Destine (The Watcher's Trilogy) (30 page)

“She doesn’t want to go with you,” Alex taunted from behind me
.
“The little whore wants to stay
where she belongs, with me,” he laughed
.

I turned and faced Alex.
“I said
to stop calling her that! She’s not a whore!
”

“Actually
,
Michelle
,
she is.
”
He had turned away from Gabriel and was walking towards Cami and myself
.
I let go of Cami and took a step in his direction
.
Gabriel saw me square my shoulders and prepare for a confrontation with Alex
, so h
e used the o
pportunity to slip past
us and reach where Cami stood
.
I heard what sounded like a scuffle, but I wasn’t turning my back on Alex
.
I had known I would have to confront him in order to get to Cami,
and
it was now or never
.

“Haven’t you ever heard of the whore of Babylon?
”
Alex turned his face to the side and spit a mouth full of blood onto the grass at his feet
.

I felt a surge of pride in Gabriel for having bloodied him
.
“No,” I spat
.
I had to keep him talking to distr
act him while my left hand slid
into my
messenger
bag and searched for the bottle I had stolen from my mother’s bedside table last night
.

“Tsk, t
sk, what have you and that sorry excuse for an angel been doing if not discussing theology,” he mocked
.
“
The
whore of Babylon is the prophet set to spread the false praise of the Antichrist
.
You should be
proud of your
friend;
she did a very good job
.
So willing, so easily manipulated.
”

I felt my fingers close around the cool glass of the bottle
.
My arm ached with the restraint I
was using to prevent my
self from reacting to his words, but I only had one chance at this and I wanted to make sure he was close enough for me to pull this off
.

“You don’t know what
you’re
talking about,” I retorted
.
“
Cami’s a fighter, you’ll see.
”

He laughed a hideous laugh, baring his bloody teeth in my direction, “Hardly, she was all t
o
o willing. As a matter
of
fact
,
I find all this a little disappointing
.
Her, you, that pathetic weakling you call a Watcher
.
This is the best
team heaven could come up with
to defeat me
?
How sad.”

With that he took another step towards me and I made my move
.
I yanked the bottle out of my messenger bag and pulled the cork out with my free hand. I splashed the contents onto Alex’s face
.
He hissed and stumbled backwards, black smoke began to rise off his face, and I saw the skin begin to bubble
.
I stood stunned
,
watching the destruction, and then I heard the honk of the station wagon’s horn behind me
.
I turned on my heels and threw myself into the drivers seat
.
Gabriel had managed to get Cami into the backseat, but not without a fight
.
I noticed he had bound her hands with
the
jumper cables t
hat were always in the back
.
I flipped the sun visor down and the
spare key that Cami always kept
there fell into my lap
.
I jammed it into the ignition and the car roared to life
.
I slamme
d my foot down onto the gas pedal
and the wheels squealed as we launched away from the curb, leaving Alex w
rith
ing on the grass with the empty bottle of holy water at his feet
.
Sometimes it was good to have a religious zealot for a mother
.

Chapter 16

Luke 10:19 “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by and means hurt you.”

As I sped off down the road
,
Cami began to kick the back of my seat and let out a string of rather shocking verbal obscenities
.

“Could
n’t
you have done that thing you do?” I asked Gabriel
.
“What do you call it, persuasion?”

“Apparently that little trick doesn’t work on people under the influence of Satan,” he retorted
.

“Well do something, if she keeps kicking my seat like this, I’m liable to run this car into a tree.
”

“What do you want me to do Michelle
?
I could knock her out.
”

I glan
ced sideways at him with a none-too-pleased look on my face.
“Unless you
’
r
e
packing chloroform, that’s not an option.
”

Cami continued to kick the back of my seat, and I was in no mood
.
I slammed on the brakes and she tumbled from her seat onto the floor
.
“Gabriel, get in the back seat with her please!
”

Gabriel
unhooked his seatbelt and slid
over the
bench seat into the back
of the station wagon
.
I heard him shuffling around and when I glanced in the rearview mirror he had a secure hold on Cami
.
He had pulled her back up onto the seat and
had his arms wrapped around her to keep her from being able to move around
.
There was a split second where I was jealous of him having his arms around her, but I quickly shook that off
.

“Now what?” Gabriel asked from the back seat
.
“We can’t very well take her to your house or mine
.
That’ll be the first place Alex looks for her.”

