Chapter 18
Eighteen
Sorcha
“What brings you to my chapel?” Reverend Whittaker asked as he led us into the spartan church hall.
The reverend was an older man with a short grey beard and a notable potbelly.
The church itself was simple, no stained glass, no crucifix above the pulpit, no altar to speak of.
And it smelled like mildew. I fought back nausea.
It would probably complicate things if I threw up in his church.
“That,” Ansel said bluntly, pointing to where the church’s back door had been haphazardly boarded up and painted over. “Heard someone etched an occult symbol. Wanted to see what you knew?”
Reverend Whittaker dithered for a moment before finally replying.
“Yes,” the reverend said. “Someone did. I . . . I talk a lot about the Ten Commandments. And lately there’s been these cattle mutilations. They look sacrificial. So I started talking about avoiding idolatry. And I guess someone took offense.”
“You have your services here?” Ansel asked.
“I do,” the reverend replied. “My wife and I have a little house farther from town. This was all boarded up when we got here. Stripped all the popery off it. Replaced the windows with plain glass. Took out all those awful statues. Started hosting proper meetings every Thursday night.”
I glared. No. There was no way . . .
“And today is Thursday, isn’t it?” Ansel asked.
“It is,” the reverend agreed. “Are you three interested in attending a service?”
“But of course,” Ansel said. “We’re here in town looking into some strange goings on. You seem to be protesting them, and protest often incites action? Doesn’t it?”
The reverend just swallowed hard. “I suppose I’ll see you tonight then.”
“I hate this,” I muttered, slouching lower in the pew.
Eight people had already offered to pray over me for the baby.
Five had touched my belly without asking.
Someone was shouting about the Tower of Babel.
And the hymns—if you could call them that—were entirely too loud and entirely too improvisational.
Neal draped an arm around my shoulders, cracking a smile.
“Don’t tell me you’re having a good time?” I asked in outright disbelief.
“I am,” he admitted, “but not because of all this. It’s just kinda funny to see you this upset over a church service.”
I muttered something about “not a real church service” but let him kiss my forehead.
It was over an hour before the reverend started his sermon. Ansel had been pacing the room’s small perimeter the entire time. Most of the worshippers seemed too distracted to notice.
Just like most of the worshippers were too distracted to notice when the bright light of torches appeared outside the window. I clocked it immediately, paying attention to anything except the sermon. I pulled Neal to his feet and gestured Ansel over to the window.
“You got something?” I asked, peering out.
“Worth checking,” Ansel agreed. “Come on.”
We ducked out the back door into the cool, humid air of the night.
And there, without the glare of the glass impeding vision, it became clear—not fifty yards off, just down from the ridge where the chapel was situated, were eight hooded figures, crowded around three untanned cattle hides, each marked with the eye and spiral.
There was a ninth figure there, an old man who looked drunk.
No cloak for him, just tattered street clothes.
He was bound hand and foot with a gag stuffed haphazardly into his mouth.
The old man’s skin was covered in cuts, and I watched in horror as the cultists smeared the blood in patterns on their faces, their hands, licking it off their fingers as they went.
I fought back nausea as I realized we were witnessing an occult human sacrifice.
“We have to do something,” I hissed. “They’re gonna kill him!”
“For now we wait,” Ansel cautioned. “We see what they do. We see if they summon something, and if so what. Hold your fire. But you know, weapons ready. Just in case.”
So we crouched behind the scrubby brush, just out of view. Until we heard the unmistakable swoosh and crackle—a portal opening. I froze. They were summoning the abominations. They were sacrificing to the abominations. They were drawing cosmic demons out of the abyss . . . and for what?
My musings were cut short as the glass windows of the church suddenly shattered and a loud screeching filled the air.
A giant, beetle-like insect with writhing tentacles instead of legs emerged from the rift, screaming.
Its shell gleamed purple black in the dim light of the cultists’ torches.
As the windows shattered the reverend’s flock started to scream as well, rushing from the building in a tangle of limbs.
The reverend stood as though paralyzed, still at his pulpit, hand still on his Bible, staring at the abomination.
