Ch.10
The church was dark against the sky and the sky was cloudless and full of stars, and neither of those things mattered because I was looking at the front door and thinking about what was behind it.
White walls. Small steeple. A building that had been a real church once, before Heaven's attention drifted away and the Fallen Angels moved in like squatters. The gate was open. The path to the entrance was cracked stone lined with dead bushes. A cat was sitting on the low wall near the gate, watching us with the detached superiority of a creature that had nothing to do with any of this.
Kiba was on my left. Sword already in his hand, a dark blade he'd pulled from the air with a shimmer of Sacred Gear energy. His face was calm. He looked like someone going to work.
Koneko was on my right. No weapon. She didn't need one. Her gold eyes were steady, her hands at her sides, her face blank in a way that should have been bored but wasn't.
Above us, Akeno. Her silhouette against the stars, hovering on Devil wings, hair loose and moving in the updraft. She was wearing her shrine-maiden outfit, red hakama and white top, and when the first crackle of lightning ran through her fingers it lit her up from underneath. For a half-second she looked like a painting, suspended in darkness with electricity dancing between her hands, and I noticed because I was always going to notice Akeno Himejima, even when I was about to walk into a building full of people who wanted to kill me.
"Focus, partner."
I focused.
"Two Boosts will double your baseline four times. Three will push eight times. You have never sustained three. The strain on your arm will be significant."
"How significant?"
"The gauntlet may draw blood. Your forearm muscles will seize for several hours afterward. It will not be pleasant."
"Noted."
Rias's voice came through a small communication circle near my ear, her demonic energy carrying the signal. "Akeno, on my mark. Kiba, Koneko, exorcists on the perimeter. Hyoudou-kun, you have the nave. Find the basement access."
I started walking.
The front door of the church was unlocked. It swung inward on hinges that needed oil, creaking in the silence. The nave opened up ahead of me, rows of wooden pews on both sides, a raised altar platform at the far end, stained glass windows that hadn't been cleaned in years. Moonlight came through the glass in pale colored patches on the stone floor. Dust in the air.
The smell hit me first. Old wood and mildew and candle wax, like the ORC clubroom's older, neglected cousin. Underneath that, ozone. The sharp metallic tang of holy energy that made my skin prickle.
I was three steps inside when the voice came from the shadows between the pews.
"Well, well, well."
A figure stepped out from behind the second row. Silver hair. Red eyes. Priest vestments, black and white, hanging open over a dark shirt. A grin that took up most of his face and had too many teeth in it.
He was holding a hilt in his right hand and a gun in his left. The hilt ignited with a snap and a beam of white-hot light extended from it, throwing harsh shadows across the pews. Light sword. Holy element. One touch and it would burn through me like acid.
"Another visitor!" Freed's voice was cheerful, sing-song, the cadence of a man who found violence genuinely entertaining. "And you came through the front door, too. Very polite. Most shit-eaters sneak in through the back."
He tilted his head. The grin faltered for a fraction of a second.
"Wait. Wait wait wait. I know you." The grin came back, wider. "You're the kid from the park! The Boosted Gear brat! Oh, this is wonderful. Raynare-sama said you'd show up eventually. She said you were-"
I Boosted.
[BOOST!]
The green jewel on my gauntlet flared. My muscles doubled. I was moving before the echo faded, closing the distance between the doorway and Freed's position in three steps.
He got the gun up. A light bullet cracked past my ear and punched a hole in the door frame behind me. My left hand caught the barrel and pushed it sideways as my right fist, armored in red metal, connected with his chest.
[BOOST!]
The second Boost hit mid-swing. The force doubled. Freed went backward into the pew behind him and the wood splintered under the impact with a crack that echoed through the nave. He hit the stone floor on the other side, rolled, and was up faster than a man who'd just been punched through a church pew had any right to be.
"Oh." His grin was red now. Blood on his teeth. His eyes were wide and bright and delighted. "Oh, you've been practicing."
He came at me with the light sword. Fast. The blade cut an arc that lit up the dust motes in the air and I got my gauntlet up to block and the impact rattled up my arm to the shoulder. Holy light on Sacred Gear metal. The gauntlet held, but the energy crawled across the surface and sparked, and the heat bled through the metal into my skin.
He reversed the cut. Low, going for my legs. I stepped back and the blade missed my thigh by an inch. He pressed, slashing in tight controlled arcs, grinning the whole time, and I gave ground because the light sword was faster than my fists and he knew how to use it.
