—†— CHAPTER TWENTY TWO —⸸—
Missing Persons And Sad Goodbyes
Sarah sat in the front pew of St. Mary’s, her hands folded in her lap. Father Marcus paced near the altar, his weathered face drawn tight with worry. Father Emil stood off to the side, arms crossed, looking like a man who’d just watched his entire world crack down the middle.
The spirit materialized between them without warning, its form coalescing from shadow into something vaguely human. It settled itself on the altar rail with an air of absolute entitlement, one leg crossed over the other, arms spread wide along the wood like it owned the place.
“Keeper,” it mocked, its voice dripping with amusement. “You look troubled. Whatever could be the matter?”
Marcus stopped pacing and turned to face it. “The Archangels arrive within the fortnight. Once they’re inside—”
“They’ll find the Relic,” the spirit finished, its tone bored. “Yes, yes. Your attempts at misdirection have failed spectacularly, Keeper. They’re coming, disguised as cardinals, and they will search every stone in this cathedral until they find what I’m guarding.”
“Can you stop them?” Sarah asked.
The spirit’s laugh was sharp. “Stop them? Oh, little Nephilim, I could tear an Archangel apart. A demon too, for that matter. I could fend off several if I wanted.” The shadow’s form flickered. “But that’s not the problem, is it? Because the moment I start killing Heaven’s precious Archangels, they’ll know something valuable is here. They’ll come in force. Dozens of them. Hundreds if they have to. And I can’t fight all of Heaven.”
“Or all of Hell,” Marcus added quietly.
“Precisely.” The spirit’s voice turned cold. “I’m bound to protect the Relic. If Heaven or Hell discovers it, if they try to take it, I will destroy it. And myself along with it.”
“What happens if you destroy it?” Sarah asked.
The spirit seemed to consider for a moment, then spread its shadowy hands rapidly. “Every ounce of Arcane power that stone has held for three thousand years gets released in one catastrophic burst. This cathedral, the school, half the town, most of the surrounding countryside—all of it vaporized. Everyone within three miles dies instantly. Everyone within five miles dies from the blast. Everyone within ten miles wishes they had.”
The cathedral went deathly quiet.
“You’d kill thousands of people,” Sarah whispered.
“I’d kill myself,” the spirit corrected. “Everyone else is just collateral damage. But yes.” It drifted closer to her. “I’ve been trapped for three hundred years, little Nephilim. If the only way out is annihilation, I’ll take it. But I’m not eager for that end. I’d much prefer someone claim the Relic properly. Complete the trial. Free me.”
Marcus rubbed his face with both hands. “What if we warded the Relic itself? Hide it and you from detection so the Archangels couldn’t sense either when they search?”
The spirit’s laughter was vicious. “Oh, how delightful. Yes, ward the Relic. You could make both of us invisible to celestial detection.” Its voice turned mocking. “And create a blank spot in the chamber below that screams to every angel and demon who looks that something valuable is hidden there. A hole in reality where something powerful used to be. Brilliant plan, Keeper. You might as well paint an arrow pointing straight at it.”
“What about a different kind of ward then?” Sarah asked. “Not to hide anything, but to keep them out. Jay showed me a barrier ward in his Codex. The same one we inscribed on the bullets. It prevents celestial beings from crossing the threshold.”
Marcus turned to her, hope flickering in his tired eyes. “You could ward the entire cathedral?”
“I think so. The pattern is complex, but I know how to inscribe it now.” Sarah looked down at her hands. “It wouldn’t hide the building or what’s inside. The Archangels would still be able to see St. Mary’s, walk right up to it. But they wouldn’t be able to get inside. Neither would any demons.”
“That could work,” Marcus said, his voice gaining strength. “At least temporarily. It would buy us time.”
“Time for what?” Emil asked bitterly. “We can’t stay locked in this church forever. Eventually we’d have to come out, and they’d be waiting.”
The spirit’s form flickered with something like amusement. “The priest has a point, little Nephilim. You could ward this cathedral so thoroughly that nothing celestial could breach it. But you’d be trapped inside. A very pretty cage, but a cage nonetheless.” It circled her slowly. “And Heaven is nothing if not patient. They’d simply wait you out. Station guards around the perimeter. Starve you if they had to.”
“But it would buy time,” Sarah insisted. “Time for me to complete the trial. Time to become strong enough to—”
“To what?” The spirit’s voice turned sharp. “To fight them? Even if you claim the Relic, even if you complete the trial and become everything you’re meant to be, do you really think that will save the clergy?” The shadow drifted closer. “Remiel told you the truth, didn’t he? Heaven’s orders aren’t just to find the Relic. They’re to eliminate any one who knows about it. To burn this cathedral and kill everyone connected to protecting the secret.”
