(Please read part I)

The words disturbed Jeremie.

  The implication woven into them settled to the base of his stomach, sent numbing talons of fear gliding into his spine as the realization of the power of this enemy washed over him like waves of electricity.  The sheer size and knowledge of this being chilled him as no other had before.  The supernatural he had encountered in his education had cringed at the mere sight of a Sacred Book, yet this menace welcomed the challenge, mocked the Holy Word by defiling and destroying the words of the Lord himself in order to strike fear and doubt into His soldiers.  But Jeremie knew, as he stood in the dark of the sleeping car, the last glow of twilight no longer able to bolster his confidence, that he must rely on himself, the woman beside him, and the One who had truly sent him here.  It was his destiny to be standing in the swaying train with a smoldering bible at his feet, its flames having been extinguished along with each candle in the entirety of the train.  But the only words left intact on the page facing him from the floor were etched into the walls of his mind, creating the very doubt, hesitation, uncertainty that he had been trained to combat.  And he would not let this entity control him, no matter how enigmatic and potent.  Jeremie knew that the trial was not only to be the physical but as well the spiritual and the emotional, and that if the Lord saw it fit for him to perish doing good in His name, then the young man would accept it.
Jeremie’s fingers closed tighter over the girl’s, not in the gentle way that he had wished for minutes before, but in haste and urgency.  He could feel the malicious energy slipping into the air, the same energy that had turned the Holy Book into a scalding sheet of leather.  The hand which had been marred by this atrocity hung loosely at his side, the sensation not one of a burn, but simply of a nearly oily, throbbing warmth on his flesh.  In contrast, the force that seeped into the walls around them made the air heavy, almost humid with its thrumming potential.  It rolled and pressed lazily but persistently, almost tauntingly, against the two young soldiers in sharp and frigid waves, not to the touch but to the mind and spirit.  As the energy brushed closer to his senses, Jeremie could feel his mind tightening against the threat, pitching the barriers over his consciousness.  He had almost been too late, for as he fortified his awareness, Jeremie could sense the allure of that energy as it caressed him, not unlike a clever, stunning seductress of the mind.  He perceived the slow, steady pull at somewhere deep within him, a cavernous place that only he himself should have been able to access.  Though as he focused on that pull, on the languorous, entrancing gravity that settled in the center of his chest and drew his mind along with it into liquid black, a call echoed through his thoughts, tearing pinholes of bursting light into the prying power to which he had unwittingly succumbed.  At that moment, the eyes of Jeremie’s consciousness snapped open and he grasped what had almost happened.
The breath left Jeremie’s lungs in a violent jerk as the intrusive energy was wrenched from his body, recoiling as if scalded by the awakening of his senses.  His body shuddered and he nearly dropped to the floor as the invasive spirit vacated him, leaving his limbs numb in its wake, his chest heaving.  He hadn’t even felt the breach, hadn’t even perceived the protective shell of his mind being penetrated.  This phantom was incredibly cunning, subtle, and possessed enormous power—the likes of which Jeremie had never before faced.  And it galvanized him.
His eyes focused momentarily to find Adelle’s hand clamped tightly over his forearm to steady him, and he knew it was most likely that she had just saved his life with a firm shake that he was just becoming cognitive enough to feel.  He could vaguely see her face before him, grimly fierce and concerned, the lines of her cheekbones and the crease between her eyebrows deep and harsh, adding a nearly haunting beauty to her naturally striking features.  Though he now realized that she was awaiting his response to something she’d said, his own eyes hardened, glittering with icy resolution as he disregarded her question.  
“We need to destroy it,” He stated, though his voice was labored with lack of breath and sweat of fear glistened beneath russet curls on his brow.  He stumbled purposefully past her to the suitcase in the corner.  In the darkness as he knelt, where the constant dull roar of the train itself seemed a whisper in contrast to Jeremie’s mind, he could feel her calculating gaze come to rest on his back as he now opened the case, drawing the only object of value from within.  
“I presume the Summit is no longer our foremost priority.”  She said flatly, though her tone held beneath it the flutter of uncertainty.  
