Raven's Peak (23 page)

Which meant that she didn’t talk to Frieda very often and never about the real things going on in her life. Even being friends, she knew Frieda would be beyond angry if she found out Abigail had spoken with Delaphene or used a forbidden ritual to create a connection to the demon holding Arthur. It was an unforgivable crime, maybe even enough to get her discharged from the Order.

When Haatim had shown up there was just something about him that made her trust him. She had been desirous to vent her problems to another human being, and he’d broken down her defenses. She had let her guard slip and told him things she should have kept to herself. A mistake which could turn costly if any of it made it back to the Council.

She awoke early the next morning, just after six, and went through her morning stretches and exercises. Arthur had taught her that staying limber was the most important part of her ability to fight. When she was young, he would have her stretch for three or four hours at a time, but now it usually took her a little over an hour to finish warming up her body.

She knocked on Haatim’s door. She expected to find him sleeping, but he answered almost immediately. He was dressed and ready, but he had bags under his eyes and was still exhausted.
Guess he didn’t sleep well, either.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said.

“Did you pick up any coffee last night?”

“Instant,” he said. “It’s all they had.”

“It’ll work. Make us a couple of cups. I have to grab some stuff from the car.”

She headed outside and started rummaging through the trunk of Haatim’s car for the large duffel bag she’d stuffed in there. It was loaded with two changes of clothes, various toiletries she liked to keep on hand, and lots of weapons: holy water, guns, knives, vials of miscellaneous poultices and poisons, and a variety of rare herbs and dried flowers gathered from all around the world.

Tucked at the bottom was her most prized possession: a small bible. It was the only one she’d ever owned and had been a gift from Arthur on her twelfth birthday. She had never fully accepted Christ into her heart, and Arthur had never been insistent that she should, but the book meant so much more to her than the words on the page.

She left most of it in the bag. For now, she grabbed an extra nine-millimeter pistol and a handful of sage. It wasn’t as potent against demons as many other things she had, but it was common and easy to acquire and worked on many weaker supernatural threats.

By the time she got back into the cabin, Haatim was mixing her coffee.

“How do you like it?”

“With as much milk and sugar as possible,” she said. “You didn’t happen to pick up any caramel syrup, did you?”

He stared at her.

“Didn’t think so.”

She accepted the cup and took a sip. It was still bitter even with the sugar and milk, but she drank it anyway. It would help her stay alert. Haatim offered her a breakfast bar, but she shook her head.

“I don’t like eating this early in the morning,” she said. “I usually just wait and eat a big lunch.”

“You should eat breakfast,” Haatim said. “It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“Not for me,” she replied.

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. He unwrapped the bar and took a bite. After a few seconds chewing, his eyes went wide. He rushed to the trashcan and spit it out, then looked at the wrapper.

Abigail couldn’t help but laugh.

“Expired?”

“Two years ago,” he said.

“Come on,” she said, finishing her coffee. “We need to get moving.”

Then she headed outside. Haatim gulped the last dregs of his own cup and rushed to follow. She paused on the porch and offered him the pistol.

“Here,” she said. “Keep this with you.”

“I don’t know how to shoot a gun,” he said.

“You point and pull the trigger,” she said. “It isn’t rocket science.”

Tentatively, he accepted the weapon. He held it up, eyes wide as he stared at it. He looked vaguely like a terrified puppy.

“Which way do I point it?”

“On second thought,” she said, taking the gun back. “I’ll hang onto it for now.”

She slipped it into her jeans at the back and headed off into the woods, looking for tracks around and behind the cabin. Haatim followed, looking at the scenery surrounding them.

“It’s quite beautiful out here,” he said. “I’ve never been to this part of the country.”

“Just Arizona?”

“Yeah,” Haatim said. “I never really got to travel because of my class loads.”

“I hate Arizona,” she said. “It’s too dry and dusty. Not enough greenery for me.”

