Caleb
A colyte Seminary rose into view as we passed through the main gates and headed toward the large, five-story building where most of the classes took place. It was built in the style of Renaissance Italian universities with arching cathedral windows, elaborate brickwork, and intricate wrought iron fences and decorations. The organization’s main campus was hidden beneath the religious university, so along the real school housing real university students was the secretive, and quite literally underground cult. One that a surreptitious diocese used to control the many agents working alongside me in the shadows to monitor, track, and—more frequently than not—kill demons and other beings deemed monsters by the Church.
I managed to raise my head and look at the building we raced by. We went past my apartment block on the left—well, not so much an apartment as one of the original cramped little dorm buildings that had been constructed back in 1910, a few years after the university opened its doors. Eventually, the buildings had gotten so decrepit, the school had done bare bones renovations and converted them into apartments for agents like me.
While those of us unlucky enough to be listed within the grunt ranks had to deal with inconsistent water pressure, broken window units for AC, and electric heaters that were older than most of us who lived there, the rich kids paying to get an education stayed in the dorms built just over a year ago within easy access to the main building. The special agents got to live wherever they wanted—even off campus—but notably, some of them got suites on the upper floors of the school, where the nuns acted as their maids, cooking, cleaning, and, as the rumors went, sometimes providing additional, off-the-records services that weren’t exactly what you’d expect from women who’d sworn a vow of celibacy.
Sometimes, a rumor was just a rumor, but other times… well, I’d been on campus long enough to have seen just how close the investigators would get with the veiled sisters when they thought no one was paying attention. I’d never seen an investigator get cell time for ravishing a “celibate” nun, but then… that was the benefit of being one of the archdioceses’ pets, wasn’t it?
I looked over to the man on my left. Although Home had clearly been the most experienced agent in the recovery team back there, he hadn’t been the one who was in charge. This asshole, whoever he was, had the pretentious stink of one of those privileged few.
“Fucker,” I muttered, but my words were so slurred, he only glanced at me in confusion, then turned back to the window.
Everything on campus—above and below—screamed opulence. Manicured lawns, quads with real fruit trees and vegetable patches, perfectly cobbled drives, classrooms with the newest, cutting-edge tech, books, and even furniture… no expense had been spared. The university’s funding—and therefore the organization’s as well—came largely from anonymous donors. There were silent supporters within the Church, but also the rich students whose parents were unwittingly backing the org so their brats could get a supposedly prestigious degree from a Christian university. The look of this place alone could draw rich assholes faster than flies could scout out shit. The waiting list to get in was going on two years long.
The class sizes were purposely kept small to increase the exclusionary atmosphere, and so some families, eager to get their kids to attend such an impressive school, made generous contributions that would bump them up a spot—or ten. The whole while, these idiots slept easy thinking that their donation was being used to ensure their child’s education and to pay for their restaurant-quality meals and luxurious rooms. In the meantime, the Church was passing the money down below to the organization, where teams of recon agents monitored for demonic activity, hunter agents were dispatched to deal with said demons, and special investigators were sent off on ultra-secret missions. Sometimes to collect possible runaways, like me.
In the background of all of this was the diocese, the archdiocese, and the archbishop, a man I’d met face to face only once as a child—but had scared the shit out of me—plus about a billion other internal agents. These agents, however, took care of the minutiae and day-to-day running of the place. Secretaries, janitors, doctors, weapons experts… there were even some scientists that ran a lab only the archbishop himself was allowed inside of.
Not to mention the veiled sisters and those who handled them, plus all of the organization’s other medical staff—as well as its torturers.
So, while these kids attended chapel and classes, and felt good about “earning” that A when their parents paid yet another hefty amount to ensure the grade, beneath their feet was a fortress the size of a small city, dedicated to torture, experimentation, and ritualistic murder. The underground area was the only place we were allowed to speak of anything to do with the organization, and even there, only sparingly.
Place like this, the walls didn’t just have ears, they had eyes and a mouth, too. No secrets stayed secret for long. I started sweating as we parked in the shed meant to house university groundskeeping vehicles. Instead of getting out, however, the driver pulled the van onto an entirely conspicuous square in the rear corner, turned it off, and waited. A light lit green on the wall, flashing over a TV screen that read stand clear in large white letters.
The elevator began its descent, and I desperately tried to swallow the lump in my throat. The tranq had worn off for the most part, but pins and needles were now jamming sensation back to life in my fingers and toes. I still didn’t quite have control of my limbs. Every once in a while, a foot or hand might twitch unexpectedly.
Home glared over at me.
“Shit should have knocked you out for three to six hours, minimum,” he said as we entered the underground garage. He didn’t elaborate, but I could easily assume he wasn’t happy I was still awake.