The blade caught my shoulder. Right side, same shoulder Raynare's spear had grazed. The holy light bit through my shirt and into the skin beneath and the pain was immediate, searing, a white-hot line that made my vision blur at the edges.
I grabbed his wrist. The one holding the sword. Same move I'd used on Raynare at the fountain, but harder, faster, with two Boosts behind my grip. His bones ground against each other under the gauntlet and his fingers spasmed. The light sword flickered.
"You're not the same boy-"
I headbutted him. His nose broke. He staggered. I hit him again, gauntleted fist in the ribs, and heard something crack that wasn't furniture.
The blur came from my left. Kiba materialized beside me with Knight-speed movement, already swinging a dark demonic sword at Freed's light blade. Steel rang on holy light. Freed parried, barely, blood streaming from his nose.
"Go," Kiba said. He didn't look at me. His eyes were on Freed and his sword was already moving into a second strike. "I have him."
A second blade erupted from the floor at Freed's feet. Then a third. Sword Birth, filling the space between the pews with dark metal. Freed dodged one, parried another, and his grin was gone, replaced by a snarl.
I went.
Outside, through the cracked stained glass, I caught a flash of yellow light. Akeno's lightning, hitting the side yard. Koneko was out there too, somewhere in the dark, and the distant sound of someone getting thrown into a wall hard enough to crack the plaster carried through the glass. The exorcists on perimeter detail were having a bad night.
The basement access was behind the altar platform. A wooden door, already open, with stairs descending into amber light. The air rising from below was warm and smelled like ozone and incense and copper.
And under that, screaming.
Asia's voice. High and raw and continuous. My hand was on the stair railing and my knuckles were white around it and I went down, fast, three steps at a time.
My shoulder was bleeding. The cut from Freed's light sword was deep enough that the holy energy was still burrowing into the tissue, a slow burn that radiated outward with each heartbeat. The Boosts were starting to drain. Behind me, upstairs, the clash of Kiba's swords against Freed's light blade rang through the stone.
The stairway curved once. The amber light got brighter. The screaming got louder, and then it stopped, and the silence was worse.
The basement opened up.
It was larger than the church above it. Stone walls, stone floor, candelabras burning with flames that were too steady and too green to be natural. Ritual circles on the floor, concentric rings of symbols I recognized from the anime, glowing with pale golden light.
And in the center, the altar.
A giant cross, raised vertically, with Asia strapped to it. Her arms were spread and bound at the wrists with bands of light. Her head was hanging forward. Her nun's habit was torn. Her hands were glowing green, the green I recognized as Twilight Healing, but the glow was wrong. It was splitting. Half of it was still around her fingers, flickering, weakening. The other half was pulling away from her in thin tendrils of light, stretching across the ritual circle to a figure standing in the glowing ring.
Raynare.
Wings out. All four of them, black feathers spread wide, catching the green light. She was wearing the Fallen Angel form, the leather and straps, and her hands were raised and the green light was flowing into them, condensing around her middle fingers where two rings were taking shape.
Twilight Healing. She was stealing it. Right now. In front of me.
Asia's head lifted slightly. Her eyes were half-open and unfocused and her lips were moving but no sound was coming out. She was trying to pray. Even now. Even strapped to a cross with her Sacred Gear being torn out of her, she was trying to pray to a God who was already dead.
"Partner. Three Boosts will break your record. Your arm may not hold."
"I don't care."
[BOOST!]
The green jewel pulsed. My gauntlet burned hot against my forearm. Every muscle in my body tightened at once and the world sharpened into crystal focus. My shoulder stopped hurting. My vision narrowed to Raynare and the green light and the girl on the cross. Three Boosts stacked. Eight times baseline. My left arm was shaking inside the gauntlet and the metal was so hot against my skin it was going to leave marks.
Raynare turned. She saw me. Her violet eyes went wide. Her mouth opened. For a fraction of a heartbeat she looked like Yuuma, the girl from the bridge, the one who'd laughed for real at the arcade.
Then the Fallen Angel mask came back and she raised a hand and a light spear formed and she threw it.
I was already running. The spear went over my shoulder. The second one I knocked aside with the gauntlet. The third caught my hip and the holy light seared through cloth and skin and I didn't stop, I didn't slow down, I kept running.
I closed the distance. Raynare formed another spear. I got inside her reach.
And I swung.