Page 25 of Prince Of Sloth

Alessio reached into a fold of his priest robes and pulled out a thick, disheveled book. The black leather was worn and ripped on the spine, and no title or author name was visible. My eyes fixed on it, but not for the reason he assumed. I could hear a low ringing coming from its pages—something pure as sunlight and just as destructive.

That book was leaving this church with Pru and me. I owed Eli a debt, and I intended to fulfill it.

“Your concern for my relationship with God is touching, but I am through with your games, Prince of Sloth.”

My heart raced as he began chanting his incantations in the tongue of his brotherhood. The repetitive phrases felt like sledgehammers against my eardrums. Muscle and cartilage tore from my bones. My spine cracked. I could feel the ripping of my immortal soul from my earthly form.

I had to get to her. She had to run far away without looking back. Alessio wasn’t going to allow her to breathe after my mortal body had melted away and my demonic presence on this plane had disappeared as if I’d never existed.

My fingernails dug into the aged brown grout between the smooth tiles, and I pulled myself across the floor. Before my hand could reach her, Alessio became a blockade.

He started another line of his passages. His voice echoed around the high ceilings, his vibrato climbing.

My nose began to bleed. My blood vessels filled to their limits as my soul searched for a way out of every cell.

The last of my existence on this plane was coming to an end, and the most damning part was having to watch Pru’s face contort as she screamed through the tape.

I felt her calling for me to stay. To fight.

My vision went black, and I waited for the pain to fall away, for Alessio’s voice to fade, but it didn’t.

One moment, he was reciting his hymns. The next, he was shouting in pain.

I felt my strength return as the sounds of a scuffle replaced his spellcasting and the cracking of my limbs. A wave of heat came from my left. A body slammed onto the ground to my right.

“Ezra.” Pru’s frantic voice perked my ears, and her hands framed my face. “Ezra, please wake up. Fuck. Look at me, please.”

I could hear the tears tightening her throat and feel the trembling in her fingers as she swept damp strands of hair from my forehead.

“Don’t cry, beautiful,” I croaked.

Each draw of breath strained my ribs and the tendons that were knitting themselves back into place. The process of being put back together was just as painful as it was to be broken.

When I pried my lids open to check that Pru was intact, I was met with the wreckage around us. She’d thrown herself from the old chair and used one of the shards of wood to impale Alessio. He was lying in a pool of his own blood. The death rattle from his lungs marked the time he had left.

The heat licking at my exposed skin was coming from a fire set by candles that had been tipped over as Pru saved my life. Flames were climbing the altar cloths and pouring over the printed sermon that had been laid out for the next service. As soon as the heat felt as if it were going to get out of hand, an alarm began to ring through the church and water sprayed from the sprinklers above.

“The book.” I looked over the ground around us for the payment I owed. Though the spell Eli had placed on me hadn’t worked on my connection to Pru, I knew it needed to be taken after experiencing the power the book held in the hands of a Hunter.

I sat up and rolled onto my hands and knees to feel around the floor, over debris and through bloody water, for the blasted tome that had almost torn my soul from Earth.

“We have to go. Fuck the book.” Pru’s panicked voice echoed in my head as she pulled at my shoulder.

Her clothes were soaked, and the dark stains of my blood on her blouse were spreading and running. She’d just attempted to murder another human. It was self-defense, but she’d already followed her fight reflex, and now flight was taking hold.

“I need that book.” I grunted, holding my sore side where ribs had been shattered. “I can’t let him leave with it.”

She spun in place. Her eyes scanned the dais, then she bent low.

“Here.” She shoved the book into my outstretched hand.

It was dripping red from the puddle of diluted blood it had been lying in. I yelped in pain and let go, and a loud thud came from where I’d let it fall. The wretched thing had been warded against demons. My skin where I had made contact looked as if I’d dunked it in boiling acid.

Pru gasped and knelt at my side. “What the fuck, Ezra?”

“I’ll be fine. Grab the book and let’s go.” I finally got to my feet and stumbled down the steps to the aisle.

I leaned on the first pew to support my broken body while my limbs righted themselves, finally giving me stability. Stabbing pain filled my gut and extremities as nerves grew back from where they had been severed. The perk of once being holy was that I would heal rapidly. Another hour and this would all be a sick nightmare, and I would be back to my full power.