Marcus’s face went pale. He sank onto the pew beside Sarah.
“Then we’re all dead,” Emil said quietly. “Everyone who knows what’s hidden here. You, me, Father Hoffman. And Sarah, if they discover what she is.”
The silence that followed was heavy and terrible.
Emil’s voice shook when he finally spoke. “I’ve served this church for forty years. Baptized children, buried the dead, tended to the sick. Everything they asked of me, I did.” He turned on Marcus, anger and betrayal written across his weathered face. “And now you’re telling me the angels I’ve spent my life serving want me dead? That everything I believed was a lie?”
“Father Emil—”
“No!” Emil’s shout echoed through the cathedral. “Don’t Father Emil me, Marcus. You brought me into this. You showed me what’s beneath this church, You told me about the spirit and the Relic. And now I find out it was all for nothing?”
The spirit’s laughter was low and cruel. “There it is. The righteous indignation of a man who finally realizes he’s been played for a fool.” It circled Emil slowly, its voice turning poisonous. “Tell me, Father. Would you rather go back? Would you prefer your comfortable delusion where Heaven is good and Hell is evil and everything makes perfect sense?”
“Leave him alone,” Marcus said.
“Why?” The spirit’s form flickered with agitation. “He wants the truth, doesn’t he? Or would he rather live in ignorance, walking a path paved with lies, believing every prayer he whispered was heard by a loving God who cared about his pathetic little soul?” The shadow pressed closer to Emil. “You can’t have both, priest. You can’t know what you know and still pretend the old lies were true.”
Emil’s face had gone red. “I never asked for this.”
“None of us asked for this!” The spirit shrieked, its form exploding outward. “Do you think I wanted to be bound to that stone for three centuries? Do you think I volunteered for this prison?” The shadow writhed with barely contained fury. “But here we are, all of us trapped by choices made by beings who don’t give a damn about any of us!”
“Then what’s the point?” Emil’s voice broke. “If everything was a lie, what’s the point of any of it?”
The spirit went very still. When it spoke again, its voice had lost some of its cruel edge.
“The point, you pathetic fool, is that you’re still alive. You still have a choice.” The shadow drifted back toward the altar. “Heaven and Hell may have twisted everything. They may have corrupted the very foundations of faith itself. But the Creator they claim to serve? That power is real. It existed before they split apart, before they turned creation into their battlefield.”
“What are you saying?” Marcus asked quietly.
“I’m saying that if you truly want to serve your Creator, you need to stop serving those who claim to speak for him.” The spirit’s form solidified slightly. “The Arcane predates the Sundering. It was meant to help creation grow, to give mortals the tools to ascend. Heaven and Hell buried it, suppressed it, hunted down anyone who carried it in their blood because they’re terrified of what it represents.”
“Freedom,” Sarah said quietly.
“Yes.” The spirit’s voice held something like respect. “Freedom from their control. From their endless war. From needing them at all.”
The cathedral went quiet. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the old windows.
A massive crash against the front doors. Heavy. Violent. Something huge throwing itself against the wood with brutal force.
The doors shuddered in their frame. Another crash. The ancient hinges groaned under the assault.
“What is that?” Marcus shot to his feet.
Another crash. Wood began to splinter. Metal twisted.
“It’s a Hellhound,” the spirit said flatly.
The crashing continued, louder, more violent with each impact. Sarah could hear claws digging into wood, gouging deep as the creature threw its weight against the doors again and again.
Sarah stood, her hand going instinctively to the revolver in her coat pocket.
The doors exploded inward.
Splinters and twisted metal flew across the stone floor as the hound smashed through, its broad chest heaving, smoke pouring from its mouth in thick, acrid clouds. The creature was massive, easily the size of a Great Dane but built low and wrong, its body compact and muscular. Charred hide split at the shoulders and ribs, fire leaking through the cracks with each labored breath.
The spirit’s form vanished the instant the hellhound crossed the threshold.
The creature stopped just inside the entrance, ember-bright eyes sweeping across the cathedral. They passed over Marcus and Emil, and locked onto Sarah. The hellhound had already been beaten bloody by one Nephilim tonight. Now here was another one, weak and unprotected. Easy prey.
The hellhound’s lips pulled back, exposing thick, uneven teeth slick with saliva and blood. A wet, grinding sound came from deep in its chest as it gathered itself to charge.
Emil was already moving. He’d grabbed the double-barrel shotgun from where it leaned against the wall near the sacristy, and now he brought it up to his shoulder as the hellhound launched itself forward.
