California Demon: The Secret Life of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom Page 9

  “Kate?” Father Ben prodded.

  “What? Oh.” I rewound the conversation in my head. “I’m pretty sure he was taking it out, but I can’t be positive.” I lunged forward. “Timmy, no. On the paper, big guy.” I sat back, and risked looking away from Tim just long enough to meet the padre’s eyes. “Either way, the book was important to him.”

  “ ‘The wheels are in motion,’ ” Father said, repeating the demon’s words that I’d relayed to him.

  “Any idea what he was talking about?” I asked.

  Father Ben nodded slowly, then sank back into his chair, motioning for me to sit as well. I did, but reluctantly. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be good.

  “We can’t be certain, of course. Not without more research. But based upon the messages you left for Father Corletti and me, and your description of the book, we were able to do a bit of preliminary research.”

  “And?”

  “And we believe the book may be the Malevolenaumachia Demonica.”

  “Oh,” I said, hoping I sounded duly impressed. “Wow. That’s . . . I mean, wow.” In truth, I was impressed. Not by the whatever he’d said, since I had no clue what he was talking about. But by the fact that anyone could take my vague description and then announce that the book was something both evil-sounding and hard to pronounce. That was worthy of some serious props, as my daughter would say.

  “Do you know what the MD is?” Ben asked.

  “A doctor?” I asked, stupidly.

  “The Malevolenaumachia Demonica,” he said, slowly and patiently.

  “Ah, um, well, sure. I mean, mostly.” I cleared my throat. “Actually, no. I don’t have a clue. What is it?”

  “You are familiar with a Grimoire?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s like a manual for black magic.”

  “Well, if this book is the Malevolenaumachia Demonica, it’s a hundred times worse than any potential Grimoire.”

  “Oh. Great.”

  He got up and came around his desk, leaning up against it as he faced me. “Have you ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark?”

  “Um, sure. It’s one of my favorite movies. We even own the DVD.” I bit back the urge to ask him what that had to do with anything. Unless my alimentatore was losing it, he’d get to the point eventually.

  “Remember the scene with the French guy? What he says about the Ark?”

  “A transmitter for talking to God,” I said. I was getting a sick feeling in my stomach. “Are you saying—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “The book is for talking to God? Or the book is for—”

  “Talking to imprisoned demons.”

  “Oh. Well, isn’t that just nifty?” I took a deep breath and considered what he was saying. “How?”

  “The demons’ words print upon the page.”

  “But then we’re okay,” I said. “The book’s completely blank.”

  “Except that once the communication is read, it fades.”

  I shook my head, trying to get a handle on what he was saying. “So the demon says something, and it prints out across the page? Like, Hey there, Reader. Go stand in a pentagram?”

  “That is the essence of it, yes.”

  “And then when someone reads that message, the page goes blank again?”

  “Correct.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t liking this. Understatement of the year, I know, but I really wasn’t liking this.

  “And can the reader talk to the demons?” I asked. “Like if they write in the book, would the demon read it and then erase the page?”

  Father Ben shook his head. “That I don’t know.”

  I nodded slowly, taking it all in. “And the demons that are doing the talking. You said they’re imprisoned, right? I thought the demons were in Hell. Or all around us in the ether.” As far as I’ve always understood it, a demon’s power comes from Hell, and he’ll go there to rejuvenate or vacation or whatever demons do in their leisure time.

  But hanging out in Hell doesn’t really have much demonicoomph. They want to be out here in the real world, fighting to become human. And, barring that, whispering to humans, their oily entreaties urging people to take the baser path even while our guardian angels try to lift us up.

  Accounts by many of the saints report being able to see demons in the air all around. That’s one serious black mark against being a saint, at least in my mind.

  “Many theologians believe that demons are free to leave Hell and walk the earth,” Father Ben said. “Certainly those of us affiliated with Forza know that to be true.”

  “Did you know it? Last year, I mean. Before you learned about me. And about Forza.”

