Private Demon

Raze came out of nowhere, as usual. The first time he'd done it, Decree had nearly passed out. Now he was used to Raze's magic tricks, or he told himself he was. His balls still shrank a little every time he looked into those eyes. Raze had the unblinking black eyes of a cobra, ready to strike.

Tonight they weren't frightening, only intent. "All went well?"

"The boys are tight, but I think Blaze has been talking to his bitch and her mom. He gets chatty when he runs dry." Decree nodded toward the bay. "I told him I'd give him a little."

Raze smiled, and that was worse than looking into his empty eyes. "Let me."

Father John Keller had grown up on the streets of Chicago. For a number of years he had also lived on them, a time he considered his primary education. The Department of Children and Families had eventually caught up with John and his young sister, Alexandra, and placed them in foster care with the Kellers, a wealthy, kind couple with no children of their own who had eventually been able to adopt John and Alex. John had gladly exchanged his freedom for a home and a life of security for Alex, but he had never forgotten the lessons the streets had taught him.

The street kid inside John hadn't wanted to come back to Chicago.

John had spent the last six months in limbo, moving through a series of cheap hotels and using up what little savings he had while he'd tried to decide what to do. The money had run out faster than his doubts and fears. He had used the last of it to return to the city of his birth with only one clear purpose: to officially leave the priesthood and confront his mentor. Archbishop August Hightower. Hightower had to answer for the events that had finished John as a priest and caused the slaughter of a hundred more just like him.

That decision John had debated long and hard, for the bishop had played a significant part in what had happened in New Orleans, and was still a member of the Les Freres de la Lumiere, the Brethren of the Light. He might throw John back to the wolves rather than tell him why these things had happened. Hightower also knew about the sadistic practices the order of former Catholic priests used to pursue their mission. The bishop had been the one to show a videotape of them to John.

The Brethren's mission, Hightower had claimed, was to prevail in a centuries-long struggle against another secret society of vampirelike demons called the Darkyn.

What John could not convince himself of was that Hightower was entirely aware of just how murderous his secret order had become, or that they were using Darkyn to hunt other vampires. I'm not sure I believe everything I saw in that church.

He had called Hightower before coming to Chicago. The bishop had sounded appalled and relieved when John had called him. We thought you had been killed in New Orleans.

I survived, John had told him. But had he? I have to see you.

The bishop immediately advised against meeting in his offices or anywhere near a church. There is a bakery around the corner from the Tribune. Meet me there tomorrow at two. I will be wearing street clothes. Sit outside.

It was at a small table outside the bakery that John now sat, staring through the window at the rows of fancy cakes and fruit pies, watching the cream-laced tea that had been served to him in a delicate porcelain cup grow cold. He could see his faint reflection in the window, his dark hair hanging past his collar; his skin, which had acquired a yellowish cast from spending too many hours indoors; the short beard he kept meaning to shave away but couldn't bring himself to do more than trim.

I look like I'm on the edge, he realized. The way I used to when Alex and I were living on the streets. John had turned his back on everything he had learned during his childhood to better himself. Now he was slowly reverting back to what he had once been. The skinny, angry kid he had despised. All I need is a shave and a job.

"Johnny." Hightower appeared as suddenly as a three-hundred-pound man could, and came around the small table to embrace him with both arms. "The Heavenly Father has heard at least one of my prayers. Welcome home, my son."

"Your Grace." John looked over the older man's shoulder, expecting to see Hightower's assistant, Father Carlo Cabreri, hovering behind him. The bishop was alone. "You came by yourself?"

"Under the circumstances, I thought it best." Hightower lowered his bulk to perch carefully on the small wicker chair across from John. Once the waitress had served him tea. he said, "Six months, Johnny. Six months I thought you dead, and not a single phone call to alleviate my suffering. Was that to punish me for my part in this?"

"No." John had never been comfortable with the bishop's affection for him, or the amount of insight he had into John's character. Hightower had also been the one to convince him to join his order. "Six months ago I watched Cardinal Stoss and one hundred of his followers attack a group of Darkyn in a church. The Brethren were slaughtered. All of them."

