Page 46 of The Wickedness of Man

I stared down at the card, then glanced up at him. “Yeah… sure.”

“I mean it, Caleb,” said Jax. “You have never had a strong opinion of the Church. I know that. But your refusal to devote yourself has made you ripe for picking by the Devil. If I let you out right now, I bet you’d run straight to your demonic mistress, wouldn’t you? You’d be back in her arms before daylight. You’d warn her about everything you just learned.”

I sat back down on the bed, resting my chin on my hands, keeping my voice almost too low for either of us to hear it. “Yes… and you know anyone who had helped me would likely face the same punishment I would for doing so.”

“Look, Caleb…” Jax paused. “I’m an old man now—but you don’t have to let this destroy your life, you understand? I don’t want to see you in the cells any more than you want to be in them, yet I cannot allow you to leave campus. However, given that youdidreturn to accept responsibility for your actions, I will give you some time to collect yourself here, perhaps to fast and pray. I will send for you tomorrow and give strict orders that you are to remain undisturbed while you seek forgiveness.”

Jax gave a final squeeze to my shoulder before turning and striding out of the room. Once he was gone, I waited for the sound of his clicking cane to recede before I reached down and looked at the keycard he’d left in his wake.

Why, Jax? Why help me escape?

I waited only a few minutes, then checked the door—he’d left it unlocked—and stuck my head out in the hall; empty.

I left the room, locking the door behind me from the outside, and snuck down to the reception area and the hall that led to the garage, where Jax’s keycard would ensure I could slip out without anyone ever seeing me on an ident scanner—and give me access to the vehicles that wouldn’t be tracked. I might not make it out of this alive, but in the very least, well… at least I’d die on my own terms.

Jax

“Bishop Knight!” called a voice from behind me. I stopped and turned, waiting for the monk to get close enough so that I could make out his face.

“Ah, Brother Will,” I said, forcing a smile as he approached me at a fast clip—not quite running, but certainly faster than normal.

I was exhausted beyond belief and wanted nothing more than to lie down before morning mass, but only a few scant hours would not be enough to alleviate the burden on my shoulders. And if one of the brothers was running to meet me—the news, I suspected, would not be good. I had a good idea who it would be about, however.

Caleb…

I had tried so long to protect him, but in trying, had only ever made things worse.

“Bishop,” repeated the brother, out of breath. He nodded and lifted a small tablet in his hands, slightly bigger than cell phone. “I thought you should see this first, given your request.”

“My… request?” I began, then stared down at the screen. On it, there was a paused video from what appeared to be an ATM.In the foreground was Caleb, glaring balefully at the dispenser. “Oh. Oh, I see.”

“I feel I need to warn you, this is… a bit alarming,” continued the younger brother.

Though he had to be in his early twenties, the man could have been forty if he was a day. The worried wrinkles in his face aged him considerably—but then again, many of the brothers in our surveillance teams—the ones who saw some of the most depraved actions of demons under our monitoring—frequently began as fresh-faced boys and seemed to wither before my eyes. Like so many others in this Godforsaken sect of the Church.

He pressed play and I watched as Caleb walked away from the camera, his entire body posture rigid as he sat down on the curb. The brother swiped the screen, moving the image of the picture to a higher angle—one of the bank’s main security cameras, I assumed—and then the black van pulled up.

I watched the silent footage as Caleb moved toward them, but the glint of something in Harry’s hand caught my eye. He’d brought agun? Why in God’s name would he have—there was an exchange, and Caleb’s demeanor changed. He headbutted Harry, then threw Special Investigator Banks—the man Caleb knew only as “Home”—over his shoulder with a single toss of one arm. Banks weighed over two hundred pounds, and I’d frequently heard him bragging to the others about his impressive bench-pressing weight, which was somewhere north of three hundred.

I gasped; unable to help myself, as Caleb appeared from the other side of the van, and then, the second van slammed into him.

Instead of pummeling Caleb’s body into paste, the van’s front grill conformed to his body for a fleeting moment before he went sailing over the hood and windshield and tumbled tothe concrete. I shoved my glasses back up on my nose, nearly pressing myself against the screen.

“Harry apparently didn’t think I needed to know about this?” I spat.

Brother Will held up a finger, then pointed to the screen. “There’s more, father.”

Caleb staggered upright as four agents with assault weapons poured out of the van, guns trained on him. I held my breath and watched with nothing short of disbelief as Caleb effectively dispatched each of them, then pulled the driver from the inoperable van before Banks took aim with a dart gun at the same time Harry was leveling his silver gun toward Caleb.

Banks’ dart found its target first, and then again, twice more. Caleb stumbled, yanked the darts out, and then fell to the ground. Harry lowered his weapon; Banks appeared to bark orders, and the agents moved. Brother Will paused the footage, then looked up at me, horror in his eyes.

“Father,” he began, “that gun that Special Investigator Benedict has—I recognize it. I was speaking with Brother Jameson last week, and he was telling me about a prototype for a new weapon, but it’s not even meant to be out of the lab yet.”

“A new weapon?” I asked in alarm. “I hadn’t been told of any?—”

“It came from the special investigators’ unit, apparently. It was all very hush-hush, but the prototype was for a gun that can shoot bullets that are similar to hollow core—only they have a bead of holy water inside of them instead.”

I forced my face to remain impassive, nodding as I listened.

---