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Living Sacrifice

By A E Mayes

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1


Silas Foster held the drawn bowstring and arrow against his cheek, his eyes locked on the black eyes of the priest down the center aisle of the former church. He took a deep steadying breath and immediately regretted it. His mouth and nose filled with the stench of the place, the decay of neglect and corruption. He pushed away the need to spit the taste from his mouth, focusing only on those dark eyes. He couldn’t afford distractions. He couldn't think about the corrupted sanctuary. He couldn't think about his brother lying on the mildewed carpet next to him, writhing, screaming in agony. He couldn’t let himself look down at Jason, hands pressed against the sides of his head one moment, the next fists beating against his temples trying desperately to end the pain.

Harder still was not looking at the child screaming as madly as Jason, his bright green eyes wild with pain, wrapped in the arms of the demonic priest. The priest with one arm wrapped around the boy’s chest, held him off the ground. The other wrapped up and around the side of his head. Fingers pressed against the side of the boy’s face, almost burrowing into the skin. Taunting Silas, he used the boy as a shield, revealing only a glittering eye and half of a smile.

“Walk away,” the priest said. His lips peeled back from rotting teeth. “You can leave the super-star on the floor. Just leave.”

The priest’s tattered robes hung off what was left of the man like the soiled linens of a mummy. His voice matched his appearance, more suitable to a dead thing than a thing alive. Worst of all was the clicking of his teeth. When he wasn’t saying things like, “This one’s mine. Walk away,” his teeth clicked and clicked, over and over as though biting, gnashing at the air.

Silas took all this in only on the periphery of his consciousness. He was waiting for the moment of the priest’s distraction. He knew the game they played. If Silas blinked first, the boy and his brother would both die. This grizzled old thing would finish the ritual and tear into the boy taking his life in the name of his demonic deity. And take the life of his brother along with it.

The boy and Jason screamed in unison. The priest’s smile widened, his jaws parting.

Then it happened. The priest took his eyes off Silas for just a moment and several things happened all at once.

The door to Silas’s left burst open and a woman, eyes and face twisted in madness, came running in. She screamed with rage and tears; a long cooking knife, blade aimed down, ready for stabbing.

“NO!” the woman's strangled voice cried out.

“Momma!” the boy cried for help.

Once inside, seeing her son held by the priest and Silas with his bow trained on the old man, she turned from the priest and ran at Silas.

The priest smiled, his eyes on the deranged mother. For just a moment, he relaxed his hold on the boy. For just a moment, the boy sagged in the priest’s arms. For just a moment, the boy’s and Jason’s screams died away.

And in that moment, Silas breathed on the arrow, releasing it to flight, the mother still screaming at him, yelling at him to stop. You can't do this! You don't know what you're doing! Why can't you leave us alone!

The arrow split the air, spinning with handcrafted precision and sank into the priest’s brittle skull.

At least Silas hoped it did. The instant passed and all he perceived was the power of the arrow, the sound of its penetration and the rise of the long kitchen knife slicing down toward him.

Silas spun the bow around like a staff and raised it to block the coming slash. The boy’s mother stood before Silas, her mouth open in a continuing scream, chapped lips, bloodshot eyes, long brown hair clumped in sweaty disarray around her face. Every ounce of strength was in that one slash, that single blow. She was up on the tip of her toes, nearly jumping, so she could throw all her body weight down against the man who was trying to save her son’s life.

Silas braced the bow in both hands and felt the knife connect with the laminated wood. The blade edge scratched a half circle in the bow, connected with the drawstring and snapped it in two. The bow unrestrained popped free and nearly leapt from Silas's well-trained hands. He caught it, but lost the opening left by her wild attack.

Her small victory only spurred the deranged woman on. She raised the blade to strike again, her chapped lips breaking as she smiled; a touch of blood bloomed on her lips.

“Silas,” Jason said, still lying on the floor.

His brother clutched his head, moaning. Silas didn’t understand. With the priest dead, his brother should’ve been fine.

“Should have walked away!” the priest screamed. He lifted the boy up in the air and slammed him down on the metal table before him. The boy and Jason cried out, their bodies flexing against the pain as the ritual drew closer to completion.

The priest had one hand on the boy’s head and another on his chest. He was chanting and humming and pressing his hands down against the child. Jason and the boy screamed as the priest pressed his fingers inside the young flesh.

The woman sliced at Silas this time catching Silas’s left hand, opening his thumb.

Silas felt the strength run from his left hand. He dropped the useless bow as he grabbed his wounded hand and pressed on the wound. A stupid mistake.

The woman took the opening and moving faster than he thought possible, she turned a roundhouse kick against his jaw, knocking him to one side then launched a left backhand that sent Silas to his knees.

“Tsk, tsk,” she said. She giggled as she raised the blade to finish him.

“You should mind your own business!”

Silas saw Jason on the floor, barely coherent, inches from death. Jason's eyes fluttered, green eyes just like the boy's eyes showing so much pain and beginning to give up. He mumbled, “We need him . . .”

His brother’s voice trailed off. That was all Silas needed.

The woman screamed. Had her fury been tangible, it would have surrounded her, thickened her into a monstrous beast capable of inflicting incredible pain. She slashed down with her blade at Silas aiming for the back of his neck, but Silas jumped forward inside her tiny reach. He dipped his right shoulder low as he came up and followed through with his right fist, connecting squarely with the mad woman’s jaw. He pulled back just a little at the last moment, not wanting to seriously injure her, but just stop her.

She rose from her feet a few inches and collapsed on the ground next to Jason, neither of them moving.

Silas spun toward the altar. The arrow quivered in the wall, stuck in the plaster behind the priest. Silas reached down to his brother and pulled the Peacemaker from his shoulder holster. As quickly as he dropped to the ground he was back up, aiming center mass.

The priest, chanting through half-closed eyes, saw the gun. He was near the climax of the incantation he was inspiring, but the sight of the revolver, stopped him cold.

The priest’s face twisted in rage. He raised the hand that was on the boy’s head, palm out for the interloper to stop. “You don't belong here! My lord will punish you for this! You don't know what you're doing! Leave!”

Dimly, Silas heard his brother beg Silas not to kill the priest. Silas let the gun barrel lower a fraction of an inch—

Until he saw the priest smile wickedly. “Can't kill me? Little bubby doesn't want it!” The priest flexed the hand still on the boy’s face, pushing through the child's flesh. The boy and Jason screamed. It was a sound Silas had heard too many times over the last three years; a death cry.

The barrel raised; Silas squeezed a single shot.

The priest’s body jolted. He looked down at the extra hole in his robes, wobbled for a moment, then like a puppet whose strings have been cut, he fell to the ground.

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