He fired both barrels point-blank into the creature’s skull just as it reached the first row of pews.
The blast was deafening in the enclosed space, the recoil slamming the old priest backward. Salt and warded coins tore into charred hide and bone, snapping the hellhound’s head sideways with enough force to send it crashing into the pews. Wood shattered under its weight.
The hellhound thrashed, claws gouging stone as it fought to right itself. Its jaw hung at a wrong angle, fire sputtering from its throat, black ichor spraying from the wound. But it kept moving, kept dragging itself forward, claws scraping across stone as it pulled its broken body toward Sarah.
She pulled the revolver from her pocket and brought it up with both hands. Her arms shook, but she forced them steady. Four warded rounds. That was all she had.
She fired.
The first round punched through the hellhound’s skull just above its ruined jaw. The ward flared bright as it bit into something deeper than flesh.
She fired again. The second round hit its shoulder, tearing through charred hide.
The creature kept coming, dragging itself forward even as its body started to fail.
She fired the third round into its face. The fourth into its eye.
The hellhound’s forward momentum broke. It staggered, claws scraping uselessly at stone, until it finally collapsed, its massive body shuddering once before going still.
For a moment, no one moved. No one breathed.
Sarah lowered the revolver, her arms trembling. Marcus pushed himself up from where he’d fallen against a pew. Emil stayed against the wall, the empty shotgun still gripped in his hands, his face pale.
“Is it dead?” Sarah asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
They all stared at the motionless bulk sprawled across the broken pews. Blood pooled beneath it, steaming in the cold air.
Emil moved closer, his boots crunching on broken wood and scattered stone. He approached the hellhound cautiously, the shotgun’s barrels still pointed at its skull even though both chambers were empty.
He stopped a few feet away, studying the massive body. The creature’s chest had stopped moving. No smoke rose from its mouth. The embers in its throat had gone dark.
“I think—”
The hellhound lashed out.
Its claw caught Emil across the chest in one violent motion, tearing through his cassock and the flesh beneath. The old priest stumbled backward, his hands going to the wound as blood welled between his fingers. He hit the floor hard, gasping, the shotgun clattering away across the stone.
Sarah screamed and pulled her blade from her inventory, the celestial weapon materializing in her hand. She drove it down into the hellhound’s eye socket with all her strength, twisted, and pulled it free. Blood sprayed across her coat and face as the creature finally went still.
She stumbled toward Emil as Marcus dropped to his knees beside the fallen priest.
“Emil!” Marcus’s hands pressed against the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. “Stay with me. You’re going to be fine. You hear me? You’re going to be fine.”
But Sarah could see it wasn’t fine. The wound was too deep, too wide. Blood pooled beneath Emil’s body, spreading across the cold stone in a dark stain that kept growing no matter how hard Marcus pressed.
Emil’s hand found Sarah’s, his grip weak and trembling. His eyes met hers, and she saw fear there, and pain.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words coming out wet and broken. “I’m sorry I doubted.”
“Don’t,” Sarah said, tears streaming down her face. “Don’t apologize. You saved me. You saved all of us.”
Emil tried to smile. Tried to speak. But the words dissolved into a wet, choking sound, and his chest rose one final time before going still. His hand went slack in hers.
Sarah knelt there, holding his hand, as the silence pressed in around them.
After a long moment, from the ruined entrance, came the sound of slow, deliberate clapping.
They both looked up.
A familiar-looking man stood in the doorway where the doors had been torn away, backlit by the fading evening light. Sarah’s breath caught. Frank Weber. The missing father she’d been trying to find. He was middle-aged, wearing simple work clothes stained with dirt and blood. But his eyes were completely black, no whites visible at all, and his smile was predatory and cold. Wrong. Everything about him was wrong.
“Imagine my surprise,” he said, his voice smooth and mocking, “when I find a hound dead in this place instead of its prey.”
Marcus shot to his feet. “You can’t be in here, Demon! This is a house of God!”
The smile disappeared from the demon’s face. He flicked his hand dismissively, and Marcus flew backward as if he’d been hit by a truck, crashing into the pews with enough force to shatter wood.
“You know nothing but lies,” the demon said, stepping further into the cathedral. His black eyes fixed on Sarah.
“Leave him alone!” Sarah screamed, letting go of Emil’s hand and pulling up her blade. The celestial weapon gleamed in her shaking hands.
The demon’s predatory smile returned. “Oh, look, the little bitch wants to fight.” He started walking toward her slowly, deliberately. “I think you and I are going to have a lot of fun. I’m going to tear you apart piece by piece. Find out what makes you tick. See what’s so special about you that my dog came running.”
