Mike
Maggie led the way down the hall, with me hot on her heels. Cain said a Word and exhaustion melted from his features. Vigor, I guess. He could have passed us both, but he stayed by my side, perhaps as a protector.
“OLIVIER!” The shout rang through our bones; sounding like it came from the pits of the Abyss. We redoubled our efforts and arrived in time to see Morgan, bloodied and torn, kneeling at the entrance to the same elevator shaft I’d used earlier.
Behind him, not five feet away, loomed Julian, but it wasn’t Julian, not exactly. Some awful thing pressed against the inside of his face, distorting it into a monstrosity, and his clothes were far too small; the thing inside was too big for his mortal form. Both eyes glowed black, a negation of light that drank the color from everything around. Black fluid dripped from its chin.
Morgan looked at me for a brief moment, and I could tell from his face he knew that we wouldn’t arrive in time to keep him from being mashed into jelly. A faint smile flickered across his face and I knew what he would do. The moment stretched, time becoming rubbery and plastic. Then he fell.
Maggie and I screamed our denial. The thing that was Julian roared its anger through hundreds of slim, silver teeth. It made as if to jump after Morgan, no doubt undaunted by the prospect, but Cain shouted a Word that caused it to stumble backwards ten feet.
While I ran toward the shaft, Cain leapt forward as if jet propelled, hammering both feet into the thing’s chest. It hardly budged and Cain fell to the floor to the sound of snapping bones. I didn’t pay attention after that; I was too busy staring down the shaft looking for some sign of my friend. Maggie also stared into the darkness, tears streaming from her sky-blue eyes.
“Do you think he-?” she began.
“No. I’m afraid not.” A fragile thing inside me broke with the sound of snapping wire. My friend was dead and there was nothing I could do for him.
There was, however, something I could do to avenge him.
AD 590, Pope Gregory revised a list of sins first linked to the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Pride, Discouragement, and Wrath. It was this last that filled me to the brim, but I wasn’t sure it was a sin because in my hands it became a weapon.
God used His wrath to smite the wicked, the evil ones, with a cold clean precision like a scalpel made of ice. That’s how I felt-icy and calm but consumed with an anger I’d never known. I had no cross, no rosary to focus my ire, but I didn’t care.
As I turned to face the Beast, Cain flew past, hurled with contemptuous ease by the Julian-thing. He landed forty feet away and rolled bonelessly, coming to rest broken and bleeding.
“Back!” I screamed, holding out a hand, palm forward, at the thing. It flinched. “In God’s name I cast thee out!” Once again it flinched but didn’t move from where it stood. It was taller and more massive than before; Julian’s suit jacket was torn at the shoulders. Bullets spat from Maggie’s Tec-9, riddling the creature, but it shrugged them off as if they were bothersome flies.
“Little priest,” the thing drooled, dark spit hissing on the carpet. “You are only human. I AM MEPHISTOPHELES!”
All my anger evaporated in an instant, blown out by the force of the fiend’s presence. Mephistopheles, Arch-Devil of Hell, one of the original fallen angels of Lucifer’s cadre.
I bit down on my fear and persevered, absently noting a faint shimmer of heat encircling my hand. “The power of Christ compels you!” I continued in Latin:
May the holy cross be my light. May the dragon never be my guide. Begone, Satan! Never tempt me with your vanities. What you offer me is evil. Drink the poison of yourself.
Each word caused the monstrosity to flinch, each syllable was a knife in its flesh, but that didn’t stop Mephistopheles from stepping forward, his burst patent leather shoes with their exposed taloned feet gouging the carpet. Another step, then another against the hail of bullets from Maggie’s weapon. It shrugged off both her bullets and my words. Slowly we backed away, keeping out of the thing’s reach as it staggered forward against the force of God’s power flowing from my hand, the heat-shimmer becoming larger, distorting my view.
Julian’s tailored shirt and jacket were reduced to ribbon-like shreds, the flesh beneath bluish gray and heavily muscled. Its face had become long and mottled, the color of half-healed bruises.
From behind me came a shout, a Word that slammed into the monster. Unlike earlier, when it had been hurled back, it staggered momentarily and then kept coming. “Banishing won’t work on me anymore, ape,” it hissed in a voice full of blood and razor blades. “I have become too invested in this body, in this world. I am part of it now.” Its eyes focused on me as Cain shouted another Word to no effect. “And you, little monkey, cannot channel the energy to dispel me!”
A sound like liquid thunder came from behind the monster, resolving into a contemptuous voice. “You’ve got nothing on me, dickhead.”