I managed a shrug. It didn’t matter; I couldn’t really move still, and now that we were inside, it would take a keycard to get back out again. Only agents on assignment or in good standing were given those, and just like my fake debit card, they could be turned off remotely at any time, which meant mine was likely just a useless hunk of plastic already.
The mechanism that controlled the lift gate moved the vehicle over to its assigned spot beside a row of other vehicles, mostly black. Across from us on the other side of the garage were the cars for the special investigators, diocese, and higher ups. The GPS on those were permanently disabled; even the box to get the keys for the cars were only accessible with special security cards.
“I’ll take him from here,” said the agent with the gun as Home opened the door and grabbed me by the manacles, yanking me out of the van.
I wobbled, but managed to stand upright, even though it required a Herculean effort.
“All yours, sir,” said Home, waving as he wandered off.
The other agent took hold of my restraints without another word, and Home and the other agents who hadn’t needed immediate medical care made their way over to the freight elevator that would take them up top and back to the dorms. My escort yanked on my manacles, almost making my legs slide out from beneath me.
“Let’s get a move on,” he said. “You’ve got a date with the Devil, I hear—oh, wait, I forgot—that was how you spent your evening.”
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response, partially because I’d decided I’d already gotten into enough trouble, but partially because my brain was too sluggish to produce a witty repartee. We arrived at the double glass doors that held an ident scanner, and the man in the balaclava beside me unmasked himself.
“Fuck sake,” I groaned as recognition hit me. “Harry Benedict, you must be the biggest bastard I have ever met in my life.”
He grinned at me, then flashed his access card on the screen to bypass the lengthy biometric verification process. The doors slid open to allow us into the cool, air-conditioned interior of the organization. We walked down the cement hall toward a door on the end which would open into a large reception room and a then into a series of smaller rooms, dozens of twisting halls, doors, and more elevators. Some that led to rooms that someone with my clearance wasn’t allowed in, and some, such as the cells, that someone with my clearance had been in too many times.
“Nah, man, that’s definitely you.” He glanced over at me, a sliver of rage in his eyes. “You fucking see what you did to my face, man? My nose is broken .”
I stared down at him. We’d always been told we looked alike, which pissed Harry off to no end whenever someone mentioned it. Whereas my hair was dark auburn and my eyes were light blue, his hair was a sandier-colored brown and his eyes were a grayer, darker blue. At the moment, they were framed by bruises and a thick, bloody line over the ridge of his nose. There was dried blood down this mouth and lips, too. We were a few inches apart in height; he was just over six feet tall and came up to my jaw. Whereas I had broad shoulders and a thicker build, Harry was a touch thinner, with lithe muscles that hid just how strong he really was. In school one year, I’d seen him lift another student with one hand and throw him against the wall.
“Yeah, well I’m pretty sure mine is broken, too; I’ve been tasting blood the whole drive back and my face is swollen. Besides, you deserved it, pulling that stunt back there. By the way, I think you enjoyed that whole charade a little too much.” I scowled at him. “Was it really necessary to do the whole gun and mask routine and tell me you’re putting me straight in the cells? I mean, fuck’s sake, if you’d just told me it was you, I would have just gone wi?—”
“Orders are orders, Knight,” he said, casting a look over at me that held no apology; there was the hint of devilish delight in his face, “and it definitely wasn’t an act. You’re in the shit.”
I glared down at him as he scanned his card on the next door at the end of the hall, then opened the door and turned back to me.
“After you, dickweed,” he said.
My hands tightened into fists in the manacles. Harry Benedict had, at one point, been the closest thing I’d had to a friend in the entire seminary. After graduation, he’d been made special investigator, and I hadn’t, so off to special investigator bullshit land he’d gone, while I checked myself into the roach motels that counted for apartments around here. I hadn’t seen him in almost nine years, and he seemed far more intense than I’d ever remembered him being. There was something in his demeanor suggesting an edge of danger.
“Don’t got all morning, Knight. Gonna have to meet with the archbishop in a bit and explain how bad you fucked everything up.” He waved me onward. The gun might have been holstered now, but I got the distinct impression if I gave Harry the chance to use it, he’d gladly do so.
“What the hell happened to you, man? You could have just asked me to get in, and instead you decided to take the piss and play all that dodgy agent shit?”
Harry shook his head. “Considering what you just did to my men, I’m surprised Jax still wants to talk to you at all. In fact, our authorization had been to make it a full bag and gag; take you to a safe house for detox, then bring you to the cells.” He jerked his thumb back toward the garage. “Home talked me out of it. Said campus was just as good if not better. Personally, I think he just didn’t want the extra drive, and I can’t blame ’im, considering how long we spent scouring the area to find you and your demon gal.”
