Stacia Kane - Demon Possessed

She’d had a radio caller just before Christmas, just before things with her demons and Ktana Leyak—a leyak demon, the one who’d created the Yezer—had gotten truly out of hand. The caller had called because of problems with her mother or something—Megan couldn’t remember the details very well. She wouldn’t have remembered the details at all if not for the fact that the woman had been unreadable.

Megan had suspected possession herself at the time. But perhaps . . . perhaps something else was going on?

Shit. The last thing she needed was for her powers to start going wonky again.

“That’s enough,” Greyson said, dragging her back to reality and dragging them all toward the elevator. “We need to find that FBI agent, and we need to figure out what exactly the reverend is up to. I don’t like this one bit.”

“Yes, what were you looking at, by the way? You raised your eyebrows at me.”

“The maid’s necklace,” he said, and pressed the button. “Didn’t you see it? There’s clearly something off happening here.”

“No, I didn’t see it, why?”

The elevator doors opened. They all stepped inside. “She was wearing a Star of David.”

“I don’t—” she started, then stopped. Oh, right. “Most Jewish people aren’t testifying about the power of Jesus.”

“Correct. So unless she converted and forgot to remove her jewelry, we could have a problem here. You couldn’t read them?”

She shook her head. “The room felt empty. And not even empty. More than empty, if you know what I mean. Like there was . . . an absence. A vacuum.”

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open, revealing a nondescript hallway empty of anything but doors. The patterned carpet made Megan think uneasily of The Shining .

They all stood for a second as if the opening of the elevator doors was an event they couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Then the brothers exited, peering around the wall first, checking to make sure nothing and no one lurked in wait.

Greyson took her hand and led her into the hall, the dim light lost in the darkness of his hair. She hadn’t noticed before how tired he looked, how the shadows under his eyes weren’t just caused by the horrid plastic- covered fluorescents clinging to the ceiling, casting a greenish glow on everything.

But then she was sure she looked exhausted. She certainly felt exhausted, as if someone had attached heavy weights to her limbs. Being almost killed hadn’t exactly pepped her up either; all the energy she’d taken from the witch on the roof had dissipated, worn away by fear and worry and the desperate search for answers.

Not that she really expected them to find any here. That would be too easy. The idea that Reverend Walther would open the door and announce, “There you are! I’ve been trying to kill you for days!” was a tad far-fetched.

But then the idea that he had anything at all to do with this was a tad far-fetched, even with the proof—circumstantial though it was—staring her right in the face.

“They were definitely human,” Greyson said as they started walking down the hall.

“So maybe they were possessed?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. They didn’t feel like demon at all. Did you see their Yezer?”

“No, I—no, I didn’t. But they’re supposed to keep hidden, so I wouldn’t.”

“ Your Yezer are supposed to keep hidden. If they belong to someone else, they might not.”

True. She nodded. “I’ll ask Roc.”

They’d reached Walther’s room at that point, an unassuming door like all the others, dark wood, with light showing in the slight gap beneath. The brothers stepped back, out of the way, and Greyson knocked.

After a moment a voice came through the door. “How can I help you?”

Shit. Megan hadn’t even thought of what they might say, what sort of cover story they’d need.

Greyson apparently had. When he spoke, his voice had a hesitant twang. “Reverend, we’re looking for our friend?”

He glanced at Megan; she whispered, “Elizabeth.”

“We’re looking for our friend Elizabeth? She left a note saying she was coming to see you, but that was a while ago, and we’re getting—”

Shadows moved across the light on the floor. The door opened.

Megan wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Some John Knox-esque character with raving eyes and a flowing beard, perhaps, or a slick Benny Hinn type with shellacked hair and an oily smile.

Reverend Walther was neither. Pale blue pajamas, frayed at the hems, covered his medium frame and gapped slightly at the front where his belly widened. Silver hair topped his head; his eyes were small and brown and full of what appeared to be honest concern.

“You’re friends with that girl?”

Megan didn’t listen to Greyson’s reply. She was too busy lowering her shields, reaching out to see if she got anything from the man, unsure if she hoped she would.

She did. A church interior. Heads bowed over books. A wife and three daughters at home, dressed in exceedingly modest high-necked, ankle-length dresses. Roast beef and station wagons. Soup kitchens.

And beneath it all something that genuinely scared her, a force that sent cold chills all the way to her toes. Not because it was demonic or otherworldly but because it wasn’t. The reverend was a fanatic. He truly believed in what he was doing, honestly thought he had the power to expel demons and that God wanted him to do so, and he would do anything to obey that command.

Greyson had told her that the Christian God had very little to do with demons anymore, that there was no Hell, and that the concept of a good-versus-evil battle was outdated and silly. Or, rather, that the concept of a good-versus-evil battle being based on religion and the power of God was outdated and silly. Yes, demons did lead humans astray whenever they could, but that was for fun and profit. For power. Not because some devil told them to.

Walther believed the exact opposite, and just standing in the presence of someone with that much self-justified rage and self-exaltation made her twitch.

The other thing she got from him, the last thing, didn’t help either. He didn’t know who she was. Thought she looked familiar but didn’t know her. Didn’t know who or what Greyson and the brothers were.

“—but she left about fifteen minutes ago,” Walther was saying when she snapped back to reality. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that.”

Megan took a deep breath and reached for him with her mind again, focusing on Elizabeth Reid this time.

Yes. Okay. There was Elizabeth, her dark hair a little mussed, her eyes wide and hopeless. And she . . . Wait. She looked fine. Well, not fine; she looked upset, a little spacey. But she didn’t look injured. Her bare arms and exposed throat were free of marks.

So where the hell had all that blood come from?

“I talked to her for a few minutes and told her to come back tomorrow.”

“When you do your exorcisms,” Greyson said.

“When God works through me to cast the demons out,” Walther corrected.

“Of course. Thanks for your time.”

“God bless you,” said Walther, and closed the door.

They walked in silence back to the elevator. Megan didn’t want to speak; too many thoughts circled in her head, too many unanswered questions. Plus, she was afraid Walther would hear. She pictured him with a cheap plastic hotel cup pressed to the door, spying on them. Probably a silly image but one she couldn’t shake, and she didn’t feel like trying to read him again to confirm or refute it.

But the others may have shared her discomfort or caution, because Greyson didn’t speak until the elevator had started to descend. “Well. That was anticlimactic.”