by Mark Carver
He elected to make an attempt at bravery.
“If you’re going to kill me, do it now,” he demanded. “I don’t know what your plans are, but I won’t be a part of any of it. Just kill me now and be done with it.”
The woman loomed over him like a mountain, even though she was barely five feet tall. Her claw-like fingers were clenched in quivering fists, but she didn’t strike him again. Her eyes, however, burned with more hate than Patric had ever seen in another human being’s face.
“Don’t worry,” she said in a creaking, brittle voice. “You will find the death you seek.”
She glanced to the right, and several black-clad commandos streamed into the room. They seized Patric and hauled him to his feet, dragging him out of the room and into a majestic sanctuary.
Despite the terror that flooded his mind, Patric couldn’t help but be awestruck by the splendor of the sanctuary that rose up around him in great waves of gold and marble. One thought plowed through the fog of delirium that shrouded his mind: This is the biggest temple I have ever seen.
The answer crashed into his brain.
Rome.
The Vatican.
This was the Templum Satanam.
He felt his knees give way beneath him, and the men dragging him along had to hold him up or else let him crumple to the floor.
“Stand up, idiot,” one of them grumbled.
Patric obeyed, but his mind was in another place. He knew he had turned his back on Satan and his kingdom, but he couldn’t resist the overwhelming sense of awe that engulfed him.
The sanctuary doors were thrown open and a chilly blast of Roman autumn air swept into the sanctuary. For a moment, the glare from the light outside caused Patric to squint and turn away.
But he could hear them. Thousands of people, shouting and cursing.
As he was hauled out of the sanctuary, the din from the crowd died down for a moment, then a tumultuous roar burst forth. A sea of angry faces, snarling, baring their teeth like wolves, reaching out their hands to tear and maim. A stone-faced troop of heavily-armed men wearing the same uniforms as the commandos kept the crowd at bay, creating a clearing in the middle of the square about fifty meters across. At the center of the square, where St. Nero’s Obelisk had once stood, arose a giant wooden platform piled high with dry timber.
Goosebumps crawled along Patric’s flesh, and it wasn’t from the brisk wind. Everyone here wanted him dead. He was going to pay for Tourec’s crimes.
He couldn’t stand it any longer.
“I’m one of you!” he cried out, nearly vomiting with terror. “I’m one of you! Hail Satan! Hail Satan!”
No one heard him except the men keeping a firm grip on his arms. One of them looked down and scowled.
“Don’t embarrass yourself. Nothing can save you now.”
Patric felt dead already. He hung his head down low and he began to weep.
Then he heard a strange sound, like the grating of wood across stones. Sniffing back his tears, he raised his head. He wasn’t going to let anyone see him cry.
His heart froze in his chest.
Four men were dragging a heavy wooden cross into the center of the square. Beside them stood another man.
This man held a massive iron hammer in one hand and a fistful of seven-inch spikes in the other.
Patric shook his head feebly.
“No...no no no no...”
****
The irritated driver of the Mercedes sedan honked his horn just as Father DeMarco squeezed past. The sudden burst of noise sent a spike of pain through the priest’s neck, and he winced with agony.
For a moment, his heart filled with rage, and he turned to glare at the driver. Then, just as it had erupted, the flash subsided, as if blown away by a strong wind. Father DeMarco stood still for a moment, puzzled at the strange pocket of calmness that suddenly surrounded him.
Thank You, he prayed.
Taking a deep breath, he started forward again, angling his shoulder as a wedge to plow through the crowd. He could see the towering dome of the Templum Satanam looming above the square, but he couldn’t see what was happening.
He was, however, keenly aware of the chaos all around him. Furious Satanists were expressing their contempt for the Christian church in the most disgusting language imaginable, but they also berated their own Order with equal fury. Their fear and frustration with remaining leaderless for so long had crystallized into blind anger that was desperately searching for release.
Mingled among the crowd were pockets of Christians, shouting and cursing the Satanists, holding crosses high above their heads like the Crusaders of old. Father DeMarco recognized the bloodthirsty expressions on their faces. He had seen that look on Benito’s face, and the faces of the fanatics who held him prisoner, along with Lorenzo and Donatella.
The priest stopped, his heart seized with worry.
Please let them be all right…
Twisting his way again through the crowd, he was shocked to realize that he was more afraid of his own brethren than the devil-worshiping masses. Then he knew why.
They were here because of her.
She had planned all of this.
He had planned all of this.
There, in the midst of the squirming, jostling crowd, Father DeMarco began to pray.
“Almighty God in Heaven, have mercy on us poor sinners. I beg You to reach down and avert the catastrophe about to happen. We are but children, and we must be shown the error of our ways. In this hour of tribulation, we – "
A shriek of agony rang across the square, soaring above the commotion. Everyone froze and turned in the direction of the sound.
Father DeMarco was paralyzed.
He recognized that voice.
****
Patric screamed until he thought his throat would burst through his neck. His body quivered with tormented spasms, and he cried out again and again as the heavy hammer pounded the iron nails deep into the palm of his hands.
“God!” he wailed. “Stop! STOP!”
