Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1) (27 page)

Malachi turned his head. “Do you need to rest?”

I shook my head. As long as I could breathe, I had to keep moving. If the demon was the one I feared, we were dealing with a big-time baddie. He could not be allowed to escape, under any circumstances. Underqualified or not, I was assigning myself the task of stopping him.

Which was infuriating when I thought about it. I’d risked my neck tracking leads, taking shots in the dark, getting shot
at
—not to mention fire-blasted and finger-cranked—to eventually connect the dots. With the monitoring spell Chicory had thumbed into my head, the Order should have had the same information as me. And yet, where in the hell were they?

It was the kind of critique I wanted to stuff into the Elders’ flabby ears, but with the interference from the energy surrounding the church, I doubted even my thoughts were getting through.

I was truly on my own.

Fresh anxiety snuffed out my anger as the stairwell deposited us into a low-ceilinged basement. Malachi held up the candle. Light swelled through a suspension of dust and over storage trunks and mounds of covered furniture.

“It’s in the back,” he said.

I studied the stone floor as we walked. Its powdery surface was marred by prints. Some from the search team, no doubt, but perhaps not all of them. I raised my eyes to the far wall emerging from the darkness. I made out what had been an arched doorway, since filled in by uneven stone bricks and chunky mortar. The former entrance to the catacombs.

Malachi stood to one side. “See what I mean?”

I pressed both hands against the impeding wall, then tested the individual bricks. A metal ringlet, too dull to determine its age, had been bolted into one of the central bricks. I pushed and pulled on that, too. Nothing budged. I pressed an ear to the wall, but it was too dense to hear through.

“You think they’re inside?” Malachi asked in alarm, catching on.

I nodded distractedly and searched my pockets. I still had Father Vick’s card but without my wizarding power, I couldn’t locate him. None of the other spell items were worth a squat, either.

My gaze roamed the floor in thought, until I noticed something: faint lines.

I asked for the candle and knelt. The lines were abrasions left by stone. I touched them and noted the grit on my finger. I stood again and moved the candle around the door frame. The texture of the mortar here and there told me what I’d begun to suspect. The bricks were secured to one another, but no longer to the frame of the doorway. Someone had chiseled out the mortar, then hidden his work. I searched around for a handhold, a place to pull.

“Here,” Malachi said, tapping something.

Of course.
The metal ringlet.

“There’s some cord over there,” he said, a step ahead of me again. Where panic was making a confusion of my own thoughts, inebriation seemed to have cooled and steadied his.

Malachi ran to an old piano, its closed lid secured with twine, and began to unknot it. I set down the Bible and cross, standing the candle on the ground beside them. The length of twine Malachi returned with looked sturdy enough, but I doubled it over before threading it through the ring. I passed the folded-over end to Malachi and took the loose strands in my own hands. We backed from the door at an angle until the cord was taut and even.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded, and we began to pull. Our strength was well short of demonic, but working together, pained grunts bouncing off the basement walls, we managed to walk the door out a few inches. I handed my end of the twine to Malachi and wedged my cane into the narrow space. With him pulling and me prying, we created an opening that looked large enough to edge through.

I held the candle inside and groaned. Rough-cut stairs spiraled down into a strangling darkness.

“Want me to carry these?” Malachi asked, stooping for the Bible and cross.

“Hand them to me once I’m through. You’ve got another candle, right?” I’d encountered one during my pat-down of him. “Good. Use it to see your way back up, then get as far from the cathedral as you can.”

“But I—”

“Forget it,” I interrupted. “You have no idea what’s down there.”

I peeked through the opening once more. If I failed, which felt almost certain, I didn’t want Malachi to be in the path of an emerging demon lord. The apocalypse that followed would likely consume him along with the rest of the city, true, but I was still holding out hope that the Order would get their heads out of their collective asses before that happened.

“Where should I go?” he asked.

I fished through my pockets until I found Detective Vega’s card. “Call this number. Someone named Hoffman will probably answer. Tell him you got left here, and he’ll send someone to pick you up.”

