Deliver Us From Evil Part 2

ANTHONY CLOSED HIS CELL PHONE and stared at the fountain in the mission courtyard. He'd called the only person who might know which demon had been summoned, the only person who knew more about demons than he did.

And if Father Philip didn't know, they were in mortal danger.

He'd stepped out of the chapel as soon as he realized the tabernacle had been replaced. Without the ancient protection against evil, these men had been in jeopardy from the moment the tabernacle had been switched. For how long? Was this a slow-working insidious evil, or a sudden awakening? Anthony had specifically asked about the tabernacle, and Rafe hadn't seemed worried. Had it been switched before he arrived last month? Or more recently? The fake looked nearly identical to the original. Only someone with Anthony's expertise would be able to tell the difference.

How long had the demon been tormenting these men?

A silent cloak of frightened whispers wrapped around the former sanctuary, suffocating the mission. The vicious imprint of what had happened inside these walls could never be cleansed.

Help us help us help us.

The chant wrapped around him, invisible tentacles reaching for his soul, the pleas growing in urgency as a sharp sliver of icy fear rolled down his spine and his heartbeat doubled. Sweat broke out on his brow and he leaned forward, putting both hands on the fountain, the trickle of water soothing. Breathing deeply, eyes closed, he forced his heart rate to slow and regained his internal composure. He needed all his energy focused on learning who and what was responsible for these murders.

He opened his eyes. Blood poured from the statue of Saint Jude. He gasped, blinked, and the blood was gone.

Help us help us help me.

The keening of trapped souls, the souls of the men being carted out of the chapel in black plastic body bags, surrounded Anthony, deafening in their persistence. He'd heard the cries of the dead before, had saved countless souls before they were forever lost. But never like this, never this strong. Never this lost.

"What's wrong?"

He turned and faced Sheriff Skye McPherson.

Needful, he soaked in her raw beauty to clear his mind of all he'd seen. She did everything possible to diminish her sensuality, but nothing could destroy what lay beneath. Her creamy, clear skin. Her sharp, intelligent green eyes. Her full, red, unpainted lips. Makeup would only have destroyed what nature had created to be pleasing to a man.

Anthony desperately needed hope. Skye's presence strengthened him. It was as if she'd been conjured from his dreams. As if he'd seen her before. As if he was meant to be at her side, helping her. Watching her. Protecting her.

He turned from her, unsettled by the thought that there might be a bond with a woman he did not know, a woman who doubted him and everything he believed in.

He touched the statue, water-not blood-flowing over his hand. Certainly his mind was clouded and troubled by what had happened here. The bond with Sheriff Skye McPherson was only through death.

"Saint Jude," he murmured, "the patron saint of desperate causes. The men inside were desperate, Sheriff. Desperate because of what they had lived through. I put this statue here, personally selected and retrieved it from a monastery in France that had given sanctuary to other desperate people. Jews escaping the Holocaust. Desperation and hope. Without hope, we have nothing."

Uncertainty flashed in her eyes, then the steady face of the cop he'd first met returned. She wouldn't understand, she hadn't believed him even when faced with the violence inside; why did he even try to explain?

Because of hope. He sensed the hope and goodness within Skye McPherson as strongly as he felt the evil that permeated the formerly hallowed grounds of Santa Louisa de Los Padres.

"All I feel," she said, "is that someone-most likely several someones-slaughtered twelve people. Considering they were priests and this is a place of wors.h.i.+p, it is being looked at as a possible hate crime."

Anthony almost laughed, pulled his hand from the water and crossed himself. A faint scream from the trees taunted him. Skye didn't hear it.

"Hate crime?" he repeated. "All violence comes from hate."

She glanced at the doors of the chapel where another body bag was being removed, then looked at him. It was obvious to Anthony she had grave questions for him.

"Did you remove anything from the crime scene?" she finally asked.

"Other than Rafe, no. Why?"

She didn't answer, then suddenly it became clear. He pictured the destruction he'd walked into at dawn.

"There are no weapons."

"Someone removed them. And if you were telling the truth about breaking into the kitchen-"

"I was."

"Then they are in here, someplace."

"The killer left. He could have taken them."

"You said a demon killed these men." She couldn't keep the derision from her voice.

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. Patience, Anthony. "Demons don't act on their own. They need human intervention. They need someone to bring them forth. Once here, they have more power, but in the netherworld, their power is only that which they are given by Satan himself. This is why demonolatry is so dangerous. It is humans who are giving these demons power, enabling them to walk on earth stealing souls.

