At the sound of the crash coming from the next room, Lucas winced.

“How much more of my stuff are we gonna let her break before somebody goes in there?”

“And get our skulls smashed in?” Zachariah snorted.

“Not like it’d kill you.”

“I’ll pass, thanks all the same.”

Carmel raised her head from where it was resting in her arms with a pained look. “I already feel like she’s smashed my skull in, way she’s screaming. If she yells any louder Michael is going to hear her and then it won’t be our skulls so much as our asses we have to worry about.”

Justin was utterly perplexed by this entire conversation, but his confusion was outweighed by the nausea and the terror. He hadn’t heard a word from the next room, what did they mean about her yelling? He could hear the shattering and crashing well enough and assumed Charmian was throwing things at the wall, but not a word had come out of her mouth. What did they mean getting their skulls smashed in wouldn’t kill them? What kind of freak did you have to be to survive having your head beaten in?

Then again, he surmised grimly, given that they could appear from nowhere and move at superhuman speed – as well as call flaming swords from thin air – it shouldn’t be all that surprising that they were deviants who apparently didn’t die too easy. It was like being stuck in the middle of Highlander.

Lucas smacked the table in frustration. “I wish we knew what was going on.”

“Yeah, about that…” Justin interrupted. “Anybody planning on explaining what the fuck is going on the hostage any time soon?”

“You are not a hostage,” Zac answered rolling his eyes.

“So then I’m free to go?”

“Nope,” he said without so much as a tinge of irony.

“So I’d be a hostage then.”

“Think of it as being under witness protection,” Carmel replied, not unsympathetically. “I know this is major league weird for you, but you’re safe in this house.”

“Safe with the kidnappers?”

“Safe with no less than four lean mean fightin’ machines and the power of Heaven guarding your ass,” Lucas said. “Though maybe we shouldn’t count Charmian until she calms her ass down.”

“I counted five of you.”

“Nathaniel’s the book guy. Couldn’t go three rounds with a toddler.”

“Why are we talking about Nathaniel when we should be talking g about how to get our beloved leader to stop with the wrathful rampaging?” Carmel asked impatiently.

“Yeah,” Lucas mused aloud, “why is it that she stayed so briefly in denial but is spending so long in the anger stage? Why isn’t it time for bargaining yet?”

“That’s what you get for repressing shit for…”

Carmel clapped a hand over Zac’s mouth before he could finish the sentence and alert Justin to just how old Charmian was. He wasn’t taking things particularly well and she thought that little snippet of information needed to wait for a few minutes… or weeks. Years if at all possible.

“Look, Justin…” she said uncomfortably. “We could tell you, but wouldn’t you rather hear this from Charmian?”

“What’s the difference if it comes from you or She Ra in there?”

“Oh boy.” She sat back in her chair, casting her eyes heavenward and inwardly asking herself ‘why me.’ “You know we don’t scare easy, being hostile isn’t going to make us let you go.”

“And when exactly are you letting me go?”

“As soon as we can work out how we’re going to keep you breathing,” Lucas answered shortly. “So shut up and stop being so fucking ungrateful.”

“Why don’t we just get the old man in here to tell him?” Zac sighed. “Charmian’s obviously lost it and maybe if he knew he’d stop giving us so much shit.”

As if by magic (when actually he’d heard them arguing loud and clear, only being in the next room with Lucas’s book collection), Nate stepped through the doorway. “You avengers. Crush, kill, destroy - you’re like bulls in a china shop, no sensitivity at all. Never had any kind of bedside manner.”

Zac rolled his eyes, absently rolling a set of nun chucks back and forth across the table. Lucas was something of a weapons collector. “You’re a Catholic priest; you’re in no position to make jokes about bedside manner.”

Lucas smirked. “I still don’t get that, by the way.”

Nate ignored him and walked across the room to Justin, sitting in the armchair opposite. “Justin, we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Nathaniel, though you can call me Nate. I’m the priest over at St Augustine’s.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Justin bit out sarcastically. The desired effect was lost on Nate, who continued to smile benignly at him.

“Believe it or not, I understand that this is bewildering and frightening for you. I imagine you’re also smarting a little that Miss Charmian wasn’t completely open with you.”

Justin shifted uncomfortably in his seat, folding his arms defiantly and refusing to meet the gaze upon him.