  “I believed it,” he said. “I didn’t know it. I’d never seen evidence of a demon. I still haven’t seen the horrors that you have, Kate, and I certainly haven’t put myself on the front line the way you have. But still, I believed.”

  He reached out and squeezed my hand. And even though we’re probably very nearly the same age, I felt warm and comforted. And at the same time, horribly sad. I’d never asked to see the things I’ve seen. My beliefs weren’t grounded in faith. Not really. Instead, they were grounded in reality. And I had to wonder if that made me somehow lesser in the eyes of God. Would I, I wondered, be so devout if I’d never actually seen the devil amongst us?

  Father Ben started pacing his office, warming to his subject. “Some believe that certain demons have even entered Heaven and been granted an audience with God.”

  “God has more patience than I do,” I said. “I would have kicked their sorry butts right out of the pearly gates.”

  Ben smiled. “Yes, well, that is one of His traits. At any rate, Second Peter 2:4 tells of some angels who sinned so grievously that they were cast not just into Hell, but into a prison called Tartarus.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said. “It’s like the worst of Hell?”

  “Exactly. Some believe that those demons mated with human women and created half-breeds. Nephalim, they’re called. And for that horrific sin against nature, they were cast down. The ancient world considered Tartarus the worst pit of gloom and darkness. And those fallen angels are bound there in chains, without recourse or appeal to God.”

  “Wow.”

  “Exactly.”

  “An eternity in chains in Hell,” I said thoughtfully. “Somehow that makes my filthy bathrooms not seem like that much of a burden.”

  “Eternity was the plan,” Father Ben said. “But some demons have managed to escape over the millennia. Goramesh,” he added, meeting my eyes. “He is believed to have once been bound in Tartarus.”

  “Oh.” I shivered. I’d done battle with the High Demon Goramesh. And I sincerely doubted he had a warm, fuzzy place in his heart for me. Someday, I’d see him again. That much I was sure of. I was also sure that when that day came, my odds of walking away from the battle weren’t good.

  I straightened my shoulders and pushed thoughts of the High Demon out of my head. “What does all this have to do with the book?”

  “Well, the lore is that although some demons have escaped, two are still imprisoned in Tartarus. The vilest. The most unrepentant.”

  I sat there a moment, letting Father Ben’s words sink in. “Worse than a High Demon,” I said.

  He nodded solemnly. “Like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

  “But they’re imprisoned, right? I mean, that’s the whole point. Gloomiest corner of Hell. Bound in chains. Right?”

  “Right. Except . . .”

  “Except some have escaped,” I finished. “And you think these two want out, too.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Mmmm.” He had a point. “And the book? The transmitter?”

  “The title,” he said. “Malevolenaumachia Demonica. Do you know what that means?”

  “I’m a little rusty on the Latin, Padre.”

  “Demon’s Malicious Struggle.” He lifted a shoulder, his head tilting sl
ightly to the side. “Well, that’s a loose translation.”

  “Loose or not, it doesn’t sound good.”

  “The point is, that lore suggests that the book is a transmitter. Not for talking to God, but for talking to the demons imprisoned in Tartarus.”

  “Dear God,” I said, then crossed myself. “So how does it work?”

  “That, I don’t know.”

  I stood up and starting pacing the small office. “None of this makes sense. If it’s a transmitter, what are they saying? And who are they saying it to? Sinclair? Other demons?”

  He shook his head. “That, I can’t tell you.”

  “And why? What are they trying to do? What’s the plan?”

  “All good questions,” Father Ben said. “And I don’t have a single good answer. All we know is that there is a plan. And I think it’s a good guess that Tartarus demons want to escape from Hell. And perhaps they were using the book to give someone directions on how to make that happen.”

  “Dear Lord.”

  “That is, of course, all speculation,” Father Ben said. “We can’t even be certain the book is the Malevolenaumachia Demonica.”

