Move now or run, he told himself.
No lights inside, but he could see as clearly as if fragments of the sun rested in each of the segments of stained glass.
He stepped in, hesitated, wiped the rain from his face, and walked into the sanctuary, and saw her in the aisle.
“Well,” she said. Hands on her hips. Shirt bulging around her waist. Short brown hair perfectly dry. Jeans neither snug nor baggy. Shoes on her feet that reminded him of slippers. “Well.”
Had she been a demon, as Todd had said, he would have felt the defilement, the blasphemy; had she been a demon, he could have presented her with the cross and banished her to her Master; had she been a demon ... but she wasn’t.
Her presence in this place felt as natural as his.
In a sense, he knew, in a very real sense, they had the same boss.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he said, standing behind the last pew, running a hand along its curved polished back.
“That’s too bad,” she said. “I’ve come a long way to meet you.”
He shook his head. “Why? Why me?”
Her smile was brief. “Too big a question, Reverend. Everybody asks that one.”
“Not everybody brought life back to a dead man.”
It was almost a question, and she spoke as if it were: “Did you, Reverend? Did you really?”
The cold; he felt the cold, and it made him dizzy.
“Where ...” He stopped, refused to look at her. “Where are...”
Say it, Casey, and it’s true; say it, and the world is over.
That smile again, taunting. “The others?” She gestured at the windows. “Not those, don’t worry about that. Those are only friends I’ve picked up along the way. You mean the Others, I’m sure.” She dusted a pew’s back with one finger. “You could call them, I suppose, my comrades-in-arms.”
It took all he had left not to speak, just to nod.
Belief was one thing; seeing its proof was something else.
Her face took on angles as the taunting smile faded; her eyes narrowed. “What do you care, priest? I’m the one who’s here.” The next pew up, the finger still moving. “I’m the one who’s going to kill you.”
The windows brightened for a second, but he couldn’t hear the explosion.
Another pew, only three away, and her face changed again; subtly, but it changed.
“You were right, you know, Reverend. That little story you told? Maybe it was a parable, I don’t know, I don’t have to worry about those things. I just do what I’m told, go where I have to.” Her head was down; she looked up without raising it. “They’re all dancing now. The same song. It took a little while, but now they’re all in step. And the funny thing is, they don’t even know it.
“And if they do, they don’t really believe it.”
Another pew.
He tensed, but he didn’t move. Her voice was smooth, her voice was hard, her voice was as old as any voice he had ever heard; it was the voice of a snake, the voice of ancient fire, and when her eyes tried to hold him, he didn’t move, he only shook his head and said, “If I’m going to die, you won’t be the one.”
Feeling the cold, burning through him.
She lifted her head. “Arrogance doesn’t become you, Reverend Chisholm.”
He didn’t argue, but suddenly he knew it was as true as the reality of this harbinger who stood before him. He knew a lot of things now, some of them confusing, some of them so clear he was nearly blinded.
He tried twice to speak, and twice he failed, because he couldn’t keep the terror in hand as she took another pace, and they were separated only by the width of a double pew.
He could feel her breath; he could smell her skin; he could hear her shoes brush across the old red carpet in the aisle.
A woman screamed, long and high.
Quickly he looked through the vestibule to the open doors, but all he saw was the slant of rain, and fire shadows in the street.
He felt the cold.
Nate and Todd; Dimitri and Rina.
He felt the burning.
“Leave this place,” he said, pulpit deep.
“Too late, Casey. This place is dead.”
He felt the heat.
She moved too quickly, but he didn’t flinch when she touched his cheek, ran her palm down his chest, making sure he knew she could feel the cross beneath the cloth. And he didn’t move when she frowned and did it again, harder this time and faster.
And didn’t move when she slapped him.
But when she stepped back, he finally smiled.
* * * *
No one moved.
* * * *
He heard a shot.
* * * *
No one moved.
