Destroying Angel Read Online Free

chemical burns. Eric Froud, his body a blistered monstrosity. And Taylor Junior, under the spell of this evil thing, had ordered his death. Had ordered all of their deaths. Only in the dark, roasting, freezing months of hiding had that realization finally seepedin.
He
was the murderer,
he
was the one following an evil master, not Jacob Christianson. Nobody but him.
    “You will do it. Your chains are thick now, you cannot break free.”
    “But I won’t.”
    “Then we’ll never be separated.” The grip tightened again. “You shall feel my presence every moment until you die. And then we’ll be together throughout the eternities. Constant companions.”
    It was too much, this terror. It devoured him from the inside, made him want to throw himself from the edge of a cliff or put a bullet in his brain, but that wouldn’t be a release either, would it? He couldn’t speak, but his mind cried out,
No more! I’ll do it!
    “Good. Now return to Blister Creek. Cleanse the town of apostates.”
    Taylor Junior blacked out. Some time passed. Maybe five minutes, maybe an hour. The buzzing was gone, had been for some time, and there was only the wind and the cold. He squirmed out from his hiding place and gasped in the cold air. It was dry and sucked the moisture from his mouth and lungs, but he didn’t care. The stench…
    It was only then that he realized the angel was gone. One moment he had been there, pressed against Taylor Junior, hand on his throat. But then he was gone, and Taylor Junior couldn’t remember when, exactly, that had happened.
    Only another mile or so to hike, and then he could get out of the cold. It was June, when sweltering heat typically settled over the desert, but in the previous week it had turned cold again, and he wasn’t prepared for it. His feet ached, and he moved with a limp.
    Would they still be there? And would they let him in? A year since he’d sent them to the second sanctuary. He’d taken three other men with him, husbands and fathers. He returned alone.
    “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to.” He tasted the dead cow in his mouth and tried to summon saliva to spit it out.
    He had no choice. The angel had seen to that. Taylor Junior knew his mission. Regroup. Return with his followers to Blister Creek. The angel had told him,
Cleanse the town
. But why?
    “Because Jacob Christianson is a minion of Satan,” he said out loud. “He has taken an oath with the devil. He is an enemy of God and stands in the way of the coming of the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord. That is why I must kill Jacob and all his followers.”
    But inside, a different, darker thought took hold.
    I’m the minion. I have given myself to Lucifer.

CHAPTER THREE
    Steve Krantz handed Jacob and Eliza surgical masks a few minutes after they entered Witch’s Warts. “You’ll want these.”
    Eliza looked queasy and put the mask on right away, but Jacob tucked his into his pocket for the moment. “I once dissected a body that had been improperly embalmed. Once you’ve breathed formaldehyde and putrefaction for three hours, you can handle almost anything.”
    “Agent Fayer and I once found the bodies of three prostitutes rotting in a storage unit in Texas,” Krantz said as he fit his own mask into place. “In August. This is worse. Trust me, put it on.”
    Jacob obeyed. He followed as Krantz and Eliza scrambled up the sandstone. It rose like the back of a tortoise, a large hump that was easily scaled until the final, horny top. From the top they could see a bristling labyrinth of spires and fins that stretched formiles in all directions. The sun was warm and bright in a clear sky. Rivulets of melting snow wept down the sandstone, while drifts clung to the shadows at their bases. Jacob lifted the mask and gave a tentative sniff. It was hard to believe that he would smell anything in this beautiful setting but the clean desert air, the sage, and the sand. Instead he caught a whiff of something