Heller’s Decision (32 page)

Just as I’d decided to leave before I
bought anything else that I would probably regret, the doors to the
courthouse
were thrown
back. Malefic, his black cloak flapping behind him, strode down the
stairs to the middle of the gathering. A silence fell on everyone
as they watched him warily.

He opened his grimoire and flipped some
pages until he found the one he wanted. He commenced reading from
it. “I am Asmodeus. I am Adras.”

An expression of pure panic on her face,
Liya raced out
from
behind her stall towards him, her palms up. “No! Stop
that!”

Chapter 21

“I am Vinea. I am Mastema,” Malefic intoned,
his voice ringing around clearly.

“No!” demanded Liya. “You can’t do that here.
Stop it now!”

“I am Agares. I am Paimon.”

“
Stop it! You’re frightening
everyone.”

“I am Leraje. I am Belial.”

“
For the sake of the Great Magna Mater, our
Goddess, stop this madness now. You know we don’t practice Goetia.
It’s an affront to us for you to say these things,” she almost
begged.

“What’s Goetia? What’s he doing?” I whispered
to Meredith. She stood still, the colour in her face draining
away.

“
He’s summoning demons,” she whispered
back, her voice trembling.
“We don’t practice that kind of magic in Cybelia. He’s
performing great evil right here in front of us. He’s mocking
us.”

“I am Berith. I am Flauros.”

“
Please stop this now, Malefic. You don’t
know the harm you’re doing here. You are frightening my
people.”

His voice grew louder.
“I am Bael. I am Beelzebub.”

“
Great
Magna Mater, help us in our time of such blasphemy and
evilness,” fervently prayed Liya.

“Out of my way, High Priestess.” Malefic
pushed past her, moving forward, chanting in that strange language
again. At his touch, Liya collapsed, barely holding herself up by
leaning on a table.

As he walked and chanted, he touched every
Cybelian he came across. They had different reactions, some
fainting clear away, others rooted in place as if unable to move,
others ran to cower behind the tables of the stalls or to Liya to
join hands with her. It was awful, but also fascinating, to witness
them scattering before him as he strode through. No wonder he had
an ego larger than Heller’s.

He stopped at Meredith’s stall. She
shrank
away from him,
visibly shaking.

“
Please, please . . .
” she begged, too afraid to articulate any
further.

He put his head on one side and shot me a
sideways glance where I stood as still as a statue, hardly daring
to breathe myself.

“
She says ‘please’ to me. I think she wants
me to do it. Do you agree, Matilda?”

“
N-no. Leave her alone. Leave all of us
alone.”

He leaned over the table towards Meredith.
“
Boo!
”

She screamed and stumbled her way up to
where Liya huddled with her coven, leaving Malefic laughing cruelly
in her wake.

“
Stop being such a jerk,” I told him,
hoping I sounded braver than I felt.

“
A
jerk
?”
He rounded on me with scorn. “You think I’m being a
jerk
? These
people . . . these
witches
,” and he
waved his arm towards the women, his voice full of contempt, “they
offend me every day. Each breath they take, each prayer they make
to their whore of a goddess, each pathetic ritual they perform,
each useless potion they concoct – it all offends me.”

My vial of love potion sat heavily in my
pocket as he stepped closer to me. I took a cautious step
backwards.

“
I spit on their so-called religion. I piss
on their so-called holy sites. I burn their ritualistic instruments
and scatter the ashes to the winds.” He looked over at the women.
“Do you hear that, witches? Only
I
worship the true gods. Only
I
have learned the dark secrets of the world and all who live
there. One day, we will rise up and destroy you and there’s nothing
you can do to stop us, because you witches do
nothing
but play-act at magic.” Spittle collected
at the sides of his mouth. “It’s an offence to
my
gods for you to exist.”

“Heller’s right. You have a real talent for
dramatics. You should be up on stage pulling rabbits out of
hats.”

He laid his hands on my shoulders and
began that bone chilling chanting again.

I fought the burning sensation of his
touch, reciting to myself Heller’s words, “It’s just tricks and
illusions. Tricks and illusions. Tricks and illusions.”

Despite this,
I slowly succumbed to him messing with my mind,
when a short, sharp crack sounded from nearby. Malefic looked at me
in surprise for an instant, his eyes wide, before crumpling to the
ground. Over his shoulder, Reverend Joshua approached us, holding
up a handgun. People fled before him, screaming.

“
I will slay all this evil!” he
shouted.
“It’s an
affront to the one true God. Especially this man. I will slay him
as he tried to slay me.”

Malefic writhed on the ground, screaming
and clutching his stomach. Everyone else scattered in panic, also
screaming. Malefic’s acolytes stood in stunned stupid silence,
staring down at him, their hands over their mouths. Because of all
his black attire, I wasn’t sure where the Reverend had shot him,
but the spreading pool of blood beneath him suggested it was a
fairly major wound. It soon became obvious to us all that the
Reverend hadn’t finished with Malefic yet. I looked around
desperately for some safe shelter for him and headed for the only
place near us.

“
Don’t just stand there! Help me move him,”
I yelled at his two women. They stared at me mutely, immobilised by
shock.

Giving up on them,
I grabbed Malefic’s arms and dragged him
over to Meredith’s stall, which she’d draped with a beautiful green
silk throw, featuring the sun, moon and stars embroidered in
silver, which hung to the ground.

I rolled him under the
table
, trying to hide
him beneath the throw – a futile gesture as the Reverend had seen
me do it and the smeared trail of blood across the light pavers
acted as a virtual beacon pointing the way to him. With
single-minded determination, the Reverend strode over to the table.
Malefic’s two women gasped in terror, but stood there uselessly. I
took up a sentry place in front of the table, barring his progress,
hoping I didn’t get myself shot in the process.

