Page 31 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
The quiet unraveled. Lincoln stared at Bishop, canine eyes narrowed, ears perked, muzzle set calmly. When he reached for them, Colin bristled, but Bishop didn’t wince or step away. They allowed Lincoln to touch their jaw, to dust his knuckles across their cheek, the same place he’d struck them days ago, and they made a tiny, broken sound when he curled his fingers around their throat—squeezing. His thumb found the bruise Colin’s mouth had left behind. They gripped his wrists and wobbled on their tiptoes, inhaling sharply through their nose.
“Love…?” they wheezed. Their pupils slitted. Magic pulsed through their skin, sending gilded light bouncing around the basement. “Is this love?”
“Is that?” Lincoln asked. He nudged his maw toward the corpse in the recliner.
Dread opened like a pit in Colin’s stomach. He reached for the light writhing beneath his skin and brought his palms together, sending a crispgongreverberating around the room. The sound mimicked a church bell, metallic and deep, and caused Lincoln to retract his hand and slap his palms over his folded ears. Lincoln curled inward, spine arching, bone splintering, becoming more animal, more demon, until the sound faded and Marchosias paused his assault on their conjoined form. Lincoln opened his jaw for a fierce snarl. His elongated, slickened teeth shone pearl-white, sprouting from pink gums. His shoulders hunched defensively, and he bent his knuckles, sending horrid, howling noise toward Colin.
“By God, I have provided safe harbor,” Colin said, projecting over the growl bubbling in Lincoln’s throat. “I have brought to you, by grace and humility, a vessel for your lost soul, a place for the damned to reside, and I command thee—demon, wretched, unclean—to cross into this abandoned body.” He looped his rosary around his palm, settling his thumb over the cross dangling from the bottom bead, and pressed the crucifix to the corpse’s cold forehead. “Like our friend Lazarus, you have fallen into dreadful sleep, and I have come to wake you.”
Lincoln stormed forward. He pitched his body toward Colin, but Bishop intercepted, sending a golden rope around their ex-husband’s ankle. The light came from nowhere and everywhere, shooting through the floor like vines, falling through the ceiling to catch on Lincoln’s belt. Bishop kept their hand outstretched, shaking with exertion, holding Lincoln at bay.
“I call upon the resurrectionist, sanctifier of life, take this soul and give him breath,” Colin shouted. He shifted his gaze to Bishop and gave a curt nod.
All at once the light blinked out, the ethereal ropes vanished, and Lincoln bounded forward. Teeth grazed his hand, slicing pale skin, but Colin met his mark and grasped Lincoln’s face in a confident grip.
“Like Lazarus, I wake thee,” he shouted. Lincoln thrashed, but his movements turned choppy and malformed. “Like Lazarus, I wake thee!”
Across the room, Bishop sniffled. A few candles winked and dimmed, simmering out one by one. Loamy wind cracked through the basement, tossing smoke from smoldering wicks, rustling Bishop’s clothes, gusting along Colin’s rosary, and made for the corpse. Colin felt the transference like electricity. Lincoln and Marchosias shocked through his body, rattled his skeleton, and began to disintegrate.
Beneath his palm, Lincoln’s wolfish head peeled away. Became ash and soot. Floated into the strange, mud-scented airstream and rushed into the body tied to the recliner. Shot into the corpse’s nostrils, filled Lincoln’s empty ear canals, dry eye-sockets, and snaked past his chapped lips. Like a swarm of locusts, Lincoln and Marchosias filled Lincoln’s bloodless corpse, and on a painful, sandy cough, the dead reanimated.
“Like Lazarus, let it be done,” Colin spat, panting. He lowered his hand from where it’d hovered mid-air and pushed the crucifix into Lincoln’s waxy flesh. “Like Lazarus, you are reborn.”
Lincoln opened his eyes. He immediately jerked against the restraints, hissing through his teeth once the rope snared his skin. Colin stepped away and straightened in place. He brushed invisible dust from his sweater and cracked his neck, granting Lincoln a proper once over.