* * * *
Until she lunged for his throat, and he grabbed her wrists and easily tossed her aside, spilling her into the gap between the last two pews. Surprised when she was on her feet before he could follow, and tried to bury a fist in his stomach.
He doubled over, his breath gone, and she made a club with her two fists and brought it down on his skull, driving him to one knee, one hand braced against the pew’s armrest, using his foot to drive him upward, catching her under the chin with his head, knocking her back again.
This time she didn’t fall.
This time she grabbed a hymnal and used it as a bat, swinging the spine across his mouth, laughing softly as he toppled onto his rump and tasted blood.
The slippers became heavy boots, and she waited until he stood before she lashed one against his left shin and brought him down again.
“One way or another,” she said, barely breathing hard, giving him a smile. “One way or another.”
He pulled himself up, ducked another swing, and slammed a fist against her chest, stepped in and used the other above her eye, splitting the skin, drawing blood, forcing her back the boots sliding on the carpet, making her grab for the pew’s back to keep from falling.
He struck her again, feeling the heat, and she bounced off the pew, the back splintering onto the carpet.
And still she smiled.
The only sound the rasp of their feet on the floor, the dull connection of her fist on his jaw, his fist on her hip, the grunt as she grabbed his wrist, came with him as he pulled, suddenly spun and whipped him into the vestibule where he landed against the edge of the announcement table with his side.
Feeling the heat.
Watching her smile lose its humor.
Circling, searching, blood smeared across her eye and cheek, blood smeared across his teeth and chin.
They came together in a silent shout like grapplers, and she was down and under him, and he was in the air and on his back before he could think. Rolling over to avoid the boots. Seeing a spark burst from beneath her sole as she tried to stomp on his knee and missed. Seeing the look on her face, however brief, that told him it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
She was one of four, and no one was supposed to stand in her way.
Seeing the smile.
Seeing the lie.
Watching her from the floor as she stood beside the table, grabbed its edge, and shoved it as if it were cardboard across the floor toward his head.
When she missed, he stood under it, bringing it up and over and pinning her against the wall. Pushing. Seeing nothing but her hands on either side slip away, and suddenly the table pushed him instead, and he gave ground until it fell away and he saw her race to the belfry stairwell.
No, he thought, and followed, slapping his hands against the walls to give him momentum, using the sparks of her ascent to give him light through the door and into the belfry.
Feeling the heat.
Feeling the wind.
Looking behind him and seeing a dozen fires on the Crest, except the Crest was below him, and he caught his breath and backed away, made the mistake of looking south where he saw the lights of Farber’s clinic, and a group of people in the street far below in the rain.
“You can’t kill me, you know.”
She stood in the west archway, her hands braced against the frame on either side. Her shirt rippled as the wind tried to take it, and her hair was pulled sharply away from her brow.
“I don’t have to,” he told her, and was on her before she could move, one arm around waist, crushing her to him, squeezing while he stared at her face because he didn’t dare look anywhere else, his other hand in a fist and raised above his head.
He nearly screamed when she smiled and stopped her struggling.
And then her lips moved: “Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t, please don’t.”
In a voice that wasn’t hers.
He knew it wasn’t hers, and he froze just the same.
please don’t kill me
Smiling; always smiling.
please don’t please don’t o Jesus please don’t hurt me
The wind gusted and nudged him forward and he couldn’t help but look down.
please don’t
Smiling; always smiling.
Waiting for the crash of glass, waiting for the cop, waiting for the gun that would send him someplace warm.
please
“Don’t,” she said, the smile gone, one eye red with blood.
“Yes,” he said, and brought his fist down.
* * * *
Stan crept to the corner and watched the people in the street watching something in the air. He couldn’t see much with all the rain, and he wondered if he dared show himself, just for a second. They were so busy, they wouldn’t notice anyway, and they certainly wouldn’t see the stupid hole that stupid army man had put in his favorite coat, right there above the heart. It had scared him to death even though he knew it wouldn’t hurt him. Just as it hadn’t scared him when he had grabbed the rifle from him and used it as a whip to send him to his knees and then to the ground where Stan used it to make sure no one would ever recognize him again. Then he had thrown it away because he didn’t need it, and heard the commotion and saw the people.