“This is the true test, Adelle,” Jeremie began and rose and turned to her, the small metal globes of a rosary now shining dully against his chest, the cross resting at the center.  He made a motion as if to move toward or past her, opening his mouth to speak, but stopped dead, words suspended in his throat.  Adelle felt the heat on her back even before his gaze settled on the doorway behind her.  She whirled to find flames licking across the thick carpet, devouring it with an almost liquid ferocity, as if it were parched grass.
In one fluid motion, Adelle moved toward Jeremie and away from the heat, while he in turn darted past her in the opposite direction.  She realized this and snatched at his arm, snagging his sleeve.  He turned to her, panic and fear in his eyes as the flames reflected within them, growing rapidly.  
“I have to save them, Adelle!” He shouted as the flames expanded into a roar, crawling with alarming speed up the curtains of their sleeping room.  Her eyes were wide with the dread of the unknown, a lustrous blue in the flash of the rising flames.  Her lips parted to speak but before they could form any words, he jerked his sleeve from her grip and plunged into the inferno.  He soared through the steadily rising hedge of flames that was sprouting at the threshold of the doorway, shielding his face with his arms even as he hit the floor of the hall.  The afflicted train shuddered and released a mournful groan as its entirety was swiftly engulfed in flame, while simultaneously a viciously blinding flash of lightning set the car ablaze with cruel white light, a horrendous clap of thunder quick on its heels.  Jeremie pitched across the hallway, lurching as much from the motion of the train as from the threat of the fire, an arm lifted to his eyes.  He tore through the curtain of the elderly woman’s room, hands ready to wing her to safety.  
But the room was empty.  Completely empty.  Jeremie spun, panicked.  He burst from the curtains once more and into the hallway, rushing down the aisles of booth seats, heart doing as much to suffocate him with its brutal pounding as the smoke, searching desperately for survivors.  Or anyone at all.  The entire car was vacant.  And the flames were not hesitating.
A bitter chill of dreadful intuition flashed over Jeremie’s body, raising the flesh despite the incredible heat that threatened to both stifle and incinerate him.  He turned to charge back to Adelle, and to inadvertently face the single most frightening thing that he had ever seen.
If Jeremie had been anywhere else, he would have mistaken it for an extraordinarily tall man.  It wore a black suit, the coat of which billowed and fluttered about him as with a fierce wind, its head bowed.  A fairly orthodox sight at a train platform in the city or on the street on a windy day.  And yet everything about it seemed profoundly wrong.  There was no definite characteristic that made this being seem wholly and deeply wicked—though as Jeremie stood, now suddenly terrified to the point of immobility, he perceived subtleties.
It stood slightly hunched, though somehow its body—if it was a body at all—seemed crooked, tweaked, as if its spine had been thrust out of alignment by a terrible accident.  And it stood in deep shadow, even amongst the blinding blaze that continued to rage through the train.  Further still, the shadow in which it was bathed seemed to be.  As if it was an entity of its own, as if it writhed and boiled within the man’s silhouette with a nearly excruciating hunger.  Yet what disturbed Jeremie to his very core was an incredibly simple thing.  Its eyes.
The being’s head was bowed toward its chest, face lost in the battle between flickering flame and shadow, and yet its eyes stared up at Jeremie from beneath its lowered brow.  Luminescent.  White.  Pupiless.  And within Jeremie they created sheer, mindless terror.  The eyes are the windows to the soul, and what Jeremie had glimpsed in that moment was evil in its most base, wild yet harnessed form.  The lightning exploded once more, pitching the being’s shadow eerily, almost in a spasm across the floor in fractures.  The being lifted its head then, veiled within the shadow that crawled and twisted over it, then its face split where a human mouth would be into a fierce, untamed and haughty grin—though there was absolutely nothing human about the expression.  And when it spoke, Jeremie knew that the voice came not from the mouth of the creature, but from all around him, seeming to slither into his ears and caress his skin as that cold energy had done.  Several voices appeared to congeal as one as they closed around Jeremie, and though he could understand them, they bore no more humanity than its eyes.  
