(On time! On time! happy dance A little bit of a slow chapter; some preparation for the final two. Hope you enjoy! Comments and concrit welcomed!)
They'd packed Demon Perry into the back of her van. JD didn't know how she'd gotten into the parking garage in the first place, and frankly, he didn't want to. God, all of this was so freaky! He'd had chills running down his spine when he helped her drag the netted Perry into the trunk. A broken record of 'for the love of everything good, please don't let him wake up' had been playing in his head.
Now they were driving, leaving the city behind them. Jack was curled up on his lap, sleeping. Apparently the events of the evening had made the toddler drowsy. JD really wished that his body would react the same way. It would be so much easier for this to be a bad dream.
It was too quiet. "So… care to explain what's going on?"
"You want the long version or the short version?"
"Wasn't what you said in the garage basically the short version?"
"True." She turned onto the highway. "Well, I suppose the long isn't too much longer than the short. You can call me Diane Carter; Dia for short. I'm a demon hunter by trade; we get calls in about rogue demons and come to take them out."
"How come I've never heard about this before?"
"Do you know what kind of crazy panic people would be under if they knew about demons?" She snorted, brushing a strand of hair back, and oh, wasn't that an ugly scar? Right under her ear too, ouch.
She was still talking to him. "No, it's easier to just keep this stuff under wraps. They call us in, have us destroy the demons, and our teams come in to do damage control if we make too big of a mess out of it."
"So… who called you?"
"Some jackass priest who decided not to mention that this demon had possessed a target."
"Does that matter?"
"Well, generally if we know that it's a possessed human, they send more than one person so we actually have a chance in hell of freeing the person."
"…so there's no chance?"
"Never said that." She glanced over and gave him a stare, as if sizing him up. Then she turned her eyes back to the road. Shook her head. "But it's not looking too great."
JD's heart sank. Oh come on, he wasn't that pathetic, was he?
"Look, I… I can't promise the world to you. I'm going to attempt to try and save Perry's spirit, but this is usually at least a three or four person job. Getting someone exorcized is hard."
JD had the urge to ask if shouting 'the power of Christ compels you!' while waving around a cross would do it, but somehow, in the present situation, the joke just wasn't funny.
"So where are we going?"
"If you're going to exorcize someone, you need to take them back to the place where they first became possessed. You see, demons like to hang around in places like churches and synagogues and mosques. They prey most easily on someone who's at a weak point in their lives and is susceptible to the demon's powers. People like that usually turn to a faith, and in turn, their places of worship."
JD had stopped listening after the words 'weak point.' Perry was at a weak point? What was going on… what did I miss? He seemed like he was getting nicer, not depressed! What could he have possibly missed?
"And since I got a call from a priest, and that priest just happened to mention the church he presides over…" -she flashed him a grin- "I have a feeling that's where we need to head to."
She seemed to expect acknowledgement of her deduction skills by him. Well, she would have to look somewhere else. His thoughts were not with her at the moment.
What happened to him? What did I miss?
>>
JD made a note to himself: going to a church at night was creepy. Especially if you had a demon in the back of your van and it looked like the remains of an Alfred Hitchcock thunderstorm outside.
Dia jumped out of the vehicle immediately, mumbling something about finding the priest and 'giving him a piece of my mind.' Really, who could blame her? But JD needed some time to think first, so he stayed seated.
This whole day had turned out to be the craziest experience of his life. He'd been groped by Perry in a storage closet (technically the other man had been possessed, but JD was so going to count this as a check in the 'he likes me' column despite it). Then he'd been chased through an apartment building and parking garage by a giant ass demon (Perry always said he'd really try to kill me one day). Now he'd teamed up with a really, really weird woman (army boots and a cowgirl hat; fashion maven this woman was not) to try and save his friend from some type of eternal damnation.
He was going to kill whoever wrote that morning's horoscope.
Slam. Gah! Was it really necessary for her to scare the fuck out of him by pounding on the window?
"Get your ass in gear, kid! We've got a demon to kill!" Oh god, she had to be related to Perry, she was giving him the same 'stop-being-an-incompetent-dumbshit' look that he constantly got from the other man.
"And bring the kid! I don't want to come out here and have another possession to deal with!"
JD woke up Jack, explaining that they were going to go exploring a church for a little bit (why is it that all of the Coxes start glaring whenever someone mentions religious stuff?). After some coaxing (okay, a LOT of coaxing), he opened the door and got them both out of the car, Jack trailing behind him.
Dia was waiting at the back and handed him the end of a long rope. Together they lugged the net holding Perry out of the trunk and dragged it around the side, pulling it towards the church steps. Oh, he was SO glad that the demon was unconscious as they pulled him up the steps. Not like Perry would give a shit at this point, but I'd rather do this with him not thrashing about.
The church was deserted, and if the entirety of the front lobby hadn't been so well taken care of, JD would've thought the place was abandoned. The main chamber held a cracked stone altar, broken pews and a cross with a few gashes sliced through it. Yeah, he's definitely been here. Leave it to Perry to destroy religious stuff.
