Deus Vult Page 5

  Ashley opened his mouth to say something to Alex but stopped and looked at us. “Are you going to let him bully me around like that?”

  Pearson shrugged. “I’m sorry, was I supposed to stop him? I’m just a priest. Though I will be happy to report all of this to the Pope. He will be thrilled to death with the news of how helpful you’ve been.”

  Alex snapped, “Address! Now!”

  Pearson hovered over Bishop Ashley while Alex loomed at the back of the room. I calmly and casually strolled over to his side and whispered, “Really? Little much, wasn’t it?”

  Alex looked from the Bishop to me and back again. “It wasn’t an act. I can’t believe this dickless wonder can’t believe in the supernatural when that’s literally his job. I’ve seen too much of this crap to listen to his BS. My God, man, you have some stupid people in your hierarchy.”

  I shrugged. I knew the history of our hierarchy. There were moments where God needed to give a stern talking to Saint Peter, Pope number one. I didn’t hold out much hope that the rest of the hierarchy would do a lot better. “No argument.”

  I wandered the back of the office as we waited for the secretary to give us the address for Minniva Atwood. There were pamphlets on one of the side tables. It was for the “Women’s Health Corps, Boston.”

  My blood went cold at the name of the death cult that had tried to slaughter my entire family twice. I was about to throw the pamphlets at the Bishop and follow through on every threat Alex had in mind – then I saw the date. The most recent pamphlet was two years old. It predated the arrest and prosecution of the entire WHC.

  But on the back of the pamphlet, in small print, read the copyright on the pamphlet itself. It was the logo of the company than printed the PR materials. It was a giant “M” with the last leg of the letter turning into an “I.”

  I swept up all of the WHC pamphlets and put them on the table in a stack. Then I pulled out all of the L.G.B.T.Q.M.O.U.S.E. pamphlets from outside in the hallway.

  They had also been printed by Matchett Industrial.

  “Father Pearson,” I called back, “I think we have a problem.”

  Pearson and Alex swapped places. Bishop Ashley whimpered. I pointed out the content of the pamphlets, then the logo.

  Pearson glanced at me and turned back to the Bishop. “What is your relationship with Matchett Industrial?”

  Ashley whimpered a little when Alex raised the back of his hand as if to strike him. “He donates to the church! Lots of money!”

  I arched a brow and spared Pearson a glance. I said, “That’s funny, coming from a big Boston company, isn’t it?”

  Ashley held up his hands. “He earmarks it for the causes he cares about. Needle exchange! Housing for the undocumented. He asks that we put out pamphlets.”

  I didn’t even ask which pamphlets. But something felt off about Matchett’s donations. “Needle exchange, but not your drug support groups?”

  Ashley nodded eagerly, happy to answer my question – it meant that Alex took a step back. “Right.”

  He wants to continue the problem, not fix it, I thought. “Any particular undocumented?”

  Ashley floundered for a moment and reached for a drawer. Alex leaned forward over him, in case there was a weapon. Ashley grabbed a folder and tossed it on the desk. “Photos. From our support group.”

  I grabbed it and opened it.

  The first picture – the very first picture – was a group shot. The timestamp put it as three years ago.

  Three things struck me immediately.

  One. They were all Hispanic. All of them. This may not surprise you, but not all “undocumented” were Hispanic. In Boston, many were Irish. The odds of them being only Hispanic were stacked against it.

  Two. Everyone in the photograph was heavily tattooed. Everyone had at least one tattoo with a giant “13” on it. Meaning they were all MS-13, a street gang that had expanded so that they were one part cartel and one part terrorist group.

  Three. Right in the middle of it, the man in the exact center, was a man I knew. He had been a shot caller for MS-13 until he went into Rikers, and then a padded cell, before finally being ripped apart by shadows. His name had been Rene Ormeno, and he and his men had tried to murder me repeatedly.

  “Sumbitch,” I whispered.

