"Before Dawn"

Chapter 15: Before Dawn

"You were in your momma's belly when all of it happened," Bishop starts. He's staring at the wall as if it were a television replaying his memories. Like his thoughts, his words were clear and free of drunkenness—and he's smiling. "This is back when her and I were in Louisiana. Remember how I used to talk to you about me and your mom and Louisiana?"

"I remember," Dawn said. "That's the place you and mom linked up and started hunting together."

And fell in love.

"That's right. The True Believer around those parts at the time assigned us together...said we'd work well together. He said her stubbornness and direct, quick to react attitude would mesh well with my patient, rational, and slow to jump into things demeanor. In other words, we'd cancel each other out...get a good balance on things."

Dawn had heard it all before, often-times when her father is drunk-rambling. She fights the urge to remind him of this. She sees the smile fade from his face, and it is replaced with somberness and fortified by guilt. It's the look that he normally wears when he's drunk, a look that she can now at least associate with the shame that he carries for whatever happened—what she's about to find out.

"There were a lot of kids turning up missing in Louisiana, mostly in the southern part of the state. They were just disappearing with no trace. No bodies, no clues, no nothing for the police. It was obvious something sinister was going down. Just-so-happened, me and your momma and a couple of other hunters operated in that particular neck of the woods. We investigated, tracked, killed a whole bunch of evil sons-of-bitches along the way until we came upon the source of these missing children. A demon known as 'The Master' was behind it all...committed those damn-sacrifices to appease his demon god...and his name is 'Moloch'," Bishop said, reaching with a shaking hand to take a swig of his whiskey from his tumbler, not realizing it was empty. He passed the empty glass to Dawn, and chin-nodded toward the bottle of Jack Daniels next to the desktop computer. "Give me a refill."

He had said it with such determined finality that Dawn does as he had asked without question. She's not happy about it, but she has no choice if she wants to keep him talking. She passes the tumbler back to her father and sits down. He takes three gulps and sets the tumbler on the desk with a death-grip around the glass. He looks her square in the eye with a stare so intense that makes Dawn slightly uncomfortable.

"Your mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer while you were still in the womb. I knew...we knew something wasn't right with her for so long, but your stubborn mother refused to go and get seen. I wanted to save her, anyway I could. So...I—"

Dawn knows she should her mouth shut, be patient and let him explain. But she can't help herself. "What, Dad? What'd you do?"

"I made a deal," Bishop said, turning his eyes away from hers in shame. "I made a deal with The Master, Dawn."

The cardinal sin of all Believers in the life of hunting—making deals with the hunted. It had been seared in Dawn's brain that in this life of hunters, making deals with, working alongside of, or the most minor of pacts with the monsters in this world is a no-go. No exception, no compromise, no matter what. You may as well go full wanderer-status if you slip, so it's been said. Dawn has already pieced together 'the deal' that her father had made with this, 'Master', already. It's obvious, but she wants to let her father tell it, no matter how much it hurts.

"I tracked The Master on my own, did my own thing to find him. He had taken over some poor homeless guy's body. When I did find him, I offered you up, Dawn. I offered you up in return that The Master would cure your mother of her cancer. Your pathetic father offered you as a sacrifice to save my wife," Bishop said.