The Demonists (17 page)

Elijah was halfway up the steps to the house when the lights started to flicker again. He looked to John. “Your wife?”

“She’s awake,” he said. “It’s as if she knew that you’d arrived.”

“I’m sure she does,” Elijah answered, continuing up to the door, where he let himself in.

There was a thin blond-haired man standing in the lobby, arms crossed defensively.

“This is my personal assistant,” John said, coming in behind him with the others. “Stephan Vasjak.”

“Mr. Vasjak,” Elijah said with a slight nod as the lights continued to go on and off.

“You’re going to help her?” Vasjak asked, stepping closer to them. “You’re all here to help her?”

“We are here to attempt something that may indeed prove beneficial to Ms. Knight, yes,” Elijah answered.

“Do anything and everything that you can to help her,” Vasjak said with grim seriousness. “But if you hurt her in any way . . .”

The threat hung thickly in the air of the lobby.

Elijah moved in close to the wispy man, fixing him in his good eye. “I’m sorry to say, there is nothing that we could do that would be worse than what she is already experiencing.”

That silenced the young man long enough for Elijah to turn toward his host.

“If you would please take us to your wife,” he said to John. “There are some things we need to prepare before we begin the ritual.”

John followed Elijah and his team up the stairs to the level that housed his wife.

Dr. Franklin Cho was waiting just outside her door.

“This is Dr. Cho.” John introduced Elijah as they reached the landing. The men shook hands.

“How is she physically, Doctor?” Elijah asked.

“She’s weak,” the doctor responded. “The constant battle to not allow these . . .” He was having a hard time finding the right words.

“It must be difficult for you, Doctor,” Elijah said. “A man of science having to confront the existence of dark forces that have been here since creation . . . and perhaps before.”

“It’s been—interesting,” Cho acknowledged. “But John and Theodora have helped to open my eyes.”

“I’m sure they have,” Elijah said, what could have been an attempt at a smile tugging at the scarred corner of his mouth.

The lights pulsed on and off.

“She’s becoming impatient,” the Coalition leader said, turning to address his team. “We’ll need to be quick and precise if we’re going to have even the slightest chance of success.”

The seven-member team nodded in unison, ready to do what needed to be done.

John stepped forward. “Is there anything that I can do to help?” he asked.

“Ah yes,” Elijah said. “There is. You’ll be going in with us.”

Cho watched them, wondering.

“Dr. Cho, I believe you can sit this one out.”

“Are you sure?” Cho asked.

“We’re good,” Elijah said, then turned back to his people. “Are we ready?”

Elijah moved toward the door.

“What should I be doing?” John asked him.

“You are to wait until I tell you what to do,” Elijah said, turning the doorknob and pushing the door open into the room.

Theodora was bound to the bed using soft restraints, her head and neck bent in such a way that looked nearly impossible, and quite painful.

“Theodora Knight,” Elijah’s voice boomed as he entered the room, his people flowing in around him to encircle the bed. “My name is Elijah, and I and my people have come to offer you assistance.”

“John . . . ,” Theo cried, pulling on her bonds. “John, who are these people?”

John started to answer, but Elijah gave him a glare with his good eye that kept him silent.

“Begin,” the old man instructed.

One of the team, a heavyset man with a shock of curly red hair and a large Viking beard, stepped toward the bed as he reached into the leather satchel that he carried. In one swift movement he’d removed a silver vial and dipped his finger inside it. As the finger came out, John could see that it was covered in something gray and powdery—ash, he believed. The bearded man proceeded to draw a strange symbol on his wife’s forehead.

She immediately began to scream, the intensity of her wails actually pushing the man backward, where he bumped violently against the room’s wall and slid down to the floor.

“Next,” Elijah said, unfazed, as a woman on the other side stepped forward.

“Don’t you dare come near me, bitch!” Theo—or the things inside her—began to threaten.

Ignoring the outburst, the woman began to recite something that might have been Sumerian, but John couldn’t be sure.

“Shut up!” Theo screamed, her neck stretching abnormally long.