Lincoln Stone carried the same primal, caged look Isabelle had before she died. The same expression Bishop had worn in the cemetery. Flighty gaze, dilated pupils, bared teeth.Desperation, he thought,a wounded animal reluctant to be contained.He searched Lincoln’s eyes, colored like Paraiba tourmaline, and snorted dismissively. The divinity thrumming in his runic tattoos made him brave or stupid. Both, perhaps.
“Priest,” Lincoln said. He spat at Colin’s tightly laced shoes. “I told you, didn’t I? Their heart is a beartrap.”
“I’m not a priest, and their heart is none of my business,” Colin said. He curled his knuckles inward, flexing his fists.
“Ah, but you’ve made it your business. Or are you only interested in their juicy—”
Colin struck Lincoln with the back of his hand. The connection, hard knuckles against sallow cheek, clapped through the dimly lit room. Bishop inhaled raggedly, as if they had something to say, but opted for silence instead. Colin glanced at them. Met their eyes for a heartbeat, then two, before he shifted his attention back to Lincoln.
“Like I said, I’m no priest,” he rasped, assessing reddened knuckles. “Technically, I’m hardly an exorcist anymore. Specialist is more appropriate. Would you like to know what I specialize in?”
Lincoln licked dark, tar-like blood—embalming fluid and distressed flesh—from his split lip. “No,” he drawled, and hissed something in a dead language. Latin, maybe. Or Aramaic. “You bore me, churchling. I’ve heard better stories from liquor-poached sailors and New York vagrants.”
Colin pulled leather gloves from his back pocket and fingered them into place over each hand. “I extract beings like you from dwellings like this. I do so gently, as often as I can, but I take no issue in severing you from this place by force if you refuse to leave willingly. Do you understand, Marchosias?”
An awful, choked-off noise left Lincoln’s mouth. Low, like a wolf chomping bone. He parted his lips, but his face remained unmoving. An eerie, familiar sound tumbled off his stationary tongue.
“Do you understand, Marchosias?” Lincoln parroted, but it was Isabelle in the room. Her honeyed voice landed like a wasp on Colin’s ear. The corpse flashed yellowing teeth, gums caked in blackened blood, and hiccuped through cruel laughter. “You’re famous, Colin Hart,” Lincoln said, returning to his rich, venomous voice. “So far from God, so close to Hell, so rich in sin. More like us than you think, yes?”
“Enough,” Bishop barked.
“And you, mightybrujo,” Lincoln seethed, craning toward them. “Such power and no sense to use it. What a waste…” He paused, brow furrowing, mouth squirming, as if two-halves of a whole warred within him. He settled for an indignant snort and flicked his eyes to Colin. “Aren’t they magnificent? Entirelyraw,” he whispered, widening his mouth for the word. “Still becoming, still searching for someone to unleash their potential. How ‘bout you, exorcist? Will you jam yourself inside them again? Pick all their locks? Or will you put a knife to their throat?”
Colin brushed past Bishop and crossed the room, retrieving a white bottle from atop the washer. He twisted the lid, dumped Holy Water into his palm, and flicked droplets onto Lincoln’s bare skin. Smoke ribboned away from the singe-marks dotting the tops of Lincoln’s hands and the bridge of his sloped nose. He writhed in his restraints. Bowed away from the recliner and flared his nostrils, bared his teeth and kicked at the concrete floor.
Stay steady,Colin thought. Isabelle’s saccharine voice had unnerved him. He could hardly concentrate without hearing an echo of her behind every thought.
“I adjure thee, demon,” Colin said, leveling his tone, and rained blessed water on Lincoln again. “You are cast out—exit this body, this place, this dwelling.”
When Lincoln Stone peeled his eyes open, he blinked at Bishop. Gasped and shuddered and breathed like a frightened deer. “Bishop,” he whispered, straining against rope and divinity. “Baby, please. I’m in… I’m in pain, okay? It’s like someone’s got ahold of my organs, like I’m bein’ pulled apart.” He heaved in another great breath. Like most exorcisms, Colin halfway believed him. Understood longing, recognized the regret vining around his vocal cords. “I didn’t know it’d be like this. I-I didn’t mean to… to hurt you. I’d never—youknowthat—you know I’d never—”
Colin arched an eyebrow. “Utilize their blood without permission? Torture them in the home you used to share? Smack them—”