  “Great. I feel so much better.”

  “We also know that you’ve disrupted that plan. Or at least stalled it.”

  “Because we’ve got the book now.”

  “And it’s secure.”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “The altar,” he said.

  “Not the vault?”

  “We have archivists cataloging the relics in the vault. They are in and out every day, and if they were to find the book . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “No, I don’t believe there’s a safer place in the world than the altar for something like this book. Except, perhaps, deep within the Vatican.”

  I nodded. Infused as it was with the bones of saints, the altar of St. Mary’s Cathedral was impenetrable by a demon. The book, at least, was safe.

  That didn’t solve all our problems. But it was a start.

  Timmy And l left the cathedral well before noon. We hit the T-Mobile store first, and I got a replacement for my missing phone, including the same phone number and a built-in camera. I snapped a few pictures of Timmy just to get the hang of it, e-mailed them to Stuart, then immediately wondered how I’d lived without the thing.

  I needed to hit the grocery store, but first I wanted to fill Eddie in. I swung by the house and gave him the rundown. He didn’t know anything more about the book than I did, but he agreed that the whole Tartarus demons run amok thing sounded pretty bad.

  “You’re going to help, right?”

  He snorted. “Eh, why not? Chasing demons always brightens my mood. And killin’ demons puts me in an even better one.”

  I ended up dropping him at the library, before heading on to the neighborhood Ralphs. He promised to call my shiny new phone when he was ready for a ride home, “Assuming I don’t catch a ride with that hot librarian.”

  I wished him luck and set out to do some shopping.

  For the first two years of Timmy’s life, I’d been content to shop with my toddler in tow. Once I discovered the joys of day care, however, my tolerance for the extended process of shopping with a child decreased dramatically.

  About the time Timmy grabbed his third can of some meat product off the shelf, held it up, and said, “This too Mommy? We need this?” I decided I’d had enough. If the folks on Survivor could live on bugs and berries, then surely we could survive on milk, pasta, and whatever happened to be hidden in the back of the freezer.

  When we got home the garage was empty, which didn’t really surprise me. Getting Allie out of the mall in under eight hours is an amazing accomplishment. Stuart had been borderline delusional to suggest anything less than five. Not that I’d been inclined to correct his disinformation at the time. . . .

  I parked Timmy in front of the television, popped in the Frosty the Snowman video, then started to unload the groceries. The house seemed eerily quiet, and I fought a sense of unease, telling myself that just because I’d spent a good portion of yesterday fighting a demon didn’t mean that they’d infested my house.

  My earnest speech, however, did nothing for my mood, and I moved slowly from the living room into the breakfast area. The pitcher of orange juice I hadn’t cleared was still there, but had it been moved just a little to the left? I frowned, not sure, as my gaze swept the room. Nothing else seemed out of place, and I told myself I was being ridiculous.

  Naturally, I didn’t really believe myself.

  “Allie?” I called, loud enough to be heard in every corner of our house.

  Silence.

  Okay, that was good. The house was empty. Nothing was really out of place. And I just needed to get a grip.

  I stood there for a minute, contemplating the get-a-grip plan. I decided that while that might be the rational thing to do, where my kid’s safety was an issue, I was more than happy to be paranoid and reactive. And that meant getting Timmy over to Laura’s while I searched the house. Just to be sure.

  “Timmy?” I called, implementing step one of the paranoid-and-reactive plan. “Come here, kiddo.”

  He looked up, his features contorted with irritation. “Frosty, Mommy.”

  “I know, sweetie. But I need you to come here.”

  Nothing.

  “Timmy,” I said. “Come here this instant.”

  Again, nothing.

  “Young man, don’t make me count to three.”

  “I’m watching Frosty, Momma!” His little hands were fists at his sides, and I could see a full-blown tantrum coming on. Give in or hold fast? The age-old question of parenting.

  I gave in, resorting to the only surefire method of ensuring toddler cooperation: bribery. “How about ice cream?”