"We suspected as much, but we have no eyewitness reports, and no bodies were ever recovered," the bishop told him. "Please, if you do nothing else this day, tell me precisely what happened that night."

John recounted the events as they had happened, leaving out only the part Alexandra had played in them. Hightower might react worse than John had if he learned that Alex had become one of the Darkyn.

What he wanted now was the truth. "After it was over, Cyprien told me that the Templars had never been Brethren. He said that he and the others like him were the Templars. The same ones who had escaped the church when it tried to exterminate them in the fourteenth century. He said they had been cursed, or maybe brought back something from the Holy Land that had turned them into vampires."

Hightower frowned. "An incredible story. You must have been terrified. You didn't believe him, of course."

'"After what I witnessed in that church. Your Grace, I don't know what I believe." John drained the cold tea from his cup. "Cyprien told me other things, such as the fact that my training in La Luchemaria was simply another form of Brethren torture."

"Stoss took things too far in Rome; that much is true," the bishop said. "We had no idea he was abusing novitiate brothers in such an outrageous fashion. Stoss used his position in the order to do many things that we would never have condoned. I knew him, John, and he was once a good man. Perhaps he fought the demons too long and lost sight of what we are trying to do. I can assure you that Stoss was an exception, not a rule, among the Brethren."

"What about Cyprien's claim that they are the Templars?" John asked softly. "It does fit the history. Warrior priests, already wealthy beyond imagining. Add immortality to that, and even the pope wouldn't be able to resist making them outlaws, to be hunted down and tortured for their secrets."

"No, you're wrong," Hightower said, his gaze open and steady. "Cyprien lied to you. The Templars who were exterminated by the old church were not vampires. They were only the last of the Crusader priests, wealthy and powerful men whose treasuries tempted a greedy French king and a corrupt pope. The few who escaped torture and death swore that no innocent would ever again have to suffer such unmerited persecution. That is why we became the Brethren and took up the fight against the maledicti, John. If we do not hold them back, they will sweep across this world like a plague to exterminate the human race."

Hightower sounded convincing, but he was one of the most persuasive men John knew. When motivated, he could probably make someone believe that the sun came out at night and the moon was made of Brie.

"I don't believe you." John took perverse pleasure in saying the words that had burned inside him since watching the Darkyn systematically execute Stoss and his monks. "They still wear the white tunics and carry banners bearing the Beau-cent. They have no reason to wipe out humanity—"

"You speak of these creatures as if they were still human and possessed their souls. These are demons sent up from hell itself to torment mankind." Hightower removed a thick envelope from his jacket and tossed it onto the table. "They use whatever they can to manipulate us, to turn us against each other. Look inside."

John didn't want to open the envelope. He didn't want to be sullied with any more knowledge of the Darkyn or the Brethren's dirty secrets about them. Still he reached for it and took out the photographs inside.

The light was poor, but the images were clear enough for the two people in them to be identified. One was Angelica Durand, the shape-shifting vampire who had come to New Orleans to kill Alexandra and Michael.

The other was John Keller, drugged and crazed, in the process of raping her.

"The Darkyn have already infiltrated the Brethren," Hightower said, his round face pale now. "We took these from one of the priests they had operating in Rome. Read the letter with them."

The letter was only half a page, quite short and to the point. The Brethren were to release the Darkyn being held in custody, or the photographs would be sent to every newspaper in the world.

"Have they sent them?" John found enough voice to ask.

"No. We were able to recover the negatives and what copies their operative had made. I have them all here, John. I have kept them safe until I could give them to you personally."'

The bishop's sympathetic gaze appalled him almost as much as the photographs. "Is this how you intend to bring me back to the church? By blackmailing me?"

"Good God, is that what you think of me?" Hightower gripped his arm. "I'm giving them to you—all of them—so you can rest easy. I think you should destroy them, John, but whatever you do, don't make the mistake of thinking that this will be the end of it. The maledicti have targeted you now, and they won't rest until you are back in prison."

"Why?" John felt more tired than he had when he had walked out of the prison in Rio so many years ago. "I pose no threat to them. I'm not part of the Brethren. I'm finished being a priest. As of today, I'm a private citizen."

"Then why did they take your sister?" Hightower countered. "What possible reason could they have had for killing her?" ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">