Dark Debts (45 page)

Donna opened the door. It took a moment for Michael's identity to register, probably because she'd never seen him in clerics. When she realized who it was, the smile left her face. She didn't speak.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Why?

“I need to talk to you.”

“I'm in the phone book,” she said coldly.

“I didn't want to do this over the phone.” Something flashed in her eyes and Michael felt it in his stomach.

Did that mean she knew why he was here? Did that mean it was true? She led him into the living room but didn't offer him a seat. The room was meticulously detailed with all of Vincent's finest touches, which made being there that much more difficult. The mahogany fireplace was lined with sienna tiles, hand-painted with troubadours on either side. The mantel was adorned with a collection of vases and an expensively framed picture of Donna's family. There were also framed photos of small children with Santa. Not what he needed to see right now.

“What is this about?” Donna asked. She was clearly uncomfortable. He knew of no easy way to get into it and wasn't in the mood to search for one.

“I need to know: Were you pregnant when we broke up?”

She looked away from him and brushed her bangs to the side, nervously. It took her a moment to speak.

“Who told you?” she asked, her voice trembling.

He didn't answer. Gave himself a minute to take it in. It didn't want to go in. He felt he might throw up.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he asked, finally.

“What would have been the point?”

“The point?” He forced himself to keep his voice down. “The point is that I had a right to know.”

“Michael, why are you doing this? It was over thirty years ago.”

Oh, dear God. It's all true.

“Why didn't you tell me? Even if it wasn't a big thing to you—”

“How the hell do you know what it was to me?” Donna half screamed. “You never knew who I was and you never gave a damn, as long as—” She stopped herself; she took a couple of breaths. Started again, slightly calmer. “What difference would it have made if I'd told you, Michael? You had big plans. What would you have done? Married me?”

He didn't answer. She knew the answer.

“All you would have done is what you're doing now. Barge in here on your morally superior high horse, judging
me
, like it wasn't your fault in the first place!”

She let him sit with it for a moment. She was right. It was entirely his fault, in more ways than one.

“I didn't see any point in both our lives being ruined,” she said.

“Has your life been ruined?” he asked. He tried to make his voice inflectionless. He really wanted to know.

“You did something worse than ruin my life. You ruined me with God. The great irony.” She was starting to cry.

“Donna, I think God knows who to blame,” Michael said.

“I don't care who He blames!” she snapped. “All I know is, He punished me and He didn't punish you, and I can never forgive Him for that! And I guess He can't forgive me, either, because I sure as hell don't feel forgiven. Especially not with you standing in my living room out of nowhere in the middle of the night.” It was his cue to leave, but he couldn't make himself move.

“There's nothing else to say about it. Now please leave before you wake up my family.”

Michael nodded. He certainly didn't want to cause her any more pain than he already had. He walked toward the door. She didn't follow him. He stopped in the doorway.

“Donna . . . I'm really sorry,” he said. “I would have been there for you, if you'd told me.”

She looked at him, unimpressed. “No, you wouldn't have. And you're not going to use me now to ease your conscience.”

It was as painful as she'd intended it to be. He left her standing in the living room, staring out the window at the rain.

He drove back to the villa as fast as he dared, given the weather and the condition of his head and heart.

Dear God . . . Dear God . . .

No prayer would form in his mind.

Why would God listen to you?

Back at the villa, Michael sat in the library and tried to pull himself together. He'd barely given Donna a thought after he'd dumped her. He'd been entirely focused on
his
future. And it had been the same way with Tess. He'd never thought about what
her
future might look like, if he left to marry her. That wasn't love, he now realized. And he knew what it was.

He sat for a few minutes, praying for the strength to do what he had to do. Then he picked up the phone and dialed.

Tess answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“It's me,” he said.

“Hi, you!” She was in a great mood, which was only going to make it worse.

He sighed, still trying to find the words.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Are you calling to break up with me?” Tess asked, her happy mood gone.

“Yes” was all Michael could say.

“You're breaking up with me over the phone?”

“It's complicated, but I can explain,” Michael offered.

“Don't.” The sound of the phone hanging up was like a slap across his face.

It took Michael a moment to hang up. He wanted to call her back immediately and try to make her feel better about it, but he knew he couldn't. He sat in the dark, aching for what he knew Tess was going through. And for Donna, and for sins upon sins. Lies, lust, fornication, broken vows, more lies, disobedience, pride, hatred . . .

And a dead child
.

The thought was more than he could bear, and he broke down sobbing. Deep sobs that racked his body with a twisting pain and took every ounce of his breath. The weight of the grief crushed him.

The floor creaked and he opened his eyes to see Gabe standing there, purple stole in hand. Michael caught his breath and tried to reel himself back in. Gabe came over and sat on the ottoman in front of him. Donned the stole but didn't say anything. Waited.

Michael sat up, crossed himself, muttered a perfunctory “Bless me Father for I have sinned,” and started spewing iniquities. The pain he had caused Tess, and Donna. The entire laundry list, ending with his murdered child. He wept with sorrow as his carefully orchestrated life lay in ruins before him.

“It's too much,” Michael managed to say.

“You said you trusted God's mercy.”

For having a lover,
Michael thought.
Not for this.
And Gabe was right. He had
presumed
God's mercy. He hadn't asked for it.

Gabe leaned closer to him and spoke firmly. “Do you believe in the sacrament of reconciliation, Michael?” he asked.

Michael weighed it. If he didn't believe in it for himself, he couldn't believe in it for anyone else.

“Yes,” he whispered.

He bowed his head and forced himself through an Act of Contrition.

“. . . with the help of thy grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.” And this time he meant it.

There was not a trace of smugness in Gabe's voice as he absolved Michael. The words washed over him and the weight that lifted was almost tangible, and Michael realized that a state of grace was a real thing.

