Chicagoland Gail Martin (best novels to read for students TXT) 📖

If he sensed that I’d been overwhelmed by memories here in the heavy atmosphere of the sanctuary, he didn’t mention it. I felt glad to leave the place behind, knowing I’d most likely revisit the memories in my dreams. He led me to his office, a cramped, overly full room that smelled of books and cigarettes.

Kinsella sat behind his desk and motioned me toward the only other chair. “Sorren doesn’t call to chat,” he said, giving me an assessing look. “So when he does call, I listen. He said he had a friend in town who needed a hand. Something about demons.”

“We think Capone bound a demon with a shoddy patchwork of rituals and incantations he came up with himself. Now that he’s not here to tend it and feed it vampire blood, we think the bindings are starting to unravel. My colleagues have some training, but they’re not exorcists.”

Kinsella sobered at the word and looked away. “Our senior priest, Father Callahan, was targeted by the Capone Mob because he was a powerful exorcist. We knew when that happened that Capone had an alliance he didn’t want broken.”

“Sorry for your loss. I guess I’m a day late and a dollar short.” Why the hell had Sorren sent me here if the exorcist was already dead?

“Which is why we’ve kept my training at the Vatican quiet,” Kinsella went on. “I showed an aptitude early in seminary, and they sent me for field studies with members of the Occulatum. I downplayed what I could do to keep another, dodgier group from recruiting me. I assure you, I have both training and experience.”

He stated the information plainly but without arrogance, factual but not bragging. Despite myself, I liked the guy. “We think the demon is locked in a vault. I’d like to have you there when we open it.”

Kinsella watched me closely. Assessing. “You’re not exactly as you appear. If we’re to battle the powers of Darkness together, I should know who I’m fighting beside.”

I figured this was where I might get thrown out on my ear, but what the hell. The short version of my sad story didn’t take long to tell. When I got to the part about Krukis, I expected the priest to hold up his crucifix like I was a vampire and order me from holy ground. Instead, he listened intently, tenting his fingers as he hung on my every word, and I felt antsy being the object of his sharp focus.

“The Slavic gods,” he said when I finished. “I wondered since their touch was not familiar to me. We have something in common then, you and I. You are pledged to a blacksmith, and I to a carpenter. Hands-on men, both of them, doing honest work.”

I blinked, beyond surprised. “And you’re okay with that?”

“We serve a common goal,” Kinsella said. “The alliances made in the ‘shadow business’ of the Church are untraditional but effective. You come with Sorren’s endorsement. That’s enough for me.”

“Yeah, same here,” I replied. “If you’re game, I have some more information.” I filled him in on what happened at the murder house, what we’d learned about Capone’s fascination with the occult, and mentioned that Capone had controlled a rougarou, although I didn’t confess to having had a hand in ending him. I’d brought some of West’s photographs of the ritual room and mentioned the items we’d found behind the first safe, as well as the issue of the missing, possibly mad, vampire.

“You ever think of moving to Chicago, Joe? Because your kind of crazy fits right in here,” Kinsella said, with a warm teasing that made me chuckle in spite of myself.

“Too damn…er, darn…cold, Father. But thanks anyhow.”

Kinsella reached for a pair of reading glasses and examined the photos in silence for a while, occasionally asking questions about the occultists from whom Capone had sought advice. He reached behind him and took down two very old leather-bound volumes from his overstuffed bookshelf and consulted the yellowed parchment pages. His brow furrowed, and his lips firmed as he read, neither of which seemed like good signs to me. Finally, he closed the book and crossed himself with a murmured blessing.

“You’re right—he’s made hellish hash of the symbols and incantations,” Kinsella said. “For the record—Lovecraft and Crowley weren’t originally mad. What they saw and summoned drove them beyond what the human mind is meant to process without protections. I’d heard Capone’s eccentricities blamed on syphilis, but I think that a more demonic origin is likely, given what you’ve told me.”

Interesting.

“If the demon was bound using the vampire’s blood, then I suspect that when we deal with the demon, the vampire will feel compelled to attend,” Kinsella said.

“Lovely.”

He shrugged. “Better than having to chase it through the streets and underworld of Chicago. Are your companions capable of dealing with a vampire?”

I thought of Ness, West, and Sarah. Ness didn’t know the occult, but he understood how to kill. West had what the government considered to be training in the supernatural, which was better than nothing. Sarah was a civilian with dead-eye aim and remarkable calm in a crisis.

“Yeah, I think so. Is it really gonna take the both of us to wrestle this demon back to the Pit?”

Kinsella nodded. “We’re going to need some materials. Some of them I have here, just in case,” he added with a knowing smile. I had no doubt that he’d been sent as the Vatican’s man against the Mob-fueled powers of Darkness.

“I brought some of the harder to get items with me,” I told him, rattling off what was in my bag back at the hotel.

“That’s good. We can work with what we’ve got. Those items you found behind the first safe are definitely part of Capone’s binding ritual—he would have needed them every time he refreshed the spell.”

“What would you like to have, to tip the odds more in our favor?” I asked.

He laughed. “I wouldn’t turn down a shoe buckle from St. Theresa