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before he had had a chance to knock.
    “They got nothing, Ted, believe me,” Eden Calloway said, her arms folded and her hand clutching her neck. Her face and neck were flushed.
    “You better be right, Eden. Mr. Di Mardi won’t take too kindly on any traitors in our midst, you know?” He glanced over her shoulder. “This place is a pig sty. Don’t you respect other people’s property?”
    She looked back, abruptly turned around and started picking up papers and clothes. “I’m sorry, Ted. I’ll clean it up.”
    He nodded, poked a finger in her face. “You better get that damned kid of yours under control, or we’ll do it for you.”
    She nodded. “I will, Ted. I’m sorry…“
    He turned around and left without waiting for an answer. He punched a number into his phone. “Yeah, I have two targets, cops.”
    “No problem,” the voice said. “Exterminate them or teach them a lesson?”
    “Nah, kill them. They’ve got nothing on us.” He disconnected the call and swung into his car seat. Like the Boss had said, he was here to take care of problems.

PART TWO

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    Unit for Paranormal Investigations and Authentication
    Vatican City, Rome

    Father Timothy Casanellas stood up purposefully from behind his desk and strode around it, holding out his hand to Father Ed Watson. “Thank you so much for coming all this way to see me, Father.” He gave the older man an encouraging smile. “I will see what we can do about your, er, little problem.”
    Father Watson looked perplexed. “It is a bit awkward, I must admit. Would you be performing the exorcism?”
    Father Casanellas clapped his hands together and smiled, a vehement shake of the head. “Oh, no, no, no!” He chuckled, waving a hand at the man. “No, we have specialists for that.” He clasped his hands together, leaned toward Father Watson and whispered, “I’d probably piss in my pants.”
    The man smiled uncertainly. “I know what you mean.”
    He guided the man out of his office and greeted him with a “Good bye, Father, I will keep you updated.”
    He closed the door and walked to the basin, unbuttoned his sleeves, and rolled them up. He proceeded to scrub his hands and arms for the next five minutes, glancing up in the mirror and muttering to himself. “Demons, eh? Oh sure, there are the odd cases of possession or stigmata that couldn’t be explained away by scientific studies or logic, but ninety-nine point nine-five percent of the time there is a logical explanation for what is going on, my dear Father Watson.”
    He rinsed his hands and shook the water from them, pulled a clean towel from a rack beneath the basin. He checked the mirror again while drying his hands, mopping his brow and neck. “No, Father Watson, I believe there is something much more sinister going on. Young boys with bruises on their torsos and legs, my ass.” He crumpled the towel up in a ball and tossed it into a basket beside the basin.  
    “Besides, you have a track record, don’t you?” he muttered, settling at his desk. He typed a search query into his PC, hit the enter key and scanned the results. As head of the Unit for Paranormal Investigations and Authentication, the team tasked with investigating phenomena that couldn’t be explained scientifically and which were somehow related to the Roman Catholic Church, he had unlimited access to all the church records. “Aha,” he mumbled and opened the case file. His hunch was right, as it so often was.
    Twelve years ago, Father Ed Watson had been convicted of sexual abuse. The kid was six. The Church removed Watson from his parish and had brought him to Rome, placing him under house arrest with the other pedophiles. The Church liked to call it Pedagogical Rehabilitation, a bit of an insider joke. He smirked. It had been one hell of a PR campaign to keep the scandal under wraps.
    He returned to the basin and washed his hands again. “You dirty, foul, abhorrent creature,” he muttered. He removed a