I, Beatrice Jayne Todd of Stone Chapel, Maine, was now federally authorized to hunt and kill demons.

Holy. Shit.

“Dante, you…” I whipped around, gripping the permit like a winning lotto ticket. “You didn't. Oh my God. You didn't!”

“I did,” he said. “Though I wouldn't have been able to without Mother Arden's help.”

“Oh my God.” My hands shook. I couldn't believe it. I was
federally authorized
now, officially a hunter. The police couldn't drag me to jail for shooting a possessed dog anymore. I was legal. I was one of
them
.

Dante cleared his throat. “You'll need to sign some things and I'll send them in for you, but other than that, you're perfectly legal now.”

“This is amazing,” I said. Everything I'd been working for, materialized in this permit. “Seriously, Dante. Thank you so much. This is all I've ever wanted.”

“I know.” He said. “You deserve it.”

I did. I
did
deserve it.

Giving it one last look, I tucked my permit back into the drawer for safe keeping, then opened my arms for yet another hug. “C'mon,” I said, “everyone's getting hugs today.”

He began backing out of the room. “That's very nice of you, but I have some work to do.”

“It can wait. Give me a hug.”

“Beatrice―”

“Dante,” I marched up to him and hugged him tight, resting my cheek on his chest. His heart beat a steady rhythm in my ear. “Just shut up and hug me back.”

To my surprise and subsequent delight, his arms wrapped around my waist and held me close against him, strong and intimate and safe. No head patting, no awkward frowning. This was a hug, a
real
hug.

I didn't want it to end.

“Beatrice?” Dante murmured.

“Yeah?” I asked, mind churning with all the romantic lines he could feed me. Like that one from
The Demon and The Dame.
Sylvie's character and her possessed lawyer boyfriend are dancing together in a glamorous ballroom and right before the big reveal
―
he's possessed, Sylvie!―he looks at her and says...

“The roof is leaking.”

Wait. That wasn't how it went.

“Huh?” I lifted my head, letting my Hollywood fantasies fade. “Where?”

He pointed directly above us to a dark brown spot in the ceiling. “There. That storm must have caused more damage than I thought. Wonderful.”

Poor old house. It was falling apart. “Can you fix it?”

“Once we get a day of sunshine, yes.” He raked a hand through his messy hair. Back to the regular, non-romantic Dante.

I took that tiny shred of disappointment I felt at his mood swing and tucked it away. We had more important things to worry about. “Should I get a bucket or something?”

“That would be wise,” he said. “Look in the kitchen underneath the sink. There should be one there.”

“You got it, boss,” I gave him a thumbs-up and went to do as he bid.

He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “Beatrice?”

“Hm?” This was his chance. His chance to feed me a Sylvie Karlov movie line.

“Don't call me boss.”

Okay, it wasn't particularly romantic.

But it was a start.

Twenty-Seven

Evening settled and with the dark came the cold. The power still hadn't been turned back on, so the space heaters wouldn't work. To compensate, I gathered as many blankets as I could find and the four of us holed ourselves up in the study, where Dante started a fire. Aralia heated the soup she'd made earlier on the hearth and we ate supper.

It was almost cozy. In a pilgrim sort of way.

Pilgrim living got boring quick, however, and to pass the time, we played a fun game called Compiling Evidence.

Dante dragged a rolling chalkboard in from one of the disused bedrooms. He taped photographs of the first crop of murders at the top of the board and photographs of the ones at my apartment on the bottom. In the middle, he taped Rosie's note and Henriette's letter. The book that contained Elias’s confession sat open on his desk.

“Everything started with this letter,” he said, pointing to Henriette's. “Days later, the first few bodies were found. We can plainly see the symbol of the First Sacrament branded onto their abdomens.”

“Which was also on the envelope Henriette's letter came in,” I supplied.

“Right,” Dante said. “And a day after the bodies were found, you had your incident with the church.”

“Seems so long ago.” Aralia rested her head on my shoulder. We sat on the floor sharing my comforter. “Poor Beatrice, you would have gotten eaten by that wretched dog if I hadn't come along.”

“My hero,” I said. “What were you doing out there anyway?”

“Looking into something for our fearless leader,” she replied, nodding at Dante. “We thought, perhaps, the church had something to do with the murders, per Henriette's letter. Turns out, we were right.”

“Did we ever figure out what exactly happened to Beatrice?” Max asked, looking up from his cell phone. He seemed distracted.

I shrugged. “I just assumed it was trying to possess me or something.”

“Can buildings even do that?” He directed the question to Dante.

“Not in a traditional sense.” He glanced at the book. “Elias had the church built because he thought God bade him so. Which leads me to believe that he was possessed. Whoever was possessing him deceived him into thinking they were the voice of God, when in reality...”