He nodded as he accepted the card, emotion trembling through him for the first time. I slid my cane inside my belt and squeezed through the opening. The effort left me dizzy. Malachi passed me the Bible and silver cross. I took them and then touched the flame from my candle to the wick of his.

As the light suffused his young face, I saw in his eyes something I recognized. “Listen to me,” I said. “Passion led you to uncover those things in the archives, not sin. You’ve no fault in this.”

The words seemed to fortify a layer of my prism. Maybe because they were words I would have liked to have been told ten years ago. Instead, the Order black-marked me. I didn’t want Malachi shouldering the same guilt.

He nodded and wiped his watery eyes with the back of a hand. “Please help them.”

“I’ll do everything I can. Now go.”

I turned from his diminishing scuffs and peered down the steps.
Better to perish in conviction than live in cowardice, right?
I felt too queasy to answer. Drawing a diver’s breath, I started down.

46

The spiral staircase ended at a cave-like corridor that diminished into darkness. I struggled to control my gasping breaths so I could listen. Easier said than done. The pressure in my chest wasn’t just my anxiety talking now. The air was heavier than in the basement, from being shut away for so long, no doubt—but an oppressive evil lived here as well.

Noises began to take shape. Things skittering here and there, and farther away, what sounded like speech, low and garbled.

It wasn’t human.

“You wanted to join the big leagues, Everson?” I whispered over a tremulous breath. “Batter up.”

I raised the candle and proceeded down the corridor. Within several paces, I saw what the corridor really was—an ossuary for the remains Reverend Higham had piled down here. They sloped toward the floor in great drifts: dusty-brown arm and leg bones, tossed-off pelvises, sections of vertebrae. And skulls. Everywhere. No matter where I looked, a host of them stared back with ghastly sockets and withered teeth.

My heart slammed harder. As decent as these people may have been in life, I wasn’t ready to join their ranks. Especially not when a shiny red centipede slid from one of their ear canals.

Ahead, the corridor bent around a corner, and the speech I’d heard earlier picked up again. The words were nonsensical, guttural grunts in a language I’d never heard or read. And they warped the atmosphere, twisting up my guts and making my eardrums ache. Though I couldn’t interpret them, it was clear the incanted words were intended to gather power.

I stopped to make sure I had everything I needed: religious text, silver cross, holy water, cane. Four checks, even though the last wasn’t much good in my weakened state. I would attempt the exorcism alone if I had to, though I was counting on Father Vick’s help. Assuming enough of him remained.

Where the corridor ended, I peered around the corner. The candle light swelled into a large grotto, revealing the missing church officials.

The bishop was a woman, I saw. She lay supine on the floor, gray hair piled under her head, back arching in spasmodic thrusts. Her closed eyes suggested she was either unconscious or entranced. The black-robed figure standing over her swayed with his back to me, those awful sounds emanating from his bowed head. He’d been incanting in the dark this whole time, which felt freaky as shit.

I swallowed hard on a knot of fear and grief. Man, I had wanted so badly to be wrong.

“Father Vick?” I called into the echoing space.

If he heard me, he gave no sign. His robe continued to shudder with his guttural chants. Steeling my nerves, I stepped into the grotto. Off to one side were the blue bits of protective clothing Vega and I had donned and the demon had used to guide his shriekers. They would be at the detective’s apartment by now.

I reached up with a shaking hand and inserted the candle into the eye socket of a dome-gazing skull. The swelling light revealed an elaborate bone pattern over the floor, one I recognized. The grotto had been made into a demonic casting circle, the convulsing bishop at its center.

The demon was preparing an alchemy spell, taking the potent faith of the bishop and warping it into a black wrath that would empower him and enable his escape from the cathedral’s weakening hold.

Like rape, there were few acts more evil.

“I know you’re in there, Father,” I said to his back. I reached into my right jacket pocket and loosened the screw-on cap to the bottle of holy water. “I know you can hear me. The night the demon murdered the rector, you wrote the message on Father Richard’s back. You couldn’t name the demon. He wouldn’t let you. So you did the next best thing. You named a druid group, Black Earth, whose beliefs revolve around the imminent return of Sathanas, demon lord of Wrath.” The esoteric Latin had likely come from an old prayer book. “You were trying to warn us.”

