The Light of the World (19 page)

I frown and look at Mona, "Starve her?"

He nods, "A little torture maybe too. She needs
to be suffering and starving. They feel the need. They will come
one at a time. She cannot take more than one feed a month, if that.
Three months is better, four is the best."

I watch Mona's face, "Can we track them?"

He nods, "Yes. They typically live in the worst
places on earth. The epicenters of sin. Hell on earth if you
will."

"How do we find Lillith and Lucifer?"

He shakes his head, "If I knew that I would
already have ended this myself."

I put my tea down and bite my lip. "What
happened last time? In the dark ages?"

He shakes his head again, "I don’t know, but I
know the Sin Eater died. Not the devils."

I stand and hold my hand out, "Thanks. You've
been a lot of help."

He frowns, "Surely you can't be ready to leave
already?" He fusses with the teapot.

I watch his face and look at Mona, "Tie him up."
He looks panicked.

She already has a huge urn in her hands. She
smashes it over his head and rips the phone cord out of the wall
and the back of the phone. She ties him up.

"How did you know?"

"His eyes. He kept looking at the clock. I
guarantee Wyatt is going to be here any second."

She looks over, "Great."

While she ties him up, I rifle through the
drawers.

"I'm starving."

I nod, "Me too. This is such bullshit. Honestly.
We should be at school right now. Having fun and getting
drunk."

She laughs and runs her fingers through her long
brown hair "No kidding."

I feel nervous and sick about leaving the room
we're in. I'm terrified he is standing in the hall or holding
Michelle as bait.

When I look at Mona, her eyes tell me she feels
the same way. She walks to the door handle and looks back at me. I
nod and together we stroll out casually. I turn the lock on the
inside and close the door. I am instantly scanning the massive
cathedral. I don’t see him or Michelle. Just people praying.

Walking through the pews and seeing Jesus
staring at me, makes me feel considerably worse about knocking out
the priest.

"Where do you think they took her?"

I shake my head and look around. The church is
actually a cathedral. It's several times the size of the churches I
never went to back home. Willow has a thing with churches.
Obviously finding out she is a witch makes that more clear. She
always came up with some story about the priest or minister. I
always believed her. Even now I cannot doubt her.

But now I see the burnings and hangings and
torture of the witches, pretty much guaranteed I would never be
allowed to go.

I walk in front of Mona and climb a set of
stairs I had seen from the corner. The red carpet and weird smells
creep me out. It's overly warm in decoration and temperature. Part
of the sales package, no doubt.

I can't help but notice the carving of Jesus in
the hall when we reach the top of the stairs. He looks exactly like
the girl in the book.

My skin shivers. It remembers what it felt like
to hang by my arms.

We walk around the balcony but I don’t see
Michelle or Wyatt.

"I'm getting worried."

Mona nods, "What if they took her and are
torturing her. He sensed the devil in her. What if the nun did
too?"

I don’t want to imagine what a church would do
to a girl who used to be a boy and sold her soul to the devil. It's
pretty much everything they hate all wrapped in a pretty
Barbie-esque package.

I look out the balcony window to my right and
see a garden. It's in fall bloom. Leaves of every color are
everywhere.

"There's the garden."

We turn to go down the stairs but my stomach
twists.

"So did Wyatt know where they were keeping
me?"

Mona shakes her head, "No. I don’t think so. He
said he could…" Her eyes widen. "Shit." The color is gone from her
cheeks, "He said he could sense you. The handfasting."

I wince. I knew it. I should have known it.

"Warwick." The word tastes bad in my mouth.

She looks confused, "What?"

"When I was in Warwick, he knew I was there.
Somehow. The Nixie swam me far from him. Like a two-hour swim.
There was no way he could have known that I was there and yet, I
was walking down the road and felt this twisting feeling in my
stomach. I ran and hid just as he drove by me."

She looks at my hand resting on my belly, "You
feel that now?"

I bite my lip, "I do."

"Shit."

I nod.