"Yes, a demon was responsible, but only with the help of people."

"Then how did the human being leave a locked mission?"

"You're the cop, you figure it out!" Anthony turned away from Skye, angry with himself for his temper. He couldn't allow himself to fall. He leaned into the fountain, put his hands in the water, seeking peace.

Help us help us help us "You told my deputy that the mission was locked when you arrived."

"Yes. The gate here"-he motioned to the courtyard fence-"had a padlock. I have a key to the mission, and went through to the kitchen door because it was closest. But the door was bolted from the inside. I broke in."

It had been like an invisible hand, dark and twisted, holding him back. The sensation of evil slithering across his skin. Malevolence hung thick in the air, whipped his tongue, and he knew he was too late.

"The lights were out."

"It was five in the morning," Skye said, as if his comment were ridiculous.

"For some of these men, dark is as much an enemy as Satan himself. The wall sconces are always on, and in the event of a power outage, the mission has a generator."

He saw Skye scribble a note. Of course, a sabotaged generator was tangible, something she could investigate. But who would know these men feared the night?

Anthony held the crucifix-dagger point out-in front of him as he ran down the hall toward the smell of death.

"I smelled fresh blood. The chapel doors were closed."

Resisting the urge to call out, he pushed open the solid wood doors and stepped into the house of wors.h.i.+p. A rush of burning heat came at him, then the temperature dropped and he saw his own breath.

Anthony couldn't tell this cop about the demon he felt vacating the chapel. She wouldn't believe him.

"I checked for survivors, but it was clear they were butchered. I was too late."

Eerily beautiful, the early morning sun filtered through the tall, narrow stained-gla.s.s windows bathing the dead in colorful rays of light. Body upon body filled the narrow chapel. Some decapitated, some without limbs, all murdered.

The crucifix hung upside down. It was a sign of demons, of Satanists, but this cross weighed too much for even a large group of men to invert and rehang. It had been carved from granite in Mexico and brought to the mission when it was first built in 1767.

"I began looking among the dead for Rafe, giving blessings as I went."

"What spirits tortured you?" Anthony whispered to the dead. Where was Rafe? He carefully crossed the floor, checking the pulse of the men he pa.s.sed. All dead. As he neared the altar, he saw his friend.

"I found Rafe behind the altar."

He lay facedown, white T-s.h.i.+rt covered in blood. Anthony squeezed back tears of anger, regret, and deep sadness as he knelt beside Rafe and turned him over. Anthony wasn't a priest, but at this point he doubted G.o.d would care who gave last rites. The crying for help intensified as Anthony began the prayer.

"After I turned him over, I saw that he was breathing. His pulse was strong and I ripped open his s.h.i.+rt to find the wound that had caused all the blood, but there was nothing. No visible injuries. I couldn't wake him, so I carried him out."

The trapped souls of the dead priests cried out to him. Maybe they hadn't been dragged down to h.e.l.l. Maybe they were in between worlds, like ghosts, waiting for help. Waiting for him.

First, save Rafe. Then he could return to save the dead.

"I called 911 as soon as I started down the mountain."

"We have the call logged at 5:32 A.M. You told my deputy you arrived at the mission about twenty minutes before that."

He nodded, rubbing his temples as the whispers continued, scratching at his subconscious. "Skye," he said quietly, not looking at her, calling on the person, the woman, not the sheriff.

"Yes?"

"Do you know of doubting Thomas?"

"Vaguely."

"He had to see Jesus to believe. He had to touch His wounds to believe in the Resurrection."

Anthony turned, stronger now, faced the woman whom he needed in order to save these men. He could stop the demon, but it would be her investigation that led him to those humans responsible for calling on h.e.l.l. To the ritual that maybe, with luck, strength, and faith, he could reverse.

He reached out, touched her soft skin. "I am asking for faith from a doubting Thomas. But I am still asking."

Skye stared at Anthony Zaccardi, the dark pirate, because that was most certainly what this man was. She should be laughing in his face-demons and h.e.l.l? Ridiculous. Her own mother had left to seek G.o.d and look what happened to her. Their entire family had been torn apart. Skye didn't need religion or belief in anything she couldn't see when she had cold, hard facts that didn't lie.

