Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Cisco
Irun so fast that I almost slip on the wet tiles by the door. Outside, it’s pitch black. Wind screams through branches, swaying the shadowy limbs like monstrous hands. The rain comes in gusts, stinging my face.
They’re at the end of the path heading away from the abbey. Mercy is gaining on the pink blur ahead.
An image slams into my head. Pink ribbon floating on a stormy sea. Pressure builds inside me until I roar, “No. Not tonight.”
Next, I look, they’re moving around the church, disappearing into the shadows. I tear after them. Mud squelches through my toes.
I round the same corner. Wet branches slap in my face. I swipe them away and step forward, but something else pelts my face, splatting against my skin.
The buzzing.
It’s everywhere.
Stop fighting it. Start feeding it.
Flies swarm around me, screaming for blood, all feeling the way Jasmine did—familiar but with a dash of evil. They dive at my cheeks, hit my hair, crawl down my neck. It’s agony. The world’s smallest teeth, biting, biting, biting.
Chase her. Feast on her.
Every time I slap one away, ten more come. They get in my eyes. My mouth.
The devil inside me is howling.
Show her what real hunger means, what the true son is made of.
The flies suddenly stop swarming. The path is clear. I’m standing before the double trap doors of the church’s basement, and they’re both flung open.
The crypt.
They’re inside.
I run forward, slipping down the wet steps, barely holding my balance. It’s a pit. A hole in the world. The air inside is dank and smells like death.
The holy presence in the church doesn’t reach down here. If anything, the void is worse, more eager. The hunger inside me screams, battering against my rib cage, driving me forward.
I know what it wants. I’m past the point of caring. I just need to get to Mercy first, to make sure she’s safe.
I descend the final steps, horrified as ritualistic occult items come into view.
Candles gutter, melting down to the wick.
They’re on top of nearby sarcophagi, surrounded by chicken carcasses, blood, and maggots.
Slowly, I inch the crucifix and holy water from my rear pockets.
My beads clatter against the glass bottle.
The further I walk in, the more horrified I am.
Flies coat the crypt’s ceiling, the windowless walls, and the floor.
But mostly, they’re drawn to the chalked pentagram at the center of the room.
They crawl along the outside curve, unable to get inside where Mercy and Jasmine are locked, rolling, neither willing to let the other go.
But then Jasmine knocks the sword from Mercy’s hand.
It spins across the vast stone, clearing the chalk circle and hitting the wall. The glow dies.
Ribbons of shadow surface on Jasmine’s skin, swarming like the flies on the walls. With a feral baring of her teeth, she grabs Mercy’s neck and chokes.
Dread squeezes my heart.
I have a second to decide who lives and who dies. The one who feels like family, or the one I can’t live without?
I drop the kit. Holy water, wood, and rosary beads scatter.
Then I open the cage for my devil. The hungry void rips out. Violence threads through my veins. My vision tunnels and color drains.
There is no priest, no divine, no humanity. All that I am is the hunger, the starvation, the ravenous, trembling rage.
“You dare…” My voice sounds foreign, deep, and hollow. It’s older. Hungrier.
Jasmine looks up. Her lips pull back, slick with spit.
“Father—” she manages, but I don’t let her finish.
I grab her by the throat, lifting her off Mercy like a frog. She thrashes, legs kicking, but I slam her against the nearest wall. Flies spill from the impact. My fist squeezes, and I grind her spine against the swarm returning like a crashing wave, crawling over her face.
“You dare!” I slam her again. Hear a wet crunch. “You think you can feast here?” Slam. “In my domain?” Slam. “On my Mercy?”
“Stop,” she gurgles. “St—”
Slam.
Jasmine claws at my wrist, tries to spit in my face, to kick and bite. I slam her harder against the wall and hear something else crack. I see it in her eyes, the moment she realizes she’s lost, and then flies crawl over her neck in a line like soldiers, swirling around her jaw.
Whatever she is, my devil is older, ancestral. And it’s been deprived of sustenance for twenty years.
Taste her sin.
The buzzing in my head bellows.
Hunt it down in Spain. It’s there, bloody and bitter.
“Please—”
The buzzing of flies reaches a fever pitch, vibrating through my teeth. The marks hiding beneath my tattoos slither out. Spiked ribbons of empty shadow peel off my skin and wrap around her like a python, smothering and squeezing every inch of her body.
Her scream is shrill, inhuman as the spiked ribbons start to pulse, rapidly thickening as I feed. Oily sin draws out of Jasmine and into me.
And I drink it in.
I want more.
“I know it was you,” I whisper, hunting through her soul for the deepest of her evil. “That’s why the orphans fear to sleep with you, isn’t it?”