We look around and creep up to the wall where
the overlook is for the balcony.
My stomach lurches when she points discretely, "There."

He is trying the handle on the priest's door. He
is not alone. There is a man and another girl with him.

"Shit." I whisper. He turns and looks around. I
pull her away from the wall. We are both shivering.

"He wanted to save me right? He never wanted me
chained to the wall? It was genuine?" I whisper into her clenched
body.

She nods, "I believed he was devastated. His
mother and everyone wouldn’t talk to him. He was screaming and
saying that it wasn’t time. They told him it was for the best. I
have no idea what it meant but I know he was outraged."

I pull her back from the wall and we duck and
run. There is another stairwell. We creep down the stairs.

I run. I don’t know where to run but I do. Mona
pulls out her phone and starts texting.

"Really?" I almost shout, but contain myself.
I'm trying every door handle we pass but they're all locked. Damned
untrusting religious people.

"Michelle says leave. She sent me a text saying
she's staying. She wants to stay and find herself."

I roll my eyes, "Shit. They're going to take her
and torture her."

Mona frowns, "I sent her a message he's here.
She said she's going to the women's only section now. It's strictly
forbidden for him to enter."

I laugh. It's funny. "Hopefully God doesn’t
remember who she is, or was."

The only door that opens for us, leads down into
the dark. The stairs are old and decrepit. We slip in and I look
out into the hall as I close the door. I turn the latch on the
door.

"I can't see." She whispers and reaches back for
me. I slip past her and hold her hands. I can see clearly.

"You don’t want to. It's friggen creepy in
here."

I feel her tense. That was probably the wrong
thing to say.

The stairs bring us to a large cement room.

"It's like an unfinished basement. Nothing down
here." I whisper into the silence.
I see a door in the corner. I pull her along. She walks like she's
impaired, tripping over nothing.

Her hands are trembling.

"It's okay dude. There is nothing down here. I'm
not kidding. It's just us and a concrete room."

"Okay. You can see for real right?"

"For real. There is a door over here. Just a
sec." I let go but she holds my shoulder with a grip that feels
like it's ripping my skin open.

I turn the old-fashioned door handle.

I push my weight into the thick wood.

The door scrapes along the old floor.

Her fingers dig into my skin.

"Easy. That hurts."

"Sorry." She is shaking brutally.

The door opens into a tiny tunnel. It's skinny
and looks as I imagine the Underground Railroad would have. I pull
her through the narrow opening, "It's small but it seems like it's
a tunnel. It must lead somewhere."

I close the door behind us. My stomach twinge is
worsening.

"He's following us I think. Or he's directly
above us."

She grips my hand. I can feel sweat on her palm.
I want to pull my hand away but I too would be shitting my pants if
it were her leading and me following.

I wipe old cobwebs out of the way.
"No one comes down here. The cobwebs are older than us."

"You're really bad at this shit dude. Try
telling me cheery shit."

I laugh quietly and pull her through the thin
tunnel. The walls are made of old bricks and crumbling mortar.

"We are going to die in here." She whispers.

I squeeze her hand, "Stop being a baby. This
leads somewhere. It has to. No one digs out this much dirt without
a reason.

The tunnel twists and turns without any actual
corners, just meandering like a river would. Finally after what
feels like hours I see light ahead.

"Look."

"I can't see anything dick."

I laugh, "Light up ahead. You'll see it in a
minute."

The light floods the tunnel. I don’t feel good
about the end of the tunnel. I feel sick with nerves.

She stops gripping me like she is going to peel
the skin off of me, as we get closer to the light.

"What is that?" She asks.

I can see it clearly, "A grate."

She is looking around horrified, "Is this what
it looked like the whole way?"

I laugh again, "No, this is worse."

The cobwebs are thick and new and I am freaking
out inside. I lean back and strike at them with my foot, kicking
and flailing.

"This is like one of those horror shows."

I pause, "Just a sec." I close my eyes and take
a breath. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah?" I shush her and swat at her.

"Can you hear me? Is he near?" The air isn’t
sparkling or whispering. I strain but still can't hear them.

