Page 35 of The Wickedness of Man

“I’ll take him from here,” said the agent with the gun as Home opened the door and grabbed me by the manacles, yanking me out of the van.

I wobbled, but managed to stand upright, even though it required a Herculean effort.

“All yours, sir,” said Home, waving as he wandered off.

The other agent took hold of my restraints without another word, and Home and the other agents who hadn’t needed immediate medical care made their way over to the freight elevator that would take them up top and back to the dorms. My escort yanked on my manacles, almost making my legs slide out from beneath me.

“Let’s get a move on,” he said. “You’ve got a date with the Devil, I hear—oh, wait, I forgot—that was how you spent your evening.”

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response, partially because I’d decided I’d already gotten into enough trouble, but partially because my brain was too sluggish to produce a witty repartee. We arrived at the double glass doors that held an ident scanner, and the man in the balaclava beside me unmasked himself.

“Fuck sake,” I groaned as recognition hit me. “Harry Benedict, you must be the biggest bastard I have ever met in my life.”

He grinned at me, then flashed his access card on the screen to bypass the lengthy biometric verification process. The doors slid open to allow us into the cool, air-conditioned interior of the organization. We walked down the cement hall toward a door on the end which would open into a large reception room and a then into a series of smaller rooms, dozens of twisting halls, doors, and more elevators. Some that led to rooms that someone withmy clearance wasn’t allowed in, and some, such as the cells, that someone with my clearance had been in too many times.

“Nah, man, that’s definitely you.” He glanced over at me, a sliver of rage in his eyes. “You fucking see what you did to my face, man? My nose isbroken.”

I stared down at him. We’d always been told we looked alike, which pissed Harry off to no end whenever someone mentioned it. Whereas my hair was dark auburn and my eyes were light blue, his hair was a sandier-colored brown and his eyes were a grayer, darker blue. At the moment, they were framed by bruises and a thick, bloody line over the ridge of his nose. There was dried blood down this mouth and lips, too. We were a few inches apart in height; he was just over six feet tall and came up to my jaw. Whereas I had broad shoulders and a thicker build, Harry was a touch thinner, with lithe muscles that hid just how strong he really was. In school one year, I’d seen him lift another student with one hand and throw him against the wall.

“Yeah, well I’m pretty sure mine is broken, too; I’ve been tasting blood the whole drive back and my face is swollen. Besides, you deserved it, pulling that stunt back there. By the way, I think you enjoyed that whole charade a little too much.” I scowled at him. “Was it really necessary to do the whole gun and mask routine and tell me you’re putting me straight in the cells? I mean, fuck’s sake, if you’d just told me it was you, I would have just gone wi?—”

“Orders are orders, Knight,” he said, casting a look over at me that held no apology; there was the hint of devilish delight in his face, “and it definitely wasn’t an act. You’re in the shit.”

I glared down at him as he scanned his card on the next door at the end of the hall, then opened the door and turned back to me.

“After you, dickweed,” he said.

My hands tightened into fists in the manacles. Harry Benedict had, at one point, been the closest thing I’d had to a friend in the entire seminary. After graduation, he’d been made special investigator, and I hadn’t, so off to special investigator bullshit land he’d gone, while I checked myself into the roach motels that counted for apartments around here. I hadn’t seen him in almost nine years, and he seemed far more intense than I’d ever remembered him being. There was something in his demeanor suggesting an edge of danger.

“Don’t got all morning, Knight. Gonna have to meet with the archbishop in a bit and explain how bad you fucked everything up.” He waved me onward. The gun might have been holstered now, but I got the distinct impression if I gave Harry the chance to use it, he’d gladly do so.

“What the hell happened to you, man? You could have just asked me to get in, and instead you decided to take the piss and play all that dodgy agent shit?”

Harry shook his head. “Considering what you just did to my men, I’m surprised Jax still wants to talk to you at all. In fact, our authorization had been to make it afullbag and gag; take you to a safe house for detox,thenbring you to the cells.” He jerked his thumb back toward the garage. “Home talked me out of it. Said campus was just as good if not better. Personally, I think he just didn’t want the extra drive, and I can’t blame ’im, considering how long we spent scouring the area to find you and your demon gal.”

He shoved me through the doorway, pushing me ahead of him. For second, I’d had the terrifying idea that he’d meant Magda before I remembered he was still referring to Dr. Lowe. I forced my face to remain neutral as I marched forward down the bizarre red carpet leading to the large reception desk nearly a hundred feet away. The interior of the org’s main reception area was as big as an airplane bunker with marble floors, red hallrunners, and thick, heavy blood-colored drapes behind which many of the secret elevators and rooms it boasted were hidden.

These also happened to hide many of those eyes and ears in the walls. Everywhere down here was bugged or watched—or so they’d told us. It was probably true, though.

“Mydemon ‘gal?’” I said as I stumbled forward toward the single reception desk. “What is this, an eighties sitcom? I don’t have any ‘gal,’ demon or otherwise, dumbass.”

“That so?” asked Harry, his tone light. “You were, ah… gone for a while, weren’t you? Plenty of time to get to know one another, I mean, after you helped her escape and all, right? After you pursued that succubus against orders. By your own admission, you can’t really remember what happened, and then you went goddamnRamboon eight of your fellow agents—including a special investigator. You tell me: is it unreasonable to assume you fell prey to her charms?”

“Oh, but your bullshit about taking me straight to the cells had nothing to do with me going off on your ass? You think that shit was funny?”

“Hysterical, actually,” said Harry under his breath, a toothy grin crawling up his smug face as we walked toward two figures in front of the reception desk. “That was just act one—just wait until you see what I’ve got planned for the finale.”

The resident organization bishop Jackson Knight stood beside a small, stooped female figure covered from head to toe in a thick black veil like some kind of fucked-up mixture between bride of Satan and nun. Although the bishop and I shared the same last name, it was only because we’d both been “adopted” by the organization—all orphans brought into the school got the same last name. He’d been adopted around fifty or so years ago.

“You’d better have a goddamn good explanation, Caleb,” said Jax, glowering at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his thick-lensed glasses, but I knew they’d practically be spitting fire. Headjusted them farther up their perch on his nose along the thick white scar that stretched from just center of his forehead across the bridge and down across his left cheek. He gripped the metal cane in his liver-spotted hands with aggravation.

He might have gotten long in the tooth, but when Jax was angry, the entire organization would feel his wrath. I would know; I was frequently front and center to it.

“Language, padre,” I muttered.

Harry clapped me on the shoulder reproachfully and whispered, “You’ll want to behave for this one, Caleb. I’m not kidding.”

Panic welled. Did they know? Had they seen me running from the building carrying Magda? Worse still—had I left her alone in that place under the guise of believing I could bullshit my way out of this and get back to her if I just took my beatings like an obedient hound?

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