Walker knew the demon moved with them. There was only one way to stop it.
Father Cornelius walked with Kim’s assistance, with Mr. Avci taking up the rear. The officious little man had his gun out and his gaze shifted left and right, peering into the storm, as if what they had to fear was out there somewhere, instead of within.
“Walker, you must listen,” Kim said. “Cornelius and I have been talking. There’s no way to know what limitations this creature has—”
“It’s a ‘creature’ now? I think we all know what it is,” Walker replied.
Father Cornelius erupted in a rattling cough, then spit into the snow. After all they’d been through, he looked his age at last. More than his age. He looked a hundred years old, but Walker figured they all looked like walking cadavers by now.
“In all the priesthood taught me and in all I’ve learned in my secular research, there’s never been any reliable account of anyone dealing with demons like this,” Father Cornelius said. “Exorcisms, certainly, and loads of ancient writings about evil spirits, but always with the caveat that they could be driven out… and once they were driven out, they would either lose their power or one could guard against the return of that evil. I’ve never run across an account in which a demon could move from one person to another with such ease.”
“In your vast experience,” Walker said drily.
“Walker, you’re being an asshole,” Kim observed. “He’s the only one here who’s ever been to an exorcism, and I don’t know about you, but he’s certainly spent a lot more years researching all of this than I have.”
Shuddering, Walker reached up to pull shut the collar of his coat. The more tired he became, the more the cold sapped his strength and will.
“I know,” he said. “That’s frustration talking.”
“The charms are not working,” Father Cornelius said. “That much is clear. But what if they’re actually hurting instead?”
The question made Walker falter a step, so that Kim bumped into him. He kept moving, but shot the priest a hard look as he went.
“How do you figure?” he asked, but his own thoughts were already shifting.
“Maybe it’s not a good idea for us to have taken anything from the ark that had any contact with the cadaver,” Kim answered. “Maybe the demon’s consciousness was still in its bones or still in the ark—we have no way of knowing—but if so, do we want to walk around with bits of its sarcophagus around our necks?”
Seemed like a good idea at the time, Walker thought. Olivieri had convinced them the bitumen shards could protect them, but Olivieri was dead now. The fingers on Walker’s right hand twitched, muscle memory from the moment he had pulled the trigger and murdered the professor. Only he hadn’t pulled the trigger at all, had he? The demon had done that.
But Walker’s body remembered it.
“I’ve been thinking the same,” Mr. Avci said, closer behind them than they’d realized.
Walker flinched and glanced back at him, watching the gun in Avci’s grasp. The man seemed himself, but there was no way to be sure.
Mr. Avci reached his left hand up to his neck and dug through the layers of fabric, pushed his fingers in and then yanked hard, tugging out the gleaming black bitumen shard and the twine on which it had hung. Without hesitation he flung it away and Walker saw him visibly relax, as if the charm had been a terrible weight on his spirit.
Anger rippled through Walker and he felt his brow furrow. He faced forward again, picking up his pace to catch up with Meryam and Adam. Kim and Father Cornelius did their best to keep up.
“What do you think, Walker?” Kim demanded.
“I think you should do what you want.”
“But—”
“Wait a second,” he said, shaking his head as he slowed again. Meryam and Adam kept going. Mr. Avci caught up, but Walker paid him no attention. His thoughts had drifted back to the cave—to the first time he’d seen one of those charms. Nearly the whole descent he had been ruminating, flipping through images in his mind, trying to find any hint at the demon’s nature. Something that would help them.
Father Cornelius put a hand on his shoulder. “What is it?”
Walker trudged on, staring at his feet without seeing them. His mind returned to the ark, to the moment he had first encountered Helen Marshall.
“The archaeology team found them on some of the cadavers in the ark,” he said, as much to himself as the others. “Why not all of them?”
“Maybe they had the same disagreement we’re having now,” Father Cornelius suggested.
“When we first got there,” Walker continued, “I talked to Professor Marshall. She and her team were working on several sets of remains, but one of the passengers had died trying to claw her way out of the ark, through a door that had been jammed shut against the side of the mountain. She’d lost her mind, obviously, but she was trying anything she could to get out of the ship… to get away.”
He glanced over at the priest. “There was no charm on that cadaver.”
“I remember it,” Mr. Avci said, behind them.
“Are you saying the demon drove her mad because she wasn’t wearing one?” Kim asked.
“Maybe,” Walker replied, boots crunching on snow. The cold slithered inside his clothes. He’d gone numb inside and out. “But what if it wasn’t just madness? What if she was trying to escape the others on board the ark, the ones who were wearing the charms, because she’d figured out that they’d made the wrong decision? That instead they were making it easier for the demon to possess them?”
“But why would that be?” Kim asked. “It makes no sense.”
Father Cornelius stumbled on the snow. Walker caught him, helped him right himself. He saw just how pale the priest had become, just how much the climb had taken out of him. Ahead, Adam and Meryam did not even seem to notice. They marched downward, slowly but relentlessly, never turning around to check on the welfare of their charges. Walker hated them a little bit for that.
“What if…” the priest said. “What if they trapped its spirit? Somehow they killed it and they boxed it up in that coffin and encased that in bitumen. They thought they’d imprisoned the demon’s essence, but instead it…”
“It seeped,” Kim said. “They’d have felt it, the evil getting under their skin, the same way we did. If it infused itself into the bitumen, then when they put those charms on, all they were doing was giving it more intimate access, keeping it with them….”
Her words trailed off, and the four them stopped dead on the trail, turning to face one another, giving each other a bit of protection from the wind and the whipping snow. Mr. Avci still had his gun in his hand, but Walker noticed that he held it as if he’d almost forgotten it was there. He looked up at Kim.
“We’re saying they knew the same legend Olivieri told us about?” he said. A gust of wind bumping him forward, so they were all even closer. He could see the exhaustion in their eyes, and the dreadful realization.
Father Cornelius swayed, squeezing his eyes closed as if he might collapse. He put a hand on Mr. Avci’s shoulder to hold himself up.
“What if Olivieri isn’t the one who told us about that legend?” the priest asked. His eyes opened and he gazed into the gray nothing in the space between them. “What if it was never his suggestion to begin with?”
“Shit,” Kim whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.” Her fingers were at work, digging into the folds of her clothing in search of her charm.
As Kim hurled the charm off into the driving snow, Walker turned to shout down the trail. “Adam! Meryam!” They’d only gotten another twenty yards or so along the path, but they were ghosts in the white veil now. “The charms… you’ve got to take them…”