Excerpt: Holy Rollers - Charlatan

After they’d checked in to the hotel in Cheneyville, and Reverend Milton had put his things in his suite and gotten settled (at least, as settled as he could get), he decided to go for a walk. Yes, a nice walk to see the town. Maybe check out some of the local churches and meet the local clergy. Yeah, that’d be good.

He set off from the hotel at a brisk pace after a quick flip through the phone book in the hotel. He had found the address he wanted in a matter of minutes. Nubbins watched him do this, smoking a cigarette, entirely disinterested. Now the little demon followed Cyrus, just a couple steps behind him. He had swiped a couple little bottles of booze from the mini-bar, and every now and then would take a drink as they walked.

After a few blocks, Reverend Milton reached St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. He chuckled to himself as he went up the steps and into the church.

“Confessing your sins isn’t going to help you,” Nubbins said. “It wouldn’t even if you were Catholic, since I’m here to see to it you can’t do your penance.”

Reverend Milton grunted, and continued into the church. He walked directly to the font, scooped up all the holy water he could hold in two hands, and threw it directly on Nubbins.

Nubbins did not burst into flame. He did not boil away. He did not hiss, bubble, moan, screech or suffer in any noticeable way. He did take out his pack of Parliament Lights and examine them. They were soaked through. He looked at Reverend Milton with the kind of smoldering hate only a demon with a ruined pack of cigarettes can produce.

Nubbins uttered something in a demonic language, and Reverend Milton started to feel kind of strange. Kind of, itchy. Small red welts popped up all over his body, and quickly grew into large boils.
“What the fuck?” Reverend Milton said as he looked at the back of his hands which now had four or five white-headed boils on each of them.

“You wrecked my smokes, you son of a bitch,” Nubbins said. “The next time you try to pull that shit, I’m going to get really old testament on you. You dig me?”