"Shit." I look back, "I can hear the dead if I
listen hard enough. They can't come on holy land though. We're
still at the church."

She grimaces, "The graveyard. I guarantee it."
She looks up and starts to panic, "They're right above us. The
dead. I bet they are."

I grab her shoulders, "Calm down. The dead
aren’t so bad. Trust me. It's the living that suck."

We get right up close to the door. It looks like
a grate but it has hinges. It has a latch on our side. I open the
latch and push. The door doesn’t move. I push harder but
nothing.

Mona pulls a tube from her pocket and starts
squeezing it onto the hinges.

"Lip gloss."

She rubs the hinges with her fingers, spreading
the gloss everywhere.

She slams into the door and rocks it back and
forth. The metal makes a screaming noise when she pulls in.

"Pull, not push."

She pulls the door. The metal doesn’t scream
again, thanks to the lip-gloss.

We step out into the light of day. She squints
but my eyes don’t need to.

We have stepped out into the graveyard,
literally from a hobbit hole in the side of the hill.

I pull the grate shut and look around. The
grounds are stunning. Colorful trees and headstones line the
leave-covered grass.

I look behind up to the cathedral.

It looks gothic and cool from this distance.

"Wow I have no idea how to get to the parking
lot."

I look at the stream to the right of us that
leads into the forest, "We're going that way."

She looks at me and shakes her head, "I hate you
right now."

I glance at her ballet flats and nod, "It's
cool. I get it. I hate me most days."

We crunch along the trees and rocks. The church
gets further and further away.

"I don’t really hate you. I just wish you were
normal."

I look back and smile, "I know. Me too."

My stomach feels him still. He isn’t close but I
know he's coming. Tracking me like a bloodhound.

"So you can feel him?"

I nod, "Yeah. I guess so."

She nudges me, "This sucks. You okay?"

I shake my head, "No. No, I don’t think I'll
ever be okay. My brain says this is all fake, for sure. None of
this is real. My body believes, but that’s from the torture. My
heart knows it's real, but wants to go back to the old way. I know
my parents were evil and broke the rules, but I don’t understand
why God hates me so much. I don’t even believe in God and yet he is
ruining my life."

"It's heavy. I want to say I don’t believe but I
do. God help me, but I do. The stuff the priest said made sense
though. The torture was for a reason."

I furrow my brow, "That doesn’t take away from
the fact it happened."

She shakes her head defensively, "I'm not saying
that. At all. I know it happened. I can't get the image of you in
that room out of my mind. It's burned there. Scarred in my
brain."

I look at her. We match. Immense amounts of pity
cover both our faces, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I dragged you into
this."

She ups the ante and lets a tear slip from her
eyes, "No. No one should have to go through something like this
alone Rayne. We are the loser nerd girls who will go unnoticed and
not be the pass around girl in the frat. We joined that shit
together. I'm in till the end."

I feel tears in my eyes but I laugh. We pick up
the pace and run the rest of the way out of the huge park we are
in.

The warmth of the restaurant and the coffee in
my hand isn’t enough to remove the feeling of the huge spider I
found roaming in my hoodie. Terror and anxiety are still crawling
around on my skin where it was.

My skin is crawling and I can't shake the
heebie-jeebies. Mona's screaming face is about the only thing that
has gotten me through it.

I shove the last of the Subway sandwich into my
mouth. I'm so hungry I could kill everyone in here and still be
hungry. Well except for Mona.

I glance at her and point at her face, "You have
dirt on your eyebrows and forehead."

She scowls, "Dude. How long has it been like
that?" She wipes with the napkin but it doesn’t come off.

"Still there."

"Gross. Graveyard dirt." She stands and walks
away. Her perfect little outfit is ruined from the day's
adventures. Running in a park and slithering through a tunnel. I
shiver again and remember the way the horrid black beast crept out
of my shirt. Its eight legs tickling me. I almost gag but I take a
deep breath and smell the bread, and the guy sitting behind me.