The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) (2 page)

Typical Rosie. She was the one laid up in a hospital bed and yet she still worried about me.

“I'm fine,” I said as convincingly as I could. “Seriously.”

“Are you,” cough, “sure?”

“Positive. Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah, I'm―Shoot, here comes the nurse. Gotta go, Bee. See you tomorrow?”

“Yep.”

The line went dead. I put my phone down. In the hall, someone was shouting about the stray cat from across the street being possessed. Someone else suggested calling the cops. A third person said that was a stupid idea. It didn’t matter anyway. No one would do anything about it.

I had more immediate concerns to fret over. Like rent. Food. Tomorrow’s math test. Rosie’s sanatorium bill. The fact that my savings account only had five dollars in it. I needed my latest get-rich-quick scheme to pay off. If it didn’t, well…I’d be sharing a slab of concrete with that cat.

Two

Hours later, I still didn’t get algebra any more than I did when I first started studying. I gave up around nine and got to work lighting candles for the night. I ran out of lightbulbs a month ago and never got around to buying more, so I made do with what I had on hand. In this case, candles. A
lot
of candles. Once they were lit, I went to the fridge and grabbed a water bottle and the leftover pizza box from three days ago, then shuffled over to the table.

My laptop—a relic from 2002 I bought from a pawn shop—lay buried underneath a pile of overdue bills. I shoved them away, pressed the power button on the laptop, and waited. Mr. Zarcotti’s opera wailed dramatically across the hall. I didn’t know what the name of the song was, but I’d heard it enough to know the tune. Hummed along between bites of pepperoni.

It took a good five minutes of sitting and stuffing my face with cold pizza for the old fossil to warm up. When my desktop finally appeared, I clicked on the browser and waited another two minutes for it to load. My homepage wasn't an email account or a news website or a blog.

It was Armageddon Now.

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a
c
onspiracy theorist, but I did consider myself a skeptic. There were things about demons that the government, the Church, the police weren't telling us. According to them, demons just decided to appear thousands of years ago to cause chaos in the world. I didn't believe that. They had reason, they had purpose. They were a whole hell of a lot smarter than we gave them credit for. And they were
winning
. Possession rates were higher than they'd ever been and the number of children being born with Faustian Syndrome was climbing with each passing day.

We didn't know crap about demons. We barely knew how to fight them.

That's where Armageddon Now came in.

It filled in the gaps official statements left behind and educated the skeptical masses on what demons really were and what we could do to resist them. I'd found out about it a month or so ago from this stoner guy at school. He urged me to “seek the truth” and “never listen to the Man, man.”

Taking a swig of my water, I clicked around the message boards for a while. One thread was dedicated entirely to these things called hell brands―the demonic equivalent of crop circles―and another to deciphering the demonic language, both written and spoken. Others discussed ancient cleansing rituals, why exorcisms didn't really work, whether the Pope was possessed or not, and Dante Arturo, Stone Chapel’s resident demon hunter. He moved here a year ago, killed a bunch of demons, saved some orphans from a possessed nun, and become something of a local legend. As one does.

Rarely seen but always talked about, Dante was the city’s elusive savior. Women wanted him, men wanted to be him, and every newspaper in the country wanted to interview him. Last December,
The Stone Chapel Gazette
got that interview, thus putting the city smack dab in the middle of the world’s current demon crisis.

Dante was fascinating―even
I
had to admit that―but some people were obsessed with him, verging on hero worship. It was weird. He did a lot of good, but it wasn’t like the guy wore a cape or anything.

It didn't take long for me to get bored with reading the same “Dante is so hot/amazing/powerful” posts over and over again, so I gave up after the tenth one and clicked on my profile. My handle was DemonBarberBeatrice―a Sweeney Todd reference that nobody got because I didn't tell anyone my last name―and I had a new message.

My pulse skittered when I saw who it was from.

Max. The creator of Armageddon Now. We'd been messaging each other for the past week. I had some questions I didn't want to post on the boards, so I decided to send him a private message him on the off chance that he'd answer. When he didn’t, I sent another. Then another and another and another. Finally, he answered, and we’d been in contact ever since.