She scratches at my wrists, then at nothing.
Every drop of darkness, every ounce of envy, evil, and sin, is mine to keep. This is holy. Sacramental. But Heaven is an addiction, and it’s been so long. I can’t control the influx. I drink and feast and gorge myself. I don’t stop until she’s empty.
Jasmine sags to the floor, hollow, skin gray and cold. A giant fly rolls away from her neck, dead too. The shadow ribbons withdraw, slithering back beneath my tattoos.
The hunger … is sated.
But only for a heartbeat.
Then the real agony sets in. The void inside me screams, splitting my skull.
More, more, more!
I double over and clutch my head. My legs buckle, and I land hard on my knees. I gasp, heave in air, and steady myself on the cold concrete wall. The pain is cosmic, like swallowing shards of glass and then trying not to vomit them up, except the sensation is everywhere. Inside me. Desperate.
It takes forever.
It takes a second.
Finally, when I can see straight, I look up. The crypt is in ruin. Feathers, maggots, blood, and bones are scattered everywhere. Jasmine is on the ground, eyes rolled up, and she twitches out her death throes. The wall behind her is streaked with blood and bug guts from where I crushed her skull.
The flies are gone.
And then there’s Mercy, on the floor, clutching her elbow. Two wide blue eyes peer out through a curtain of messy hair.
Footsteps scuffle on the steps behind me. I turn and see the others descend. My team. Mercy’s team.
Leila is the first to view the devastation. Her face grows hard as I’ve never seen it before. She lifts her spiked gun and aims at my head. “What the ever-loving fuck, priest?”
Her too.
“No,” I grunt, but the hunger yawns inside me, opening its mouth. I tense all over, grit my teeth, and stare at Mercy. I remember how she looked at me beneath the water, and then I force the cage closed.
Snick.
Leila cocks the pistol and sights me down the barrel. “Make one fucking move toward my sister, and you’re dead.”
Voices shout. Chaos erupts. A distant part of me recognizes my team, my family—Zeke, Wesley, Dom. They all try to reason with her.
But no Mercy.
Her silence is the worst pain of all. It almost kills me to face her again. She tries to stand, but her good arm folds, and she slips.
I push off the wall, every motion agony.
Wesley yells, “Don’t—he’s not—he’s—”
“I swear to God, Father. One more step and I shoot.”
“Wait!” Thea’s voice rings out. “The gun will kill the man. The staff will kill the demon.”
My feet shuffle to a stop, but I don’t look back. I won’t survive the relics. If this is my time, I want Mercy to be the last thing I see. Her eyes, her hair, her smile. I take a step. Then another.
Light behind me blooms brighter.
Thea’s coming.
The devil roars and swells inside me, stronger than before. It fills me up with emptiness and—
“Stop!” Mercy shrieks.
A blow to my back jerks me forward, onto my hands and knees. Blinding white light washes through me, and it’s euphoric. It’s the feeling I get when I’m close to God, the holy presence, the fucking universe in a breath. And it’s the feeling when I devour. It’s all one.
But I’m still here.
Still me.
The silence is louder than a gun.
I glance up and see Mercy gaping at me, confused. Awed.
“He’s not,” she mutters. “He’s not a demon, see?”
“Then what the fuck is he?” someone shouts.
I can’t tell who because Mercy’s limping closer, wounded arm hanging, and it’s wrong. I see it on her face; she thinks I’m not evil.
I’m not a priest. I’m not a demon. Not even a man. I’m something worse, something a divine relic can’t kill.
The void howls with laughter in my belly, black and infinite.
It whispers, You’re almost there. One more mouthful. Just one—
“Cisco.” Mercy reaches for me.
I snarl, jerk away. “Don’t—”
She flinches, making a noise like a kicked dog, and I hate myself for it.
But it’s better this way. It has to be.
Leila’s still aiming at me with the gun. The rest are too shocked to move.
My gut is lava. The void inside me claws at my ribs, desperate to get out and feed again. I fight it, wrestle it with every ounce of will left. At some point, both my hands are on the floor.
Get out. Now.
I need to go.
Bitter blood rises in my throat when I force my limbs to move. Concrete rips the skin off my palms, but I keep crawling for the stairs to the exit.
Up, up, and up. Hannah flattens herself against the wall as I pass, mumbling something nonsensical. No one shoots me. No one stops me. Somehow, I make it out. My feet barely land where they should, but even blinded by pain, I know where to go.
I need to rebuild the cage. Make it stronger than before.
Down the path, around the building, and through the church’s front door. I stagger into the nave and stop. I hold my breath, tensing, half expecting—half hoping—for the wood and stone to combust in flames. For God to finally say, “Enough.”