  At that moment, the secretary came back with an addressed for Minniva Atwood. But just as importantly, he had her job details. She was chief of sales for Matchett Industrial.

  8 Beyond Bullets

  We pulled up to the house at the edge of Boston and found three black vans parked in front. One of them had cut off the driveway, and another was parked on the lawn, back facing us. It had no license plates. At the end of the driveway, two large hulking men in Secret Service chic were carrying a slender brunette. It was Minniva Atwood. We knew thanks to the description a suddenly-helpful secretary had provided us at the diocesan office. Slender, broad-shouldered, and physically active, she put up a good fight. Her shoulder-length dark brown hair and smart business attire were in disarray, giving witness to her efforts. She kicked and struggled against them, screaming her head off. Without hesitation, I gunned the engine and turned the wheel.

  My wheels went up the next driveway over. We cut across the lawn next door and shot into Minniva’s driveway. The two men holding her didn’t have time to react. One held Minniva with one arm and reached inside his jacket with the other for his gun. The other one looked too confused to react.

  I twisted the wheel just enough to shoot past Minniva and slammed into the man in black. I slammed on the brakes as the car passed behind Minniva. The gunman was knocked away from Minniva and went flying into the closed door of her garage. I spun the wheel as we slowed, bringing the passenger side around to face Minniva and her other kidnapper. Alex jammed his gun out the window, into the kidnapper’s face, and fired four rounds. Minniva screamed and ducked her head away from the noise and spatter erupting from the ruined face.

  Pearson got out of the back seat and grabbed Minniva by the arms. “Come with us if you want to live!” he called to her as he hustled her into the back of the car.

  The men from the cars threw the doors open and stormed out. They weren’t armed with anything visible, which made me wonder how much they had up their sleeves. The driveway was still blocked.

  Not wanting to get into a game of chicken with the gunmen, I spun the wheel and threw the car into reverse, backing down the driveway and dashing into the backyard.

  I slid out of the car and shouted at them, “Get into the house. I’ll hold them off.”

  “With what?” Alex screamed, incredulous. “You have body armor we don’t know about?”

  I smiled at him and let it happen.

  Under my shirt, the clay armor around my chest sprang to life. Sheets of clay armor telescoped out over my body. Interlocking plates slid down my arms and legs while the helmet slid up over my head, then the face mask locked into position.

  Alex blinked. Then shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. Of course. Clay powered armor. Because I’m in a comic book now.” He threw open his door and held his gun up as Pearson and Minniva ran behind him.

  The garage door exploded open. The kidnapper I struck with the car stepped out and turned to me. His black sunglasses were broken, one lens entirely ripped off. It revealed one solid glowing red eye.

  I leaped forward in my golem armor and crashed into the man in black. While the power suit made me look light and nimble, I easily weighed four hundred pounds.

  The kidnapper only staggered back a few steps. He reared back and swung for me. I deflected the blow with my left hand and shot in with my right. My fist came in low, diving into his stomach. It slid him back along the concrete without doing anything else to him.

  The entire time, his face was impassive, as though he were bored.

  Okay. Not human. Check. Not even a little. Good.

  He darted in again. I sidestepped the charge, then grabbed his right wrist with both hands. I pulled back as
he kept running. His entire body weight went one way while his arm went another. It was enough to break bone in a normal person. As I drove his arm to the ground, his feet went out from under him. I clomped down on his chest, held my grip on his arm, and pulled. It was a move meant to dislocate the shoulder of a human. I gave it everything the armor had.

  His arm came right out of its socket with a sound like breaking stone.

  Instead of blood and bone, the open wound poured forth a green gelatinous substance. I dropped the arm and backed away from it, not wanting to get too close.

  I looked up. The other kidnappers filled the driveway. There were fourteen of them to block my path. The augmented reality of the armor’s vision scanned over them once, then again. The last time penetrated the glamour they hid behind.

  They were less human and more … scaley. Some sort of serpent men.

  Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

  Their steps even now encircle me; they watch closely, keeping low to the ground, like lions eager for prey, like a young lion lurking in ambush.

  I reached down for the driveway and grabbed either side of the slab of concrete in front of me. With the powered grip of the armor, I ripped the concrete from the ground, hefted it, and hurled it at the line of attack like a death Frisbee. Some ducked, some dove out of the way. Five of them weren’t fast enough and were cut in half.

  Rise, O LORD, confront and cast them down;

  They were so busy with the incoming slab that they didn’t see that I leaped right behind it.

  I landed on the head of one of those that dove, pulping his skull. I spun, delivering a right stone hammer fist to the nearest temple. The head caved in, and the neck snapped to one side.

  At the same time, I jabbed a left knife-hand into a serpent man’s throat. I punctured the skin and came out the other side, then chopped away. I ripped out the side of his neck, casting away green goo from within.

  The remaining serpents jumped me, piling onto me like I was in a football game.

  Rescue my soul from the wicked.

  I found purchase on the ground and pushed up with all my strength. I pushed up, to my feet, throwing off all of the serpents.

  Slay them with your sword; with your hand, LORD, slay them;

  One serpent landed in front of me, bouncing back to his scaley feet. He threw his head back, and I instinctively ducked. He spat for me, where my head was. His spit landed in the face of the serpent behind me. On contact, there was the spit-sizzle of acid melting away flesh. The serpent man screamed and grabbed his face as it melted off.

  Snatch them from the world in their prime. Their bellies are being filled with your friends; their children are satisfied too, for they share what is left with their young.

  The serpent before me opened his mouth again, but before he could rear back for another load, I sprang up and forward, fist cocked back.

  I am just.

  I punched right down his throat and out the back of his head. I swung back, ripping the serpent’s head off, hurling it at another creature.

  Let me see your face.

  I whirled on the remaining five creatures. A window opened from the house behind them, and Alex casually threw a package of thermite onto one of them. The package broke open against its head, opening it up to the air. The oxygen ignited a chemical inside, which set off the thermite. He burst into flame, and the others fled from the fire.

  I grabbed the one straggler who darted down the driveway. Alex fired into the other three. I took the straggler by the neck, lifted him over my head, then threw him into the concrete, head first. The head exploded like a balloon filled with green Jello. There didn’t even seem to be a brain inside the skull, just animating fluids.

  When I awake, let me be filled with your presence.

  The final three tried to flee. Alex gunned down one of them in the back, felling him.

  I leapt onto their backs, driving them to the concrete. With balled fists, I pounded down on their skulls like I hammered a nail. After half a dozen strikes, the heads were pulped and gushing ooze.

  I pushed off of the bodies, to my feet. With a flick of my wrists, I rid myself of the spatter. I thought at the golem armor for more data. The display flicked to a green tint, giving me the all-clear.

  I looked down at the serpent men. The display on the helmet highlighted the green slime and blinked for a moment. The data filed down the right side of my helmet’s vision, studying the goo. “The suit says that they were animated by ectoplasm. Apparently, that’s what happens with a … summoned construct. I guess that means they were demonic flesh robots.”

  Alex leaned out the window and looked at me like this was boring. “Yay. Can we leave now?”

  “Excuse me, we have a problem!” Father Pearson called out from the back.

  Alex rolled his eyes. “Of course, we do.”

  I powered down the armor and slid it away so it folded back under my clothing. Alex pulled himself back inside. I took the short route, grabbed the window sill and pulled myself inside the house.

  Minniva Atwood, lay boneless in Pearson’s arms. Her eyes were wide awake and staring, almost like she was catatonic. But her hand reached out to me, and her mouth moved, wordlessly asking for help.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

  Pearson glanced my way. “The demon has rendered her mute.”

