Haunted Devotion

24.

"You can't bleed!" The woman bellows out with anger bubbling inside towards Nolan.

Ripping the wooden piece out of his hand he takes the girl and lays his hand where blood is still leaking out and says something for the demon to lay dormant having her fall asleep with it.

"Decades of limbo also gives you things to blend in with whatever century you land," Nolan answers while now shaking his hand having it back to normal.

I look stunned at how he even could do any of it, forgetting I was even mad at him.

"How is that possible?" I ask him, shocked only knowing him to be an entity not an actual human or have human-like qualities such as being able to bleed.

They both look to each other more than to me than to the women, "She's better protected by me," Nolan tells Linus.

"I can do a better job as I actually know what's going on," Linus says, pulling me towards him.

Hunter just watches with the priest who is chanting out latin verses casting the woman away.

"Shut it old man," The woman snaps her fingers and he starts puking out blood onto the Vatican floor.

Hunter is about to take over but she does the same to him but worse as his eyes begin to bleed as well.

"Stop. Stop hurting them." I say looking at her as she enjoys them hunched over in their own blood.

Both guys kept their hands on both sides of my arm until I yanked away going over to the woman.

"Rowen right?" I say as she reaches to touch my face delicately.

A smile presses against her face as she now takes hold of me roughly, taking a look at how our features resembled so much as I'm grown now.

"You got those eyes...cheekbones...magic like me."

I nodded, "But you placed a curse and now I have no anklet so I'm guessing you could take me easily with no fight from me right?"

Rowen grooms my sweaty hair only wanting to feel the magic radiating out of me.

"It's only right to help your mother," Going to trail over to my heart, I closed my eyes and remembered that night Nolan told me I had a choice. I could either die painfully or I could die not feeling as much pain. I had taken some time to read my relic to make better sense of my confusion, so saying the words I read from the relic a cup forms in my hands with a liquid brewed inside.

"I don't know about you but I would rather be consumed by death limbo than a magic greedy mother who barely knows me," Opening my eyes I drink half of the liquid before Nolan yanks the cup before I can finish the rest.

"Love," He sternly says but just taking half makes me fall to the ground, soul intact, but chained to me for no one else to take...not even Rowen.

"You brat! And you–you pathetic puppet!" Rowen yells at Nolan after yelling at a now asleep Devlin on the Vatican floor.

Hunter and the priest die from the spell Rowen casted on them while Linus turns as the girl who is still possessed is still asleep as well.

Nolan scoops up Devlin bridal style, not letting Linus or Rowen touch her.

"You won't be able to extract her soul and I have no idea how you're involved but don't follow behind either," Nolan says to Linus while stepping over Hunter and the priest's dead body.

****

HQ gets a whiff of what happened as Yerlin is going around in circles on how Hunter or Linus even ended up on the list for the Vatican trip.

"That's not my signature," Yerlin says as he's chewing on a toothpick sitting in front of the same people Devlin had when getting suspended.

"Well that's a liability we can't afford around here," They urgently say while crossing their arms.

Yerlin stands, "You're firing me? Me?"

HQ raise their heads to the side and have him pushed out like Devlin.

"This is bullshit," He kicks the metal trash can that was there and chews on another toothpick out of bitterness.

Grabbing his pager from his waist he tries to page Devlin but she doesn't answer.

Trying Gerald, he doesn't answer, leaving Yerlin in a shitty position.

****

Nolan lays Devlin down in his bed, sitting at the edge, holding her hand.

"Why did you do something so stupid?"

Cold spots fill his room more as he says that, having him know what's to happen next.

He leans over feeling her neck for a pulse and doesn't find one.

"Love," He desperately calls out and just as he appeared out of nowhere, Devlin appeared as an apparition.

"Now we have to do the wedding before I go back into my body on the full moon," She says walking over to him.

Embracing her, Nolan nestles into her ghostly shoulder, relieved she isn't fully gone.

"How'd you even learn about this? You could barely believe you had magic in you."

Nolan says but Devlin just embraces him back, "They were never going to give me back all my relics and with the curse...I would have never stopped stressing about dying and being enslaved to a woman who calls herself my mother."

Moving back a little, Nolan holds Devlin's face gracefully, "You said on the full moon you have to return to your body, but if we get married there is no returning. You'll be with me forever...do you think you're ready for that?"

Devlin looks to her body on the bed then back at herself now standing in front of Nolan.

She had a choice again. Be dead. Or be like Nolan for eternity spending forever with him with no worries of anything.

"If we wed...promise me one thing..." Devlin leans into Nolan's ear telling him what it is that she wanted, having him nod with a kiss placed on her forehead, "I promise." Both leave going to the place Nolan has been lingering in with a couple of spirits just like him.

"Don't be afraid. They are just like family to me."

A few poke at her as they are small children while the adults stare from afar.

"So it wasn't that lonely," Devlin says while now seeing a skeleton dog run up licking her ankle.

"Without you it was utterly unbearable," Nolan says, holding her hand as he takes her to the spirit bar where all new spirits get crafted a spirit drink.

Chatter and laughter fills the undead place until Nolan has Devlin walk in with him, sitting at the bar.

"A newcomer I see..." The rotted out spirit says mixing two drinks, one for Nolan the other for Devlin.

While mixing, an eyeball falls out into the drink, Nolan takes it out and hands it to Devlin.