M L N Hanover - Killing Rites

The little cutout where we’d parked before was full. In addition to the sedan and the Yukon, two cars with matching pro-life bumper stickers, and one with a heart-and-cross Marriage Encounter decal peeling in the window. The other had a vanity license plate that said GODSWRK. That was one way to keep from getting rear-ended. Ex parked across the street, and we got out. The air smelled of burning wood. I stopped and looked both ways before I crossed the street, only realizing how ridiculous it was after I’d already done it.

The front door swung open as we came close to it. Tamblen haunted in the doorway, nodding to each of us and stepping back into shadow. Voices speaking quickly in Spanish came softly from the back of the building.

“Is he here?” Ex asked as Tamblen closed the door behind us.

“An hour ago,” Tamblen said. “He’s with the girl’s family.”

“How’s Alexander doing?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Stable,” Tamblen said. “Not released yet. They don’t know what they’re looking at, so they’re being cautious.”

“That’s probably wise,” Ex said.

“You?” Tamblen asked. It was clear from his posture that he wasn’t talking to me. “Doing all right?”

“Bloodied but unbowed,” Ex said, and Tamblen hitched up a smile.

“We brought donuts,” I said.

We walked through the rooms again. They seemed smaller than the day before, the windows narrower, the light that glowed off the pale stucco dimmer. The web of cracks was going to take a lot of work to cover over, and it hadn’t happened yet. In the kitchen, Carsey was sitting on the couch with a laptop computer, tapping quietly. The sound of Spanish flowed in from the chapel. Even without knowing the language, I could pick Chapin’s voice out of the group. A woman laughed as I set the box of donuts on the little kitchen table.

“Welcome back to Chapel Perilous,” Carsey said with a wave. “Are those all sugar? Really, Chewy, what did chocolate ever do to you?”

I noticed he was keeping his voice low too. I wasn’t sure what it was about the meeting in the next room that commanded a kind of respect. It was in the air, though. The closest thing I could compare it to was being quiet in our rooms while Dad had some of the more respected men from church in the living room. Everything that wasn’t the main event became peripheral. I edged down through the rooms until, pausing half in the doorway, I found them.

They were in the room just before the black-floored ritual space. Three women, all with black hair and deep-gold skin and the same squarish nose, sat at a table across from the priests. The oldest of the women was probably sixty, streaks of white at her temples. The youngest was hardly older than Dolores. And also Dolores, sitting at the foot of the table with her hands in her lap. Father Chapin’s back was to me, and Tomás and Miguel were at his sides. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, like the end of a particularly successful dinner party. The only one who seemed out of place in the gaiety was Dolores. I edged in a little more, trying to catch her eye. When I did, she waved at me, a small motion and with a weight of desolation in her eyes I didn’t understand.

“Don’t fuss,” the older girl said, slapping at Dolores’s arm. It was a big-sister move, and I recognized it because I’d done it. Dolores’s gaze went down again, and I sloped back toward the couch and Carsey and Ex. Tamblen was halfway through one of the donuts, sugar spilling down his black front like stars.

“The older sister too?” Ex was saying.

“We thought she was the center of it. The one who was opening other people to demons,” Carsey said. “We went to confront Soledad, and she was possessed, but only by one of the spawn.”

“Wait,” I said. “Dolores’s sister was taken too?”

“Soledad and Dolores and a dozen others,” Tamblen said. “The beast in Dolores was the oldest of them. The most powerful one. All the others were its children.”

“Ah,” I said. “That’d be an awkward Mother’s Day.”

“Victories for the forces of darkness always annoy, don’t they?” Carsey asked with a lightness that seemed barbed. “Well, one disaster avoided. Full speed on to the next.”

The tone of the voices next door changed. I found I could follow the words closely enough to know they’d moved from whatever the first conversation had been about into farewells, protestations of thanks, and modest denials. I moved toward them. I wanted to see Dolores again, and I also didn’t. On the one hand, I liked her and I felt like we’d been through something important to both of us. On the other, she was well now, and I wasn’t. Knowing the shame was unjustified only made it sharper, and I covered it up by eating a donut.

The four women passed through the room, escorted by Miguel and Tomás. They nodded to the men but pointedly didn’t notice me. We passed in mutual anonymity, like patients at the STD clinic. I laughed at the thought, then swallowed it. Not a joke I wanted to explain to Father Chapin.

And there he was. The night rested hard on him. The eye he’d bled into was an orange-pink instead of full-on bloodred. His skin had the gray, powdery look of exhaustion. His curt bow of greeting had all the certainty and energy of before, but his face couldn’t quite carry it off. I hadn’t known him more than a few days, and the first thought I had was He’s getting too old for this shit.

“I’m pleased you came, young miss,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“Didn’t think there’d be much question about it,” I said, trying for lightness.

“There are always questions. There are sometimes answers.” He offered up a strictly pro forma smile and turned to the men in the room. “Knowing what we do of the youg miss, what can we say?”

In the moment’s silence, I heard a car engine come to life on the street. Then another. Carsey shifted his weight, but Tomás was the one who spoke. He had a voice like honey glaze and smoke. In a different life, he’d have been Leonard Cohen.

“It cannot stop her. Or it chooses not to,” he said. “If the Enemy had been able to keep her from us, she would not have come.”

“Yes,” Father Chapin said. “It was possible before that the demon had hoped to evade us as it did the group in Hamburg. That after we saw the beast, she could leave and return of her own will is a very good sign.”

He stopped here to make eye contact with me and give what was probably supposed to be a reassuring nod.

“And if I hadn’t been able to?” I said.

“Then Xavier would have brought you,” Chapin said, as if it was obvious.

I looked at Ex. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. He’d been waiting. Even as I helped him bleeding over the threshold, he’d been waiting to see if the thing inside me took over and grabbed the car keys or flew up into the air like a Halloween witch. I wondered if he’d really been sleeping when I’d paused by his door. There was an uncomfortable thought.

“We can also say that it likes him more than it does her,” Carsey said, waving a hand at Ex. “When the demon attacked Jayné, it didn’t leap to the defense. Oh, it might have if pressed, but it wasn’t pressed, was it?”

“The attack it defended against was directed against me,” Ex said. “I didn’t see that branch coming. It would have killed me.”

“And what,” Father Chapin said, “do we draw from that?”

No one said anything. I finished my donut. The dry cake had sucked all the moisture out of my mouth, and my tongue felt like a desert. I looked around the room at all the men in their dark shirts, saying nothing. Father Chapin nodded once.

“Then it is a thing to hold in mind as we move forward,” he said. “A place to begin. This morning, we perform the blessings and a complete interview with the woman.”