  9 The Exorcist

  Normal operating procedure would have been to spend hours talking with the police about everything we had done at the house and everything that had led us up to that point. We would be grilled by a rotating set of police officers for hours on end to make certain the stories we told were all in sync. Minniva Atwood would be dragged off to a hospital and probably a psych ward. Alex’s gun would be disappeared into a box, then a lab, then a report would be filed with the NYPD, and he would spend the better part of the next week without a gun, and being questions by Internal Affairs of New York, as well as the investigators from Boston.

  If we were lucky, standard operating procedure would keep us penned up tight, and out of circulation for the better part of two weeks. Perhaps more.

  With that in mind, I looked at Alex and Pearson. “We’re getting out of here immediately. Throw her in the back of the car. Want me to carry?”

  Pearson rose with her in his arms. She was long, but slender. And he had been a spy and who knew what else. She wasn’t a problem for him. And the demon wasn’t fighting. Then again, given what Pearson said earlier about demons not wanting to tip their hand by revealing themselves, that could be the demon playing it safe. The longer it could drag this out and prevent us from talking to Minniva, the less time we would have.

  I armored up and led the way outside in case something closed in on us between the time we left the house and the time we pulled out. I didn’t know the range on the armor, and I wasn’t going to spend time asking.

  I got out of the house and circled in front of the car. No one was there. As Alex and Pearson loaded Minniva in the car, I peeked around the corner of the house, down the driveway.

  There were no intruders around. But even stranger, there weren’t any of the serpent men either. Both the bodies and the clothes on them had melted away, leaving a little bit of a wet stain where the attackers had been. At least they were self-cleaning.

  If we allowed ourselves to be detained by the cops, that would make things even more complicated. Questions like “Why did you fire your gun?” or “Why is there a slab of concrete ripped out of the driveway?” would be inconvenient.

  It took me a moment to piece together why the serpent men had melted. The golem armor had told me that they were summoned constructs and animated by ectoplasm. Apparently, when they were defeated, the summoned were cast back into the pit from which they came.

  I armored down, got behind the wheel, and made our way out of the driveway. I casually drove away, under the speed limit, drawing no attention to us.

  Alex kept his gun in his lap the entire time, his hea
d on a swivel. I had to admit that my eyes were on a fast rotating schedule, from my mirrors to the windshield and back again. Pearson sat in the back, and he held Minniva, keeping her calm, peacefully reciting the Rite of exorcism.

  “Don’t you have an app for that sort of thing?” Alex asked.

  I spared him a glance. “What sort of thing?”

  “Demonic whatever the Hell they were. It was disorienting when you squashed their heads and they’re empty except for Jello. But you have a magic ring for that, don’t you?”

  I took a deep breath and calmed myself. “One, it’s not magic. Any more than the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail would be magic. Second, do you know why I don’t use bilocation to stay home while I’m off getting shot at?”

  Alex shrugged. “I have no idea. I always wondered.”

  I took a deep, calming breath. After all, it wasn’t self-evident to everyone. “We’re a few steps beyond ‘With Great power comes Great Responsibility.’ These are gifts from God. I ask for what I need. I don’t say ‘I’m going to do this because I want to.’ I use what I need and no more than what I need. If God were going to do every last little thing, then I don’t need free will, He could just pull the strings. Heck, He wouldn’t even need me. God may have whispered in the ear of King David to take down Goliath with a slingshot, but David still needed years in the fields practicing and taking out wolves. I have powered armor, and I have charisms out my ears. I want to save the ring for when I need it.”

  Alex said nothing for a long stretch as he thought it over. “You could have just said you were saving your ammo.”

  I scoffed. “That would be too certain an answer. I don’t know how this works. I don’t know if there is a charge for it. It may be that it can never run out of charge. The Jihadi thugs who shot at me had bits of the Soul Stone embedded in them and ran on hate. I never got to see them with constant, prolonged use of their powers. They also had the main stone within proximity. So there are more variables than I feel comfortable experimenting with, especially during a firefight.”