The woman had just finished the verse when she began to choke, and the insects—cockroaches, it appeared—began to spill from her mouth. She, too, stepped back, then dropped to her knees, and John heard her begin to pray aloud.

Elijah watched unflinchingly, nodding to the next of them.

Another woman darted toward the bed, laying a gloved hand upon John’s wife’s stomach and reciting the next verse of this Sumerian rite. As she spoke, she removed the glove to reveal a hand covered in a strange, swirling-patterned tattoo that seemed to move as if alive as it hovered above his Theo’s stomach.

Theo’s body went completely rigid, as if her limbs were being pulled taut by invisible ropes. Her shrieks intensified as she fought against the forces that were being worked upon her.

The woman’s tattooed hand suddenly burst into flame, and she stifled a scream as one of her other teammates ran forward to suffocate the orange fire with a towel.

Elijah then nodded to another of them, a thin-faced man with twitchy, nervous mannerisms who quickly stepped to the bed and extended both hands above their subject, reciting even more of their rite.

Theodora began to roar.

It was as if there was an entire zoo inside her, the shrieks, wails, screams, and howls coming from her vibrating the very air of the room.

The animal sounds eventually began to dim, followed only by the pathetic sobs of a woman in obvious pain.

“Theo?” John asked, looking first to Elijah before moving.

The old man nodded to him, and John sat down on the bed next to his wife.

“Something’s happened,” Theo said, eyes drooping from exhaustion. “The demons . . . they’re . . . they’re trapped . . . locked away.”

“Is this true?” John asked, stroking his wife’s sweaty hair and enflamed cheeks.

“It is,” Elijah said. One of his people came over to him with a black leather medical bag, and he took it.

“How long?” John asked, knowing that this was only temporary.

“Long enough to do what is next required,” Elijah said as he removed a long protective case from within the bag.

“Which is?” John asked.

“Which is your job,” the old man said as he opened the case to reveal a syringe filled with a golden liquid.

“What’s that?” he asked cautiously.

“When you are told, this is what you will inject into your wife,” he said.

“Okay. And what will I be injecting into my wife?”

Elijah approached, offering him the syringe.

“It’s a fast-acting poison that basically shuts down the entire nervous system,” the old man explained.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious, Mr. Fogg,” Elijah said. “With your wife being technically dead, we can then turn our full attentions to the demonic entities inside her, without concern.”

“You . . . you’re going to kill her?”

“Only temporarily,” he said. “As soon as we’re done with the demons, we’ll administer the antidote and then—”

“I can’t do this,” John said. “I’m not going to kill my wife.”

“Then your wife will die anyway,” Elijah said. “You heard your friend Dr. Cho. She is growing weak. The entities are becoming stronger with every passing day. Theodora only has so much time left before the demons totally dominate her, and at that stage your wife will no longer exist.”

Elijah shoved the syringe at him.

“Take it,” the old man said. “Do your part, and then we will do ours.”

He couldn’t believe he was doing it, but John took the syringe in his hand. Theodora was delirious, her temporary relief from battling the demonic forces inside her having taken its toll.

“Time is of the essence, John Fogg,” Elijah informed him.

“Don’t you dare rush me,” John yelled. “What you’re asking me to do . . . I . . .”

“I am asking you to trust us,” Elijah said. “Without this . . .” The old man went silent, and John knew that this was likely his wife’s only chance at surviving her affliction.

Without any further words, or thought, John removed the plastic cover from the tip of the needle and prepared to do what was asked of him.

“Damn you to hell if this doesn’t work,” John said through gritted teeth, bringing the needle to his wife’s throat.

“There’s a very good chance we’ll all be dammed if we’re not successful,” Elijah responded.

The tip of the needle punctured the pale flesh of her neck, a crimson bead welling up at the point of entry. John then applied pressure to the plunger, slowly injecting the poison into his wife’s already depleted system.

Her eyes at once grew wide, and he bent down nearly overcome with emotion to kiss her lovingly upon the lips.

“I’m so sorry,” he said to her. “But it’s for your own good.”

