Page 47 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
“I’m going to do everything I can to turn back time,” he promises.
I wish I could trust him. I wish that word meant something to me anymore.
“You can’t,” I breathe and drop the bracelet. “The damage is done. Good luck charms don’t work. Time travel doesn’t exist. Promises break. We’re different people now.”
Hurt flashes in his eyes, but I don’t allow another word. I turn and stride to the door.
Alarmed, he reaches for me. “Leila, don’t.”
I palm the door hard enough to fling it open. The bell smacks tonelessly as my boots slap on something wet. Blood and dead bodies are everywhere. At least fifty, maybe a hundred people of all shapes and sizes litter the room. No children as far as I can see. The lights are on. The jukebox plays something on repeat. The beer tap is pulled down, but nothing comes from the nozzle. The keg must be drained dry. Broken glass is everywhere.
My eyes sweep the place again, taking in each body. Some still clutch a weapon, whether a broken bottle, gun, or kitchen knife. I sense the same tainted feeling in the room as I did at the abbey.
“This is like what happened when Asmodeus infected the nuns.” I step into the room and try not to breathe the miasma too deeply. “This is the carnage we’d have found if we were a few minutes later and Thea didn’t have the staff.”
Writing on the mirrored wall behind the bar catches my eye. I almost missed the message written in blood. Ezekiel 9: 5-6.
“Definitely Asmodeus,” I whisper with a shudder.
Zeke’s gun is out and cocked as he reads the message like it will jump out and hit him in the face.
“Does that mean something to you?” I ask, my brow lifting.
He shakes his head a little too fast.
“You think it’s a coincidence he quoted Ezekiel twice?” I pull out my cell phone, take a picture of the words, and send it to Thea. She doesn’t answer immediately, and I’m impatient. I try to recall my Bible studies but never could retain much of it. With a frown, I realize the range on my cell is poor.Damn it.
“Do you know what verse that is?” I ask Zeke.
He looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “I don’t read the Bible. Oh, wait. I do have one in my bag.”
While he returns to the Mustang, I stand in the open doorway and infuse my lungs with fresh air. Through the shadows down the road, I see him rifling through his bag in the back seat. It’s so dark out there. Owls still hoot in the woods. Clouds pass the moon. A trickle of apprehension sharpens my gaze, and I search for signs of the enemy.
Zeke drives the car into the lot and then brings me my katana and a small beat-up Bible.
“Looks pretty well used for someone who never reads it,” I note.
“I don’t.” He smirks as he thumbs through page after page of handwritten notes. I catch lists, diagrams, and crude demonic sketches. This must be his demonology notebook. I want to read it like his diary, to find out if anything he said to me was true, but I flick through to Ezekiel’s gospel. It’s Old Testament and closer to the start, which means plenty of scribbling over the words. Hopefully, the verse we want is still legible through the notes. I run my finger down the page as I scan.
“Here.” I tap between a handwritten list of ghost hunters Zeke must have been investigating and a list in another language. Is that Romanian?
Zeke’s presence is warm and calming at my back as he reads over my shoulder. “The Lord commands: kill without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children.”
“That’s pretty dark.” I turn the page. “What was the verse Asmodeus wrote on the wall next to the Monsignor?”
“Ezekiel 18:4.”
I glance at him, surprised he remembered.
But he’s focused on the new verse and reads. “All lives are mine; the life of the parent and the life of the child belong to me. Only the one who sins will die.”
“So Asmodeus started out saying only the sinners will die, but now wants revenge on everyone. Great.”
“He’s mad,” Zeke says.
“He’s War.”
The sound of something metal and heavy drops behind the office door at the end of the bar. It’s open a crack. I creep toward it, readying my sword. Zeke grips my shoulder, trying to stop me, but I shake him off, annoyed.Christ.If he keeps doing this protector thing, I’ll lose it.
