The demon roared in pain.
I shuddered, and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck tingled.
“Is that thing alive?” Priest watched, transfixed.
Gabriel jerked the whip, and Andras fell to his knees. “We don’t have time for twenty questions.”
The man struggled to lift his head. “Help me.” The raspy tone and the eastern European accent sounded nothing like the voice the demon used earlier.
I grabbed Gabriel’s arm. “He’s trying to say something.”
“I don’t give a crap what he says, as long as he says it in hell.” Gabriel shrugged me off and followed Dimitri into the cell.
The man’s head lolled to the side as if he were drunk. “For the sins I have committed, I ask to be forgiven,” he said in the same accent.
“Why does his voice sound different?” Elle asked, keeping her distance.
“I think the guy Andras possessed is trying to break through,” Lukas said.
Dimitri waved his arm. “Stay back.”
Gabriel didn’t even glance at Lukas. His attention was focused solely on Dimitri. “We need to kill Andras now.”
“You mean exorcise him, right?” Priest asked.
Gabriel looked confused. “There’s no way to exorcise a demon as powerful as Andras.”
“Then how do you kill the demon without hurting the guy he possessed?” Elle asked.
Dimitri looked her in the eye. “You don’t.”
“You can’t kill an innocent man,” I said.
Dimitri strode over and yanked on the man’s shirt collar, exposing a tattoo on his neck. A knife—with blood drops on the blade. “Do you know what this is? It’s a Russian prison tattoo. It means this innocent man is a killer for hire. And those blood droplets represent the number of people he’s killed. Do you want to count them?”
I shuddered.
Lukas stepped in front of me. “Why don’t you take it down a notch? She missed the chapter on prison tats in criminal history class.”
Alara pointed a chipped silver fingernail at Dimitri. “Obviously you didn’t.”
Dimitri ran a hand through his hair and lit a cigarette. “You don’t understand the way this works. Right now, Andras needs to possess a body at all times.”
“Which means if we kill the body, he dies with it,” Gabriel said.
“The body you’re talking about is a person,” Alara yelled.
“Once Andras consumes enough souls, he won’t need a human body.” Dimitri crossed the room, and bent down to pet Bear. The dog growled and Dimitri backed off. “He’ll be strong enough to take his true form.”
“And there will be no way to kill him,” Gabriel finished. He looked Lukas, Jared, Priest, and Alara, one by one. “If you want to be Legion members so badly, you’d better start acting the part. Because none of your family members would ever let that guy walk out of here with that monster inside him.”
Alara squared her shoulders. “My grandmother would figure out another way.”
Dimitri put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, a calming gesture.
Gabriel turned away.
Dimitri fixed his gaze on Alara. “Imani Sabatier would have killed Andras with her own bare hands if that was the only way to destroy him.”
“You don’t know anything about my grandmother.” Alara’s voice trembled.
“I know more than you think, about all of your family members.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the wall. “I’m not saying this is easy. But the Legion of the Black Dove and the Illuminati share one purpose above all others: to defend the world from a demon that is desperate to take it over. If one man’s life—one murderer’s life—is what we have to sacrifice to save millions, I can live with that.”
Which only left one question.
Could we?
As much as I didn’t agree with Dimitri, I’d seen what Andras was capable of on a small scale. I couldn’t imagine what he might do if he grew any stronger.
If he opened the Gates of Hell, how many demons like him were waiting?
Hundred?
Thousands?
We had barely stopped Andras, a demon temporarily weakened after being trapped for centuries. How would we stand a chance against when he grew stronger?
Jared crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Dimitri’s right. We can’t risk it.”
“So you’re okay with killing someone?” I asked.
Lukas stared at his brother until he caught Jared’s attention. “Haven’t enough people died already?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jared said.
“He’s saying we don’t have a choice.” Alara’s tone didn’t match her conviction.
“There’s always a choice,” I said, repeating the mantra my mom had drilled into my head before I was old enough to understand the meaning behind the words. They sank like a rock in the pit of stomach.