“God was just a demon,” I muttered. “Why would a demon want a church?”

“To expand its territory, maybe?” Max suggested.

“Demons don't have territory, Maxie,” Aralia said.

Dante got a box of chalk from his desk and wrote something down on the board between the rows of pictures and letters. “Power. That's what it wanted. Demons draw their strength from other living beings, especially humans. Can you imagine the combined force of everyone in that church?”

“It would have been enough to sustain it for months.” Aralia pulled our blanket closer.

“How would that work, though?” I asked. “I thought demons got their power from possession.”

“They do,” Dante replied, “but sacrifice is another means of acquiring it, provided the energy is channeled correctly.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, needing a moment to process everything. “So Elias was possessed and the church was built because the demon possessing him wanted a bunch of sacrifices. And the church was a way to gather everyone together.”

Dante sat on the edge of his desk. “Correct.”

By that logic, the founding of the entire city was based on Elias’s sick herding. The church provided a springboard for the development of everything else. Stone Chapel wouldn't be Stone Chapel without it. But without it, none of this would have happened. It was a chilling realization.

I was born and raised in a city founded on literal sacrifice. Built on a foundation of blood and lies. Sixty-seven people died because Elias wished it. No wonder the demon infestation was so bad here.

“The settlers here revered Elias as a prophet,” Dante continued. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “He coerced his followers into gathering at the church. Claimed God wanted him to do what he did. And then he killed them.”

I shivered. Elias Cromwell was a monster. And I had a feeling we'd only scratched the surface of his atrocities. “Why would someone try to cover it up as an earthquake? Why not a hurricane? Or a…nor’easter or something?”

“I wondered that, too, but it makes sense,” Dante said.

I waited for him to clarify. He didn't, too lost in his own thoughts to untangle mine.

“A mass sacrifice like that could have easily generated enough force to cause some sort of tectonic shift,” Aralia murmured, subdued by the depressing subject matter. “Sacrifice is similar to exorcism in that it causes the Veil to rip. Sixty-seven of them all at once would have created an energy so massive that an earthquake could have very well happened.”

I pulled my knees to my chest and hugged my legs tight, fighting back the nauseous feeling in my gut. I couldn't tell if it was from the concussion or everything else or both. “Whoever's doing all this clearly doesn't want me involved.”

“Yes, it certainly seems you've made someone angry,” Aralia agreed. “But who? That Gershom man is in jail and I doubt he's smart enough to orchestrate all this from there.”

“The mayor is our best guess,” Dante said.

Ugh. The
mayor.
With his stupid press conferences and his stupid hair and his stupid smile. He'd been weirdly unobtrusive lately, which only made me distrust him more.

A collective hush fell over the four of us. The fire popped and Mo came padding in through the door. He laid down next to me and let out the dog equivalent of a sigh.

I scratched him behind the ear. “Me too, Mo.”

“What about the kazraach?” Max asked. He kept glancing down at his phone.

Dante scribbled on the chalkboard.
KAZRAACH
. “Whoever put the book there summoned them. Let’s, for all intents and purposes, assume it was the mayor. Since he’s our only real suspect at the moment.”

I raised my hand.

Dante lifted a brow. “Yes, Beatrice?”

“Yeah, I have a question,” I said. I had tons of questions. This was getting more confusing by the second. “If the mayor’s our guy, who’s possessing him? Kazraach can’t get here without a really powerful summoner, right? Got to be a really powerful demon.”

Aralia coughed. A fake cough, a dry noise laden with deception.

I looked at her, suspicion aroused. “Something in your throat?”

She huffed and lifted her head off my shoulder. Instead of responding to me, she spoke to Dante. “Just tell her. This has gone on long enough and you
know
how I feel about lying.”

Oh, great. The Compiling Evidence game had turned into hide and seek. Let's
see
what we can
hide
from Beatrice this time. My favorite.

“One of you better tell me what's going on.” I looked at Dante. “You promised me.”

He shot Aralia a severe look and reluctantly,
very
reluctantly, returned his gaze to me. “I also asked you to give me a few days to sort things out.”

“We don't have a few days,” I said. “I'm
tired
of being lied to. I'm tired of being patient. I need to―”

Leave it to my phone to go off at the most inconvenient time. The generic ringtone chimed in my pocket and I would have ignored it had I not caught a glimpse of who was calling.

The Stone Chapel Sanatorium. Calling me at eight thirty at night. They never did that. They weren't allowed to nag me for money after six and Rosie had her phone privileges taken away after she attacked that nurse.

I swallowed hard. This wasn’t a courtesy call. “Hello?”

