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Sadie ran up the stairs and stopped at a locked gate. She slid through the bars into a well-kept garden with a pair of shrines nestled among the artistically gnarled plants. She ignored the shrine to the holy mother and ran towards the smaller one with a large cross as a focal point. They passed a few gravestones, and she dropped to her knees behind the large cross, and dug her hand into the dirt to find a lever.
She pulled the lever that caused the cross to move revealing a small opening at its base. She then slipped into a hidden opening. "Come on."
"I don't think..." Callen started.
"Yeah, don't think. Let's go." She flashed her pretty, yet roguish, smile and Callen followed crawling through old musty tunnels. She pulled out a small flashlight and clicked it on. "These tunnels are all over the place in this place. They run beneath the streets into the Heavenly Pint. I think some of it may be old parts of the rectory before it burned down in the late 1800s. But there are also some parts I think they connect to some of the old sewer systems. I've never gone that deep though. It just smells too bad."
Sadie and Callen inched through the dark crawlspace. After a few turns, they started to hear voices. One was Corth's and the other sounded like someone who had throat cancer. Sadie dimmed the flashlight and pushed a small block. The crawlspace opened and she peered into the room. When she was sure the room was clear, she climbed out. "Aren't old buildings great? There’re all kinds of nooks and crannies in this place, lucky for us those in charge never get a chance to fix this place."
"I guess they're too busy fighting monsters." Callen followed her into a stone room with a few computer monitors on the table and an empty set of chairs.
Sadie brought up the camera feed from the interrogation room. "Normally, your Grandpa's partner would be in here during an interrogation, but he's still in Boston. So, we get to watch." She pointed to the monitor. "They are in the next room over, so be quiet. Some of the older walls in this place are really thin." She adjusted the speakers.
Before a massive table, the shadows of Corth and his prisoner moved in the warm candlelight. From one of the candelabras hanging from the wall built of time-warn brick, Corth plucked free one of the holy candles and bent down towards the floor. In the shifting light, the faint patterns of holy writings had been etched in the cold cement floor. He touched to the flame to the runes, and the oil that ran in them ignited, and slowly spread through the room. Bound to a heavy chair, the sleazy man, with his thin mustache, greasy hair, and aviator sunglasses, struggled as the glowing runes encircled him.
Corth stood, and after replacing the candle he glared at the man. Hatred boiled in his eyes, as if all heaven's vengeance for this demon's crimes rested in the old dwarf's reach. With a satisfying grin curling beneath his thick braids hanging from his upper lip, he tapped his fingers on an old tome, which was resting before the man on an old table. With his other hand, he pulled a wooden cross from his pocket and slammed it down next to the whiskey flask. "I suggest you start talking, lad. 'cause if yeh don't, yeh know yer not walking out o' here..."
"You...can't kill me...you guys have rules."
"Lad, who do yeh think I be? The cops? The Feds? Look at the room. Don't play dumb with me, devil-spawn." He uncapped the flask and splashed the man with holy water. The man's flesh warped and bubbled. The scent of rotten eggs grew more intense.
The man screamed. "I'll kill you for that." He roared.
"I doubt that." Grandpa laughed. "I suggest you start talking. I can play with holy water all day, but I don't have time. So, I'll cut to the chase: start talking or I'll start the exorcism, and fer you half-bloods, which means ripping yeh in half. Holy water this fresh will just help me rip you from this world quicker and more painfully. So, get talkin'." Grandpa reached into his pocket and slammed a medium sized wooden cross on top of the leather book.
"Isn't magic evil?" Callen whispered.
"Exorcisms aren't magic. It's channeling. God is doing the work."
"What?"
"Didn't your grandpa tell you anything about magic?"
"No more than you did. Your classifications just seemed like crap to me." Callen grumbled. "Considering Jesus had magic and probably was magic."
"Jesus wasn't magic," Sadie whispered. "Jesus was god. He used miracles. Miracles are God's creation powers working towards his will. Magic is the perverted knowledge.
"Semantics..." Callen grunted.
"Lad, yeh have to the count of three." Corth opened the book. "One..."
The man started to panic. "I told you I don't know anything about no missing children. I told you everything. We're just after the glams, humans don't care about them. Please...let me go." He whimpered.
"Glam?" Callen whispered.
"Demon slang for unseelie fey," Sadie answered. "Fairies that can't visibly pass for human."
"Great," Callen muttered sarcastically. "Demons and Tinkerbelle. What's next? Mermaids singing under the ocean with a talking crab?"
"You wish you were in a Disney flick..." Sadie whispered. "Then you might get the girl..."
"Thanks," Callen muttered.
