However, DH and I are playing it safe, as in he's not going to see his dad for the rest of this week. I'm home curled up on the couch with my protective princess pup in my lap and alternating between writing and watching the winter Olympics.
So while I finish up some things, here's another raw chapter to tide you over...
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Ed spent the next week physically training with Father Lambert’s team along with a couple of the taskforce personnel who were in residence during the mornings. Afternoons were reserved for researching the Vatican side of the accounting issues with Mbaye and Lambert. Ed wondered what Deacon and Laura did during the afternoons. The Scottish priest was about Ed’s age.
The Vatican’s gymnasium was the only normal thing about the teeny, tiny country. Utilitarian yellow block walls. Polished hardwood floors. Padded gray mats neatly stacked against one walls. Basketball hoops and punching bags hung from the ceiling. And like every other gym Ed had ever been to, the place stunk with body odor no matter how clean everyone tried to keep it.
The place would have reminded him of high school or the army if Father Lambert hadn’t stuck him with the ladies. Unfortunately, he found out every morning just how talented in various martial arts Laura and a couple of the nuns really were.
Seven days into training, Ed slapped the mat to indicate his surrender after Laura wrenched his right arm into painful hold. Thankfully, she wasn’t vindictive. She immediately release him, and he rubbed his right shoulder.
“Just remember, child,” their primary trainer Sister Joan chided. “A demon allows the possessed person to resist pain more so than a non-possessed person.” Like everyone else in the gym, the nun was dressed in a gray t-shirt and black athletic shorts, and her feet were bare. However, unlike Laura’s long braid, her medium brown hair was cut chin length and held out of her eyes by a headband.
“Yes, ma’am,” Laura answered. “But I don’t think it’s wise to severely injure a teammate right before we go on a mission.”
Sister Joan chuckled. “True, but there’s another hold I would suggest in the same situation.” She motioned for Ed to stand.
He stifled a groan. There were few things more demeaning than being used as a fight dummy by a bunch of nuns, but he couldn’t think of any at the moment. And the older the sisters were, the nastier they fought. He pushed to his feet.
“Grab me like you did Laura,” Sister Joan ordered.
He may not be Catholic, but he was raised not to beat up on women. Much less ladies old enough to be his mother. It didn’t help Sister Joan was a very good-looking woman and she had a delightful English accent that reminded him of Emma Peel of The Avengers. All she needed was a leather cat suit.
“Come along, Mr. Hudson,” the nun demanded.
He stepped behind her and wrapped his right hand around her throat and his left arm about her waist. Next thing he knew, he was face down on the mat, and Sister Joan twisted his right thumb behind him to the point where his entire arm had gone numb. “The nerve is now pinched, which makes it hard for any person, possessed or not, to regain control of their limb.”
“I’ve never seen that hold before,” Laura said. The ladies continued their spirited conversation concerning their different martial arts styles until he cleared his throat.
“May I please have my arm back before I’m permanently disabled?”
“Oh, sorry, dear.” Sister Joan released him.
“I think I can vouch for the sister’s analysis.” Pins and needles rippled down his nerves as he climbed to his feet. His fingers tingled, burned, and twitched while the individual neurons tried to analyze what had been done to them. He shook his hand to get some feeling back into his hand.
“Father McAvoy?” Sister Joan called. “Can I borrow you for a moment?”
He jogged over from another set of mats where he’d been sparing with Mbaye with staffs. “Yes, Sister?”
“I want both Mr. Hudson and Ms. Campbell to learn the thumblock.” The nun eyed Ed and raised her left eyebrow. “Assuming your right hand nerves are cooperating again, Edward.”
He wiggled his fingers. “I believe I can continue, ma’am.”
She walked through the maneuver a couple of times with Father McAvoy before she had Laura try. Once she got the hang of the thumb lock, it was Ed’s turn. For the life of him, the moves seemed ridiculously simple and terribly complex at the same time.
“C’mon, ya dobber,” McAvoy mocked after Ed’s third attempt, his accent thickening with each insult. “Ma wee sistah mastered this move before she started school.”
“Not everyone jumps on the chopsocky bandwagon,” Ed retorted.
“Gentlemen! Mind your manners!” Sister Joan reached up and whacked them both in the back of the head. “Don’t make me fetch my ruler.”
Maybe it was the priest’s insults or the nun’s threat, but Ed managed to get McAvoy down flat on the mat with his fourth try. Whatever good feeling he had were quickly abolished when Sister Joan wrenched his thumb around again. He found himself face down next to McAvoy.
“Pride’s a sin,” she lectured. “And it’s a good way for a demon to get inside you.” She released Ed. “Now, go clean up before the noon prayers.”
As Ed and Laura walked to the dorms, she glanced up at him. “I hope I didn’t bruise your ego too much this morning.”
He laughed. “Not half as much as Sister Joan.”
“She’s right though,” Laura said softly. “If you let male chauvinism get the better of you, a demon can take advantage before you realize what is happening.”
He groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re a bra burner.”
“I’m serious,” she bit out.
“I don’t think male chauvinism is how one got into your grandmother.” Ed didn’t realize how bad he screwed up with Laura until her face went blank. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her to a stop. “I’m sorry. That was really out of line.”
“Yeah, it was.” She looked up at him with shimmering liquid in her eyes. “Her arthritis was bad. The pain got to her. Bad enough a demon took advantage of her wish the constant agony would go away.”
“It doesn’t take much,” he said softly. Hell, he still had nightmares of those three days in a village so remote it didn’t have a real name. Of his own sergeant pointing his pistol at Ed’s face when he refused to rape a little girl. “What happened after your grandmother stabbed you?”
“The demon—” Laura emphasized the word. “—pinned me to the ground. I grabbed a trowel to keep her away from me, and—” She stared a nearby flower bed for a long moment before her attention returned to him. “The demon deliberately threw Grandma on the trowel to kill her, and it kept telling me it was my fault she died.”
A lot of words backed up in Ed’s throat, none of them fit for polite company. He let go of her arm. “That’s…I’m sorry, Laura. I won’t bring it up again.”
“You need to know what you’re really up against,” she murmured. “They will use any trick, any threat, any technique to get you to sin. That’s their way into you. And once they have you, it’s next to impossible to get them out.”
“But an exorcism—” he began.
“You’ve got to catch the demon by surprise,” she said while she continued walking. He jogged a couple of steps to catch up with her. “If you don’t, well, there won’t be much of the person’s mind left to save.”
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