Chapter 25

Icould feel her fading. My bear wanted to start tearing limbs off until we got to the basement so I could scoop her up and Benji could get us home. I hated this. I wanted her in my arms. I wanted to look her in the eyes so she knew I was safe like I had done with Pax and Benji.

We had everything we needed except the location of where they were venting angel tears. It could very well be in the basement. Pax and I found a nuclear bomb on their antiquated computer. Pax got it over to Father Nathan. Pax said his room was bugged, but the office wasn’t, which was a little weird considering what was on that computer.

Pax had his cane when he was in new places. He usually preferred it rather than relying on one of us because he liked being independent. But this was different. We didn’t trust these people, so if Pax was in the main building, I was his guide. Benji was mostly working Hannibal and spreading word among the ranks for our big break.

We did have a plan. Pax came up with this one since he’d spent all that time doing video calls with Father Nathan to go undercover. Hannibal wasn’t in the basement. I hoped that meant our mate’s punishment was over and he’d get her some food.

I led Pax straight up to Hannibal. I could hear his guts turning on him and it looked like he was trying to clench his asshole. Benji was sitting with him looking immensely pleased with himself, so he could have said literally anything. At this point, it wouldn’t shock me if Benji had convinced this man to stop the anal leakage with a butt plug slathered in capsicum.

“Hello,” Hannibal said, smiling like a fucking snake. “Benji was just explaining the error with the food and that his inner demon is fighting to come out. Is yours?”

That was just Benji talk for being a hangry, little picky eater. We ate mostly all natural at home. Margarine was one of those things that offended his delicate sensibilities. And since he started this, I just had to go along with it.

“Oh, yes. I can feel him scratching at the surface. I can tell the other people here are struggling, too.”

“I’m betting the people in the basement that need the most help could use it, too,” Pax said.

“Hrmph. It’ll be expensive, but I’ll see what I can do. I haven’t decided on the basement yet. I’m not sure those people can be helped.”

All three of us were fighting an inner battle not to rip this man apart. We had to hide that we even knew someone in there. Benji and I were struggling, so Pax swooped in to save our asses.

“Does this place have an attic? There’s this old legend back home that when the angels came down the first time, they handed out these medallions to each holy man they visited and told them to use them at the treatment facilities they would set up. They were supposed to be embossed with the true image of an angel and not how they appear to mortals.

“It’s honestly kind of an urban legend, as we never found them, but they are supposed to be these massively powerful holy relics and I have to think if they were real, we were given them for a reason.

“I don’t know if the Church took them when they severed ties with the Coalition or they were lost before that. I didn’t really get a chance to search other facilities before they were all closed back home. Isn’t New Eden the original Coalition treatment center in the United States? Even if those medallions aren’t up there, there might be some amazing history and I’ve always been a history buff.”

“I don’t know about the medallions as I’ve never heard those legends and I should have, but I don’t know how I feel about letting a blind man up there. There are a lot of important things in the attic and the only way you can see anything and not break it is if we let a demon-possessed up there with you. Can you even manage stairs in your condition?”

What.the.fuck? Pax wasn’t some bull in the China shop who couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs. He barely even needed me since he could see outlines and his phone would read out any text in my voice.

I know Benji called dibs, but I really wanted to kill this guy.

“If I may,” Pax said. “I spoke to both Benji and Caspian when they woke up. Their demon only broke loose because their favorite restaurant switched ingredients and they weren’t aware. The wards and their mental exercises helped put it back to sleep. If you get them what they need, it shouldn’t be a problem.

“Getting everyone these ingredients could lead to a cure. We could show the whole world we were right the entire time. You’d be famous as the head of New Eden. Writing a book would bring funds to New Eden and would clear our name to all the people who might have found our methods distasteful while we were trying to help these poor people. It would make all the people who maligned us and excommunicated us eat crow.”

Watching Pax and Benji manipulate this man when none of us couldn’t access our magic at all was sexy as fuck. And maybe one day, my mate would confide in me how she managed to kill one of these bastards without hers so I could file it away for later in my spank bank.

But I needed to focus. Hannibal wasn’t a godly man. He lied to himself that he was because he liked hurting people. Hannibal was greedy, and he wanted the world to kiss his ass like he had his subordinates doing here. The idea of the masses eating his ass about being right the entire time was probably about as close to an orgasm he’d let himself get.

“Butter isn’t that expensive wholesale, but it is also pretty cheap to make,” I said. “If you can get a source for heavy whipping cream and some jars, you can have us make it. You just shake the jar for several minutes and you get butter. It’s how I make mine.”

That was because I was old enough to live in a time that if you wanted butter, you had to milk the cow and make it yourself. I kept doing it even after we got a supermarket in the small town at the bottom of the mountain. I preferred the taste of fresh made and Benji was a bit of a picky brat when it came to food. I was shocked he hadn’t sermonized a fake Monsignor on the evils of margarine before we got here.

That could actually still happen.

“All of this just seems so strange,” Hannibal mused. “In our history, we tried various tonics, then moved on to pharmaceuticals. We tried Lithium and Clozapine. Clozapine is supposed to be used with weekly blood tests or it can be fatal to humans. The demon kept their bodies from dying. They were nearly dead, but even then, the demon was awake and lying about being born in that body. It just seems strange simple ingredients could do that, and we never knew that.”

Fuck, I wish Benji hadn’t called dibs. This man didn’t even see anything wrong with any of that. Pax or Benji could take this one because I didn’t trust what would come out of my mouth. He didn’t say if they were still using those drugs, but my mate was feeling and sounding very weak. If he was using them on her, Benji might have to share and if he’d actually gone to kindergarten, he would have flunked sharing for biting.

“It’s just water until it’s blessed and becomes holy water. It’s like lavender and valerian. Simple herbs, but so many medicinal uses. Same with turmeric. It’s an amazing spice to flavor the food, but it’s great for inflammation.

“I learned the trick from this tiny, remote village on an island off the coast of Italy. The church there is quaint and still doesn’t have electricity for some reason. Everything else does, but they chose not to have the church wired. It was beautiful when the sun or moon shone through those stained glass windows.

“I befriended the bishop, and he told me how they kept the demon infestation off their shores. It was top secret information and the only reason I’m sharing it with you now is that I need your help to get this demon out of me,” Benji said.

Don’t ask me why Benji had this carefully curated library of smut where people fucked their front door, but never felt the need to write any himself. The door book was amazing, by the way. If we needed any type of cover story on the fly, we went straight to Benji.

And frankly, all the shit we had said since we got here was utterly ridiculous, but Benji had been a total boss so far at making it sound believable to a human who already believed a lot of bullshit.

“Since the two of you have a lot of insight from this demon-free village, why don’t you all escort Father Pax to the attic? You can make sure he doesn’t break anything and maybe the three of you will find something we didn’t think was important from your research in Ireland and Italy.

Yes! This man didn’t want a “cure” for the good of his cause. He wanted to be famous and adored.

And that made him easy to manipulate.