Plunging a knife in was easy. Pulling it back out was easy too. But reinserting the blade into the exact same wound? That was a different story entirely.
Only one exchange in, and the ghost nun was still strangling Castiel with every ounce of her demonic-versus-angelic fury. Meanwhile, Bella had broken into a fine sweat across her forehead.
Reintegrating the extracted memories demanded surgical precision. She worked with painstaking care, taking two full breaths before managing to shove the tangled fragments back in at roughly the correct angle.
Then both hands went to work. A pale white aura enveloped them as she channeled her psychosis treatment spell—Suppress Mind Schism—forcibly binding the ghost nun's fractured psyche back together.
Using a healing spell in a situation like this struck Bella as deeply strange.
Suppress Mind Schism was a fifth-circle spell, the highest tier she could currently cast. It was far less effortless than third- or fourth-circle magic, and the results weren't nearly as immediate.
The ghost nun wasn't defenseless either. Dark crimson energy rippled outward from her body in every direction.
Bella took the brunt of it. A torrent of images flooded her mind—frenzied massacres, sadistic torture, rivers of blood.
A voice seemed to whisper in her head without end: Go on. Go slaughter. Go kill to your heart's content.
She clenched her jaw and used her own mental discipline to force the corruption out, accelerating the fusion at the same time.
A spectral outline—a slightly plump nun—stepped out of the ghost nun's psyche.
Her soul had already been devoured. The last remaining traces of her memories were now being forcibly absorbed into the ghost nun's psyche. With a soft pop, like a dreamlike bubble bursting, the final shred of her existence was wiped from the universe.
Body, soul, memories—all gone. As far as the cosmos was concerned, this person had never existed.
Her sacrifice caused the ghost nun's overwhelming malice to recede. Those murky yellow eyes still burned with fury, but noticeably less than before.
"It's working... it works! Hurry!" Castiel, fearing his vessel would be strangled to death, had no choice but to pour his own energy into it, sustaining the body's life force in a continuous stream.
"You think I need you to tell me that?" Bella grumbled, annoyed at the angel for going down in the first round. She cast another fifth-circle Suppress Mind Schism, and a second nun's soul dissipated entirely.
"Bella?! What are you doing here?!" Miss Violet Harmon appeared suddenly, dressed in a white nun's robe. She stared at the scene before her, bewildered.
Castiel had it worst—the ghost nun had him in a death grip by the throat.
Bella stood behind the ghost nun, both hands on its shoulders, pressing down with increasing force in a posture that looked remarkably like she was trying to strangle the thing from behind.
Miss Harmon gaped at the three of them locked in mutual choking, utterly lost. She desperately wanted someone to give her a cue.
"The basement! Jesus's... blood! Blood!" Castiel pointed toward the far wall. A beam of white light shot from his fingertip, and a hidden door swung open to reveal a winding passage descending into impenetrable depths.
"Ha! So that's what you angels were really after!" Bella had known all along that these angels had a reason for coming to a remote monastery in the middle of nowhere. Defeating the demon was important, but there had to be something more important still. She just hadn't expected it to be the Blood of Jesus.
To be honest, she didn't dare touch the stuff. One touch and she'd probably convert into a devout believer on the spot. Drink it? The thought alone was terrifying. Even with it right in front of her, she wouldn't take it—the ramifications of the Blood of Jesus ran far too deep.
She had no intention of touching it, and she didn't want Miss Harmon anywhere near something that holy either.
"Violet! Come help me!"
Despite the powerful draw of the angel's holy aura, Violet trusted Bella more. She sprinted to Bella's side.
"See the tattoo on the back of my right hand? Use your blood to trace it." Bella turned to Castiel. "Cas, I'll have my associate take your place. You go get the Blood of Jesus yourself. Sound fair?"
"Agreed."
With the deal struck, Violet Harmon sliced her wrist open and smeared her blood—tinged with undead essence—over the tattoo on Bella's hand, summoning Jason to the scene.
Jason was a dedicated student. Even aboard the ship, he always had his nose in a book. Right before the summons, he'd been reading one titled How to Become a First Mate.
The summons caught him completely off guard. Before he could process what was happening, Bella reached out, tapped him, and swapped his position with Castiel's.
The ghost nun's iron-grey fingers clamped around Jason's thick neck.
What the hell is this?! Both of them had roughly the same thought at the same time.
Jason looked at Bella, then down at the book still in his hand, his resentment obvious. Boss, would it kill you to give me a heads-up? I didn't even bring my machete!
The ghost nun stared at the bloodstained hockey mask and decided the burly man in front of her didn't look like a good person either.
Castiel expressed his admiration for the self-sacrificing spirit of Bella and Jason with a solemn nod, then headed for the basement to retrieve the Blood of Jesus.
With the pedantic angel out of the way, Bella picked up the pace.
Jason was famous across the region for being built like a tank—big head, thick neck, enormous health bar. Strangling him to death wouldn't be easy.
Under Bella's direction, he seized the ghost nun's arms in an iron grip.
"Ranked sixty-second among Solomon's Seventy-Two Demons? Quite the heavy hitter. But now that you're saturated with all this holy energy, can you even go back to Hell? Your old friends down there would probably rip you apart on sight. Why not join my crew instead?" Bella said with a light laugh.
As she continued fusing the nuns' memories into the ghost nun's psyche, she gradually uncovered the entity's true identity.
At its core, this creature was Valak—the sixty-second of the Seventy-Two Demons of Solomon. Summoned to Earth during the Middle Ages, Valak had been delighted at first. But before the demon could even leave the summoner's castle, a squad of priests had burst in.
The lead priest hadn't wasted a word. He'd splashed the Blood of Jesus straight onto Valak's forehead, and just like that—without killing so much as a rabbit on Earth—Valak was sealed.
A Theron single-seat craft had shattered the monastery's seal. Valak burst free, seething with centuries of pent-up fury, and devoured every last nun in the monastery.
The Blood of Jesus, the very substance Bella wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, had proven devastatingly effective.
Sealed by the priests with the Blood of Jesus, Valak had undergone a fundamental transformation. The souls of the holy nuns and the Blood of Jesus had merged and mingled. The sixty-second Demon of Solomon ceased to exist. He became she—a ghost nun who could never return to Hell.