Sarah backed away, the blade held in front of her, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The demon raised his hand, black energy crackling around his fingers. “Let’s see how—”
The spirit lashed out from the shadows.
Long, inky spikes erupted from the darkness near the altar, driving toward the demon with brutal speed. He screamed and twisted away, but the spirit’s attack caught him across the shoulder and chest, tearing through his stolen flesh.
The demon backpedaled, snarling, his hands coming up to fight back. Black fire erupted from his palms, meeting the spirit’s shadowy form in a violent collision that lit the cathedral with strobing light.
They fought their way across the nave, trading blows that tore chunks from the stone walls and shattered pews. The demon couldn’t run. The spirit somehow, forcing him to fight even as he was driven backward step by step.
They reached the ruined entrance, still locked in brutal combat, when the demon finally managed to hurt the spirit badly enough that its form scattered for a moment. He raised his hand toward Sarah one more time, black energy gathering—
Headlights filled the doorway.
The demon turned just in time to see the truck slam into him at full speed, the impact driving him backward and pinning him against the cathedral’s stone wall with bone-crushing force. The collision was violent enough to send Jay crashing through the windshield, his body tumbling across the hood and onto the stone steps below.
The demon slumped forward over the hood for a moment, then sat up slowly, still pinned against the wall. Blood poured from his mouth, but he was laughing. “Weak,” he said, his black eyes finding Jay’s motionless form on the steps. “You’re pathetically weak. I’m going to kill both of you!”
He reached down and grabbed the front of the truck with both hands, his arms bulging with unnatural strength, and shoved it away from himself. The vehicle rolled backward down the steps, crashing and clanging as metal twisted and wood splintered.
Sarah ran to the entrance and looked down the steps.
Jay lay in front of the cathedral, blood spreading beneath him in a dark pool. He wasn’t moving.
The demon pushed away from the wall and started down the steps, his stolen body broken and bleeding but still moving. He raised his hand toward Jay’s motionless form.
Sarah didn’t think. She ran and drove the celestial blade into the demon’s back with all her strength, burying it to the hilt. The demon screamed, his body arching backward, as she drove the blade upward as hard as she could, feeling it tear through flesh and bone.
The spirit surged out of nowhere, its shadowy form wrapping around the demon and driving those inky spikes through his chest, his throat, his skull. The demon’s scream turned inhuman, high and terrible, before cutting off abruptly.
The corpse crumbled on the steps.
Sarah yanked her blade free and stumbled toward Jay. Marcus appeared beside her, helping her drag him up the steps and through the ruined entrance. The old priest grabbed the demon’s host body by the collar and hauled it inside as well, leaving a trail of blood across the stone.
They got Jay onto a pew. Sarah knelt beside him, her hands hovering over his torn body, not knowing where to start. There was so much blood. His coat was shredded, his shirt beneath soaked through. His breathing was shallow and wet.
Marcus tried to tend to the wounds, pressing cloth against the worst of them, but his hands shook.
“What was that?” Marcus asked, his voice breaking. “Who was that?”
Remy materialized near the pew, his small armored form flickering weakly. “That was Astaroth. Not one of his servants. The demon lord himself.”
“He’s not slain,” Remy continued. “We were only able to send him back to Hell.”
Sarah looked at Jay’s still form on the pew. His eyes didn’t open. He didn’t respond.
“Jay,” Sarah said desperately. “Jay, stay with me. Please.”
But he was already gone, his body slack as consciousness left him.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my own bed.
The apartment above the office. My apartment. The ceiling was familiar, the cracks in the plaster forming patterns I’d stared at before.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Pain flared across my chest and shoulders, sharp enough to make my vision blur. I fell back against the pillow, breathing hard.
“Don’t move,” Sarah said.
She was sitting in the chair beside the bed, still wearing the coat stained with blood and ichor. Her face was pale, exhausted, but she managed a small smile when she saw I was awake.
I looked to the side of the bed. Remy hovered there, his small form dimmer than usual.
“Astaroth,” I said, my voice rough. “Is he gone?”
A new voice answered from near the window. “Yeah, Mud. He’s gone. For now.”
I turned my head slowly and saw Az for the first time since the fight. His tiny red form sat on the windowsill, wings tucked tight against his back. He looked exhausted, his usual grin nowhere to be found.
“Az,” I started to say.
He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Don’t.”
Sarah leaned forward and touched my arm gently. “You need to rest. Close your eyes.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to ask about Emil, about the cathedral, about what came next. But the exhaustion was pulling at me like a weight, and my eyelids were already closing.
The last thing I felt was Sarah’s hand on mine, before the darkness took me again.