Haatim shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Found the tracks,” she said, noticing a footprint in the mud. “Looks like someone headed away from here pretty fast yesterday.”

“Think it’s the missing student?”

“More than likely,” she said. “Let’s see where it leads.”

She followed the trail, looking for broken branches and footprints to know they were heading in the right direction. It went basically due east and didn’t deviate much, so it wasn’t difficult to track. Haatim followed silently for a while, but after about fifteen minutes of talking he spoke up:

“How can you tell we are going the right way?”

“The footprints,” she said, pointing at the ground.

“What footprints?” he asked. He looked where she was pointing. “That? That just looks like a scuff mark.”

“What else would make a mark like that out here?”

“A deer?”

“Deer have hooves,” she replied.

“A squirrel?”

“That’s just ridiculous,” she said. “This track is way too big.”

“OK, then what about a bear?”

She looked solemnly at him. “It’s a definite possibility.”

The expression on his face was priceless as she turned and headed back into the woods. He hesitated for a couple of seconds and then rushed to catch up.

“You don’t really think it could be a bear, do you?”

She ignored him, spotting something farther up ahead in the trees. It looked like the roof of a building, though it was resting at about ground level. She stopped walking, feeling an intense wave of déjà vu wash over her.

“I’ve been here before,” she said.

“What?”

“Here,” she said. Her hands were shaking. “I’ve been
here
.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I thought this was your first time to Raven’s Peak?”

She didn’t answer and started walking quickly toward the buildings. She had a sudden flash in her mind, a memory of being attacked in these woods. A man in rotting flesh had killed her friends and taken her captive.

She crested the hill and gasped, looking down at the little town. There, in the center, was the Church.

The
Church.

Frieda had told her the Church was in Europe, somewhere in Germany, and that it had been destroyed by the Council after her possession. But now she knew that had been a lie. Here it was before her, exactly how she remembered.

How she
remembered
…

She ran down into the town. Haatim was shouting behind her to wait, but she barely heard him. She didn’t care and just kept going. She saw the spikes standing in front of the doors, though the heads had been removed, and ran quickly up the steps. She pushed into the room and was assaulted by more memories.

The demon had dragged her here, barely conscious. It was carrying the heads of her friends as well, laughing and singing the entire time. Their faces were plastered with terrified expressions, the last ones they wore before the demon ripped their heads off.

And then…I was taken…

“What’s going on?” Haatim asked, stumbling into the Church behind her.

She spun and grabbed him, slamming him against the wall before she even realized what she was doing. His expression shifted from curiosity to fear and he put his hands up in submission.

“Hey, hey, I was just trying to help,” he said, eyes wide.

She relaxed her grip and shook her head. “Sorry…I just…It was a reflex.”

“It’s OK,” he said. “Do you mind letting me go?”

She pulled back, releasing her grip on his shirt. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Haatim was staring over her shoulder, and she turned to look. Next to the rightmost wall of the Church sat a twenty-something guy wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. He was using his fingers to paint a word on the wall:

Belphegor.

He was currently writing the last letter.

“Who’s that?”

“Belphegor?” Abigail said. “I think it’s a demon.”

“I know who Belphegor is,” Haatim replied. “I meant the guy.”

“Probably our missing college student.”

“What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know,” Abigail said. She walked across the Church. “Hey!”

No answer. The guy kept writing on the wall in his big scrawling letters. He reached up toward his face, seemingly to scratch his cheek, and then back to the wall and kept drawing.

“Hey, you!” Abigail said again, glancing back at Haatim. She had one hand resting on her revolver, ready to draw it at the slightest provocation.

Still, there was no response. She stepped forward, footsteps creaking on the floorboards, and reached a hand out. She grabbed the college kid on the shoulder and spun him to face her.

She heard Haatim gasp behind her and couldn’t really blame him. The guy had dug his fingers into his own eye-sockets and ripped out his eyes. He was using the blood and ichor spilling out as the paint to write the demon’s name.

