“You’re staying, or I’ll really start playing games. How about shooting dice with your balls for starters?”
Nelson winced from the pain but he refused to cry out. Cain’s grip intensified until thick globs of blood bubbled up around his fingers. The others looked on in ignorance, their view of the commissioner’s pulverized arm obscured by the mayor’s body.
Cain released Nelson’s arm. The police commissioner dropped to his knees. Muriel let out a slight gasp and started to run to Nelson’s side.
Cain stepped in her way. One look at his eyes and Muriel collapsed in a dead faint. Next, he ripped off his pants in one fluid, fabric-wrenching motion, and wagged his engorged, discolored penis with huge tufts of hair sprouting from the head.
“Poor girl,” he said as he looked down at Muriel’s body. “Passed out before the big shindig even begins.”
Chapter Fourteen
Father Michael locked eyes with Shane. His voice carried the gravity of centuries.
“You are an Impervious,” he paused for a moment, “and you will fight.”
Shane used all of his reserve to break the priest’s glare. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m no fighter. Hell, you saw me in the alleyway. I may be living on the streets but I’m a friggin’ lightweight when it comes to fighting. If you need a wiseass, I’m your man. Besides, how the hell am I supposed to fight something like that Cain?”
“Yes, I saw you in the alley and I also saw you refuse to back down. You even drove a broken bottle into Cain’s neck. You’re far braver than you think, because there is more at work within you than you can understand. And ultimately, Cain is not yours to fight.”
“Then who am I supposed to fight, Cain’s trainer? Or better yet, his cut man?” Shane’s natural defense of making jokes in the face of uncertainty was not appreciated.
“He will make others, turn mortal flesh into demonic slaves. You will fight the demons.”
Shane shook his head. “Even if any of this is true, and the only reason I’m hearing you out is because of what you saved me from and the fact that a man of the cloth is backing your story, what makes you think I’d fare any better against a demon or, better yet,
demons
?”
Monsignor Stanton spoke up. “Because as an Impervious, you cannot be killed by pure evil. In other words, you are impervious to their attacks.”
“So, I’m immortal like Father Michael? No offense, but the gig doesn’t sound too appealing.”
“You are far from immortal. The only thing you are guarded against is mortal violence at the hands of Cain or one of his minions. Father Michael has been aided by only two of the Impervious Order these many past centuries. Your abilities even outweigh those before you. That you were able to stop Cain from dragging you to hell makes you unique. If only there was more time to prepare you.”
“If Cain can’t touch me, how come he was able to practically poke my eye out of its socket? If it wasn’t for Father Michael, I’d be down one eye.”
“You cannot be
mortally
wounded,” Father Michael intoned. “Cain’s actions were only meant to gather information, not destroy.”
“Okay, for some odd reason I can buy that. Probably because I felt it with my own eye.” He waited a beat but the play on words went unappreciated. His fingers absently rubbed the repaired eye.
The monsignor wheeled his chair over to a nearby cabinet and poured himself a small glass of brandy. He nodded and tipped the bottle in Shane’s direction.
Shane reached for it and downed a shot straight from the bottle. Manners were never his strong suit. “What are the odds that you would even hook up with me?” he said, turning to Father Michael.
“There are no odds,” the undead priest said, suddenly rushing to the window. “There is only divine intervention.”
And then he started screaming.
The radio in the mayor’s office was blasting a pop tune, some insipid song about crying ‘’cause the phone won’t ring’. The assembled staff, just ten minutes earlier running in vain for their lives, had formed a pulsating pile of nude bodies in the center of the room. Cain wiped the blood and tissue on his penis off in the hair of the nearest woman who was currently taking on two men at once while another woman urinated on her.
Cain stepped back to admire his latest converts.
“That’s much better,” he announced. He was answered by moans, sucking noises and the slap of skin against skin. “You all will serve me well on Tuesday. And with that bitch Aimee as bait, we should have a special visitor not on the guest list. Or, better yet…”
Cain strode towards the pile of bodies, pushing people aside like toys until he found Rose, the former mayor’s secretary. Rose, a once benevolent woman just shy of sixty whom others in the office had always regarded as the kind grandmother they wished they had, was hungrily gnawing on a woman’s breast while plunging a stapler into her own vagina.
“Rose!” Cain snapped. She immediately stopped.
“When you’re done, dear, please add Father Michael to the Javits Center guest list. Just in case he decides to come through the front door. I don’t want him having any trouble getting in for the big show.”
Rose snarled like a rabid wolf and resumed impaling herself with the stapler.
“My special twelve. If Jesus had only had apostles as loyal as you will be to me, instead of the chickenshit flock he gathered like so much flotsam, he could have really been something.”
He skipped over to the still body of the police commissioner. Nelson, stirred from his faint, tried to extricate himself from Cain’s grasp. Cain lifted Nelson over his head with one hand.
“Put me down! Put me down!”
With his free hand, Cain broke the wooden leg off of a nearby chair and tossed it into the pile of bodies.
“Oh, apostles, what party is complete without a piñata? Here, take a whack!”
Commissioner Nelson looked down at his executioner. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you are strong and good and just,” Cain sneered. “I fucking hate that in a man. Plus, if I added you to my party that would make thirteen. Such an unlucky number.”
Nelson was smashed across his spine with superhuman strength by a woman who then passed the chair leg on to the next demon. They had formed a single line, each one smeared with semen, blood and other waste, all of them wearing sadistic smiles.
“Aaggghhhh!”
The next blow shattered the right side of Nelson’s head, popping his eye from its socket and then, still clinging to a string of pulp, swinging it into the commissioner’s open mouth in midscream.
Each newly converted demon took turns striking the commissioner while Cain cackled and sang “Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush”.
“Keep going, kiddies. We’re almost there!”
