enemies of the state (45 page)

Tonight, a revenant was tearing through the Ostia Antica Cemetery, screaming wildly into the night and cracking marble tombs with its roars of rage. The shrieks had chilled Alain’s blood when he and Lotario arrived, like branches scratching over glass. The cold followed, then, an unnatural chill that swam through the Roman fog and seeped into his bones.

They had arrived just in time to see the revenant shriek its way out of the cemetery and cross the street, a swirl of shadow and bloodred rage. Curls of terror and fury crashed through the drivers along the road. Cars spun out, tires squealing, horns honking, and people suddenly cursed at each other as they rocked with the sensations of a demon they couldn’t see.

Across the street from the cemetery, St. Golden’s church, a bedraggled medieval building of crumbling, rotten stone and ivy-covered castle walls, sat in the middle of a cracked cobblestone courtyard. Candles inside the church twinkled, lit with prayers and whispers from the congregation, but it was the lights in the rectory that drew the revenant. Inside it went, and the elderly priest barricaded himself inside his closet.

Angelo was talking to the priest over the phone, trying to calm the old man down from his hyperventilating hysterics. A man of the cloth the priest may be, but preaching in a pulpit and saying grace didn’t prepare a man to come face-to-face with a resurrected corpse-spirit full of rage and bitter malice on a Tuesday night.

“The stairs around the back go up to the rectory,” Lotario said, motioning with his head. “I’ll slip up the back. You come in from the front and cover me. Distract it. I’ll hit him with the flask when it’s occupied with you.”

Alain snorted. “This plan sounds dubious at best.”

Lotario shrugged, and a devil-may-care smirk curled up the edges of his lips. “If you would carry more than just your pistol—”

“No.” Alain sighed. “How many times—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lotario took another pull from the flask of vodka. “One day, Alain.”

“On three?” Alain ignored him and glanced around the church wall, looking at the front entrance to the rectory. “I can get inside in six seconds.”

“Well, then wait here for a bit before you go. You know I smoke.” Lotario pushed off the wall and ducked around the side of the church, heading for the rear stairwell. His long legs pumped behind him, his suit jacket flapping in the night.

Alain watched and waited, his lips pressed tight, holding in his curse, until Lotario reached the base of the stairs.

Then, he took off, racing around the other side of the church wall and tearing for the rectory’s entrance.

Alain burst inside, crashing through the doors with his shoulder and splintering the ancient wood from its hinges. He stumbled but heard the upstairs balcony door crash and then a roar from the revenant. Leaping, Alain dashed up the wooden stairs of the church rectory, taking them three at a time, and then kicked down the priest’s bedroom door.

The revenant, a swirl of ruby mist coalescing into a vaguely human shape, though elongated and stretched out of proportion, spun, the mist shrieking into Alain’s face. He raised his pistol and fired once, trying to squint through the haze.

Lotario knew better than to be in the path of his bullets.

Then again, he really could never be too sure with Lotario, but Alain caught the sound of a flask’s cap hitting the wooden floorboards.

From behind a thick wooden door, he heard sobbing and then pleading and frantic prayers to God. The priest. He rolled to his side, edging along the wall as Lotario doused the revenant mist with the flask of vodka. Lotario brandished his blade in front of him, swished wildly through the air, holding the revenant back, and sprayed the demon’s incorporeal form.

Alain reached the closet right as he heard Lotario flick his lighter. “Jesus Christ,” Alain breathed, rolling his eyes.

He ripped open the door in one quick jerk, sweeping with his pistol. Inside, the old priest was curled into a ball, a stain on his bathrobe showing where he’d pissed himself. Red-rimmed eyes and a tear-stained face turned toward Alain. He was gasping, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Marys by rote.

Behind Alain, Lotario’s lighter landed in the dripping pile of vodka tossed through the revenant’s mist. Flames bloomed, erupting in a fireball through the priest’s bedroom, engulfing the revenant and searing through its ethereal form. Another shriek, this one worse than all the others combined, tore from the revenant’s burning shadow, a formless, screeching cry of fury and agony. The flames followed the mist as it tried to flee, tried to scatter, the fire burning away the revenant like a vapor, flaring out in a single moment.

Burn marks smoked up from the priest’s bedroom floor. Lotario stepped forward and poured the second flask—Holy Water, this time—onto the black scorch seared into the wood. He ground his heel against the drops when they sizzled and popped.

Alain held out his hand for the priest, but the old man fainted, a breathless gasp wheezing past his lips.

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