He shoved me through the doorway, pushing me ahead of him. For second, I’d had the terrifying idea that he’d meant Magda before I remembered he was still referring to Dr. Lowe. I forced my face to remain neutral as I marched forward down the bizarre red carpet leading to the large reception desk nearly a hundred feet away. The interior of the org’s main reception area was as big as an airplane bunker with marble floors, red hall runners, and thick, heavy blood-colored drapes behind which many of the secret elevators and rooms it boasted were hidden.
These also happened to hide many of those eyes and ears in the walls. Everywhere down here was bugged or watched—or so they’d told us. It was probably true, though.
“My demon ‘ gal ?’” I said as I stumbled forward toward the single reception desk. “What is this, an eighties sitcom? I don’t have any ‘gal,’ demon or otherwise, dumbass.”
“That so?” asked Harry, his tone light. “You were, ah… gone for a while, weren’t you? Plenty of time to get to know one another, I mean, after you helped her escape and all, right? After you pursued that succubus against orders. By your own admission, you can’t really remember what happened, and then you went goddamn Rambo on eight of your fellow agents—including a special investigator. You tell me: is it unreasonable to assume you fell prey to her charms?”
“Oh, but your bullshit about taking me straight to the cells had nothing to do with me going off on your ass? You think that shit was funny?”
“Hysterical, actually,” said Harry under his breath, a toothy grin crawling up his smug face as we walked toward two figures in front of the reception desk. “That was just act one—just wait until you see what I’ve got planned for the finale.”
The resident organization bishop Jackson Knight stood beside a small, stooped female figure covered from head to toe in a thick black veil like some kind of fucked-up mixture between bride of Satan and nun. Although the bishop and I shared the same last name, it was only because we’d both been “adopted” by the organization—all orphans brought into the school got the same last name. He’d been adopted around fifty or so years ago.
“You’d better have a goddamn good explanation, ,” said Jax, glowering at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his thick-lensed glasses, but I knew they’d practically be spitting fire. He adjusted them farther up their perch on his nose along the thick white scar that stretched from just center of his forehead across the bridge and down across his left cheek. He gripped the metal cane in his liver-spotted hands with aggravation.
He might have gotten long in the tooth, but when Jax was angry, the entire organization would feel his wrath. I would know; I was frequently front and center to it.
“Language, padre,” I muttered.
Harry clapped me on the shoulder reproachfully and whispered, “You’ll want to behave for this one, . I’m not kidding.”
Panic welled. Did they know? Had they seen me running from the building carrying Magda? Worse still—had I left her alone in that place under the guise of believing I could bullshit my way out of this and get back to her if I just took my beatings like an obedient hound?
Like a punch to the gut, I realized I’d never had any intention of leaving her alone for good. The second Harry had given me the ultimatum of turning on my fellow agents for the chance to escape, my first thoughts had been how I would get away and go back to Magda… and I knew better than anyone what the organization did to the men in its employ who fell under a demon’s thrall.
I’m so fucked.
I swallowed down my terror. I had to stay centered; focused. She might not have bewitched me on purpose, but there was no denying the effect Magda had on me. It was more than the sex; I’d been drawn to her from the very first moment I saw her getting out of the car—when I’d been watching her through a lens half a mile away.
Jax lifted his hand, extending it toward me with the air of a man who would brook no argument. Under normal circumstances, we’d dispense with this kind of ceremony, but Harry’s warning, along with the veiled nun behind him, convinced me to swallow my pride. I bent down and kissed the ring on his finger—a large, diamond encrusted ruby that could have probably fed a third-world country for a year—and idly wondered how many other lips had touched it recently. I stood back, saying nothing.
“This way,” said Jax, leading the way with the tell-tale click-clack of his cane. He made his way toward the elevator doors nearest to us with a pronounced limp. “Unbelievable, .”
“Jax, I?—”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” the bishop warned.
I sighed. “Jax, please?—"
I doubled over onto the tile, clutching my gut, suddenly finding myself weak in the knees. I gave a strangled cry and collapsed, gasping hard as a strange warmth flooded me. My dick throbbed like it had its own heartbeat; for one long, unbearable minute, I shook and worried that I was going to pitch a tent right there in front of a priest and a nun, but thankfully, I stayed in place.
There it was again—that strange connection between Magda and me. It snaked around me like a soft ribbon, wrapping tight; like her arms had slipped over my chest. There had been something like a shockwave of her power, and now… now I could almost sense her, like a shadow just out of the corner of my eye.
“?” asked Jax. “What’s going on?”
I was panting hard, searching for an answer better than I don’t know .
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I just got sick for a minute.”
I sat back on my haunches; watched Harry and Jax exchange a look that spoke of secrets I wasn’t privy to, but I was pretty damn certain had something to do with me.
“Can you stand,” sighed Harry, extending his hand as if to help me up, “or am I going to have to carry your ass?”