“Do something!” Ansel snapped as the cultists knelt, dragging their captive with them. They left the old man on the ground as they returned to their feet, backing up and walking a slow, deliberate pattern. “They’re going to let it take him!”
“What do you want me to do?” I snapped.
“Pretty sure normal bullets won’t touch it,” Neal added. “Where’s your magic gun?”
“Back with the mules,” Ansel admitted, a little sheepish. “Do we think the walking and chanting is doing anything?”
“That’s a stupid question,” I hissed. “How the hell would I know?”
“Then we need to get away from here! And fast!” Neal insisted.
“Just see if you can summon something to disrupt them. See if that will get it to go away,” Ansel insisted. “Hurry!”
“I’ll watch your back.” Neal sighed, conceding to Ansel’s position. “Just focus.”
And so I did. The desert was bursting with life—but most was small—lizards searching for insects to eat, snakes sleeping curled up under rocks.
I couldn’t get reptiles to do my bidding anyways.
There were ground squirrels, gophers, a jackrabbit.
All profoundly unhelpful in this scenario.
Where was a mountain lion when I needed one?
Then finally I felt it—a wolf pack. Not too nearby, but near enough.
I directed my focus and just breathed. I’d never tried to summon more than one large animal at once—the bears at home didn’t count, I’d had more than enough honey and treats for bribery without magic then—and I felt the energy drain out of me as I focused my power.
Heat and a bizarre vertigo flooded through me.
The vertigo I knew well—any time I tried to summon something bigger than a housecat it made me dizzy as my brain tried to reconcile my own vestibular sense with the creature’s.
But the heat was new, it was like the exertion of the entire wolf pack was manifesting in my own flushed cheeks.
For one terrifying moment, I worried it wouldn’t even work.
But then the pack tore through the valley.
The largest had to be close to a hundred pounds—dappled grey and white, snarling, blood-streaked spit dripping in sick globules off its face.
It lunged at one of the cultists—jaws snapping.
The others quickly followed suit, baying and howling all the time.
Two smaller wolves grabbed one of the cultists by the arms and ran into the brush, dragging the screaming, bleeding figure in their wake.
Another half dozen of the cloaked figures tried to run—a few made it past the tree line, but three were cornered and backed up against the portal.
One of the remaining wolves pounced on the drunk old man—disoriented and bleeding already.
I flinched and covered my eyes as it went for the man’s throat.
A scream, then a gurgle. I risked looking again.
Two of the wolves dove directly toward the giant eldritch beetle, snapping at the tentacles and leaping onto the carapace in search of tearable flesh.
One of the tentacles ripped off in a wolf’s jaws with a sickening squelch, black blood spraying.
The beetle screamed louder, then opened massive iridescent black wings, flinging the wolves off its carapace in the process, and flew back through the rift.
Then there was a loud, ear-piercing crackle. And all went still.
“You did it,” Neal said, pulling me into his chest. I could feel something dripping down my face—my nose was bleeding.
My ears rang and my eyes refused to focus on anything properly.
I tried to take in the destruction around us—three dozen worshippers were still running for town, the reverend hadn’t moved from his place at the pulpit, three of the cultists’ bodies lay bleeding on the valley floor, and the old man too—blood pouring from a wound on his neck and entrails spilling from his belly.
The others were gone—scattered in fear or dragged off by the wolves.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, speech coming slow and challenging. “I think I did.”
And then I vomited onto the ground at our feet. Neal didn’t even flinch.
The reverend picked his way around the shattered glass, out the chapel doors, and over to us. “Did you do that?”
“Open the portal or get that hell beetle to retreat?” Ansel asked.
“Either one,” Reverend Whittaker said, shaking like a leaf.
“She got the abomination to back off,” Ansel said, gesturing at me as I still heaved, emptying my stomach on the dusty Texas earth.
“Ah,” said the reverend, “I see.”
“And now you’re gonna give us a place to sleep tonight. I’ve no clue if any of the cultists got out of this in one piece, but if they did I hardly want them tracking us back to the hotel.”
“But you see there’s my wife, and we don’t really have the room . . .” the reverend began.
“So you’re gonna make the pregnant lady sleep out in the dirt?” Ansel said. “Not very Christian of you, Reverend.”
“I’m sure something can be arranged.”