I Will Fear No Evil (Psalm 23 Mysteries Book 10) Read Online Free

soon they were running through the house, then out onto the porch, then they were by the car.
    She heard someone shouting, but she didn’t think it was Jeremiah. The pressure on her throat was beginning to ease up and relief surged through her. They were out of the hideous house. Everything was going to be fine.
    Someone came over and after a moment she realized it was a paramedic. She hadn’t realized there were any there at the house. Jeremiah put her down on the ground, and the other man bent over her and began to examine her.
    After looking her over he said, “You’re having an allergic reaction to something.”
    She remembered the strange smell that had been in the basement and wondered if it could be connected.
    “Are you allergic to anything that you know of?” he continued.
    She shook her head, not sure if she could speak yet. He asked a couple of more questions and then gave her some medication. Faster than she would have thought possible she was able to start breathing freely again. With Jeremiah’s help she sat up slowly, just in time to see the medical examiner bringing the body out of the house.
    Mark exchanged a few words with both him and the paramedic before he came over.
    “You doing okay?” he asked, worry evident in his tone.
    “Yes,” Cindy managed to say.
    “You had us worried. I wonder what you were allergic to?”
    She shook her head. She didn’t know, but she hoped to never encounter whatever it was again.
    “You might want to see a doctor and have the whole battery of allergy tests,” he suggested.
    It was probably a good idea. She shuddered to think what might have happened if she had been alone when the attack happened. Then again, there was no way she would have been alone in that house. Still, whatever was in it that had triggered the reaction could be something she might encounter elsewhere.
    “It’s a heck of a thing,” Mark said, looking distracted.
    “Where’s Liam?” Cindy asked, realizing she hadn’t seen Mark’s partner.
    “On vacation, lucky son-of-a-gun. Wish I was. In all my years I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
    “Nor have I,” Jeremiah offered.
    “You said she had a mixture of symbols on her. What do the symbols mean?” Mark asked. “I mean, obviously pentagrams are Satanic.”
    Jeremiah shook his head slowly. “That one in particular was symbolic of evil because it was upside down and that would seem to be the intent of it. Regular ones with the single point facing upward aren’t Satanic.”
    “What do you mean?” he asked.
    “The normal pentagram is a Christian symbol representing the five wounds of Christ: head, both hands, and both feet. The upside down version didn’t become a negative thing until more modern times when occultists and Satanists used it to represent something contrary.”
    Cindy had heard something like that before, though she couldn’t remember where.
    “So, point up okay, point down bad?” Mark asked. “That makes no sense.”
    “It’s the inversion, the opposite. Like the difference between a cross and an upside down cross,” Cindy said. She guessed even that was a corrupted symbol, though. Legend had it that the Apostle Peter had been crucified upside down because he didn’t consider himself worthy to be killed in the same manner as Christ. Even an act of humility could be corrupted by those with evil intentions.
     
     
    Jeremiah was still worried about Cindy. When she had fallen off the stairs it had scared him, and when he realized she wasn’t breathing right he had felt a kind of powerlessness he never wanted to feel again.
    There was something deeply wrong with the house and particularly the basement. He had been doing his best to try and block it out, even though his imagination had been working overtime. He could have sworn he’d heard noises, whispers, most inaudible but a few startlingly clear.
    He had told himself that it was nothing, merely an old building and the suggestion of what had