The men holding down his arms grinned at one another. After two more blows, the man hammering the nails was satisfied that the spike was driven deep enough, and he stepped back.
Patric’s hand was engulfed in fire. Blood streamed from the vicious wound and pooled on the ground beneath the wooden beam.
The trauma attacked his consciousness, and the cloudy sky above was starting to flicker. His head lolled to the side and he caught sight of the angry mob encircling him. Some wore expressions of horror and disgust, but most were cheering and stabbing the air with their fists.
Patric wanted to curse them, but he was too weak. The pain in his right hand seemed to spread over his body like gangrene. Even his bones were screaming.
For a moment, the world went black, as if a warm, numb blanket had been pulled over his eyes. Then he felt something sharp strike his face and a rancid taste flood his mouth. He lurched back into consciousness, gagging and gasping for breath.
He saw a sinister smiling face hovering above him.
“Vinegar,” the smile said. “You like it? It was good enough for the carpenter, so we thought we’d continue the tradition.”
Patric coughed violently, gasping for air. He cried out again as his right arm was bound with hemp rope. For a moment, the pain was unbearable, but the rope was thankfully tight enough to cut off the circulation in his arm, and he felt his muscles begin to slip into numbness.
Then he saw the man with the hammer again.
He was standing above Patric’s left hand.
“No!”
Patric wrenched his hand away from the beam but it was quickly grabbed by the men in black uniforms, and they held it down against the rough wood. The man with the hammer knelt down slowly and placed an iron spike in the center of Patric’s palm.
****
Father DeMarco’s heart cringed as fresh cries of pain rang throughout the square. The crowd of people surged forward to see what was happening, and his blood ran cold as
he heard whispers of “crucifixion.”
He had never heard such tortured screams before, despite all of the horrors he had witnessed. And that voice...
No. Impossible.
He pressed forward but the crowd was an impenetrable wall, and he was too short to see over the heads and shoulders in front of him.
Someone brushed past him, and he felt a chill. He turned to his left and saw a man wearing a slate-gray robe and hood. The figure paused for a moment and turn to look back at him with blazing eyes.
The priest gasped. The hooded figure moved forward and disappeared into the crowd.
Father DeMarco clenched his teeth. The pulsing orb of pain at the base of skull flared like a fire beneath the bellows, but he ignored it. Summoning all of his strength, he pushed against the crush of humanity and miraculously slipped into the midst of the crowd.
He craned his neck, hoping for a glimpse of the mysterious man. He saw the pointed hood gliding forward about twenty meters ahead.
“Stop!” he shouted.
He knew it was futile.
Bracing himself as if for a collision, he pressed forward again, squeezing through impossibly tight gaps between sweaty, smelly bodies. He felt as if he was suffocating in a putrid swamp, and he cursed his family for being so short.
He caught glimpses of the pointed hood here and there, and it was enough to give him a trajectory. There had been menace in those eyes…
The cries of pain continued, and the crowd began to murmur and stir with anticipation. Father DeMarco stood up on his toes and found a gap between the shoulders of two large men that afforded him a view into the square.
He clamped his hand over his mouth as he watched several men in black military clothes hoist a bloodstained cross into a vertical position on the wooden platform. Patric’s bruised body hung limply from the crossbeam. His hands were impaled with gigantic spikes and his forearms were bound to the beam with ropes that sunk deep into his flesh.
Father DeMarco struggled to keep his knees from buckling.
“God have mercy...”
He gazed at Patric and his heart broke. The surge of rage and hatred which had flared inside of him on the outskirts of the square suddenly roared back to life.
Heathens... Monsters!
He turned his eyes towards heaven, but he didn’t pray.
He made a demand.
Do something!
CHAPTER 12
He could hear them. He could see them. Teeming below him, like fish caught in a net. Shouting at him, spitting, cursing. Stones and bottles sailed through the air towards him, though none impacted his body.
They had only driven spikes through his hands. His feet rested on a small block of wood fastened to the vertical crossbeam.
He knew he was there, hanging on a cross with nails in his hands, but somehow his mind couldn’t grasp the idea as fact. He seemed to be outside of his body, like a kite flying overhead. He was still tethered to his body and could distantly feel the agony streaking through his nerves, but it didn’t seem like it was him. Words and ideas floated through his mind, colliding like atoms.
You are dying, he told himself. Right here, in front of all these people. You are hanging on a cross. They are going to burn you alive.
He knew it was true, but somehow he still couldn’t believe it.
Then he saw her.
She seemed to hover in front of him, her white clothes shimmering and twisting, as if she was suspended in water.
His parched throat croaked her name.
“Natasha...”
Her eyes were soft and benevolent, even forgiving. Patric felt his heart breaking into a thousand pieces, filling his whole body with pain far greater than the agony caused by the spikes in his hands.
She reached out her hand to touch his face. Patric closed his eyes.
His skull was suddenly seized by an ear-splitting vibration, like an invisible buzzsaw slicing through his brain.
His eyes snapped open. The woman in black smiled at him. Her teeth were sharp as knives and her eyes blazed with black fire.
Patric screamed and arched his back. Every muscle in his body burned. The monster hovered in the air in front of him, watching his torment with amusement.
