Dark Exodus

  That there wasn’t anything—or anybody—that they weren’t willing to drag into their struggle. Innocent or not, it did not matter in the war of good versus evil.

  • • •

  Were they all just pawns of some massive cosmic struggle?

  Theo attacked the three again, wondering who they were—who they really were—before the forces of good had decided to use them. The demons inside her reacted to her thoughts, reminding her yet again of her own curse, as she fought back against the savagery of the beings before her.

  They met her attack with equal fury, coming at her as one, the blows so powerful that she felt bones pulverize and skin tear as she was relentlessly driven to the floor of the corridor. There was no doubt in her mind that they were trying to kill her and that they would succeed if she didn’t do something . . .

  Drastic.

  “Do it,” Billy Sharp whispered from somewhere within the folds of her brain. “Do it or we’re all dead.”

  She knew the statement to be true and could actually hear a trace of fear in the demon’s normally calm, cooing voice. If she were to die here, the demons would be trapped inside her rotting corpse, and without her soul to torment, they, too, would wither and eventually cease to be.

  There was nothing worse for a demon than to no longer exist.

  Theo was going to do it, to let them all go, but hesitated. The Divine seemed to sense this and used the opportunity. They leapt upon her, holding her down, while one of them opened its mouth so incredibly wide and let the power of Heaven rain down upon her.

  The pain was both psychic and physical, and in that moment, she wished that she would die, she wished that she could cease to exist to escape the level of agony she was experiencing.

  Even the demons inside her were reeling; the assault was so all-encompassing that it had rendered even the infernal legions impotent.

  Theo was convinced then that she would die and that the world itself would die as well. Everyone and everything would experience the same level of horror and agony that she was experiencing then, which just added to the misery that dragged her deeper and deeper and made her beg . . . pray, for death.

  Something was suddenly different, a moment of distraction to divert her from the pain.

  Theo could sense them—hear them—but she could not see them.

  Animals.

  The nursing-home hallway had become filled with the presence of animals.

  And they were angry, tapping into the nature of their wildness, swirling around the Divine, tearing at their human forms, driving them back and away from her.

  Theo did not question this act, scrambling to her feet, trying to douse the holy power that ate at her body and soul. She saw her standing there, along with others. Theo almost screamed at them. Run! Get as far away as you can.

  But then she realized that the blond-haired girl had been the one to save her. Those were her animals.

  And maybe things weren’t as hopeless as they seemed.

  • • •

  To say that she was afraid was an understatement.

  Nicole had watched the entire fight unfold, the Three Stooges with the electrical mouths and eyes, moving like robots, and Theo.

  What the fuck was up with that?

  She knew that something had happened to John Fogg’s wife, but what exactly she had no idea. Watching her, the way her body changed, it was obviously something bad.

  Really, really bad.

  But there wasn’t any time to think about that stuff now, Nicole thought, seeing that Theo was about to get her ass handed to her. She had to do something; she had to help if she could.

  She left the safety of the ground at the far end of the hall, listening to the protests of John and Griffin. They were telling her to get back, but she knew that she could do something to help out.

  At least she thought she did.

  Nicole dug deep, using her special talents, reaching out to all the dead things, all the animals that had ever lived within these walls, as well as a pretty good distance outside. She called them, all the restless spirits that had never moved on.

  She called them, and she asked them to do her a favor. She asked them to fight—to attack—the three creeps with the burning eyes and mouths.

  To tear them apart if they could.

  The one thing about dead animals, they’re often really bored and just looking to have something to do.

  The animals massed, becoming a swirling vortex of ethereal energy, an angry storm of ghostly claws and teeth.

  Nicole commanded them, and they eagerly complied, swirling down the hallway to engulf the three, to drive them back away from the injured Theodora.

  Running down the corridor, she reached for John’s wife.

  “C’mon,” she said. “They should buy us some time.”

  Theo reached a fucked-up hand toward her; it was clawed, the flesh covered in scales. Nicole had the urge to pull her hand back, but she didn’t, taking the nasty thing and helping pull Theo to her feet.

  Nicole was helping her down the corridor when she felt it.

  “Oh God,” she said, her entire body going stiff.

  She always maintained a kind of connection with the spirits she commanded, feeling what they felt as they took some of her own life energies to make their ghostly forms corporeal.

  But now something was up.

  She was feeling these connections break. One after the other, the spirit animals under her control were disappearing.

  The sound from the other end of the corridor stopped them both in their tracks, and they slowly turned.

  The ghosts of animals continued to swirl about the three, scratching and clawing and reducing their clothes to tatters, but the Scouts were also doing something.

  It took Nicole only a second to figure it out.

  “Holy shit,” the girl said, feeling suddenly weaker as even more of her connections to the dead were severed.

