Page 21 of Wayward Daughter

“Wouldn’t the Church have more information about the Yellow King if he or his followers were responsible for that kind of death with your holy people?” Logan asked.

“The Church didn’t know about anything but witches and demons back then,” Caleb said. “The bible doesn’t talk about anything else, though Leviticus and Deuteronomy specifically prohibit consuming blood. Venatio Daemonum formed shortly after they found out it was more than what the bible mentions. The existence of vampires and shifters would have been of greater importance than reading a diary that survived a fire. The nun wouldn’t have been writing while everyone was dying.”

“I have a theory this Yellow King isn’t real,” Rainer said. “No offense to you and yours, but I’m an atheist. I think he’s a story that grew legs and spawned a religion. They are waiting for him to come back and just not as loud about it as some of you with your gods.”

Blasphemous, but also a possibility.

“Get into that diary,” Caleb said. “I’m going to give Rainer and Logan access into our drive with the Esoteric Texts. The rest of us need to be looking into exactly what happened that Venatio Daemonum was formed and if it has anything to do with the Yellow King and everyone just missed it back then.”

Good plan. And I didn’t think it was possible to blow my mind any more than Logan had, but then Saul opened his mouth. No one really knew what happened back then. We just had letters and diaries. Most of them had been translated by men and were in the drive.

But I’d already started translating other texts on my down time. There were some…liberties taken with the translations. The verse in the bible about not suffering a witch to live used to say poisoner, not witch.

It wouldn’t shock me if that was changed because of us and our research. It had caused a lot of death and I didn’t question that because I thought witches had sold their souls to the devil. I was starting to realize exactly how much we had gotten wrong.

I didn’t have a ton of down time to really translate everything I wanted to, but I also had chronic insomnia. I’d gotten a good bit done.

Translating Agnes’s diary was going to be a lot of work because I wasn’t as comfortable with the language it was written in, but maybe it was good no one had translated it first and twisted her word.

Iloved a good villain origins story. I always thought a priest came across a shifter coming back from a run and saw them changing and lost their fucking minds. Turns out something might have gone down thousands of years ago that was similar to what happened the night my mother went missing, just no Pan to try to save everyone.

Sometimes, this job involved driving around the country pretending to be someone I wasn’t and then fighting monsters, but a lot of it was just research. The Flame had been around a long time. It started out in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians and started making its way out to other cultures. It was big in Ancient Egypt and there were similar writings in Ancient China.

A lot of my time just involved research with Rainer and Pan. Despite how long the Flame had been documenting the supernatural, we learned new things every day. We didn’t know every kind of demon there was, just the kind they let out of Hell or what managed to escape. Some types of shifters managed to stay completely hidden from us until they had a problem that they couldn’t handle themselves.

Long research sessions on the couch with Rainer and Pan were completely normal. We didn’t just make sandwiches. Well, I made the sandwiches while Rainer got a roux started so the gumbo could cook because we both knew we’d be here for a while.

Rainer got up to finish things up. My damned dog was curled up in Saul’s lap snoring, so I knew he wasn’t introducing himself. We were into hour three of research. So far, I’d found the charter for Venatio Daemonum. It read more like a manifesto for serial killers.

Solomon was deep into the diary and Caleb and Saul were looking into the same thing I was. Caleb looked up.

“I have an idea, but everyone is going to need to be quiet.”

Everyone looked at me. What was that about?

“Oh, fuck off. I can be quiet.”

“She can when she wants to. Gumbo is coming up. Grab a bowl if you’re taking a break.”

Everyone started serving the gumbo because we really did need a break. Caleb made a phone call and set the phone on the table. Huh. He had it on speaker. He must really trust us. I was going to have to work on that.

“Father Caleb. To what do I owe the pleasure and why do you all have your locations turned off?”

Wow. Yeah, I was going to really have to start trusting these guys because they did try to keep my uncle’s safe house a secret. I was guessing this was the mysterious bishop.

“Bishop, we’re following a lead and will probably be out of contact for a while. I don’t want to say anything until I have a solid theory, but I have a question. We can’t find anything in the Esoteric Texts. What was the match that lit the Church into forming Venatio Daemonum? There had to be an inciting incident. There was limited travel and no internet back then. What happened?”

“Why are you asking these questions?”

Because it was important, you bag of dicks. And I was learning Father Caleb was a master at bending the truth. Good for him.

“Because I’ve been in the field twenty years now. That many demons don’t get out at once and supernaturals tend to stick with their own. I’ve never once come across witches and demons on the same job. And even when we didn’t know about them, the Flame was policing them when they acted out and brought exposure.

“We’re in the thick of it with the Flame. You know we have differing opinions and methods, but they insist most supernaturals aren’t trying to expose their communities like that. I have to think that if the Church had proof it was more than just demons and witches as stated in the bible, it was because something like what happened at that house occurred. I just can’t find a record of it.”

“Have you been listening to that slut? Is she perverting more priests?”

Hey, I had a feeling I was that slut. And we didn’t slut shame in this house. I’d insulted a bunch of priests and my Hellhound peed on them, but the only one I could be accused of perverting was Caleb when I called him Daddy and spanked him. I’d said nothing sexual to any of them since.