"Pity." Grandpa picked up the cross and began to say something in Latin. His voice got stronger and more intense as he read. The man's skin started to smoke and his skin began to split open as if some invisible clawed force was tearing out of him.
"Wait." He coughed. Corth didn't stop. "It wasn't us, I swear. You know that we wouldn't kidnap that many, not so close together. It is something else, you have to believe me!" The man's skin began to smoke.
"You're gonna have to do better than that." Corth chanted more, and he began to burn.
The demon voice grew frantic as the flames grew stronger. "And the word in the shadows is...some of those kids you're looking for return a few days later...with scars on them...no one knows why...you should really do your homework, thin-blood."
As Corth continued the Latin, the demon leaned forward. The hungry look of a feral animal washed over his face. Through the thin cloud of smoke, he lunged towards Corth with a malicious snarl. His jaw unhinged and rows of rusty shark-like teeth slid out of his gum line.
Corth didn't flinch as the teeth gnashed a few millimeters from his face. Unyielding with his holy words, he kicked the table into the demon knocking him backward and causing him to crack his skull on the floor. Before the demon could reorient himself, Corth's boot was on his neck and a sparkle of enjoyment twinkled in the old dwarf's eye as righteous flames erupted. The flames grew, like a bonfire, in which Corth stood unharmed. The demon, however, convulsed and snarled in a hellish tongue as his flesh cooked.
Callen felt his lungs spasm and the burning exploded in his chest. He held back the cough. As the guy screamed in pain, Callen slowly let go of the cough; otherwise, it would turn into a spasm. Sadie shot him a dirty look.
"You're gonna get us in trouble." She whispered.
"Sadie, I don't feel so good." He started to get dizzy, but Sadie caught him and helped him into a chair before he fell over.
"In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit." Corth roared. He slammed the book closed and held the cross before the burning man. "Amen." The demon stopped moving and the flames dissipated, leaving only a smoldering corpse with blackened metal modifications on his fingers and jaw. "One less o' you fookers on the street." He inspected the demon's corpse. "These alterations are damn expensive..."
Sadie leaned me back against the wall. "You alright?"
"Yeah." He swallowed. "Maybe I'm allergic to something down here." He coughed with his mouth closed.
By touching something on his wrist, Corth answered a phone call. "Ello, lad." He spoke without holding anything to his ear as if he had a microphone somewhere on his person. "Aye, lad. Things are going well up there? No?" He cursed. "Aye. But, as for
some good news, I caught a few leads on the kidnapping case here. Said it wasn't anything he knew about. He insisted through the exorcism that it be someone else and deh kidnappings be far too many to be related to demon magic. He said his bunch be after unseelie fey, well, that in less polite words. But, I not be believing him just yet. I got some checking up to do. However, I should mention he was surgically altered." He paused and listened.
"Surgically altered?" Callen asked as he gained control of himself.
Sadie shrugged.
"Aye, he also said the children were being returned with scars on their spines...so, that rules out possession." Corth paused to let his partner talk. "Aye, and those types of surgeries are costly...so, that could explain why the money led me to him...I'll make a note in the file about looking into medical professionals and fey connections." He paused again. "I don't know, lad. But, there could be two separate issues here...and that would mean there's another player involved. But, either way the kidnappings are the priority...if demons aren't the culprit, we'll deal with them later. If they're wrapped up together, then watch yer back, lad. A shadow war between demons and fey not be two things we want to be sandwiched between. Good luck and Felix will get yeh what yeh need. Later."
"So, what the hell just happened?" Callen asked.
"You started to get sick."
"No, with Grandpa."
"Interrogation and a standard exorcism."
"Does it kill them?"
"The host tends to die, unless you get them really early in the process. But, whether it sends the demon back to hell or destroys them, who knows."
"What about the water and the oil?"
"Holy oil and water will kill them too, but you need a lot of it, like enough to fully submerge someone. They're better for torturing those monsters." She looked at the screen and saw Corth step towards the door. "But, we should get out of here. Besides, you're looking a little ill. Let's go get those cheesesteaks. That'll fix ya right up."
Callen followed Sadie back through the crawlspace. He felt a sharp edge on the smooth stone wall. He paused for a second and ran his hand across it. It felt like something metal had scratched the cement wall. "Hey, there is a scratch here..." He whispered. "Gimme the light." He grabbed the light from Sadie and began inspecting it.
"Yeah, I think that's from the original foundation or maybe when they added these crawl spaces. I have seen those all over the place. Maybe someone damaged this place when they rebuilt what's above us."
"It looks newer than that. Like it was scraped by some sharp tool."
"Yeah, but who knows?"