“
Don’t just stand there. Call an
ambulance!
Call the
police!” I screeched at the women. They stared at me as if they
didn’t understand English.

Without thinking, I kicked out at
the
Reverend’s hand, but
his grip on the gun was zealously tight. All I managed to do with
that action was to bring his attention closer to me, something
Heller was not going to congratulate me for afterwards.

“
Get away from me. This is
a righteous man’s business,
whore of Satan.”

“
Call me that again and you’re going to
regret it, buddy.”

“
Who else except a whore of Satan would
arrange an interview where this demon,” he kicked out in Malefic’s
direction, eliciting an animal-like pained groaning from the
wounded man, “was free to try to kill me on television?”

That was kind of a touchy subject for me,
so I bristled immediately. “So now you think
it’s okay to wave a gun around and shoot a
man in public? Terrifying lots of innocent people? All because you
over-reacted to some mumbo-jumbo sprouted at you by some guy
playing dress-ups? And you call yourself a man of God.”

“
I
am
a
man of God, but he is no man. He is a demon.”

“
Can’t you just give that demon shit a rest
for a while? Don’t you see you’re just playing into his hands?
That’s what he wants you to think about him. He’s merely a
charlatan, using tricks and illusions. And you just
shot
him. He could die because of
you.
You’re
the one
who’ll be going to jail, buddy, not him, no matter what you think
of him.”

“
Young lady, it is my duty to exterminate
demons. And you did
n’t
feel what I did last night when that
thing
spoke those words.” Well, that’s all he knew – I’d felt
plenty when Malefic laid his hands on me, and none of it pleasant.
“It was a mighty evil. It can’t be allowed to survive.”

“You people are all as crazy as each other.
How about you all just ignore each other for once and concern
yourselves more with your own lives.”

“Out of my way, demon whore. You pretend to
talk reason, but I see the evil in your heart.”

“
And I see the stupidity in your brain!” I
snapped, abandoning any hope of arguing with this dogmatic
man.

He barged past me and in a blink, lifted
the table throw, stooped down and shot Malefic again at
close-quarters. His renewed screaming definitely indicated he’d
been hit for a second time.

When the Reverend had done that, he
unemotionally stood and searched around until he found his next
target.

“
Meredith,” I yelled. “Call an ambulance,
for God’s sake . . . or the Goddess’ sake, or whoever’s sake you
want. Just hurry! And someone call the police.”

Still in a state of shock, she did as I
instructed and pulled her phone from one of the pockets of her
long, flowing dress. I shot the acolytes a look of contempt. For
all their professed loved for their ‘master’, they were too drugged
or intellectually vacant to actually help him when he needed
them.

“Get over here and help stem his bleeding.”
They looked at me without any sign of comprehension. Exasperated, I
dropped to my knees and pulled Malefic’s cloak out from under him,
holding it over one of the patches on his clothes damp with blood.
It seems he’d been hit somewhere in the abdomen and also in his
thigh. “Come here,” I demanded. “Come and do this.” They drifted
over. “You, press his cloak down over his abdomen like this. And
you, use your hands to press down on his thigh, there.”

And it finally seemed as though I’d broken
through the miasma of otherworldliness that surrounded them and
they did what I asked. I stood up and surveyed the area, wiping my
bloodied hands on my trousers. The Reverend headed for the group of
women with determination in his stride.

“
Liya! Run!
Hide! He’s coming after you too,” I
shouted.

Stupidly, even thoug
h she’d just seen how Meredith’s table had
offered no shelter to Malefic, she crawled under hers. She should
have sprinted towards the courthouse instead. The security officers
there may not have been terribly interested in what happened
outside those glass doors, but inside, they knew what they were
doing.

Looking around for some sort of weapon, I
scooped up a handful of Meredith’s vials and
ran after the Reverend. I pegged the first
vial, missing him completely. It exploded on the pavers, glass and
liquid flying everywhere. My next shot was better, hitting him in
the middle of his back. He didn’t even turn around. My third shot
was on target, cracking into the back of his head with an ugly
thump. I quickly followed with the fourth vial, my last, giving it
everything I had. It also hit him in the skull with even greater
impact, knocking the gun from his hand when he howled in
pain.

I skidded up to him and dived for the gun,
flinging it under the table where Liya hid and into what I hoped
would be her safe custody. As the Reverend was rather an elderly
gentleman, it didn’t take much to subdue him, especially when some
of the Cybelians helped me struggle with him to force him to the
ground.

Fortunately for us, two bike cops pedalled
towards us furiously just as the first faint wails of the ambulance
could be heard trying to battle its way through the afternoon city
traffic.

An hour later we’d given preliminary
statements to the uniformed cops and Reverend Joshua had been taken
into custody. I approached Meredith and held out some more money to
her.

“Sorry about wasting your potions like
that.”

She shrugged philosophically, but still
took my money. “At least they were useful in the end. I guess
that’s all I can ask for. I hope your love potion is
too.”

I said goodbye to her and Liya, looking
forward to return to my car and far away from anything to do with
magic. Meredith’s love potion would probably sit on a shelf unused
and gathering dust forever more.

The paramedics stabilised Malefic,
and prepared to place him in
the ambulance. Lying on the gurney, paler than usual, he appeared
very young, frail and oh-so human, his aura of malevolence
dissipated by his pained expression.

“
Matilda,” he said weakly, wincing as the
paramedic adjusted his oxygen tube. “You saved my life. I owe you a
great favour. Name any ritual you’d like me to perform. Any enemy
you want to smite, I will do it for you.
It would be my honour.”