The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

constant cycle of decay. You had to keep up unless you wanted to rot along with it. Buying a gun was one method of staying afloat. Using it was another. And I certainly planned on using mine.
    But before I could do that, I had to prepare. I hiked back to my apartment, narrowly avoiding Marion and his questions about the rent I owed, and got to work.
    Between downing iron pills—demons hated the stuff—and loading my pistol with plenty of bullets, I checked Armageddon Now. Max messaged me back. He warned me again about what I was doing. Reminded me to perform the cleansing rite after I made my kill. I replied with my plans, thanked him for the hundredth time, pressed send, then clicked on the boards.
    Since I didn't own a TV, I got most of my news, local or otherwise, from the internet. The first thread, written by Max, was posted two hours ago and titled “MULTIPLE HOMICIDES UNCOVERED IN STONE CHAPEL, MAINE. – URGENT!”
    Murder wasn't rare here, but multiple ones committed in a short period of time? I hoped we didn't have a serial killer. That would suck.
    Dear Readers, the post began. Many of you, myself included, live in Stone Chapel and it is because of you that I write this. You may have already seen the reports on television. Five bodies have been found in the old Harker Meats warehouse on Barton Avenue by the harbor. The police claim to have a handle on things. They don't.
    Great. Barton Avenue wasn’t even ten minutes from my apartment.
    The police think these people were murdered.
    They were. But we have a reason to believe they weren't murdered by human hands.
    Oh, shit. We couldn't just have a normal serial killer, could we? We had to have a demonic one.
    The Boss has done some investigating of his own.
    The Boss, taking some initiative. Good job, Boss.
    And the bodies show signs of demonic tampering. On each victim's abdomen, there is a branding of some sort. It's unclear what the symbol is right now, but it's definitely demonic. The killer at work here is extremely dangerous. Use caution when out at night. Take extra iron to protect yourself against possession. Be safe and if you know anything about what's going on, please contact me.
    - Max
    The subsequent comments ranged from panicked to grotesquely curious. I hovered somewhere in the middle. I was freaked out, yeah, but I had plenty of questions. Who was The Boss? Why was this killer so dangerous? What did this mysterious symbol look like? Should I really go hunting tonight?
    All I had to do was take a gander at the mounting pile of unpaid bills on my kitchen table to find the answer to the last question. The others I could merely speculate about.
    In an effort to avoid any more bad news, I closed my laptop and directed my energies toward the task at hand. I had everything I needed for a hunt spread out on the floor in front of me. Gun, bullets, chalk, dagger, a diagram of the banishing seal―the symbol used to purge a demon's spirit from its physical body―and a list I printed out from the government's Department of Demonology website detailing the ways to identify a possessed animal. I probably wouldn’t need the diagram, seeing as we spent an entire week in third grade learning how to draw the seal as part of Possession Prevention Week, but I wanted to bring it just in case my brain shorted out like it often did under pressure.
    No one knew exactly where demons came from. A lot of people used them to prove the existence of Hell while others believed they hailed from a parallel universe. I didn't care one way or the other. They were here and they weren't showing any signs of wanting to leave.
    What we did know, however, was that a demon couldn't survive long without a host, hence possession. They were parasites, feeding on whatever living thing they could sink their nasty claws into. According to demonologists, animals were easier to possess because they lacked the free will humans had. They couldn't fight back. Humans were trickier but the payoff