She chose to lie to me, and my dad.
My mother had made the wrong choice, whether or not she knew it.
Like me.
“This is so not what I signed up for.” Elle turned to Jared, her features hardening in an expression usually reserved for news reports about people running puppy mills. “What are you gonna do? Whip out a buck knife and stab him in the heart?”
Seeing her standing there triggered a wave of guilt inside me. Elle should’ve been at a party, stringing along one of the guys desperate to get a date with her. Instead, she’d been attacked by a paranormal entity and chased by a demon. Now an unstable chain smoker and a guy carrying a whip made from vertebrae were asking her to stand by and watch someone get killed.
Jared frowned. “I’m just trying to figure this out before anyone else gets hurt.”
Dimitri took something out of his coat pocket and held it between his fingers.
A syringe.
“No one is cutting out any hearts. We aren’t monsters.” Dimitri depressed the plunger and a few drops of clear liquid squirted from the needle. “We’re trying to stop one.”
Andras, or the Russian criminal—it was hard to tell who we were looking at—moaned in pain.
Lukas gestured at the needle. “That’s not the way to do it.”
“Please—” the criminal pleaded.
Gabriel cracked the whip, and the ivory vertebrae coiled around the criminal’s leg. “Shut your mouth.” Gabriel yanked the handle, and the bones tightened.
The prisoner’s head snapped up, and his body straightened. It began in his feet and traveled through his torso like a current was shooting up his back. The demon’s midnight eyes stared back at us, the corners of his mouth curving in a wicked smile.
“Be careful, Gabriel,” Andras said, the Russian accent gone now. “When I break free, I’m going to cut out your tongue.”
Gabriel released the whip and cracked it again. This time, the narrow bones snaked around Andras’ neck. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Took four hundred and forty-seven demon bones to make Azazel.”
Azazel? He named his whip?
Gabriel’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile. He was enjoying this. “Want to know where I got them?”
Even as he struggled to breathe, Andras forced a sadistic smile to match Gabriel’s. “I know you are not the one who made it, Gabriel, Champion of God. I know your name, and its meaning.”
“I paid for every bone, and watched while they were extracted from one of your kind—while the demons were still alive.” Gabriel had a white-knuckled grip on the whip handle.
“What was the price?” The lilt in Andras’ a voice made it seem as though he already knew the answer.
“We both know the price, and when I die, I’ll pay it. And my name means strength of god. Be sure to remember it so you can find me in hell.”
Dimitri cringed. “Enough. He’s buying time we don’t have.”
Gabriel flicked his wrist, and the whip slid from the demon’s neck.
Dimitri turned and faced Jared, Lukas, Priest, and Alara. “Practice is over. You’re
the Legion now, and you vowed to protect the world from Andras.” He slid the syringe out of his pocket and held it out to them. “Are you going to honor that vow?”
When no one responded, Dimitri bent down and placed the syringe on the floor in front of us. “It’s easy to call yourself a hero. It’s much harder to be one.”
The syringe lay on the floor like a grenade. No one uttered a word. Speaking felt too much like volunteering. Bear sniffed it, then trotted over and lay at my feet.
“I’ll do it.” My voice lacked any real conviction.
Priest swooped in and snatched it. “You can’t.” He looked down. “One of us should do it.”
Us.
He was drawing a dividing line—the one I had always believed was separating me from the four of them. The line I wasn’t sure existed, until now.
Hearing Priest say the words punched a hole in my heart. He was the one person who accepted me from the beginning. Now he wouldn’t even look at me.
“He’s right.” I said. “You don’t want my Illuminati blood tainting your execution.”
“He didn’t mean it like that, Kennedy.” Jared’s hand slid underneath my tangled hair, and he rubbed the back of my neck with his thumb.
How long before he turned his back on me, too?
Priest stared down at the cracked concrete floor, silent.
“Priest?” Jared sounded confused.