“Beatrice?” Pam's frantic voice said on the other end of the line. The thrum of the background noise, garbled conversations and high-pitched sirens, made it hard to hear her. “Beatrice, this is Pam. Something's happened. Your friend is gone.”

My mouth went dry. “
Gone?
What do you mean,
gone?
”

“We don't know the details yet, but she got out of her restraints, killed a guard, and ran.” She choked on the word
killed
. “The—the police are here. Please, Beatrice, you need to hurry.”

I stopped listening after she mentioned the police. I'd seen this scenario play out before. A possessed person escapes. Goes on a rampage. The police guns them down. The sore spot on the back of my head throbbed. I wanted to puke. I couldn't puke. I needed to do as Pam said. I needed to hurry. I needed to find Rosie before the police did. I needed to save her.

Ripping my tiara off, I ran for the door, knowing full well the others would follow.

***

Dante drove. The rest of us piled in the car and off we went. That his house was so close to the sanatorium was a blessing in disguise. It wasn't but five minutes until we pulled up. A flock of police cruisers gathered out front, lights flashing too brightly in the dark. Officers with muzzled dogs wandered the lawn, awaiting orders from their superiors. Pam was by a tree wiping tears from her eyes. Brother Luke rested a comforting hand on her shoulder.

I ran to them first. “What happened? Did they send anyone out yet? Where did she go?”

“Beatrice,” Brother Luke said, “you're here. Thank God. I was wondering if I should―”

“Where is
she?”
I didn't have time for this. I needed to find Rosie.

“She bolted for the woods,” he said. I turned to leave. He grabbed my wrist. “Beatrice, wait.”

I tugged against his grasp and pried at his fingers, a few hot tears dripping onto my hand. I'd held it together until now. But Rosie was out there somewhere. She needed me. “Let me go!”

Brother Luke’s voice turned soothing. A crust of red tinged his nostrils. His nose had been bleeding. “Beatrice, the police have already sent people out to look. They'll find her.”

That was the problem, jackass. “They’ll kill her, Brother Luke, I have to go find her
right now
before they do!”

Why didn't he get that? The police liked to pretend they were all about protecting and serving, but the reality was much different. They protected those they thought worthy of the service. The possessed didn't matter to them. Rosie didn't matter to them. They were going to murder her. My best friend. Murder her for something she couldn't control.

Dante came up behind me with Aralia and Max at his side. I felt marginally better with them there to back me up.

“Is there a problem here?” Dante asked coldly, glaring Brother Luke.

He turned white as a sheet and his grip on my wrist weakened. I yanked it away and pondered whether or not it would be worth it to kick him in the balls in front of a bunch of cops who would probably charge me with assault. Given how freaked he looked by Dante's presence, it wouldn't be.

Sheer intimidation would have to do for now.

“Come on,” I told Dante and hustled toward the wall of trees behind the sanatorium. “Rosie went into the woods. We can still catch her.”

The distant wail of sirens got louder as we neared the trees. An ambulance came zooming up the drive and stopped in front of the sanatorium. EMTs in dark blue shirts jumped out. They had to have been going to receive the corpse of the person Rosie killed. I didn't want to think about it.

Chief Morales was speaking with another officer at the edge of the woods. Her jaw was tense, her eyes tired. She gave her associate a nod and sent them away.

I hurried over to her. “You have to call your people back.”

She blinked impassively, looking between me and the rest of my group. “What are you doing here?”

“The girl you're looking for is my best friend,” I explained quickly. “She didn't mean to hurt anyone, you have to believe me. She's sick. She has Faustian Syndrome. You can't kill her. You
can't.
Please, Chief Morales, she didn't know any better.”

My pleas didn't move her. “She killed someone, Beatrice. I can't let that go.”

I buried my fingers in my hair, tugging at the orangey strands. Frustration and fear stretched my nerves taut. This couldn’t happen, this
couldn’t
happen. I promised Rosie I’d always protect her and I
couldn’t
break that promise now. “I know, but you can't kill her. Let me find her first.”

“I already have people looking for her,” Chief Morales said. “If they can't find her, I'm sending in the dogs.”

Sending in the dogs. Like Rosie was an animal to be hunted. A bounty to be won. She'd done a lot of bad things in her life. She attacked me. She stabbed her nurse with a syringe. She murdered that guard. But I couldn't bring myself to hate her for it. I knew her in a way no one else did. I knew her before she'd gotten too sick to function.

What kind of friend would I be if I abandoned her now? What kind of sister would I be if I left her to die in those woods? It was supposed to be us against the world. Never had this been more literal until now. Standing face to face with Chief Morales, I knew I had to do something. For Rosie's sake.