The garbled incanting rose in pitch and urgency. I could feel Sathanas’s rage now, could feel how badly he wanted to tear me apart. But to turn from the spell would be to sever his connection to the bishop. I followed the dark, twisting umbilicus of energy from the demon’s head down to the aging woman’s heart. I would have to be careful. At this stage, any violent disruption—such as driving my sword through the demon or dousing him in holy water—could kill her.

I needed Father Vick to work against Sathanas. And to do that, I needed to call him forth. Problem was, Father Vick’s hold, which had already begun to fail during the daytime, would be all but absent after dark. Demons ruled the night. And with a demon moon nearing its zenith?

But Father Vick had wrested back enough control once to leave the “Black Earth” message. I hoped that walking him through what had happened would spur him to rebel again.

“Yes, you’re possessed, Father,” I said. “The fifth rector of St. Martin’s took in the remains of thousands, to enrich himself, but he succumbed to the demon Sathanas in the process. The Church executed the rector and performed an exorcism. Malachi found the account in the archives and shared it with you and Father Richard. You weren’t convinced the exorcism had been done properly, though. You may even have sensed a shadow around his tomb. When Father Richard forbade you from performing a second exorcism, you attempted the rites at night, in secret.”

I thought about the robed figure Effie’s ghost friend had seen muttering around Reverend Higham’s tomb. I was sure now that had been Father Vick. And that had been his mistake—attempting the exorcism at night.

“The demon was more powerful than you anticipated,” I continued. “He overcame you and put you under his control. He had you retrieve Higham’s scrying mirror from the heritage room so he could contact those you sensed dabbled in magic.” It was the same mirror Father Vick had kept covered with the handkerchief. A mirror that would have shown the image of Reverend Higham to those on the receiving end. “Clifford, Chin, Flash, the others,” I said. “Sathanas dictated to them the spells to summon the shriekers. The night the demon contacted Clifford, Father Richard must have seen a light on in your room or overheard you. Not understanding your possessed state, he chastised you for practicing magic. In wrathful response, Sathanas followed Father Richard to the sacristy and murdered him.”

He’d also had Father Vick leak the murder to the press later.

Sathanas’s breaths gurgled in Father Vick’s throat. Was the struggle beginning?

“I can only imagine your horror,” I said. “But you
fought
, Father. You named a demon who didn’t want to be named. And as long as there’s any will left in there, you have to fight again.”

“Go away,” the figure garbled in an inhuman voice.

Sathanas? Father Vick? I couldn’t tell.

“Father, listen to me—”

With a final eruption of words, something appeared above his head. A dagger. He was going to finish the spell by driving it into the bishop’s heart, releasing the last of her energy. I dropped everything and scrambled forward. With bones rolling underfoot, it felt as though I was running in a dream. But the space separating us collapsed, and my lowered shoulder struck his ribs in the back. His incantation broke off in a wet roar that shook the grotto.

I wrapped my aching arms around his waist and continued to drive with my legs. He was larger than Malachi, more solidly built, but I managed to topple him. We crashed down into the bones that edged the casting circle.

When he rotated his head, I delivered a bone-crunching right to his jaw.

He fell limp, the dagger tumbling from his outstretched hands. I turned quickly to the bishop. She’d fallen into quiet repose, but I couldn’t tell whether she was breathing or not. In either case, I could no longer sense the warping energies of the spell. What that meant, I wasn’t sure.

“Father Vick,” I whispered, shaking his shoulder.

He stirred, and I helped him onto his back. When his face rotated into the candlelight, I recoiled in horror. In addition to his ears and nose, blood had been pouring from his eyes. He hadn’t just been fighting to maintain the faith of the cathedral these past days. Father Vick had been fighting to maintain himself. How he’d lasted this long, I had no idea.

“Everson?” he mumbled. He blinked, then stared in a way that told me he couldn’t see through the red skein that coated his eyeballs and gummed up lashes.