“Indeed, and he is well. As you know, the potential students had already been heavily recruited in their home states. But once they met each other we wanted to ensure the group melded, and that each student understood what the school would teach and how it would be run. Marcus flew from Italy to conduct that meeting and then to bring the students to you.”
“And somebody didn’t like it?” Seemed like an overreaction, but you never knew how someone would react when they finally understood what it meant to live in a world full of demons.
“No. That was not where the tragedy occurred. From Nashville, they began the journey to California. That was three days ago.”
“With Marcus?”
“No. There was an emergency—a demon infestation that he had to handle. The local archbishop assigned a deacon to escort them. This man did not know aboutForza, and the students were instructed not to speak of it. As far as the deacon knew, the five were heading for an academic camp. They got as far as Tulsa, and then they were attacked.”
“A demon?” I squeezed Eric’s hand.
“Yes.” He sounded tired. Older than I’d ever heard him sound. “But she was also one of the students.”
“Oh, dear God.”
“The demon infested a fourteen-year-old girl. Jessica. I never met the child, but Father Donnelly found her when he was in New York. Obviously she was not a demon then. We don’t know how death came upon her, but clearly the opportunity for invasion by the beast occurred.”
“And no one noticed any unusual behavior during the trip?” Eric asked.
“I presume that she was doing her very best to fit in. Or she was not turned until Nashville when she took out the deacon and seriously injured another student, Dani, a girl from South Carolina.”
I put the phone down, still on speaker, and hugged myself, looking around the room at the shocked faces of my friends and family. “Go on.”
“The demon was stopped. Another student—a sixteen-year-old boy by the name of Bruce jumped into the fray. He was too late to save the deacon, and Dani died while they were waiting for an ambulance. Still, Bruce managed to overpower the demon. He used a pen to stab her in the eye and release the demon.”
“Thank God,” I said. “If that demon had gotten the rest of them...”
“Yes,” Father Corletti said. “We promised them sanctuary. An education and training. But the first thing they witness is death.”
“They will have to learn about it sooner or later,” Eric said. “But I’m so terribly sorry that it had to be sooner.”
“Bruce sounds like he’s going to be our star student,” Cutter said. “But their parents. Have they been notified? They must be devastated.”
“It is both a blessing and a tragedy that these children who are coming to you have no families.”
“What do you mean?” Allie asked.
“He means they’re like me,” I said. “Orphans. Kids in the system. That’s the wayForzausually works.” The fact is almost all Demon Hunters come toForzaas children of retired Hunters, novitiates or seminarians who realized their true calling was to fight, or rejects from society.
The latter group was the largest by far. With no parents and no family, it made it easier to do what had to be done. And those Hunters had no family that a demon could attack as a pressure point.
I learned that one the hard way, but I also knew that my family gave me strength. More than that, I knew thatForzatruly had been my family back in the day when I lived in the dorms in Rome.
“I have family,” Allie said firmly, looking at everyone in the room, but stopping at Eliza, who nodded. “And we’ll make them feel part of our family.”
“Damn right,” Eliza said, as Eric caught my eye and smiled.
But that brief moment of solidarity evaporated soon enough, and Eric’s face turned harsh. “We should have collected them after Marcus got called away. Not just sent them with a deacon who knew nothing about fighting demons. They should have had a Hunter as a chaperone.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Father Corletti said, “but hindsight is more clear. As far as we knew, there was no need for protection. It’s not as if we are advertising the school.”
He was right about that. We didn’t have ads in the back of magazines. We weren’t putting flyers up at local churches. But at the same time, we were spreading the word. Every time a priest aware ofForzatalked to a kid in the system, the word got out.
And, true, there weren’t that many priests who actually knew aboutForza, but it only took one. “Do you think the potential students who say no are going to keep it a secret? Do you think that the ones who were recruited really understand the importance of silence? One wrong word to a friend, even an entirely innocent word and….”
I trailed off, feeling a little sick. “We messed this up, Father. We really did.”
“You are right,mia cara. But all we can do is move forward, pray for our charges, and learn from our mistakes.”
