At Sunny Days Baptist Church, Trip had been busy setting up the dining hall, which he deemed the most defensible location. By the time Grant and his team arrived, Trip had stacked heavy boxes of church supplies to serve as makeshift barricades and decorated the walls with religious imagery such as crucifixes, posters of biblical stories, and scriptures from the Bible. The dining hall was located at the back of the church with windows providing a view of the back parking lot.

“Brought my shotgun,” said Trip, holding up a 12 gauge remington as Grant and his team entered the room. “Brought some food from the church kitchen too. We might be here for a while.”

“Does the church staff know of what we are about to do?” Grant asked, setting down a bag full of equipment.

“Oh sure,” said Trip, smiling. “The pastor and I are good friends. I actually used to attend here.”

Estelle dropped the bag of bones before Trip. “Ok we brought the bones. Now what?”

Trip pulled out a thick knife and grinned. “We carve oneselves a weapon made of bone. I suggest we make one for each.”

“No I’m good,” said Franklin, who looked scared shitless. “I’m just going to sit here and gather myself.”

Trip shrugged. “Suit yourself. Don’t worry son, we’ll take care of her. Remember she ain’t here to kill you. She just wants you to squirt a baby into her. Who knows, you might just get the best sex of your life.” Trip roared with laughter. “Admit it son. You're curious to know what it feels like.”

“No not really,” Franklin said quietly.

“Are you sure her being on church grounds is enough to weaken her?” asked Grant, double checking his submachine gun.

“Not one hundred percent,” Trip admitted. “But I’m pretty confident she will be.”

“Then wouldn’t she keep out knowing that?”

“No she wants it bad I’m sure,” said Trip. “Demons are parasitic. They need something to feed on. In this case she needs it bad.” He winked at Franklin who groaned.

“Please stop teasing me about it,” said Franklin.

Grant winced as Trip sawed both of Aldo’s tibias in half and sharpened them to form stakes of bone.

“Help yourselves,” said Trip, handing each of them a stake. Estelle grimaced as she turned her own over in her hand.

“I am definitely washing my hands after this,” she grumbled.

The five of them waited through the afternoon without leaving the room, not even to use the restroom. Trip has set up buckets in the corner of the room for body waste needs. Estelle however refused to do her business in the presence of four men and so Rourke accompanied her to the nearest church restroom. When night fell Grant could feel himself and the others grow uneasy.

Trip produced a tablet and examined the screen. “I can use this to access the church’s cameras. Don’t see anything so far.”

“Maybe we did kill her with that grenade launcher,” said Estelle.

Trip snorted. “Demons don’t die that easily. I remember the cult managed to summon this tiny little thing, half the size of a watermelon. One of the guards emptied an entire clip into it and it was still twitching.”

“If she was dead Jim would have given us a call,” said Grant. “He’s watching over the painting, remember?”

They waited in silence for another two hours, which passed like minutes. Grant caught Franklin nodding during that time.

At 10:43 pm, Grant heard a car alarm go off just outside the dining hall. Everyone stood up immediately, weapons at the ready. Grant could see the lights from their rental sedan blinking as the alarm continued to blare out. He saw no movement however. There was nothing but the two vehicles parked outside the window illuminated by the blinking lights.

A heavy thud came from the roof and Trip looked up sharply, pointing his shotgun. “Christ,” he muttered.

Franklin looked close to having a mental meltdown. Roruke stayed close to him, his handgun pointed downwards.

“Franklin I think you should lock yourself in the kitchen pantry,” said Grant.

“Yeah good idea,” said Franklin, and began fast walking towards the doorway to the kitchen. The service window above the counter between the dining hall and the kitchen gave Grant and his team a clear view of the whole kitchen area and the pantry door.

The noises from the roof moved in the direction of the kitchen and towards the side door in the kitchen which opened to the alley between the church and the fence that surrounded the house next door.