Immediately there was a loud bang and a loathsome roar from down the hall.

“He didn't like that,” Gabe said with a trace of a smile.

B
ack in the room, they found Randa quivering in a corner, terrified. The air was frigid and the presence heavy and overwhelming, and a foul stench permeated the air. There were two distinct voices coming from Jack. One maintained a low growl that never stopped. The other was Jack's voice, but with a ragged edge, as though he was getting over a bad cold.

Michael and Gabe were both gagging from the stench as they found their places in the
Roman Ritual
. Michael found his first, as Gabe barked, “Skip the preliminaries.” Michael agreed. Things had ratcheted up intensely; there was no time to lose.

“I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, now attacking this servant of God—”

“He's
my
servant!” the thing bellowed.

“—by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord—” Michael started to choke on the stench, but Gabe barely missed a beat.

“Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit—”

There was a loud explosion and the window blew out as if from a tornado. A huge wind swept through the room. With supernatural strength, Jack broke all the straps and stood up. At the same time, a lamp flew across the room like a missile. Its heavy brass bottom slammed squarely into Gabe's forehead, knocking him to the floor. Jack headed for the destroyed window and dove through it.

The wind was gone and the room was quiet. Michael knelt by Gabe, who was struggling to maintain consciousness.

“I'm okay,” Gabe said. He tried to get to his feet but lost his balance and fell back to the ground.

“I have to go get him,” Michael said.

“I'm going with you,” Gabe said, groggily.

“I don't have time for you to recover. I'll lose him.”

Gabe nodded. Michael turned to Randa, but she cut him off before he could speak.

“Don't even
try
to tell me to stay here.”

M
ichael and Randa caught up with Jack, driving Randa's car, as he headed south on I-75. For a while they kept him in sight, but he was going too fast and they lost him.

“How are we going to know where he's going if we can't see him?”

Michael didn't know the answer to that.

Dear God, I can't fight him if I don't know where he is.

The silence did not surprise Michael. Seconds later, though, he was shocked to hear the demon's voice in his head, clear and loud.

“Este vez, Padre, nadie estará allí para atraparte.”

It took Michael a little while to translate.

“This time . . . no one will be there . . . to catch you.”

“I know where he's going,” Michael said.

“How?” Randa asked.

He ignored her and drove.

Of course. It made perfect sense. The Winecoff, where he'd killed Michael's family. Where he had tried to kill Michael. He'd probably laughed that night, and sang his little “
salsipuedes
” song. Probably reveled in all the carnage, but he hadn't gotten the one thing he'd really wanted. He hadn't killed Michael. Vincent had been waiting to catch him.

Michael parked the car on a side street and led Randa up the street to the Winecoff. The glass doors to the lobby were covered with brown paper. Michael pushed them anyway. When they refused to budge, he looked around. On the other side of the building was the Chinese restaurant. Neon lights glowed in the window:
DINE IN OR TAKE OUT
and
DELIVERY AVAILABLE
, but the
OPEN
sign was not lit and the doors were locked. Michael motioned for Randa to follow him and ducked into the adjacent alley so they could check out the side of the building. From there, it was obvious how Jack had gained entry. One of the windows on the first floor had been smashed and was now open. Michael climbed through it and helped Randa in after him.

They ran into the lobby, where they made a beeline for the interior stairs. At the bottom of them, Michael stopped. “Okay,” he said to Randa. “I need you to stay here—”

“I'm not—”

“Randa!” Michael raised his voice enough to shut her down. “This is going to take everything I've got. I
cannot
be worrying about you and your safety. You have to sit here, for Jack's sake if not for mine.”

Randa sat. She pouted, but she sat.

“And Randa . . . Pray. You can believe it later. Just pray.”

She nodded, and he left her and quickly climbed the stairs. He removed a plastic holy water bottle from his pocket as he went, like a cop taking his gun out of its holster.

By the time he hit the second landing, he knew he was right. He could feel the presence by the heaviness in the air and the heaviness in his soul. He had to stop on the third landing just to summon the strength to make it the rest of the way. The air was impossibly heavy and he was swallowed in a sudden onslaught of grief. The fire had started here, not more than twenty feet from where he was standing.

On the sixth-floor landing he was hit by another wave of grief, and this time it was paralyzing. Knowing its source gave him no power over it.

He sat on the stairs and cried. Sobbed. Deep, tight sobs that made his throat ache. His breath wouldn't come, and when it did, he started to cough and couldn't stop. When the coughing finally stopped, the sobbing started again. Everything inside him, body and soul, ached until he didn't think he could live through it.

God, why did You let them die? All those innocent people. Why did You punish them for what Vincent did? Families, Christmas shopping. Fathers on business trips. A bunch of high school kids in town for the Junior Assembly . . . they were probably so excited to be here . . . their parents were probably thrilled for them to be staying at a big hotel in Atlanta, waiting for them to come home and tell their stories. And my family, completely ignorant of their maliciously summoned fate. Why, God? Where the hell were You?

No answer. Never any answer to the pain. Never any answer to anything. Just orders.

Pack. Move. Keep going.

Why? Why should I keep going?

He knew the answer to that. He picked himself up and started back up the stairs, counting the floors as he went. The stairs were lit only by what little light spilled through the dirty windows. The stairwell smelled strongly of urine. The paint on the walls had flaked off in sheets that had fallen to the floor and now crackled under Michael's feet. The paint on the handrail was peeling badly, too; it broke off in his hand, along with years' worth of dust. He kept moving. Reached the eleventh floor. He slowly stepped into the hall. Michael had spent countless hours over the years studying the floor plan of the building in Vincent's scrapbook, trying to figure out how his family could have escaped. He knew the suite of rooms where his family had died was on the other side of the building. He knew Jack was waiting.