Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

he understood. I tore my arm from his grasp and sprinted for the door at the end of the hallway. It should have been a quick dash down the corridor to the door, through the chapel and the entrance way until we reached the parking lot. But the hall stretched impossibly long like a visual effect from a cheap horror movie as we hauled ass for the closed door at the end. No matter how hard we tried, we could not reach the damn door and get out.
Suddenly, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was angry. What could Ryerson possibly do to me that no one else had tried? There was nothing he could do besides give me a painful experience, and I have endured plenty of those in the past. They were unpleasant, but they did not scare me. I am truly immortal, and there was nothing in the world that could stop me if I didn’t want it to. This ass hat was going to go down hard.
I slid to a stop on the thin carpet and swung around to face the sinister group. Shaw shot past me, realized that I was no longer running for my life, and stopped as his training kicked in. He yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and spoke frantically into it, giving the dispatcher a long string of code numbers and then the church’s address. I would have preferred that he continued to run and leave me to fight alone without having to explain everything afterward. Now I would have to lie to a bunch of skeptical cops about what had happened, provided Shaw didn’t live through the next few minutes. If he survived, then I would be forced to tell the truth, and that would probably go wrong somewhere along the line. Ain’t it always the way?
I drew my remaining baton and started back toward the office, moving slowly so that I had time to dig through my oldest memories to identify what Ryerson was and how best to deal with him. But memories fade and distort, and the best I could do was assume that he was the victim of demonic possession and that the only way to rid myself of him was to kill the poor bastard he controlled. There are a few nasty consequences for a mortal killed while overcome by a demon, like eternal damnation and torment, but if the human hadn’t been doing things he shouldn’t have been, he wouldn’t have gotten possessed in the first place. So he would be sent off to Hell along with the beast.
“What are you doing?” Shaw demanded behind me. I heard his gun clear leather and for the first time in many decades, I regretted my choice of personal weapons. If I had brought a gun instead of my batons, I could have shot Ryerson full of holes from a safe distance instead of getting close enough for him to work his nasty mojo on me. Oh well, hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I’d make sure to carry a gun the next time I went up against a demon. Not that I intended to ever do so ever again.
“The demon isn’t going to simply let us go,” I barked at Shaw. “We have to convince it that it’s in its best interests to back off.” The office had gone dark during our useless flight, and all I could see was the red glow of a small eerie light. I contemplated the scene and scoffed. Was this really what I was dealing with? A minor creature possessed of such little imagination that it had to steal its crappy tricks from B-movies and bad novels?
“Demon? Are you shitting me?” Shaw asked.
“No,” I snarled. Let Shaw chew on that revelation for a while. I would do something about it. I was going into that office and kick the crap out of those people until Ryerson stopped being a prick and let us go. If I happened to kill him while I was at it, then all the better. Going back proved to be as frustrating as getting out. The corridor refused to shrink as I walked.
“Do you really believe that you can defeat me?” he sneered at me in my head.
“Do you really believe you can kill me?” I retorted. By way of reply, Ryerson sent long ribbons of blue and green flame scorching out of the office and racing down the walls. I gasped as the heat bit into my exposed flesh. Behind me, Shaw let out a strangled cry of primitive terror. Ryerson laughed at us, his sharp features made ghoulish by the strange glow of the intense flames. Around him, his lackeys had all placed their hands on his shoulders and arms, lending him what strength they possessed. At their feet was the girl who had brought Shaw to my rescue; her head was bent at an odd angle, and she leaked blood from a deep puncture wound from her neck.
Shaw fired his gun in three rapid shots that sounded like cannons had gone off. I felt something sear my cheek and realized that Shaw had come perilously close to shooting me in the head. Two men and a woman fell from Ryerson’s side with a cry and Ryerson snarled rage at us. I decided that now was not the time to yell at Shaw for his carelessness, and I attacked before the enemy could regroup.
Fighting more than one opponent is all about geometry and speed. You have to enter the battle knowing where everyone and everything is, and then kick the crap out of them in a way that allows you to avoid falling or getting struck in return. You have to estimate the distances between each individual and figure the angles required to take out as many of them as possible with a single stroke. A fighter must also deliver enough force so that an enemy is taken out in the minimum number of strikes; otherwise they get back up and make you bleed while you worry about their friends. It can get tricky.
Ryerson was still gloating when I rushed upon him and cracked his skull with my baton and swung around to one of the women before he had a chance to register that he’d been hit. The woman fell with an anguished scream and Dorman bull rushed me from the other side. I took care of him when I jabbed the baton into his throat, collapsing his Adam’s apple and leaving him struggling to breathe through his crushed windpipe. Ryerson was already on his feet as I whipped back around to him, and he blocked the next hit with his arm while I was seized around my legs by a man Shaw had shot.
I fell trying to free my legs from his relentless grip, and Shaw fired twice more, hitting Ryerson and sending the second bullet into a wall. I snarled and whapped the clinging man on the top of his head and swore at Shaw and his poor aim. He cussed back, but his words were directed at the people climbing back to their feet. Ryerson, Dorman, and one unnamed man sported bullet holes in their torsos and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by them. The sight of their injuries made my breath catch and hesitate in wonder. I thought for a moment that I was fighting more people like me, that I was engaged in a battle that could not be won, and that my only option was to run away, and keep running until the end of time.
Dorman and a woman rushed Shaw, hesitating only when he shot them, then they kept going. They seized him and pulled the gun from his hand before they shoved him face down onto the floor. He continued to fight even then, struggling hard to get up and get away. Ryerson stood, smoothing his hands over the blood staining the pristine whiteness of his shirt as he smirked down at me.
“Sir, the fire is growing!” Dorman cried where he struggled to keep Shaw pressed to the carpet. Ryerson made a sheepish noise, as if he had forgotten about the inferno raging out of control around us, and he bent beside the dead girl and dipped his fingers in her cooling blood. He closed his eyes and murmured some nonsense words, then stretched out his hand toward the blaze. The fire went to him like a faithful hound to swirl around his wrist and arms before it disappeared into his flesh. The walls and floor were clean, as if the blaze had never existed.
“We can’t kill a cop,” Dorman grunted as he and the woman forced Shaw’s arms behind his back and hauled him off of the floor. “They’ll notice that he’s missing too soon, and they’ll know he came here before he went missing. He’ll talk if we let him go, and I don’t want to go to jail. What are we supposed to do?”
Neither of us said a word, afraid that we would inadvertently provide a spark of inspiration that would give Ryerson some nasty ideas about what he should do with us. Their three fallen comrades groaned and climbed shakily to their feet as they fixed the reverend with looks of exhausted adoration and waited expectantly for him to tell them what to do.