“She’s going to drop down and come through that side door,” said Trip. “Shit, the church staff aren’t going to be happy about us lighting up their kitchen.”

“We got bigger things to worry about besides ruining a couple of pots and pans,” said Estelle.

The noise on the roof stopped and all was quiet again. Grant felt sweat roll down his back.

A scream came from the pantry and Grant rushed into the kitchen. He was a fool to trap his cousin inside the small closet for food. He had seen how strong the demon was. It was capable of ripping through solid steel. The demon lady had torn right through the roof.

Franklin burst out of the pantry and pushed past Grant back into the dining hall. “Shwe’s in there!” he shrieked. She punched a hole right above me!”

“Get back!” Grant yelled to the other and aimed his submachine gun at the pantry door. The noises from the pantry ceiling stopped and something heavy could be heard roping down. Out stepped the demon lady slowly. Her pale body and hair was lightly covered with dust and wood chips.

Grant opened fire as he backed out of the kitchen and the lady screeched as she was pelted with bullets.

“Reloading!” Grant yelled, ejecting the clip after he had emptied it.

As Trip has told them, the demon seemed weakened inside the church building. Her wounds did not heal instantly as Grant had seen them do before. In fact the demon was now backing away slowly from Grant like a wounded animal.

“Finish her off!” Grant shouted to Trip and Estelle as they fired through the service window and into the kitchen. Rourke stayed back to cover Franklin. Trip fired shell after shell at the demon lady who still had some speed in her. She ducked and weaved, using the kitchen counter as cover and then burst through the door, leaving a trail of dark colored blood.

“Don’t chase!” said Trip, hastily reaching into his pockets for more shells.

“She’s wounded,” said Estelle. “If we can incapacitate her for just a few seconds….”

“Not much visibility out there,” said Trip. “Don’t try it.”

“But she’ll heal and hit us again and again till our bullets are spent.”

Trip shook his head. “There will be another opportunity. She wants Franklin bad remember? She’ll make the risks.”

Grant walked up to the windows and checked the back parking lot. To his shock and confusion their rental car was moving on its own. He stared as the sedan then rose into the air, revealing the demon woman behind it. She bent backwards.

“Everyone back away from the windows!” Grant yelled, scrambling back.

Rourke picked up Franklin and rushed him into the kitchen with everyone else. Grant barely made it to the doorway when a crashing noise came from behind. The woman had thrown their rental car into the building. Rubble and dust spewed in all directions. The windows of the car and the wall shattered, littering the floor with glass. The car alarm began to blare out loudly, filling the whole room with an obnoxious noise.

“The rental company is not going to be pleased,” said Rourke.

“No shit,” said Grant.

The woman appeared, crawling over the roof of the ruined car. Grant, Estelle, Roruek, and Trip all unloaded on her, but this time the demon did not slow down despite the numerous wounds that tore her body. Her flesh still seemed somewhat resistant to bullets. Though she wasn’t healing, she was not sustaining as much damage as Grant would have liked.

“Run!” Trip yelled.

To Grant’s horror they all spread out as the demon lady charged the kitchen doorway. Estelle dived out the door to the alleyway. Trip and Roruke dived in the direction of the walk-in fridge. Grant grabbed Franklin and together they left through the back door that led into the rest of the church building.

Grant noticed some stairs in the darkness and hurried up them with Franklin right behind him.

“The others!” Franklin cried.

“It’s you she wants!” said Grant and they ran for their lives.

The stairs led up to a hallway which Grant and Franklin fled down. The room at the end of the hall on the right was labeled as a church conference room.

“In here,” said Grant, pulling the door open. Inside was a long table with business like swivel chairs on either side. It looked just like the conference rooms found in high end company buildings.

Grant flicked on the lights and spotted a restroom at the other end of the room.

“Hide in there,” said Grant, pointing at the restroom.

“We are trapped,” Franklin whimpered.

“Just do it!” Grant barked, pushing him forward.