Lukas’ shoulders stiffened. “Priest, what’s your malfunction? It’s Kennedy we’re talking about.”
Priest shoved his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. “I’m not saying she’s Illuminati, but she’s not part of the Legion. That’s all.”
Jared’s hand slipped from my neck. In the space of three strides, he stood towering over Priest. “You weren’t worried about whether or not she was one of us when she saved your life.” He turned to Alara. “What about you?”
She had been unusually quiet, and I braced myself for the inevitable rejection headed my way.
Alara picked at the loose strings on her cargo pants. “My grandmother didn’t trust the Illuminati.”
I choked back the acid burning my throat.
“But I’m not one of them.” Anger tore through me. It dulled the pain and the questions, the fear and the doubt. “I didn’t know about any of this. My mom lied to me, and I can’t even ask her why because she’s dead.”
Jared reached for me, but I twisted out of reach.
Gabriel’s cell phone chimed. He scanned the message and nodded to Dimitri. “The sanctuary’s ready, and you owe me ten bucks.”
“We weren’t betting.” Dimitri swept past us.
“I’m always betting.” Gabriel walked over to Priest and snatched the syringe. “Playtime’s over kids. It’s time to move him.”
“Move him where?” Alara followed Gabriel. “You said we had to kill him.”
“We do, but not here,” Gabriel said, with his back to Alara. “Andras can only be destroyed within the walls of a sanctuary, in the presence of a cross from a church altar.”
She grabbed his arm jerked him around to face her. “Then what the hell was that crap you fed us about sticking a syringe in that guy and honoring our vow to the Legion?”
“A test.” Gabriel looked down at her hand and brushed his off his arm. “In case you’re wondering, you all failed.”
22. GATES OF HELL
Dimitri slid his arms around the criminal’s body, and Gabriel grabbed his legs.
Lukas stood between the shipping containers that led to the warehouse exit. “You’re not taking Andras anywhere without us.”
Dimitri shouldered his way past Lukas without much effort. “We assumed as much.”
“How about you make yourself useful and get the door,” Gabriel said, nodding toward the end of the metal aisle.
Lukas rushed ahead of Dimitri and Gabriel without a word, and Priest and Alara stayed right behind them.
“Come on, Elle,” Jared said, taking my hand. He held it just as tight as he had before I told him the truth about my mom.
You should be relieved.
But I wasn’t. I felt empty, like someone had punched a hole in me, and all of my emotions had spilled out.
Elle trailed after us, still dazed.
Outside, Lukas was unlocking the trunk of a silver SUV, while Dimitri and Gabriel waited. Priest and Alara must’ve grabbed the duffel bags on the way out, and Priest was digging through one of them.
Every inch of the trunk’s interior was lined with cold-iron grating.
The two men dumped the demon inside, and Dimitri ran around the SUV and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Bear ran back and forth behind the car, barking and growling.
“Get in if you’re coming,” Gabriel said. “Holy water isn’t enough. Without other pre-emptive measures, those chains won’t hold Andras much longer.”
We piled in the back, before Gabriel could change his mind. It took Alara a few attempts to coax Bear into the car.
Andras banged against the grating.
Elle scooted forward to the edge of her seat. “He sounds really pissed off.”
“The Illuminati has safe house down by the stockyards. We’ll be there soon.” Dimitri turned on the radio and scanned through the stations, settling on the news.
I leaned my head against the window, watching traffic lights blur in the darkness. Everything looked different, and it took me a moment to realize why.
The rain and snow had stopped.
For the first time since the night I freed the demon, the sky was clear. But my thoughts were darker than the sky had ever been.
Why didn’t Mom tell me the truth about her past? Was she ashamed? Maybe she thought I wouldn’t forgive her… or maybe she didn’t trust me with her secrets.
If my mom had lied about who she really was, she could’ve lied about anything.
Like the way she felt about my dad.