“Arrived at your peril, have you, Knight?”  It inquired, the feral grin severing its face further toward its ears, its mouth bristling with claw-like objects rather than teeth, stridently bright in contrast to its shadowy features.  Jeremie could not speak, nor even think as the terror consumed him much like the flames were the train.  As the creature’s eyes bored into his, he could feel the searing heat return to the palm of his hand where the book of his own faith had scalded him, amplifying until the pain of the initial burn had been recreated.  Any other individual would have crumpled to the floor screaming in agonized torment, but Jeremie could do no more than remain breathing beneath the spell of fear.  It had latched onto him like a parasite, draining him quickly of all mobility and logical reason, stealing layer upon layer of willpower until his confidence lay stripped and vulnerable.  However, deep within him lay the tenacity, his powerful faith still preserved and prepared to clash with this monster, untainted by its control.  This minute little flare tucked down inside of Jeremie whispered into his mind the contrary to the deception of this wicked creature, steadily keeping Jeremie’s sanity folded safely within it.  The tiny flame strove to recover the true Jeremie, the composed, certain, devout man that he had been before stepping foot on this train.  But the thrashing, unrelenting tides of the being’s essence were no longer a seduction, but an overtly insidious force that compelled itself against the most intense of Jeremie’s defending wills.  His resolve needed assistance, no matter how steadfast and deeply rooted it was within him, regardless of his years of training.
And it came from the one individual on earth that he could truly rely on.  When he was hauled out of the daze for the second time, he not only felt the intruder being expelled from his body, but felt a barrier of pure will explode around him, keeping the malevolent force clawing at an unseen barrier several feet away without effort.  His senses returned within a moment, the howl of the flames, the bitter smoke and the image of the creature were no longer muddled with the haze of mindless fear.  He realized that Adelle had called him once again to safety.  His eyes flickered upward, straight into those of the beast, and his fingers snapped into fists, his burnt hand now without pain or injury.  He caught a glimpse of Adelle, who stood ready but wary behind the creature, the golden cross glittering within her tightly closed fist.  Before they could be spurred and react, the creature tilted its head back, unfolded its arms from behind its back and laughed.  This sound, much like its voice, held no resemblance to that of a human, and would have most likely cracked Jeremie’s strength of mind beneath its awful sound.  But now the raw power of its voice had been rendered ineffective beyond the point of sending waves of chills spilling over Jeremie’s shoulders.  The creature turned, its arms outstretched to both of them in an almost welcoming gesture, as if to applaud them for surviving thus far, its head facing the heavens.
“A talented pair you have made them,” the creature boomed, its voices entwining so loudly that the already compromised structure of the train hummed with the sound.  It spoke to both of the young Knights and their creator, its very existence a travesty to the Almighty himself.  It laughed again, and continued, “Though their Holy guidance will be of no aid to them now.”  The creature’s arms dropped to its sides, its coat still fluttering about it ethereally.  
Jeremie stepped forward boldly, flames creeping at his heels, jamming a fist into the stifling air toward the creature.  Its form warped further with the distortion of the heat, making it flicker and buckle as the fire wrapped itself around them, causing Jeremie to shield his eyes as he called to the being.  
“You have no power here!”  He shouted over the roaring crackle of the flames, focusing his determination and resolve through the rosary that hung at his collarbone, reinforcing the strength of the will that enclosed him.  “Our faith cannot be shaken by your sorcery!”
The fiend turned to Jeremie, shadowy fingers stretching toward the young Knight, its teeth gleaming red in reflections of the flames, figure twisted by the heat.  “The greatest test is still to come, then, is it not?”  It hissed, its throat gargling in another barking laugh.  “Let us see the fortitude of your conviction when standing on my own soil.”  It snarled, snapping its fists shut and jerking its arms back into itself.
The instant that it did so, Jeremie knew that his world had changed.  Wind suddenly buffeted him from behind, rising to a scream in his ears, his vision guttered as he lost connection to his nerves; he was no longer able to feel his fingertips, his shoes on the carpet, the searing heat as it drew close enough to caress his skin.  But as his sight failed him completely he glimpsed the black creature one last time, the blazing car overgrown with its wispy tendrils of shadow, before Jeremie’s world rushed forward and he was wrenched into the realm of the spirits.  Alive.