“Get...get away from me,” he gasped, gritting his teeth against the deafening hum that felt like it was separating the bones in his skull.
The woman in black cocked her head and leered at him.
“Come now,” she cooed with an icy voice, “don’t be so cold. After all, we’re going to spend a lot of time together, you and me.”
Then she vanished like a puff of smoke.
The buzzing in his head also stopped, and the tension in his body disappeared. He slumped on the cross, too exhausted to react as the weight of his body tore the holes in his hands even wider.
He slowly turned his head left and right. She was gone. Thank God, she was gone.
He spotted some movement below him. He glanced down and saw a large black man in a red robe approach the platform and stand in front of him. The man looked up at Patric with contempt, then turned towards the rabid crowd.
“Children of Satan!” he cried, his voice echoing throughout the square with the aid of a microphone tucked away in the folds of his robe. The crowd became quieter, though by no means tranquil.
Master Kwambala raised his arms, his eyes flashing as he gazed out upon the sea of faces. Then he spoke again, his voice booming across the square.
“Sons and daughters of Lucifer, the Master of this world…behold! The folly of the deluded masses is made manifest in this pathetic wretch before you. Patric Bourdon, the brother of the cowardly assassin who took the life of our beloved Voice, one of the greatest leaders of our generation. Patric Bourdon was also a co-conspirator in this heinous crime and sought to undermine the greatness of our Order, and look where he is now.”
The crowd roared and hissed, but scattered pockets of Christians pressed forward, hurling curses and condemnation.
“Heathens!”
“Murderers!”
“Burn in hell!”
Master Kwambala surveyed the scene of outrage with a raised eyebrow. Then he pointed an accusatory finger towards the Christian protesters.
“Be silent, hypocrites! Atrocities a thousand times greater have been carried out in the name of your dormant God, who has turned His back on this world. Perhaps He is ashamed of you, His pitiful children. Even now you continue to terrorize our Order by burning our temples and slaughtering our ministers and congregations! We wanted to co-exist in peace, but you cast the first stone, and now look where we are! You are all a blight upon this world, a blight that shall be scorched into a memory by Satan’s unquenchable fire!”
A blazing torch was handed to Master Kwambala, and he turned and looked up at Patric.
“This is what hell tastes like,” he said with a scowl.
He lowered the torch to ignite the tinder.
Patric couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly, Master Kwambala froze, though his eyes remained fixed on Patric. His hand trembled, the torch quivering dangerously near the dry kindling.
Then, like a dead tree falling in a storm, he toppled to the ground. The torch clattered across the stones, away from the pile of wood.
Patric’s mind was delirious with pain, and he wasn’t sure if he had really seen what he thought he saw. The crowd gasped as they watched Master Kwambala fall, then cries of shock and horror escaped from the lips of those closest to the center of the square.
A man stood at the foot of Patric’s cross. He wore a dark hood that hid his face, but it was plain to see what he held in his hands.
Two gleaming silver pistols, elongated with equally brilliant silencers.
The image swam before Patric’s eyes. He couldn’t tell what was real anymore, and he honestly didn’t care. Every cell in his body longed for death.
The hooded figure raised his head and looked up at Patric hanging on the cross. In his eyes, Patric saw…k
indness?
The guards maintaining the perimeter didn’t notice that Master Kwambala had been killed until they heard the sound of the torch falling to the ground. They whirled to see the phantom standing in their midst, though no one had seen him enter. Then they caught sight of his weapons, and they all turned their guns on him.
“Forgive them, Father!” the phantom cried out.
Instantly, the automatic rifles the guards were carrying blazed red hot and burst into flames that quickly consumed the men holding them. Their tormented screams drifted across the square, then faded away as they collapsed into smoldering heaps of charred flesh and bones.
The crowd screamed and leaped back in horror.
Patric could barely remain conscious as wave after wave of agony washed over him. His head lolled on his shoulder and he glanced down at the mysterious hooded figure, who kept his eyes on Patric as the guards were incinerated around him. After the screaming stopped, he knelt down and wrenched the lapel microphone from Master Kwambala’s robes.
“Children of the darkness and the light!” he declared to the awestruck crowd. “I am Julian Rossa Monte, servant of the Most High God. I have been granted the authority by Heaven to purge this evil from our midst and drive the devil and his minions into the lake of fire that awaits them.”
The crowd murmured in fear and disbelief, and several faces became dark with aggression.
Julian’s fingers twitched on the pistol triggers. He glanced up at Patric, as if asking for support. Patric was too weak to say anything, but he knew that this maniac was a dead man, too.
Then several cries erupted from the crowd.
“Look! Up there!”
Every eye turned towards the sky. Even Patric managed to turn his head and gaze upwards. He gasped.
A woman dressed in brilliant white robes was descending from heaven, along with dozens of angels. They shone brighter than the sun, and their eyes blazed with fire. The crowd shrunk back with shock and horror, and several people fainted outright.
The angelic beings floated slowly towards the earth, ringing the entire square above the colonnade. The crowd trembled with fear, though they were too mesmerized to run away.