But she couldn't laugh at this man whose middle name could be Serious. His expression when he recounted finding the dead priests would stay with her for a long time. So full of pain and agony, as if he felt what they'd gone through. Zaccardi believed everything he told her, of that she was positive, and she couldn't figure out how he had anything to do with the murders.

But the investigation was still young and she refused to let her feelings cloud the facts.

"I am a cop," she finally said, her voice a mere whisper. "I want the people who did this. Demons or not, someone was responsible for killing these men and I will find them."

Skye turned from Anthony Zaccardi's eyes, so piercing it was as if he could read her mind. She didn't like that, not one little bit.

She surveyed the courtyard. Two wings extended on either side, leading toward the main entrance, with the traditional rounded arches of California missions. Entirely surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest, Santa Louisa had been built by a reclusive sect of the Franciscans and dubbed the "lost mission" because it wasn't easily accessible from the Mission Trail that started in San Diego and ended in San Francisco.

The courtyard was beautiful in its simplicity. Six arches on both sides framed the buildings. Brick walkways. And roses, everywhere roses. The fountain in the center was designed as a natural rock waterfall, water trickling over gray and brown stones that looked so precariously balanced that Skye was surprised they didn't topple over.

Saint Jude, Zaccardi had said. Patron saint of lost causes. She was certainly a lost cause. But one thing she was good at, thrived in, was being a cop. And her instincts told her that G.o.d or no G.o.d, a man was responsible for these deaths.

"I'll need your pa.s.sport, Mr. Zaccardi," she said, regretting her decision when a cloud of disbelief crossed his face, but knowing a good cop would insist that Zaccardi not be able to leave the country. He reached into his back pocket and handed her the doc.u.ments.

"I'm sorry," she found herself saying.

"You're just doing your job," he finished for her.

"Where are you staying?"

"I don't know."

"The Coastal Inn outside town is a nice place. I know the owners. Tell them I sent you, they'll give you a good rate."

He looked over her shoulder. What did he see? All she saw was a simple stone building. His troubled eyes told her he saw something more. She wanted to ask, but bit her tongue. She couldn't, wouldn't, be sucked into his fantasy. Or hers.

Detective Juan Martinez stepped out of the chapel, waved her over.

"I'll keep in touch," she said to Zaccardi.

A chill wind swept through the courtyard as he turned and left, as if he'd summoned the elements himself.

Or they came in his wake.

Trapped himself without a human body, the ancient demon imprisoned the twelve souls that fought for the Light, but didn't have the strength to bring each soul back to his Master.

He had failed. Black pain twisted his noncorporeal mind as he hovered in the mountains, invisible to those who did not know what he looked like, how he smelled, how he felt, in his true form.

He had never faced Zaccardi, but the human was known to all in Hades. Zaccardi was a relic from the past, relis.h.i.+ng the destruction of that which ensured balance on earth.

If the Master of Heaven hadn't wanted them to exist, He would have extinguished Satan and the rest of them during the Great Battle. But it was a game. How many souls could they win over? How many would serve the Dark Lord? The more they won, the hotter h.e.l.l burned, the more of his kind walked the earth.

But Zaccardi was among those pathetic humans who wanted a piece of the pie. As if destroying demons would grant him a larger room in Paradise. Because of Zaccardi and his powerful friend, he'd failed. He hadn't been able to keep Zaccardi at bay and Cooper trapped at the same time he manipulated death. And in that sliver of time, the soul he'd been promised got away from him.

He burned at the unfairness of it!

Losing the body chosen for him greatly irritated the demon. That which was lost would have given him more power than he'd ever had. He'd have ruled on earth forever! He would have opened new portals for his Master, converted more humans to dark service. They would be a potent force, undefeatable. No angel would be able to destroy them. No human would be able to fight them. They'd have the numbers and strength to come and go at will among the pitiable human bodies.

What a travesty that he needed such a weak vessel to survive in this dimension!

With the remaining strength from the ritual that had brought him from h.e.l.l, he'd be able to keep the souls trapped until he could complete his mission and send them to the fiery pit. He needed another body, which his earthly servants would soon provide.

He could survive in an unwilling body, but the constant battle to restrain a fighting soul would prevent him from attaining his highest power. Sooner or later, he would need a willing human to increase his strength.

The dead around him moaned with dread of their fate.

No one can save you. You were betrayed by one you loved, and you're mine for eternity.

The demon laughed, and waited, and the trees of the forest groaned.