  He cocked his head to the side, looking just a little bit more toward me than the television. “Ice cream?”

  “Absolutely. Come with me over to Aunt Laura’s, and you can have ice cream. And you can watch Frosty over there.”

  He looked at me, his face scrunched up in concentration. “Chocolate ice cream?”

  “Sure,” I said, hoping Laura’s freezer was well stocked. For that matter, I hoped Laura was home.

  “’Kay, Mommy.” He tugged me toward the back door. “We go Aunt Laura’s!”

  And so we did. I popped out the video and turned off the television, then let Timmy drag me out the door. I double-checked the alarm system, then shut the door tight and locked it.

  Timmy raced across the grass, with me following at a much more reasonable pace so that I could pull out my cell phone and give Laura fair warning. She answered on the first ring, and assured me that she was more than happy to watch the kiddo. It would, she said, save her from a fun-filled morning rearranging her Tupperware.

  “Always happy to be of service,” I said, as soon as we arrived at her back door.

  “I hope you mean that,” she said. “I swear I’m going crazy obsessing about my jerk of a husband. If I don’t have something to keep me occupied, I’m going to start stalking the man.”

  “I can help you there, too,” I said, as we got Timmy settled. “I’ll bring you up to speed when I come back. But basically, I was hoping you could help me search the Internet.” I’m not a complete idiot when it comes to computers, but I did think that Google was a children’s video program until about six months ago. Laura’s computer skills, however, had been honed and sharpened by years of online shopping. Give her a mouse and a cable modem, and she can find (and buy) pretty much anything. Isn’t technology amazing?

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “So why the last-minute babysitting? Everything okay over there?”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Can I help?”

  I pointed to Tim. “Trust me,” I said. “You already are.”

  Once Timmy was happily settled in front of the television with a bowl of ice cream in his chubby little hands, I sprinted back across our connecting yards to my house.
Once again, I told myself I was being ridiculous. And once again, I convinced myself that I wasn’t. Demon hunting’s all about instincts. And, for whatever reason, I had a bad feeling.

  Back in the house, I paused just inside the back door. “Allie? Stuart? Anybody home?”

  No answer.

  I checked the kitchen and the garage, just to make sure. No sign of Stuart.

  Jimmy Neutron’s theme song drifted into the kitchen, and I sang along with it, only a little mortified to realize I knew all the words. I froze suddenly. I’d turned off the television!

  With my heart pounding in my chest, I made a beeline for the utility drawer. I pushed down on the little latch, then pulled the drawer open slowly, trying to avoid the telltale squeak.

  Once it was open enough, I took out an ice pick and tested its weight in my hand. I’d invested in about six of the things last month, never expecting Stuart to notice. Of course that meant he did. I said they’d been on sale and that had satisfied him. After all, what woman can pass up a bargain?

  Because of the configuration of our house, you can only see part of the living room from the kitchen area, and I entered carefully, watching my blind side until I’d swept the entire area with my gaze.

  Nothing.

  Or rather, nothing except the television that I was positive I’d clicked off. But maybe I hadn’t hit the button hard enough, or aimed the remote the wrong way. After all, why would a demon want to watch The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron?

  I wished I could believe I’d simply left the television on, but I couldn’t quite manage it. Especially not once I noticed other things out of place. Knickknacks shifted on the hall table. The entertainment center door open just slightly.

  Someone looking for something? The book, maybe?

  I bit my lower lip and continued moving silently through the house. I’d known that returning to Forza would be dangerous. But for that danger to invade my home . . .

  I shivered, guilt overwhelming me. If anything happened to the kids. To Stuart.

  No.

  I wasn’t even sure there was a danger here. And as for Sinclair and his mysterious book, I didn’t know what that was about, but I was determined to end it. And soon. No matter what, my first priority was keeping my family safe. And if that meant killing a few demons along the way, then so much the better.