Her mouth moved as she tried to speak, but the poison was as fast as Elijah had explained.

All John could do was stare, watching as his wife’s life drained away.

“Oh my God,” he said, watching her die.

Elijah then took him by the arm, escorting him toward the door as his team began the next phase of their operations.

“What’s going to happen?” John asked, turning around to see what they were doing. They had undone her bindings and were removing her pajamas.

“What . . .?” he asked.

“John, please,” Elijah said. “Let us try to help her.”

Elijah pulled open the door, pushing him out into the hall. John took one last look just as the old man closed the door. The Coalition agents were all standing over his wife, having taken items from their bags that he had seen before while visiting some of the more primitive cultures in his research. They were items made of bone and used for puncturing and injecting ink beneath the skin.

Tools used for making tattoos.

John sat outside the locked bedroom door for what felt like days. It had been, in fact, a little more than twenty-four hours, but the reality of the actual amount of time that had passed did little to comfort him.

There had been screams, and there had been moans from the other side of the door; some had been from his wife, and others . . . The number of times he had risen, and almost pounded upon the door, demanding entry, was too many to consider at this point.

The disturbing and curious sounds had diminished over the last few hours, and John found himself back on the landing floor, leaning wearily against the balustrade.

What was happening on the other side of the door, he obsessed, and would it result in his wife being returned to him? Elijah had offered no guarantees, but as long as the slimmest hope remained, he needed to hold out.

“Anything?” a voice asked, coming up the stairs from the first floor. John turned his head as Stephan passed.

“Nothing,” John said.

Stephan reached the top, holding a tray of steaming mugs. Dr. Cho followed with another tray, this one holding three plates with a sandwich on each.

“I told you I wasn’t hungry,” John said as he stood, taking a mug of hot coffee from Stephan’s tray.

“You haven’t had anything substantial in close to fifteen hours. I’ve decided that yes, you are hungry,” Stephan said. “Have a sandwich.”

Franklin came to stand beside Stephan with the tray. “I don’t want anything,” John said, before taking a sip from his mug. “Believe me,” Dr. Cho said. “Take a sandwich.”

“See, someone listens,” Stephan commented.

John shook his head, exasperated by the badgering, but knowing better than to argue with his assistant. He did as he was told, taking a sandwich from one of the plates.

“There you go,” Stephan said, helping himself to one as well. “You won’t believe how much better you’ll feel once you have something in your stomach.”

John grunted a response, lowering himself to the floor, careful not to spill his coffee. Franklin took the spot beside him, and Stephan plopped down beside him. They all began to eat, staring at the closed doors.

“I wonder how much longer they’ll be?” Stephan asked, taking a large bite from his sandwich, chewing slowly.

“It’s making me a bit crazy that I can’t check on her,” Franklin said. “Her vitals were so iffy that . . .”

“She might be dead,” John stated, eyes fixed upon the barrier before him. The statement of fact was true, no matter how abrupt and potentially painful, and he felt as though they should all get used to the possibility.

“I don’t think that they’d still be in there with the door closed if she was dead,” Stephan said. He set the plate with the half-eaten sandwich down on the floor beside him. “I don’t even know why I’m eating that. I’m not even hungry.”

“Is that how you’re choosing to deal with this now?” Franklin Cho asked him. “To assume the worst, and take it from there?”

“I injected her with a neurotoxin,” John said.

“Which was part of a procedure,” Franklin then added. “One that I believe is extremely dangerous, but a part of their procedure nonetheless.”

“I just feel we should all entertain the possibility that Elijah and his people might not be successful,” John said. He took another bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly.

“But again,” Stephan said, “they might be. You’ve always been that half-empty guy, John. You really do need to start thinking more positively.”

“We’re going to do this now?” John asked him. “Have you seen anything positive around here these last few days? Maybe I’ve missed it.”

Stephan looked away and began to silently sip on his coffee.

“We don’t even know what they’re doing to her in there,” John said, the primitive tattooing tools prevalent in his thoughts.

“Yes, we do,” Franklin chimed in. “They’re trying to help her.”