I forced myself upright, slapping his hand away, then went past Jax and stood in the elevator. “I’m fine.”
“What was all that about?” demanded Harry as we rode up. “Couldn’t tell if you were loving that or hating it.”
I felt my jaw clenching. “I got hit by a car, asshole—then beaten, tranqed, and beaten again—so maybe I’m just not feeling well. Or don’t you remember?”
Jax spun to face us, his caterpillar-like brows pinched together. “…You what ?”
“It was only after he headbutted me in the face and attacked everyone,” Harry snapped, gesturing to his nose, “or did you not notice the fucking blood everywhere?”
Jax stared at me now. “ You what ?”
“He tossed the other agent on duty over his shoulder like a rag doll, broke my driver’s leg, then took down four recovery agents,” Harry sneered. “So yeah, he mighta gotten a little hit by a van , but you ask me, he deserved to be hit with a fucking bus .”
Jax sighed and faced the doors again, his voice low and furious, the grip on his cane tightening. “We will talk about this upstairs.”
At least for the time being, I wasn’t heading for the cells—not immediately, anyway. I didn’t like that Harry and the veiled nun were with us; or that Jax seemed, at least in my estimation, as angry as I had ever seen him. The doors opened on a small, dark room with a one-way viewing panel at the back, a small wooden table, and two chairs.
Fuck. Interrogation room.
“Sit,” Jax ordered, resting his cane against the table and swiping his pastoral robes out of the way as he took the only other seat.
The veiled sister moved to the left of the door, Harry, the right. I sat with a sigh.
“Let’s start with the obvious,” said Jax with the patience of a man who’d never known patience in his life. “Where have you been since you went dark yesterday afternoon?”
I started to speak, but he raised his hand. “No bullshitting, boy. You’ve made a mess of this entire thing, and if there is any hope for you to get out of this intact, you’re going to talk. Now.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said.
It was the truth—and I knew that for certain, because the interrogation rooms wouldn’t allow for lies; the priests refreshed the room’s holy spells before each session. So, while I would have to tell the truth when I answered, I’d still have the option to not answer or find a way to be evasive. Wording things carefully would be easier here than once they pushed drugs through me in the cells, though.
Jax hmmed at that and rested his hands on the table. “The other agent stationed at home gave us his report, so we know everything up until you got in the building.”
I blinked at that. Either a hint or a trap; I couldn’t be sure.
“Okay, well, I took my firearm with me—” I belated realized it was still on my person, just under my coat jacket; why hadn’t they taken it? “—and I went in. I didn’t catch sight of the civilian I’d spotted from my perch, but I watched for what floor the elevator stopped at, noted it was the same floor the demon under our surveillance was at, and followed.”
Jax nodded, staring at the table as he contemplated. “You told the other agent you’d been burned.”
“Yes.”
Jax glared at me, clearly waiting for me to go on.
“I was monitoring the situation through my telephoto lens,” I paused, frowning, realizing I had no idea where the camera had gone. “The doctor seemed to… I don’t know how to explain?—”
“Do try,” Jax demanded dryly.
I looked over to Harry and the nun. The woman, with her thick veil, still seemed to be unaware of my presence, but Harry was watching me intensely. I cleared my throat. “She just… knew I was there, Jax. I swear to you. She’d been at her desk doing paperwork just fine, then I took my eyes off her, spotted the civie, and when I looked back…”
I recalled the smirk she’d given me as she closed the blinds. “She was looking right at me. Like she was…”
“Taunting you,” Jax said with a deflated sigh, his bushy white eyebrows furrowing closely together. “Yes, I suspected that could be the case. I believe that the succubus may have been aware—and targeting you—for some time. Possibly almost as long as you’ve been surveilling her.”
“Wait, why?” I demanded. “How did she even know I was there?” I leaned forward and placed both manacled hands on the table.
Did the doctor do something to me…? Is that why my memory of Friday is hazy? Is that why… why I feel this way about Magda?
Something within me had been altered; I could feel it, but I wasn’t sure what precisely had changed. The holes in my memory… the experience with Magda? Her insistence that I protect Magda from the organization—what had that been about? Maybe I could find out if Jax had any other info and explain to Magda when I?—
Stop thinking you can go back to her! You really need to worry about your own hide right now.
Jax looked up to Harry with a deep frown and nodded. Harry moved to the glass behind me and tapped on it. Within moments, the light clicked on and off, signaling the room had been emptied. I was no stranger to the procedure; I was just normally the one doing the knocking.
“The reason this entire operation was to be ‘no contact’ was because the archbishop himself has ordered that we take the demon—alias Dr. Lowe, real name, Carmilla de Mornay—back to him alive. He’s had a contract out on her for years, and to be frank, finds her very existence an embarrassment, since she’s a testament to the organization’s failure to capture her.”