A radio newscaster’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “In breaking news, the story of the seventeen missing girls ended has in tragedy. Seventeen bodies were found in the woods outside of Topsfield, Massachusetts, earlier today. Initial reports from the coroner’s office estimate the victims died between three o’clock and five o’clock this morning. The FBI has yet to make an official statement, but local law enforcement officers believe the bodies will be identified as the teenage girls who disappeared over the last seventeen days.”
Topsfield. The location of the museum—thirty minutes from Faith’s house and less than an hour from here.
Andras probably killed them before Faith.
Alara leaned over the front seat, gripping Gabriel’s headrest. “Turn it up.”
“Alexa Sears, Lauren Richman, Kelly Emerson, Rebecca Turner, Cameron Anders, Mary Williams, Sarah Edelman, Julia Smith—”
I didn’t listen to the rest of the names. I already knew them by heart.
Shannon O’Malley, Christine Redding, Karen York, Marie Dennings, Rachel Eames, Roxanne North, Catherine Nichols, Hailey Edwards, Lucy Klein—they’re all dead. And it’s my fault.
Dimitri guided the SUV through a wasteland of condemned buildings and rusted machinery, before he pulled up to an unmarked warehouse with a HAZMAT sign on the door. Gabriel jumped out of the car before it stopped and bolted to the door. He sorted through a ring of keys chained to his belt, and systematically unlocked close to a dozen dead bolts.
Dimitri threw the SUV into park and dug through the glove box, unearthing a handful of ugly plastic sunglasses. “Put these on.” He handed them to Priest and waited for us to follow orders before he climbed out. “Stay here.”
“Nice try.” Alara opened her door, and followed him around to the back of the car ahead of everyone else.
Bear stalked in front of her, flashing his canines.
Gabriel emerged from the warehouse carrying a wide-barreled rifle and a fire hose. “Heads up.” He tossed Dimitri the gun, and he caught it with one hand.
“Get back.” Dimitri a
imed the rifle at the trunk.
Priest examined it and dropped a duffel bag full of weapons on the asphalt. “It’s a tranquilizer gun like the ones they use at zoos,” he whispered to Jared, as the Legion members grabbed their own weapons.
I hung back with Elle, afraid of how Priest and Alara might react if I tried to help.
Gabriel reached for the handle and glanced back at Dimitri. He nodded and Gabriel opened the trunk, pivoting to the side.
The criminal’s muscular body lay crammed inside, motionless.
“He’s still out. That should make it easier to move him.” Dimitri lowered the rifle.
As he did, Andras lunged from the trunk, knocking the rifle out of Dimitri’s hands in the process. The demon was still bound in chains, but they didn’t slow him down. He pounced on Dimitri, snarling like an animal.
Jared, Lukas, and Priest opened fire, but the salt rounds had no effect. Alara dropped her paintball gun and dove for Dimitri’s rifle. She scrambled onto her knees, aiming carefully.
A flurry of tranquilizer darts punctured Andras’ back. He whipped around with his black eyes focused on Alara, his legs still pinning Dimitri to the ground.
Bear sprang and clamped his jaws around Andras’ arm.
Gabriel turned on the hose, and a deluge of water hit Andras. The force sent Bear rolling and threw the demon’s body against the fender. Steam rose from his exposed skin, and he let out a piercing scream, as he dropped to his knees on the asphalt.
Alara hit him with another dart.
Andras swayed for a moment, then collapsed.
Gabriel hauled the demon up by the chains around his wrists. A web of vicious burns marred his damp skin.
“That was enough Ketamine to take down a grizzly,” Dimitri said, trying to catch his breath.
Alara walked by and shoved the tranquilizer gun into his hands. “You’re welcome.”
Gabriel hoisted Andras over his shoulder and rushed toward the door. “We need to get him inside fast, before it wears off.”
The warehouse was nothing like the one at the wharf. Instead of rusted paint and oil-stained floors, we followed Gabriel and Dimitri through a maze of hallways with shiny metal walls and fluorescent overhead lights. I looked for signs of whoever had been prepping the sanctuary, but the place seemed empty.