Ethan grabbed the ladder from its place, rotating it around, over his head, in order to maneuver it past the wagon it had been kept behind. He looked for Gideon on the roof so he could bring the ladder to rest near him. Ethan watched in horror as an old woman came up behind Gideon. But she was not a normal old woman. She was controlled by a demon. Ethan saw the creature’s form like a shadow moving within her body.
“Gideon!”
The warrior-priest spun on the old woman, instinctively unleashing a vicious roundhouse kick, knocking her to the ground. The old woman turned a sadistic, toothy grin on him, rising to her feet again.
Ethan was already half way across the courtyard with the ladder, maneuvering it vertically as he ran. The old woman growled with an unnatural voice and lunged at Gideon. He turned, leaping out of her reach-off the roof-toward the approaching ladder. Ethan saw the move and tried to compensate.
The ladder nearly tore free from Ethan’s hands when Gideon caught the top rung, swinging his legs around to land two rungs below the top. Gideon quickly descended using the side rails to slide down the ladder. He was half way down when the old woman leaped away from the building, copying Gideon’s move.
When she landed on the ladder top, it became too much weight for Ethan to hold. As the ladder tipped backwards, he used Gideon’s weight at the middle and the woman’s weight at the top in order to bring it down even faster. The top end of the ladder, with the old woman, slammed into the parked wagon as Gideon dropped to the ground. The old demon-controlled woman smashed right through the bottom of the wagon with a horrendous explosion of wood.
“HELP, HELP! Two men are killing a woman!” Hook-hand shouted as he ran into the crowded street in front of the Old Panther Pub. A great many men had congregated there tonight and they were outraged by what they heard.
“What’s that?” someone cried.
“This way, two young men killing a lady!” Hook-hand shouted again.
“Come on!” The men began to follow. The crowd turned into a mob quickly. Men with guns, knives, and torches followed Hook-hand through the streets. Within moments, the young bouncer appeared ahead of them, running back toward the crowd. “Hurry, Hurry! They’re trying to escape! They’re behind the Seed and Feed!”
It happened to escape everyone’s notice that these two men looked rather feral. They smiled as they ran ahead of the crowd. But the most significant characteristic, concerning Hook-hand and Bouncer, was something none of them could have seen. They were possessed by demons.
GUILTY OR INNOCENT
The old woman stirred in the wreckage of the wagon as Ethan helped Gideon to his feet. She burst through the sidewall of the wagon, rushing across the courtyard toward them. She wailed like a banshee, foaming at the mouth. She charged at the boys like an enraged bull, but could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds.
“Get behind me!” Gideon shouted.
He picked up two of the wooden rungs from the broken ladder. Gideon twirled one through his fingers to get the feel of it, then tagged the woman in the collarbone with the other as she came at him. Bone cracked. She fell back stunned, but did not retreat.
She leaped at Gideon only to meet a flurry of alternating strikes with the wooden dowels. Normally a woman, her age and in her condition, would have been killed very quickly by such an attack, but the demon kept her body empowered with the strength of ten men.
Ethan tried to help with a longer piece of the ladder, but the woman splintered it with her boney hand and grabbed him. Gideon intervened with lightning speed. The frail, old woman threw Ethan ten feet across the yard, turning to take on Gideon again. The sound of a mob filtered through the alley leading to the Seed and Feed.
The old woman fought like a rabid animal. She answered every one of Gideon’s strikes with defiance. No matter how much damage her body took, the demon within would not give her up. Gideon lost sight of Ethan in the fight.
Ethan disappeared from the physical realm after the old woman threw him to the ground. He appeared in the spiritual realm arrayed for battle. The old woman had her back to him as she tried to back Gideon up against the wall of the building. In the spiritual realm, the demon’s form was the more apparent, with the old woman appearing transparent around it.
Ethan drew the sword from his side and charged at her. He was not sure if the demon would be able to see him while inside of the woman or not, but it did not matter. In this realm, Shaddai had made him a mighty warrior. He struck the woman with his blade. It swept right through her physical form, but caught hold of the demon.
That mighty blow knocked the demon out of the woman’s body. It tumbled backward to the ground. The bewildered look on its face told the story.
Released from the energizing power of the demon, the old woman fell to the ground like one of the sacks of feed stacked against the wall. Gideon knelt down cautiously, checking for signs of life, but the demon had pushed her body beyond hope. She was gone.
“There they are!”
A crowd appeared in the entrance to the courtyard. They were armed, carrying torches. A man with a hook for a hand led the way.
Ethan saw the evicted demon run into the crowd. He moved with dizzying speed from one person to another, feeding them thoughts and steering their perception of what they had just found in the courtyard of the Seed and Feed. They saw a helpless old woman lying murdered.
Ethan appeared back in the physical world with Gideon. The men moved in, brandishing their weapons. “What do we do?” Ethan whispered.
“We give up, Ethan, and pray the Lord will have his hand upon us. Nothing can harm us without his allowing it to.”
The demons watched as the crowd fell upon the two young men and bound them. They led them away from the Seed and Feed to the stockade nearly one quarter of a mile away. A guard, who kept the stockade, locked the boys in a cell.
The magistrate would try them in the morning, then sentence them. Everyone knew the only penalty for murder was death by hanging. Even as the night hours crept along into morning, the gallows were already being prepared.
Some time in the morning hours, a commotion erupted in the jailhouse where Ethan and Gideon remained under lock and key. The rancid smell made any possibility of sound sleep remote. Only from sheer exhaustion had he and Gideon been able to nod occasionally as the night progressed. Members of the mob had beaten them before leaving them at the stockade. The mob had called the boys many unsavory things, making their arrival at the jail almost a relief.
Ethan awoke to the sound of voices in the outer office of the jail. It sounded very similar to what he had heard when he and Gideon arrived. Within moments, the keeper of the jail brought in three men dressed as pirates.
There was only one large cell in the jailhouse, so these men were placed inside with Ethan and Gideon. Darkness made it difficult to tell much about the new arrivals. The only light filtered in from a moonlit window outside of the cell on the other side of the room.
Gideon seemed uninterested in the men. He slept, or at least he pretended to. Two of the men found themselves a corner to occupy while the third, more outgoing fellow, stood at the bars, talking to whomever might be paying him any attention.
“What are you lads in for?” he said.
Ethan almost told him, before Gideon grabbed his arm in the dark. “We were framed,” Ethan said instead.
“Framed? Aye, we were framed too, weren’t we lads!” the man laughed.
The other two men dismissed his joviality. Considering the circumstances they found themselves in, they were not in the mood.
“Well, what are you in here for?” asked Ethan.
The man left the bars, walking over to Ethan and Gideon’s side of the cell. He knelt down where Ethan sat against the wall. Gideon waited. “What’s your name, lad?” The man had a goatee and a ring of silver dangling from his left ear. His hair was black and shaggy and he smelled like the sea.