Raising Innocence: A Rylee Adamson Novel(35)

From close to a hundred years ago, the kid was the oldest of the group as well. Twelve years old, a girl, and—I bent to read the tombstone better—she died of the wasting disease.
Brittany Mariana Tolvay. Nothing else but her name and the dates. No, that wasn’t true. I bent down and brushed the grass back from the base, the words faded with age and weather, but I could read them still.
Beloved daughter. Cleansed by fire in the hands of God. Gone for but a moment.
“This one was dug out?” I pointed at it, not sure if what I was seeing fit or not.
Harold stepped forward. “That one there is strange, the only one where it looked like a proper grave robbing. Someone trying to get in.”
But if the kid’s body had been burned, there wouldn’t have been anything left to steal. This was the only one that didn’t fit with the others. This was the starting point.
I shook myself. No, what I was seeing confirmed my suspicions. I had some proof, and I was ready to rumble. The asshole stealing kids from their deathbeds was about to get a nasty surprise on his doorstep.
I saw Harold back to his hut, thanked him for his help and turned to go, papers tucked inside my jacket; but something pulled at me, like string tied around my waist, I felt it vibrate under my skin.
Standing quietly, I let my senses guide me. Someone was throwing around a lot of power, so much so that even my miniscule abilities with detection were picking it up. The church bells tolled and I frowned. The time was wrong for the bells to be tolling. Hell, it was twenty-two minutes passed the hour, not even close. And churches were, if nothing else, particular about their rituals.
Setting out once more in a brisk walk, I made my way to the church, feeling the power of whoever it was grow the closer I got. Like a wash of home I felt the hum of magic and knew it was a witch battling it out in the church. For one brief second, I wondered if it was Milly. But no, whoever this was throwing power around was stronger even than Milly; besides Milly was an ocean away, it wouldn’t be her.
The bells tolled again, and this close, the sound rumbled through my chest. Leaning up against the huge wooden doors, I pressed my ear tight against them. Chanting, a lot of chanting. My skin crawled in remembrance. The last time I’d been on the other side of a set of doors and chanting we’d almost lost a little girl, India in fact, to a serious demon possession.
Though I doubted that was the case now, I still couldn’t turn around and just leave without making sure whoever was being chanted over was okay.
With a shove, I opened the double doors wide and strode in, stopping in the vestibule, the scene before me not something I’d expected.
Two circles of priests surrounded a girl strapped down on the altar; a cloth was draped over her body and a chunk of wood, what I was betting was a heavy wooden cross, was on her chest. One priest held a bowl over her head as he chanted, then slowly poured the water out on her face.
She snapped her head to the side. “Get the hell off me!” Her English accent made me think of the girl from Harry Potter. Hermione, if I remembered the name right.
The priests, of course, didn’t listen, nor did they listen as she flicked her wrist and sent one of them flying into the air. They had no idea what they were dealing with.
“You should let her go,” I said loudly, and the church went silent.
Stepping down out of the vestibule and into the main alley between the pews, I ran my fingers over the wooden armrests. “She isn’t possessed and you have no right to torment her.”
Two priests came toward me, faces grim, the one on the right doing all the talking. “Her family gave her to the church to heal. Now be gone with you.” They shooed at me like I was a stray dog.
I smiled and slid my two swords from the crossed sheath at my back. “I don’t play nice, boys.”
They stopped their advance on me and it was my turn to motion for them to get out of my way. They listened, stepping back.
The head honcho, the one with the fancy scarf around his neck and ridiculous looking hat, lifted his hand to me, palm out. “God will not be denied, and no matter the temptations that the devil will send, we will be faithful and bring this child to the light of Christ.”
I lifted my middle finger to him. “This ain’t got nothing to do with God or Christ. Now. Let. Her. Go.”
The priest’s eyes blazed with anger; I just continued to smile. This was about to get fun. I wouldn’t really kill any of the priests, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t make for some good practice. I put my swords back into their sheaths one at a time. There were nine priests, just enough to make this interesting.
I beckoned to the high priest, or whatever the fuck he was. “You’re going to have to take me out before I let you put one more drop of holy water on her.”