It was Muriel, or the husk that had once been Muriel, who drove home the winning shot. Commissioner Nelson’s body ruptured like an overripe pumpkin, showering all of them in human viscera. They danced underneath the storm like children on a rainy day and even threw larger bits of his body around in a nightmarish snowball fight.
“Just think, Michael my boy,” Cain shouted. “All of this is for you! Oh, and that delicious Aimee. I know her secret too. I am so going to piss on your picnic basket!”
Monsignor Stanton and Shane crouched near Father Michael who had dropped to a knee and was holding his head like it was about to explode. The screaming had stopped but the ice it had produced in Shane’s veins was far from thawing.
“Is he all right?”
The monsignor brushed aside Shane’s question with a quick wave of his hand.
Just as quickly as Father Michael’s outburst had begun, he straightened up, grabbed Shane by the shoulder and forced him back into his chair.
“I felt their souls,” he rumbled to Monsignor Stanton. “Cain is near and at work. I must leave to consult with the newly dead. They will tell me where to find him.”
Father Michael rummaged through his gunnysack, retrieving something long and gold, but pocketing it before Shane could tell what it was. He then tossed the sack to Shane who let out a loud grunt as a hundred pounds of holy-battle gear knocked the wind out of him.
“Watch this and wait for my return at Aimee’s.”
“Watch this, man, I can’t even lift it.”
The otherworldly priest was gone before Shane finished his protest.
“Where the heck is he going?”
The monsignor looked out the window with rheumy eyes. It was snowing again, coating the city in a blanket of white that looked so pristine, so heavenly. But he knew that heaven on earth was a fleeting thing, something to be glimpsed but never attained, as penance for Adam and Eve’s sin. A night as beautiful as this, tainted by the blood of Cain so many centuries after he murdered his brother in the field, and when asked by God for Abel’s whereabouts, Cain answered, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
To which God replied, “The blood of your brother cries out from the very ground!”
Cain was cursed by God to be the bearer of death wherever he trod upon the earth and was forever marked by God. Cain would bring death but no living thing was to bring death to Cain. And now here he was, preserved by God and chosen by Satan, his anger at the perceived injustice of the Father stoked until it had become an eternal flame of carnal desire and stinking death.
Shane cleared his throat to get the monsignor’s attention.
“Excuse me, but did he say he was going to talk to the newly dead?”
Monsignor Stanton nodded.
Shane thought for a moment, then waved his hand as if motioning for someone to stop what they were doing. “I was going to ask what that really means, but I’ve decided I’ve had more than I can handle today. If you need me, I’ll be the guy in the hospital having his hernia operated on.”
He winced as he hoisted the gunnysack over his shoulder and staggered backwards a step. He grunted a good-bye and left. Monsignor made the sign of the cross at his wake and prayed for the safety of his soul.
Chapter Fifteen
Shane trudged through the blackened slush on his way to Aimee’s apartment while fresh snow pelted his eyes like tiny darts. Monsignor Stanton’s aide, a super nice old lady who reminded him of Mrs. Butterworth come to life, had lent him a metal luggage carrier so he could transport Father Michael’s gunnysack. Shane would have preferred a cab but as usual he was broke and something about begging from an elderly woman just seemed wrong.
People weaved around him, anxious to get out of the snow as they headed to stores or homes or work. A very tall blonde, model-thin woman walking her dog, one of those pure-breed minidogs that spent more time being carried in purses than putting paw to pavement, bumped into him and he almost tipped over the gunnysack. While she apologized, the dog sniffed the bag and proceeded to go bonkers, growling and barking at the gunnysack as if it were filled with kittens. She picked the dog up and tucked it under her arm, now apologizing for her pup’s rude manners.
“Don’t worry, Benji,” he said, “I’m not so crazy about this bag either.” The woman was too far gone to hear him, but he thought he saw the dog’s ears perk up.
Still absorbing everything he had learned and what he had seen in the alley a week ago, he suddenly felt evil dwelling in every unlit doorway, around each corner and in every person that he passed. The fire-and-brimstone routine was a nice touch in religion class and church, but what rational person thought it could all possibly be real? Wasn’t it supposed to just be a load of scary shit designed to keep people in line?
Now he was faced with the fact that evil was real, more real than he’d care to fathom, and currently roaming the streets of his home and, even worse, possibly stalking Aimee.
He walked, oblivious to the cold or the hot pain that flared up his arm from dragging Father Michael’s bag of weapons. Shane was lost in revelation and on the brink of being consumed by crippling fear.
A clouded wisp of hot gasses poured from the grate of a curbside sewer grate, the stench clinging to Father Michael’s clothes very much like the miasma of Cain’s work had befouled his existence since his mortal death.
He’d felt all dozen souls as they were ripped from their earthbound hosts and dispersed like ash from a smokestack. All of them were lost between heaven and hell, a journey begun that may take eons to complete. He needed to find them, even just one soul, and capture their final images before death. One soul, though doomed to be astray for what mortals would consider an eternity, could save millions.
Locating and conversing with these souls was difficult and painful—physically, emotionally and spiritually. For despite Father Michael’s divine purpose and skill in this world, he still grappled with his emotions, though they became duller with the passage of time and lives. It was yet another curse that he had been forced to bear by the Lord. It would have been so much easier to be reborn as a killing machine, efficient without the slightest trace of remorse, without memories of the past, of his life, of Ailis and his son, Kerwynn.
Ailis. She had returned, in Aimee, but why now? To torture him? To test him? Had her soul been claimed by the dark lord only to be recast to make him weak? They were all here for a purpose, but to what end? He shuddered at the thought of his beloved Ailis suffering in hell all these years, prayed that she had been spared both hell and the nothing where he was certain these newly detached souls now existed.