I clicked on the newest message.

Beatrice,

I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this (my boss would kill me if he knew) but…did you get everything we talked about? Please be careful.
- Max

I went over the list in my head. A bottle of iron pills? Check. Iron bullets? Check. Iron pocketknife? Check. A box of chalk? Check. All I needed was a gun. I told Max as much in my message, thanked him for answering my questions, and pressed send.

I don't think he realized how much I appreciated his help. I'd gotten fired from my last job as a waitress (I “accidentally” spilled coffee on a customer) and between the rent, food, power, utilities, and Rosie's sanatorium bills, I couldn't afford to be unemployed.

The buying and selling of demonic parts wasn’t legal, but it was fast becoming an industry. They sold for astronomical prices on the black market because no drug in the world could compare to the high a couple of demon's eyes gave you. Or so I've read. Despite being a delinquent in every other sense of the word, I stayed away from drugs. Alcohol. Anything that would compromise my sense of self. I was screwed up enough without adding some crazy demon brew to the mix.

But if
other people
wanted to get trashed off vodka and demon blood, no skin off my nose. As long as I got paid, I didn't care.

Keeping Rosie at the sanatorium and a roof over my head were my top priorities and if I had to shoot a few evil monsters in the face to do it, fine.

I was going to do whatever it took to survive. Always have. Always would.

***

Saturdays were sanatorium days. The extended visiting hours meant Rosie and I were allowed to walk the grounds when the weather was nice, eat lunch together, squeeze in a game of Monopoly. Anything she felt up to doing. I liked these days the most because if I closed my eyes and ignored the smell of rubbing alcohol and the beep of her monitors, it was almost like having my best friend home again.

But when I opened my eyes, that dream crumbled and reality settled in, heavy and dank and tinged with a single omnipresent truth: Rosie was going to die. And it wasn't going to be of old age. The signs were already there, in her cough, her sallow complexion, her unsteady gait, her mood swings.

She was going to die. She was going to die soon and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Therefore, I spent my weekends on the rocky outskirts of town at the Stone Chapel Sanatorium, doing the only real thing I could do. Be there.

We ate lunch in the dining hall while the rain pattered gently upon the roof, then went back upstairs to the “patient lounge” to watch TV. Television was a luxury many here weren't able to indulge in. Too violent, too triggering. Though the intensity varied from patient to patient, reactions to offending material were by and large the same.

One time, a commercial for the newest shooting game came on while Rosie and I were watching some stupid reality show. What began as a harmless afternoon of fun quickly turned into a disaster when a nurse and her fourteen year old patient came walking by.

I don't know if it was the guns or the loud noises or the explosions or a combination of the three, but as soon as he saw the commercial, that seemingly nice kid went berserk. The pupils in his tired eyes swallowed his irises and a low growl built in his throat. He flung his nurse aside with a strength unheard of in someone so young, then lunged for Rosie and me like we were a couple of lambs for the slaughter.

Security got him pretty quickly. Tried to send me home for the day. I refused. The incident jarred me, but it didn't fully surprise me. Rosie did something similar once. When we were younger. Demons made monsters of good people.

We tried not to think about it.

Instead, we buried our worries in board games and gossip magazines and old movies pulled from the sanatorium's limited collection. Today's was
The Big Sleep.
We'd watched it multiple times, but Rosie idolized Lauren Bacall and given the gloomy weather, an equally gloomy movie seemed appropriate.

“She's so stunning.” Rosie sighed, thin face turning wistful. She turned to look at me. “Isn't,” cough, “she stunning?”

“I don't know, have you gotten a good look at Bogart?” I asked. I loved Bacall, but there was something about Bogie. “He has a weird nose but he's got that angry detective thing going on. Not to mention that coat.”

Rosie nodded along, considering my points while Bogie droned on in the background. “How many,” cough, “times do you think we've watched this?”

I shrugged. “It's a good movie.”