The student hissed when she touched him and cowered back, curling into a ball next to the wall and flailing his arms at her. He looked disheveled and was covered in dry mud.

“What the hell?” she muttered.

“What…?” Haatim said, visibly shaken up. “What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know,” Abigail said. This wasn’t what she was expecting, and she certainly had never expected anything like
this
to be out here. “But something is
really
wrong.”

“Is he possessed?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I can’t think of another reason he would do
this
.”

She turned and headed back out of the Church, brushing past Haatim and to the town outside. He followed after her, a few steps behind.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“What did you mean?” she countered. “When you said you knew of Belphegor?”

“I read about him in one of my classes. It was on demonology.”

“Where?”

“College?”

“Are you asking me?”

“No,” he said firmly. “It was part of my graduate studies. We studied demons from all over the world.”

“You didn’t think that would be useful to tell me?”

“It was about theoretical demons that are supposed to be metaphorical. I didn’t think any of it was
real.”

She picked up the pace to a quick jog as she headed back toward the cabins. She heard Haatim breathing heavily behind her, trying to keep up. “Where are we going?”

“Back,” she said. “I have a phone call to make.”

“For what?”

She kept running and picked up the pace again, dodging around trees and underbrush, expecting Haatim to fall behind. She could come back and get him later.

He lasted a lot longer than she expected, making it almost all the way back to the cabin before finally slowing down and clutching his side.

“I’ll uh…I’ll catch up,” he shouted after her.

She made it back to the clearing and went to the car. Her phone didn’t have any reception out here, but she had something better. She popped open the trunk and pulled her satellite phone out of her duffel bag. She punched in a number and waited for Frieda to pick up on the other end.

As soon as it clicked, she said: “What the hell?”

“Abigail, this isn’t a good—”

“You
knew
I’d been here before,” Abigail interrupted.

“Abi—”

“Why didn’t you tell me
this
was where the Church was located? Or that it was still standing at all? You lied to me, Frieda. You told me it had been torn down.”

“The Council thought it might be good for you to experience this organically. When you were asked about it during the debriefings, you had no memory of the location or surrounding are, and the doctors thought coming upon it unexpectedly might trigger some memories.”

“So I was a Guinea pig?”

“All in the pursuit of finding Arthur,” Frieda said. “They thought sending you out there would spark your memories, and you might remember something vital about the demon that took him.”

“And you didn’t think any of this was worth telling me about that beforehand?”

“It didn’t seem relevant,” Frieda said tersely. “The doctors insisted you not know and I needed an excuse to send you. I made up the reports about disturbances in Raven’s Peak, so I knew you wouldn’t be in any real danger. Look, Abi, I’m sorry if you feel like we’ve wasted your time, but clearly you remember
something
—”

“No disturbance?” Abigail echoed incredulously. “Tell that to the five dead college kids.”

Silence. “What?”

“I’ve got five college kids out here who’ve been hacked to pieces and another one who gouged out his own eyes to scrawl Belphegor’s name on the wall of the Church. The Church you found me in but decided to keep secret from me.”

Abigail spun, raising her revolver and aiming it at Haatim’s face as he rounded the corner of the cabin. He stopped, raising his hands, and she slowly lowered the revolver. He walked toward her, keeping his hands up.

“Abi, there were no reported disturbances in your entire region.”

“There sure as hell is one now,” she said. “And I’ve got a possessed college kid out here who needs help.”

“You said he was writing Belphegor on the wall? Definitely Belphegor?”

“Yeah, why? What’s it matter?”

“I’m going to have to call you back,” Frieda said.

“Wait—”

Abigail heard the line go dead and cursed, throwing the phone back into the duffel bag.

“You OK?” Haatim asked, still holding his hands up.

“Put your hands down,” she said.

He did, resting them at his sides. He was still panting and drenched in sweat. “Are you OK?” he asked again.