Part 2

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    The air was not meant to be so cold. Spring season had driven that away more for the humidity than the true dry heat, and the nights were mildly cool and insect-ridden, but the closer they came to the village the lower the temperature fell. And the aura Sanzo could sense even a street away, that enveloped the house and shrouded it in a different kind of darkness. A black hole of aural energy. His skin stung as he neared it, following the bishop's lead soundlessly as their boots crunched dead earth and Hazel offered no details, no warnings or advisories, even background information it might be prudent to know.
    Hazel Glosse signed habitually before passing through the door of the house, which he did without knocking or waiting, as readily as though a resident.
    There were a few relatives inside, eyes sunk back and dark and wary on Sanzo as he passed through, shivering internally for the cold chill of the barrier just passed over but too proud to gesture a banishment. The hosts murmured something and Hazel gave the introductions. They bowed, belatedly.
    "Through here," the Westerner said, breath frosting in the air. He indicated to a side door with a pale hand. Sanzo had yet to inquire about the ugly slash across the man's palm.
    In a few moments he didn't need to.
    This place was at one point a bedroom, but the bedding had been removed and all the furniture stripped. Someone had bolted chains into the rocklike stone of the floor.
    Sanzo had a brief image of Goku imprisoned in his cave, looking at the small huddled figure wrapped up and bound in thick, heavy chain, curled in the corner with matted hair hanging over his eyes. But Goku hadn't appeared as a black snarl to the mind's eye, coiling sick aural threads. He hadn't wheezed with shredded lungs and reeked so much of violent filth.
    There was a good bit of blood on and around him, seeped into his clothes and dripping from rutted gashes along his arms. It had a look that suggested these wounds were self-inflicted. Certainly his red-soaked fingers with the torn and ragged nails attested to this.
    Hazel signed again as the door closed. Sanzo caught a quick burst of very mild energy swirling forward in the air and then the boy in the corner gave a full-body jerk, coughing wetly and trying to squirm away.
    "Do you know any prayers, Sanzo-han?" he said, as the creature crawled with awkward limbs onto his knees, trying to disengage from his restraints.
    "None of yours," Sanzo answered. His eyes didn't pull off the boy.
    "The mother church dictates use of the Roman Ritual for matters of this regard. The standard preliminary invocation is the Litaniae Sanctorum. It's more powerful through recitation, but I have this prepared for you," said the bishop. Sanzo looked over finally to find a hand extending a handful of paper sheets toward him. Torn sacrilegiously from somewhere, foreign text looking up at him in incoherent tiny lines.
    "I can't read this," Genjo Sanzo told him flatly, even after getting the papers forced into his hands. They were the same size and thickness to have come from one of the various holy books he had on occasion seen the priest paging through.
    "It's Latin. Surely you as a learned man are familiar with it."
    Hazel saw the expression. Sour, not embarrassed, just a bit glowering.
    He ducked his head in graceful defeat. "Repeat as I say, then, if you will."
    "In my experience, words have little use, Englishman."
    "At times I would agree. However--"
    The foreigner was interrupted first by the scream, the feral yell as the boy started to lunge, caught almost too late on the chains and slashing through the air in wild, felt movements, mouth frothing with spit and eyes bloodshot, unblinking, ceaseless as the shrieking from his lips.
    Sanzo found only belatedly that he had stepped back, wiping hot acidic saliva from his face with a sleeve.
    And Hazel, in the confusion, had rushed forward, suddenly vibrating with a surge of something not even witnessed in battle, indecipherable words shrill from his mouth higher and sharper than the monk could have thought him able. He caught the fist that swung at him without effort, arm shaking and smoke curling under his grip as the creature howled in animal-felt pain.
    "Pater noster, qui es in caelis," Hazel began to intone as the screams increased. "Sanctificetur nomen tuum--"
    All at once the arm was ripped from him, slung back so strong that a pop of bone sounded, and then a swing before Hazel could react. He was struck hard and solidly, knocked back as though thrown and colliding with the taller priest.
    The child cackled as they picked themselves up off the earthen floor.
    "Have you dealt with exorcism before, Sanzo-han?" Hazel coughed out, wiping away the blood for a slash to his cheek by a nail, and with a light in his eyes Sanzo had never been privy to.
    The Buddhist watched it as he pulled himself upright, dusting dirt and grime from his robes. "No," he murmured. "You'll say you have."
    "A few times," said the Westerner, with a masochistic little smirk. The remark came with the hint 'but nothing like this.'
    Sanzo kicked the scattered Latin sheets aside. "If it's defense you needed and not assistance, you've already a manservant for that purpose."
    The smile stayed frozen. "Gato is presently not well, Sanzo-han."
    Before them, the creature continued to laugh.
    "We will disable him faster in concert. It's worth more than physical strength now. But Sanzo-han, if he starts to speak, do not listen to anything he says."
    "What could he have to say?"
    It flashed a bloody, decayed grin.

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18:45 18 Dec 2004

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Pater noster, qui es in caelis,
sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Adveniat regnum tuum.
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie,
et dimitte nobis debita nostra,
sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem:
sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Our Father (Latin)