Free New Title 1 by Eric S Brown

attempted to roll over onto her side, but the strength required to perform the action wasn’t there. She couldn’t endure his “affections” again. Lori rested, trying to gather enough energy to get up. Her throat burned and felt scratched down its length. She gagged at the thought of what caused the feeling. As the memory of his penetrating violence floated through her mind, she almost vomited.
    Terrified she would drown in her own sickness, she struggled to calm her stomach and turned her mind to finding a way to take her life before he returned. She knew suicide was a sin, but so was almost everything else she’d done in her life. Surely God would understand this one.
    Hell would be a relief compared to Lee’s touch on her skin and his probing, tearing fingers inside her. If she could just make it to her night table, where she kept a straight razor—just in case any of her normal clients ever tried something she didn’t want to do or got a bit too forceful in their loving.
    She was under no delusion that she could hurt Lee in any real way, much less kill him—but if she could reach it, she could set herself free from the nightmare she was trapped in.
    She tried again to get up and failed as pain shot through her midsection from the effort. Lori fell back onto the bed. The best she could do was to pull the stained and bloody sheets over her naked body and turn to God for the first time she could remember since she’d been a child. She begged for death to come and take her from this place.
     
    ***
     
    Lee clapped his hands together rapidly as he stood at the top of the stairs leading to the saloon’s second floor.
    “ Come, my children!” he summoned the horde of demons below. Excited shrieks punctuated the air as the creatures laid back their heads and yipped their pleasure like a pack of frenzied coyotes. “There’s work to be done before you’re free!”
     
    Twenty-Three
     
    Nathan sat on the steps of the Presley’s porch while O’Rourke scavenged what weapons and ammo he could find.Louis pushed his glasses up his nose and walked over to the man dressed in black. “May I sit with you?” he asked.
    Nathan shrugged. “Last I heard, this was a free country.”
    Louis placed himself on the steps beside Nathan and took his pocket watch from his jacket. He held it up to his companion. Its hands had stopped ticking. “Now, I suppose this watch could’ve gotten broken dozens of times tonight, but something tells me it didn’t. It should have been dawn hours ago.”
    “ Noticed that, did you? Would you like a gold star for your discovery?” Nathan asked sarcastically.
    “ No, but I would like an explanation. I have never heard of a demon who had the power to blot out the sun.”
    “ He’s not one demon,” Nathan admitted with a sigh.
    “ I think it’s time you fessed up,” Louis stated. “I have pieced a few things together, but I’d like to hear the whole truth from you.”
    Nathan appeared tired and beaten as he turned to Louis. “He calls himself Lee today, but he’s had many names over the centuries. You would know him best by the name Legion. He’s a swarm of hellspawn, compressed into a single form. No demon can truly bring on the end of days—only God can choose the time of his son’s return. Legion believes he can, though.”
    “ Wait, this is the thing Jesus cast out into the pigs?”
    “ Yes,” Nathan nodded. “Ever since those pigs drowned, he’s been locked in a single body. He hops from host to host like a disease. He believes that if he can free all the pieces that make up his whole on this earth, the world will become so much like Hell that he can force God’s hand. All he’s really going to do is take the human race to the edge of extinction and have a lot of fun doing it.”
    “ So those creatures...” Louis prodded.
    “ Yes, they’re pieces of him possessing whoever they can. He can even add souls to the numbers that compose him. If the host’s spirit is weak