“I think I know a place, well that is if it
’
s still there.
”
I continued to drive away from town and into the rural countryside beyond
.
I always found it amazing how certain areas
remained
untouched by modern
urbanization
, but I was thankful for it now
.
I drove about ten minutes till
a large over grown apple orchard loomed in the
passenger’s
side window
.
It had been years since I had tried to find thi
s
place, but I was s
u
re this was the correct orchard
.
Just when I was starting
to doubt myself, I spotted it, a
dirt lane
hidden
amongst
all the over grown trees
.
I turned the station wagon down the path and feared for a moment that the old dirt lane was too bumpy for the car to h
andle,
but after a very nerve
w
racking scra
ping noise the car continued on down the path
.
I drove at a slow pace
,
attempting to avoid the majority of the po
tholes. Finally, out of the over
grown weeds emerge
d
what I had been looking for
.
An old
abandoned
house loomed out of
nowhere
in the middle of the orchard
.
Surely some long forgotten
farmhouse
.
All the windows were broken out and the pain
t
had long ago
chipped away
.
What remained of the house was nothing more
than
a
two
story brown shell of a structure, but it would have to work
.

“Cami and I use
d
to come out here when we were little
.
We found the dirt lane one day while we were riding our bikes, and followed it back to this place,” I stated pointing up at the
farmhouse
.
“Once we found it, it became our place
.
We would come h
ere and play house, or just run
away here whenever we wanted to escape
.
Our parents would have killed us if they had known we were playing in a
dilapidated
, run down building,” I
half laughed to myself
.
I remembered my seventh grade year, the year my mother had lost
it;
I had spent a lot of time at this old farmhouse that year
.

I let out a heavy sigh and opened the driver’s side door, and walked around
to
the passenger’s backseat
.
I opened the door and helped Gabriel climb out with Cami still in tow
.
The other good thing about the location was that it was deserted enough that no one was around to hear the string of curse words that tumbled out of Cami’s mouth as soon as she was out of the car
.

Gabriel grabbed
her a
rms and I more or less secured
her feet, although she kept kicking me and making the job a lot harder than her 110 pound frame should have been to carry
.
I worried at first that the old steps wouldn’t hold our combined w
eight, but
after a rather precarious groan,
the steps held just fine
.
We entered the old farmhouse, and the place looked surprisingly similar to the way I remembered it
.
Twigs and leaves and other debris littered the floor, and some random pieces of furniture remained
.
An old hard-back chair, a three-legged end table, and what appeared to be an old cradle all scattered about what looked to have been the living room
.
I saw the pictures on the wall from where Cami and I had brought my paint set and decided to paint pictures on the walls
.
I remember the rush I had at the time, at the rebellious act of drawing on the walls, even if they were the dilapidated walls of an abandoned house
.

Gabriel and I dropped Cami into
t
he hardback chair, with her hands still bound by the jumper cables
.
I looked around and
found some old rags
.
I cringed as I picked them up
,
not wanting to think about what was on them, and bound Cami’s legs to the chair
.
She fought
,
cursed
,
and yelled, but we managed to bind her to the chair without much difficulty
.
We didn’t have anything to gag her with, but it didn’t much matter there was no one around to hear her anyway
.

I tried not to think about what we were doing
.
I had technically just kidnapped my former best friend from her house and was now holding her captive
.
Surely this wouldn’t look good to the cops, but I was counting on Alex not calling the cops and instead dealing with this on his own
.
Once Cami was secured in the chair, I pulled my cross out from inside my shirt
.
The minute the cross was free from my shirt it began to glow
.
I didn’t dare remove it from my
neck;
the las
t thing I wanted was to be without it
.
I leaned over Cami with the cross extended towards her, held out as far as the chain would allow
.
The closer it got to Cami the brighter it glowed, and Cami’s skin began to smoke
.
She began to scream and curse.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but all my research on exorcism had suggested that this was the only way.

“You bitch
!
” she yelled
.
“When Alex
finds me, you’ll regret this!
He’ll take care of you and that sorry excuse for a Watcher!
”
I glanced in Gabriel’s direction
.
We had suspected that he was a Watcher not a fallen angel since my dream, but Alex and Cami had both called him a Watcher as well
.
I took this as conformation, but if Gabriel thought this was good news he didn’t show it
.
He remained stone still
, leaning against the far wall
with his arms crossed tensely over his chest
.
It was the body language I had come to expect from him
.
He looked like a coiled spring ready to lau
nch itself
at a moments notice
.
I returned my attention back to Cami.

She had started to struggle fiercely against the restraints and I wasn’t at all sure they would hold
.
She began rocking back and forth and twisting her arms to free them from the jumper cables
.
I was starting to doubt myself
.
The
cross-glowed
in her presence
, but she didn’t seem to have the super human strength or any other symptom
s of
being possessed
.
What if I had been wrong
?
What if this didn’t wo
rk?

N
o
,
I
would not quit
this easily
.
I squared my shoulde
rs and continued to lean
over Cami
.
She hauled off and spit right into my face
.
I stepped back in shock, and tried to blink the
sal
iv
a
out of my eye
.
I had to remind myself that this was not Cami, well at
least not the Cami that I
knew;
this was some demonic version of m
y
best friend
.