“I’ve got him!” Judah grabbed him by the backpack and jerked hard, falling back on his rear with the stranger prone on the ground between his legs.
The stranger recovered first, flipping over and lunging at Judah, who shrieked and tried to crab-walk away. Nathan threw himself at them, using his bulkier weight to pin the stranger down. An elbow nailed him right in the eye, and he twisted away, his face throbbing.
“We’ve got to hold him down,” he said, trying to grab the boy’s scrabbling hands. He found Nathan’s wrist first, jerking him forward and rolling them. Nathan cursed as he toppled over and landed on his back. A slender leg slung across his waist, and Nathan barely had time to raise an arm to fend him off as he lunged toward his throat like a rabid animal.
Teeth sank into Nathan’s forearm, and when he took a breath to scream, the stranger slapped a hand over his open mouth. Something small and cylindrical fell into his mouth from between his fingers. Panic seized him, and he managed to capture the thing between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. It was dangerously close to the back of his mouth.
The stranger’s teeth were still embedded in his skin, but the pain was an afterthought as he grappled with the slick capsule. God, he didn’t want to swallow it. The stranger’s black eyes—all black, even the sclera—were bright with triumph. He thought Nathan had swallowed it.
Hands dragged him off Nathan, and he rolled over, letting gravity do the work for him. He spit the capsule out onto the concrete, sucking down a greedy lungful of air.
“Get his hands! Freddy!” someone was shouting, and Nathan turned, pulling himself together to help his squad, who were trying to hold him down.
The stranger fought hard, kicking Frederic with his free leg. He grunted but didn’t go down, pouncing on both of his ankles with all his weight. Aidan had his left arm, while Judah had his right.
“Cap, do the exorcism!” Aidan grunted. “He’s too strong!”
Nathan threw himself into the fray, pinning the boy’s shoulders down. “Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde?—”
He thrashed wildly, and then, quite abruptly, the black faded from his eyes and the fight drained from his body. Normal brown eyes blinked up at them, filling with tears.
“What—what’s going on?” he asked, his voice trembling.
At once, all four men released him as though burned.
Nathan leaned in, meeting his frightened eyes. “Sir? I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“I…” His body convulsed, and a gasp of pain escaped him. “What was that? I—ahh!” His body arched off the ground, and his chest heaved.
“Oh shit,” Nathan said, throwing himself at him once more. “It’s trying to break free. We have to exorcise it before it kills him.”
“What?” he shrieked.
He put a hand over the boy’s heart and the other over his forehead, stumbling through the Latin words as quickly as his panicked tongue would allow. Bone cracked under his palm, the boy’s sternum bowing outward, and Nathan’s stomach roiled. Blood soaked into his shirt, mixing with the blood trickling down Nathan’s bitten arm.
“Et in nomine Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostre, et in vir?—”
The boy’s chest broke open, and a bony, claw-tipped hand ripped through his shirt, wrapping painfully tight around Nathan’s wrist. His screams trailed off, his body convulsing. He couldn’t survive this trauma, and the demon was almost free. The footage of the first incident had shown them that the demon couldn’t escape a dead host. There was only one thing to do.
“God forgive me,” he sobbed, drawing one of his knives. Rearing back, he brought it down hard, through the boy’s throat and severing his spinal cord. His body slackened, and the demon’s rattling growl cut off like a mute button had been pressed. The pressure from those bony fingers disappeared from his wrist, and calm silence filled the air around the panting group.
Aidan broke it first. “God in Heaven,” he whispered, crossing himself. “We have to clean this up. Nate’s blood is all over him. We…” His eyes went a little glassy with grief, but he pressed on stubbornly. “We can take him to Maxwell. He can cremate him.”
“But…” Judah looked from one horrified face to the next. “No one will know what happened to him. What if he has family?”
“Look at what this looks like, kid,” Frederic said, his voice hollow. “Four men holding down a screaming, bloody young man?”
Bile rose in Nathan’s throat.
“But that’s not—we weren’t—” Judah broke off. “We’dnever?—”
“No, we’d never,” Nathan agreed hoarsely, telling himself his eyes were watering because of the pain in his arm. “But the police won’t understand what just happened.”
Aidan sniffed hard, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll bring one of the cars. Then we’ll take him with us.”
Chapter13
Nathan