They dragged Perry up onto the first level of the altar. It was large and wide enough to hold the entirety of his demon body, and still hold room for them to stand. Dia knelt and knocked on the ground. Huh, what was she so happy about all of a sudden?
"Stone is good at containing spell work; I won't have to put down an extra barrier."
"Magic? You're serious."
"Your friend is a demon and this shit is surprising you?"
"…Good point." Shut your mouth and stop acting like a damned fool, JD. "So what do you have to do to exorcize someone?"
"You'll see in a sec. First, a precaution." She removed her shotgun and opened the chamber, pulling a few bullets from a pouch on her belt and loading them in. She held one up for him to see. "Sulfur. Explodes on impact. A demon's biggest weaknesses are sulfur and fire."
"Why?"
"Nobody knows." She loaded another bullet. "I've got a theory though. Are you a religious man?"
"I'm Jewish, that's all I should have to say."
She chuckled. "Good to know you've got a sense of humor about it. I'm not religious, but if I was, I'd say that we were wrong about demons and hell. They want to escape it as badly as we do, because it's as painful down there. I mean, it's hell, and anything living in hell can't be having a good time! That's why the demons are here, to escape it. And considering fire and sulfur are traditionally all what hell would be made of, no wonder it hurts them so much."
She clicked the barrel shut. "But I'm not a religious woman, so I guess I can't even believe my own theory, can I?"
Wow, that was one whacked out woman. Did she even listen to herself speak?
"Lady, are you cwazy?"
"Jack!" Okay, so he wasn't JD's kid, but that didn't mean he didn't have SOME semblance of control over Jack, right?
"What?" Guh, the son was as incorrigible as the father. Wow, had he actually used that word right? Sweet!
"No, it's alright." Dia laughed, leaning down to ruffle Jack's hair. "You're a pretty funny kid, you know that?" Her face was wistful for a moment, and it seemed to JD to be a look only a mother could have. Wonder if she's got a kid… maybe condemning Jack to life without a father isn't something she wants to do.
She stood, gave JD a nod, and motioned towards the pews. "Step off a second and let me work."
He obliged, grasping Jack's hand and pulling him off the altar. They stood a few feet away and watched as she pulled a cigar out of a pouch and lit it, lips puffing out an oval of smoke before a hacking cough escaped her lips. It seemed kind of weird to be smoking now though. She couldn't wait a bit for a smoking break? They were in the middle of an emergency here!
"Smoking," she said, flicking a few ashes down, "is a terrible habit. God, anybody who smokes these things out of pleasure is a moron. I never get used to it."
Okay; now that confused him, but he watched her anyways. She walked, circling Perry and puffing on the stick. When enough of the cigar had been turned to ash, she tapped it to the floor around him, drawing a circle of ash around his form. It took three cigars to form a semi-decent circle.
Finally, she stepped back, surveying it before giving an approving nod. JD could only scrunch his nose at the foul smell. How much damage must she have done to her lungs if she needed to perform exorcisms this often?
Next she turned and walked to the duffle bag she had brought in with them. Unzipping it, she withdrew a worn, leather-bound book. She flipped it open and immediately found the page she needed, another sign of her experience at whatever this was. A few words echoed from her mouth into the void of the church, and flames sprang up around Demon Perry, following the circle that the ash had created.
JD watched, fascinated. For somebody so whacked out, she sure knows what she's doing. If for some odd reason he lost the urge to be a doctor, how hard would it be to get into this line of work? Wonder if you get hazard pay.
"Okay kid, here's the deal." She turned and walked over to JD. Wow, those flickering shadows made her look even creepier; if that was possible.
"I'm going to start this up. Basically, I have to wake Perry up from the comatose state my net put him in, and then use the chants to summon the demon out of him. Usually, there are multiple people performing this chant at the same time, which increases the success rate.
But," she continued, flicking her finger out to point at him, "only somebody who is experienced and trained like hell is supposed to attempt this chant. It's dangerous to mispronounce it, and all sorts of horrible things can go wrong, which is why you will be standing in the back with Jack and staying out of my way. Got it?"
Jeez, thanks for making me feel useless. He really didn't like being ordered around and unable to help, but knew she was probably right. What the hell did he know about demon hunting?
"If things get out of hand, get the kid and get out of here. There's only a limited amount of time that we have to exorcize someone; after that, they're lost to the demon forever. But during the opening we do have, the demon will go after the person's loved ones, because once a demon-possessed kills a friend or family member, that's it; it's over for them. Even if we free them from the demon, their mind is fucked up forever by that experience. They either try to kill themselves or get locked up in mental asylums for the rest of their lives."
"So if this goes wrong, we're still in danger?"
"Yeah, until Perry is lost to the demon forever. Then you're as fucked over as the rest of us!"
Wonderful. "Good luck?"
She snorted. "We're gonna need all the luck we can get." She motioned her hand, and JD stepped back, picking Jack up (despite his protests of wanting to 'see the cwazy lady do more stuff') and heading to the back of the church.