  The three Scouts had opened their mouths, but instead of spewing electricity, the bluish light from within had turned a cold, eerie white, and the ghost animals were being drawn inside.

  “They’re eating them,” Nicole said, almost falling to her knees. It was now Theo’s turn to keep her up. “They’re eating my fucking ghosts.”

  Their mouths opened wider, and wider still, and even though the spirit dogs and cats and birds and bugs tried to fight it, they were pulled into the open maws as if by some incredible current.

  It was like watching moths flying into a bug light.

  Flutter! Flutter! Zap!

  She felt their fear, their panic as they were drawn toward the sucking void.

  And then she felt nothing.

  It was one of the worst things she’d ever felt.

  The three had begun to glow, their bodies throwing off an unearthly energy with each new spirit they consumed.

  “Got to go,” Theo growled, helping to move her quickly along.

  Through bleary eyes, Nicole saw that John and Griffin were running toward them to help.

  Her spirits . . . her ghost animals, were almost gone. She held on tight to Daisy cat, fearing that she, too, would be drawn toward the white light glowing up from within the bodies of the Scouts.

  That white light grew brighter, and brighter still, as the spirits of the animals fed it.

  And then minibolts of lightning started to shoot from the mouths and bodies of the beings, striking the walls and ceilings.

  Bringing the corridor down upon their heads.

  • • •

  Through smoke and plaster dust, John saw movement.

  Fearing for his wife and friends, he frantically began to pull the rubble away from where it had fallen upon them. Griffin helped, sliding away the ceiling panels and broken fluorescent lightbulbs.

  John breathed a sig
h of relief when he saw them, Nicole and Theo, both moving on their own.

  Moving.

  He glanced up again to see the three whatever the hell they were coming toward them.

  “Help them out,” John told Griffin, as he approached the beings. He dug deep into his memories, looking for something in his arcane knowledge that might do some good and maybe even some damage.

  The ancient words of binding flowed freely, booming from his mouth as he advanced on them.

  They all seemed distracted, looking elsewhere as he approached.

  And also, they seemed totally unaffected.

  What the hell were these things?

  “You!” John commanded. “I am talking to you!”

  They didn’t even look in his direction, turning instead toward a broken section of wall. The strange energy streamed from their bodies again, striking the wall and reducing it to rubble. They moved toward the passage they’d created through a patient’s room and the next wall that had fallen to the outside grounds.

  They’re leaving, John thought.

  The idea of these three . . . these creatures, out there in the world filled him with a terror that spurred him to action.

  He began again, digging even deeper into his memories, searching for the oldest and most obscure words to hold these three, something to stop their progress.

  “John,” he heard somebody call to him.

  Not now, he thought, screaming words that he hoped would bring near paralysis to these hellish creatures. He needed his total concentration if he was going to attempt to . . .

  “John, listen to me!”

  It was Theo, filthy and bloody and battered but still so very beautiful.

  “It’s not going to work,” she said to him.

  Momentarily, he felt crushed, her words a knife blade to his ego. He was going to prove her wrong, and was about to let forth a barrage of some of the more powerful spells that he had managed to master over the years, when he finally listened.

  Listened to the specifics of the words coming from his wife.

  “It’s not going to work,” she said. “They’re not of the infernal,” she continued. “They’re not demonic.”

  His brain raced with the possibilities as he watched the three ready to walk through a hole in the wall out onto the nursing-home grounds.

  • • •

  Angelic.

  The word was both terrifying to him and incredibly exciting. If this was indeed the case, it was the first time that he’d ever encountered a being of a divine nature.

  And then he remembered something he had read in an ancient scroll, something from the library of King Solomon himself. A piece of long-forgotten arcana collected by the ancient order of Demonists attempting to combat the forces of the supernatural throughout the ages.

  Guessing that there would be a chance he’d regret his actions, John Fogg dashed in pursuit of the three divine creatures. He came up behind the last of the three, one of the boys, and grabbed at the back of its shirt, tearing the cloth of the Scout uniform away. The creature lashed out, spinning around and taking a swing at him. John ducked beneath the blow, which most assuredly would have torn his jaw from his face, but he didn’t have the time to dwell on that.

  Having lost interest in him, the divine creature turned to follow his brethren out, which provided John his opportunity to stop at least one of them.

  He grabbed a piece of metal, something jagged, probably used to hold ceiling tiles in place, and cut the flesh of his index finger open, letting the blood flow. John dove at the boy’s bare back, and relying on memory, scrawled the ancient binding symbol between the creature’s shoulder blades.

  A binding symbol for one of God’s holy messengers.

  A binding symbol for angels.

  The creature wailed, its entire body going stiff as it attempted to throw itself through the opening. The other two did not come to its aid, escaping out onto the grounds and disappearing into the woods surrounding the nursing home.