She couldn't argue with that. Literally. She'd been coughing since I got here, but now it seemed her illness was getting the better of her. A single cough escalated to a fit that had her doubled over on the couch we were sitting on, her bony shoulders trembling with the force of it. I tried reaching for her, but she shied from my touch. Spat out a mouthful of blood onto the rug.

Worry settled in the pit of my stomach like a ball of ice, cold and weighty. I didn't know what to do. God, I never knew what to do. Swallowing hard, I stood.

“Rose,” I said, “I'm going to go find a nurse, stay right there.”

“No!” The word came out as a snarl no normal teenage girl could ever make on her own, her hand a pale flash as it shot out to curl around my wrist.

I froze, that ball of ice growing to encase me in a frigid layer of fear. The unpredictability of Faustian Syndrome never failed to impress me. One minute, Rosie was fine, and the next…

The girl whose fingernails buried themselves into my arm wasn't my best friend. She looked like her―dark brown hair chopped off to her chin, big brown doe eyes, tiny frame drowning in a shapeless hospital gown―but she wasn't her.

This girl was an imposter. An infernal changeling put there by a demon that insisted on making its presence known. When our gazes met, I saw nothing of Rosemary Barrett. Only the monster she had no say in becoming.

“Rosie,” I said, fighting to keep the tremor from my voice. “I need to get the nurse. Let me go.”

Her head tilted to the side, chapped lips spreading into a Cheshire Cat grin. She was amused by my fear. Or the demon was. Keeping the two separate was getting harder every day. “What's wrong,
Bee?
Are you afraid of little ol' me?”

I shook my head. Definitely the demon talking.

“You're a liar,
Bee
,” Demon-Rosie said. She gave my arm a yank, forcing me to sit down next to her. “You're afraid of me because you know what I can do.”

Yeah. I did. I had the scars to prove it. But I couldn't let my fear show any more than I already had. Fear was to demons as blood was to vampires. I needed to keep it under control. Deep breaths. Mental barriers. Focus.

“Rosie,” I said carefully. I was treading a thin line here. Any more pressure and her nails were going to pierce my skin. “Let me go. You need help.”

“
I
need help?” She leaned toward me, eyes wide open and black as night. “You're an eighteen year old orphan with a very bad attitude. Your parents
killed
themselves because they couldn't stand you any―”

“Rosemary?”

Demon-Rosie's hateful gaze flickered from me to our intruder―a handsome twenty-something with perfect teeth and a clerical collar. Brother Luke. He stood in the doorway, brow creased as he assessed the situation.

“What's going on here?” He asked.

Demon-Rosie released me from her vise grip, twisting around in her seat to smile her creepy smile at her favorite man of the cloth. “Nothing. We're being good girls, watching the movie, see?”

Brother Luke didn’t believe that for a minute. He looked at me. “Beatrice, I think it's time you leave.”

I couldn't have agreed more. Demon-Rosie, however, had other plans. She wrapped her skinny arms around me and squeezed tight, resting her head on my shoulder. Rosie and I had always been close, but this was pushing it a little.

“Sorry, Brother Luke.” Her eyes narrowed. “She's all mine.”

“Rosemary,” Brother Luke stepped into the room, and when he did, Demon-Rosie hugged me even tighter. “You need to go back to your room. I'll go with you.”

“You just want Beatrice to yourself,” my not-best friend growled. Her breath was hot against my skin, the faint scent of blood wafting in my nose. “I've seen the way you look at her.”

Brother Luke faltered. This is what demons did. They screwed with your mind, rearranged your thoughts into far more sinister versions of themselves. They could convince you the sky was red and the grass was blue and that you wanted your dying charge's best friend in a manner less than professional.

A menacing giggle curled like smoke in Demon-Rosie’s throat. “How long has it been, Brother? Since you've been
intimate
―”

“That's enough,” Brother Luke snapped. He abandoned all sense of self-preservation and charged forward to pull me from Demon-Rosie's grip. My hero. “Beatrice will be leaving now. Say goodbye.”

Surprisingly, she let me go. Whatever sway she held over me dissipated as I staggered back. My vision blurred and pain blossomed at the back of my skull. Demon-Rosie watched on with a wicked expression.