Chapter 12

All I know is that I found myself standing in the parking lot of the Immortal Church of God and wondering what had just happened. A plain clothes detective was questioning me with an earnest look on his face and I could hear Shaw pitching a nasty fit from the back of an ambulance. Near the entrance to the church, Ryerson screamed at another police officer that he did in fact; plan to file assault and violation of civil rights charges against Detective Shaw. That last bit astounded me and I turned to look, but the detective stopped me by calling my name.
“What do you want?” I snapped at him, scowling. The detective sighed wearily, and pushed his thick spectacles up his nose with a finger.
“I was asking if there was anything else you wished to add to your statement,” he replied. The man in front of me was a clean cut, ordinary looking black man with bags under his dark eyes that made him look as if he didn’t sleep very much. I blinked at him in confusion. I didn’t remember telling him anything.
“What did I tell you already?” I asked cautiously. The detective gave me a concerned look.
“Are you sure you’re okay Rebecca?” he asked. “Would you like some water or to sit down?”
He was using my first name in an attempt to be friendly and non-threatening. Goodie, I wasn’t suspected of a crime. That at least was bit of a relief. “I promise I’m fine. I’ve just had a bit of a shock.”
“Yes, you did,” he chuckled as if I was being ironic. Was I? “You stated that you were investigating the church for the possibility of becoming a member when Detective Shaw arrived under the mistaken assumption that you were being held against your will. When you refused to go with him, he felt that you were under duress and he fired upon the Reverend Ryerson and other church members and had to be