Nate sighed. “Because you feel connected to Charmian, don’t you? The second you laid eyes on her, you felt like you’d known her forever.”

“I don’t believe in that bullshit.”

“And yet you feel it. I expect you’ve probably dreamed of her, too. Dreams of places you’ve never been to, different times?”

He remained silent, but Justin’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly and he began to get very nervous. How could this guy possibly know all of this? Were they all psychic too?

“You have been there before. Those weren’t dreams, they were memories. Of past lives.” Justin was about to interrupt with a derisive comment, but Nate rushed on before he could. “And if you’re about to say you don’t believe in them then I ask you to think on what you’ve witnessed tonight and re-evaluate very carefully your idea of what is or isn’t possible.”

“Look, Justin…” Carmel interrupted the conversation, perching herself on the arm of Nate’s chair. “The truth is that Charmian… all of us… well… we’re different.”

“No shit.”

“We’re immortal.” She carried on, ignoring him. “We were human once, but we were called on by the higher power to protect the human race from demons, like the one Charmian killed tonight. That’s why we’re so fast, that’s why we’re so fancy with the martial arts and that’s why you felt like you’d known her forever. Because you have, you’ve met her in past lives when you were someone else. Normal people get reincarnated regularly with new lives and a blank slate, but for some reason you remember more than you’re supposed to and that’s why you remember Charmian, even if you didn’t realise it was memories drawing you to her so strongly. For some reason you’re different that way, which is why we think the demons want you.”

“So you guys are telling me you’re… angels?” Justin asked incredulously.

“Fuck no.” Lucas laughed. “I guess we do the same kind of shit for God or whatever you want to call the higher power but we don’t play harps, we don’t sit on clouds and we’re not that well behaved.”

“Even if I believed you… and I’m not saying I do,” he rushed to qualify the statement, “why would a demon want me?”

“We don’t know,” Carmel replied, “that’s why we’re not letting you go just yet. We knew you were being watched by the other side, which is why we’ve been keeping an eye on you ourselves, but that guy you met tonight is a step up from your usual everyday demon and the fact that he was anywhere near you is too much of a coincidence. I know you think we’re just some kind of freaks who are getting off on fucking with you, but we’re not. What’s happening is worrying in extremis and we can’t let you go back out there until we‘re sure we can keep you safe – Lucas’s house is surrounded by protection sigils, demons can’t enter, it’s the safest place for you right now.”

“I’m gonna regret asking, but what’s an everyday demon?” The scepticism remained, but the fact that Carmel sounded so deadly serious was starting to perturb him.

Zac shrugged. “You’ve probably met a few. They’re spirits who invade the bodies of humans; they sit in your head and try to encourage you to do evil. Kind of like the opposite of a conscience. If you resist them long enough then they leave, but if you give in then they get stronger and they keep going until they’ve turned you into a real son of a bitch.”

Carmel nodded. “It’s our job to find them and smoke them out before things get too far and they’ve successfully damned the person they infected.”

“So you just go around sticking swords in all those people?” The look on his face was blanched, horrified.

“No.” Lucas shook his head. “We can drive everyday demons out by touch, so long as they haven’t got too strong. The one you met tonight was different; that’s the type of demon that can really possess someone and make them act against their will. We’ve tried for years to figure out some way of dispossessing the host without killing them, but we’ve never found an exorcism that works. Our weapons are the only thing that gets it done – it’s sacred cleansing fire.”

“It just has an unfortunate side effect of killing the poor bastard who got taken over.” Zac shook his head, a glimmer of anger in his eyes. Being the youngest, he had not yet become so desensitised to the injustices of their line of work.

“So, what, Charmian was dating me to keep tabs on me?” He tried to stay neutral, but a shard of anger and hurt pierced his voice. Then he reminded himself that he didn’t believe them anyway, they’d clearly escaped from some nut house.

“Uhh… that part really is going to have to come from Charmian and not us.” Carmel fidgeted uncomfortably, nervously picking at her nails. “Suffice to say, if I were you I’d start co-operating with us because you are not getting out of here until we say you are.

Justin huffed silently to himself and said nothing. He was Justin fucking Timberlake, he’d faced down crowds of thousands and packs of ravenous paparazzi. If they though a few looney tunes freaks fresh from the asylum were going to intimidate him or keep him captive, they were wrong.

He just had to work out how to sneak past them without ever coming into contact with the big honking swords.