The door to the conference room exploded inward and the demon lady dived in. Grant shoved Franklin away from him and held back the trigger. The slim body of the demon lady shuddered slightly from the impact of the bullets but his volley only seemed to anger her.

The submachine clicked empty.

“Fuck,” said Grant. He reached for a spare clip but the demon didn’t give him a chance to reload.

Grant dodged the first swipe from the demon lady’s talon like nails but failed to avoid the kick that followed. Pain spiked in his belly as he was thrown back from the impact. Grant curled up and moaned in agony.

“Grant!” Franklin cried out.

Grant could feel his cousin touch him and struggled to push him back. Grant tried telling him to run but couldn’t find the strength to form words. Franklin seemed to be searching for the submachine gun but Grant had dropped it and it was empty.

“Noooo!” Franklin screamed and Grant turned over onto his frontside to look at Franklin. Franklin could be seen struggling on the conference table and the woman was holding him down.

“Get off!” Grant screamed, struggling to get up. His ribs felt broken and a sharp pain in his hip continued to agonize him. To his horror he saw the demon lady tear off Franklin’s pants. Grant fumbled in his pockets for the bone stake but it was gone. He didn’t see it on the carpeted floor.

“No…” Grant whispered. He had likely dropped it in the dining room or perhaps it had fallen out of his pocket when they were running up the stairs.

The demon lady flung her head back and screamed. Her arms flailed out to the side widely and her breasts shuddered. At last Grant got a look at her face which had always been covered in an impenetrable shadow now gone. Despite the feral look in her black eyes and the sickening pale complexion of her skin, she was otherwise beautiful in an unexplainable fashion.

Grant starred helplessly, his body too damaged and weary to fight. The demon lady looked down on Franklin, his face stony and eyes wide. Her thin fingers wrapped around Franklin’s prick and began to gently draw it towards her womanhood.

“Grant,” Franklin whimpered. “Jesus, it feels…”

“Fight it Franklin,” Grant croaked weakly. His eyes searched the floor for the submachine gun. It lay below the table and was cleaved into three pieces.

Franklin was moaning loudly, whether in pain or in pleasure Grant could not tell. Perhaps it was a mixture of both.

“Franklin!” Grant roared.

Suddenly Franklin was sitting up. He moved shockingly fast and his right arm came up. The bone stake was in his hand which he brought down on the demon lady’s chest.

The demon lady made no sound and she stared right at Franklin. Her expression was one of confusion.

“We are over,” Franklin stammered and the demon lady’s body began to collapse into itself. Franklin scrambled back on the table and Grant watched alongside him as the body of the demon seemed to be slowly absorbed into thin air as if a vacuum in space time had formed. Grant thought it looked like a miniature black hole or perhaps a portal to another world. The demon’s ties to the mortal world had been severed and the place where it came from, where that was, was calling it back.

Within seconds the entire body of the demon woman was absorbed and a releasing silence fell over the conference room. For a good long minute Grant and Franklin simply stared at the space where the demon had just been moments before.

Grant coughed to break the silence. “Wanna pull your pants up now?”

Franklin turned red and did just that.

“So uh how was it?” Grant asked, nursing his hips.

“How was what?”

Grant grinned and Franklin scowled when he finally understood. “Do me a favor and never bring up what happened here again.”

“You seemed to like it,” said Grant, fighting back laughter. “You should have seen yourself. I almost didn’t want to stop her.”

“Just shut up about it ok?”

Grant chuckled. “Alright, but on a serious note get Rourke up here if you can find him. I’m tapping out here.”

Grant slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. He heard Franklin go out the door and a minute later Estelle, Trip, and Rourke burst into the room.

“We thought you two fled across the street,” said Trip. “That’s where I would have gone.”

As Roruke helped Grant up, Grant’s phone began to vibrate and Estelle picked it up for him.

“Grant,” said Estelle, handing him the phone after listening for a moment. “You better hear what Sophia has to say.”