  The divine creature continued to wail and thrash, its ability to move and use its destructive abilities canceled by King Solomon’s magick.

  John shoved his lacerated finger into his mouth and sucked upon it. The others joined him, looking the worse for wear.

  “You guys all right?” he asked the others, as the young Scout possessed by a divine entity twitched at his feet.

  Theo suddenly pounced, her movements a blur. She perched upon the youth, her demonic manifestations all struggling for control.

  “Theo, you good?” John asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, but he wasn’t sure he believed her. Theo remained perched upon the creature, leaning down incredibly close.

  “They want me to kill it,” she said, making a reference to the demons inside her.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” John said.

  Nicole seemed shaken as she stared at the figure on the floor of the room. “I wouldn’t stop her,” the girl said with a snarl. “It would serve the miserable thing right after what they did to the animals.”

  “You said that this has something to do with the divine?” Griffin asked. “With something to do with . . .” He slowly pointed up to the ceiling, but his meaning was understood.

  “Yeah,” John said. “Somewhere up there.”

  “I think we might want to leave it alone,” Griffin said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “I think that you’re right,” John said, as he approached his wife and took her arm. “I think you need to dial it back now.”

  She whirled on him, and he saw that her teeth were like a shark’s, glistening with blood from her torn gums.

  “Do you really, John?” she asked, but he wasn’t quite sure if it was entirely her.

  “Yeah, I do,” he said forcefully.

  He saw her expression soften, a struggle for supremacy going on behind her beautiful eyes.

  “What are we going to do with it?” she asked him.

  John crouched, looking at what had once been a boy soon to become an adolescent, now a vessel for a destructive power from the heavens above.

  “I think we need to question it,” he said. “Find out what the hell it’s doing here, and maybe learn what its partners might be up to before they can do any more damage.”

  17

  Emma Rose had been drawing for hours.

  The child sat, hunched over a desk, reams of paper at her disposal.

  Elijah watched from a distance before stepping over to where the finished drawings had been placed.

  He found nothing in her work that gave him any clue that she had seen the location of the mysterious key, or of the Vessel.

  “I’m very tired,” she said, pausing mid drawing.

  Elijah looked over her shoulder at the swirling scribbles and wondered what they would eventually be. Perhaps what they were looking for, and if not this particular drawing, then maybe the next.

  “You have to be strong, Emma,” he said in his most soothing voice. “You must keep going for as long as you can.”

  She looked at him, her eyes wide and watery. Dark circles were beginning to form beneath them, and her look was tired and pleading.

  “Remember the sisters,” he said as he placed a comforting hand upon her shoulder. “We must do everything in our power to prevent those who hurt your family from acquiring these items of power.”

  He’d thought that a mention of the murdered sisters would be enough to spur her on, and he was right. Emma Rose began to draw again.

  “Thank you,” he said, watching her hand clutching a pencil as it flew across the surface of the paper. The tip of the pencil broke with a snap. Emma paused momentarily, her odd fugue state broken. Elijah picked up a new pencil with a sharp point and handed it to her.

  She took the pencil with a wan smile and
began to draw again.

  He felt the phone in the inside pocket of his suit coat vibrate and almost chose to ignore it, but at the last minute glanced at its screen.

  He recognized the number at once and was glad that he had answered.

  “Yes, John,” Elijah said into the phone. He stepped back and away from Emma, so that he could talk. “What can I do for you?”

  John’s words were totally unexpected.

  “Divine entities?” Elijah repeated, just to be certain.

  John went on to explain the situation at the nursing home.

  And then he described what followed.

  Elijah thought of the Messenger and what he might know of such a visitation and why.

  John then went on to say that he would need anything they could find in the Demonists’ writings about divine binding, most likely from the secret library of King Solomon.

  Elijah agreed to send all that they had, then asked if there was anything else John might require.

  The man paused and told him yes.

  He wanted a safe place to perform questioning.

  For one of the divine beings had been captured.

  • • •

  The third piece of the key had been collected.

  Number three had been found in the belly of a homeless veteran of the first war in Afghanistan, as he’d slept on a sheet of cardboard in an alleyway that ran alongside a furniture-storage warehouse just outside Dearborn, Michigan.

  They could have taken him while he slept, but the Cardinal had other plans, explaining that the pieces of the key could only be harvested from the fully conscious.

  • • •

  The Cardinal had made the man relive the moments that had led to the fragment of the key’s growth within. Again, the murdering of innocents—even during a time of war—had been the catalyst.

  The spilling of innocent blood had provided the most fertile of soils for the piece to mature.

  Fritz actually believed that this one had been grateful when the Cardinal had cut him open to claim his prize.

  Now they were about to collect the fourth piece in the most unusual of places.