“Hey.”
He froze, relaxed, and turned around. Hummed and rubbed his palms together when he saw the old lady and saw the rifle in her hands. Damn, but she could barely hold it; and damn, but she looked bad, that white coat all torn, her hair all messed and looking like a witch.
She pulled the trigger and missed him.
“Lady,” he said.
She fired again.
He felt the impact; nothing more.
* * * *
And he brought it down again.
* * * *
Helen knelt in the diner’s kitchen, holding her upper arm just above where the woman’s knife had sliced through it. She had tied a dish towel around it, praying it would do for a tourniquet until she could get to Mel for help, then snuck out the back door and forced her way through the hedge, biting her lips against the twigs that gouged at her face and breasts, that clawed at the bloody arm, that tried to flay her hands.
When the screen door opened, she thought to run, and changed her mind. Instead, she tensed against the pain and rose slowly, leaning against the stove.
“You know,” Lupé said, “I don’t have all night.”
Helen grabbed the cleaver from the butcher block and waited.
“You don’t get it,” Lupé said, almost sadly. “You don’t get it, do you?” She wiped her knife on her jeans and shook her head again. “It doesn’t matter, you know? Since the mountains, it doesn’t matter.”
She lashed out and stepped too close.
The cleaver slipped into her chest.
* * * *
And he brought it down again.
* * * *
Harve Turner surprised himself by being just about the last one to pack it in. There were too many fires despite all the rain. Every time one was taken care of, another explosion changed the rules. It had been too much. Surrender had finally become the order of the day, and when he decided it was time to get down to Mackey’s and get himself a drink, it didn’t bother him a bit.
What did bother him was the kid he spotted wandering down the street. What the hell was she doing here?
“Hey, kid,” he called.
She turned.
“Get the hell home, okay? Jesus, are you stupid or what?”
Then he saw what she held in her right hand.
“My God, where’d you get that dynamite?”
The flame in the palm of her left hand.
Harve didn’t know which way to run when the flame touched the fuse; he didn’t know what to make of the way the damn kid giggled; he didn’t make it to the curb before the explosion lifted him off his feet and carried him to the sidewalk where he landed on his shoulder and heard the bones split, had no breath to scream, was just alert enough to see the little pillar of fire in the middle of the street and think, Stupid damn kid, just before he passed out.
* * * *
And he brought it down again.
* * * *
And again.
Until the smile was gone, replaced by a silent scream of a silent question, a fierce look, a spit of blood, both eyes blinded now by shimmering red.
He hesitated, his arm shaking, not sure.
“Reverend Chisholm,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him.
And threw herself backward.
* * * *
Falling in the rain, listening to the wind, was the sweetest thing he had ever done.
And he didn’t mind a bit.
Because he was what he was.
No matter how hard he hit the ground.
* * * *
Part 6
Coda
* * * *
1
1
T
here was nothing left but the rain, and a few smoldering shards of wood, and a shattered brick at the door of Mabel Jonsen’s store. The mist had long since been beaten away. The streets had long since been emptied.
“I can’t stay here,” Cora said. Her hair was burned, her cheeks and brow and chin and arms dark with wet ash, her shirt ripped, her jeans stained with too many drops of blood.
“I know.” Reed sat beside her on the top step of the church. Behind them the doors hung, broken on their broken hinges. “Me neither.”
Nate, he thought, and couldn’t cry anymore.
Rina, he thought, and threw a pebble angrily out toward the curb.
Too weary to move, too weary to sleep, they sat in the rain and waited, neither one looking at the place where Reverend Casey had come down.
The woman was gone.
As far as he could tell, no one else had seen her but Cora, maybe Helen. Maybe Doc Farber, too, but they were still at the hospital, sitting in a room that was warm and light, waiting for the surgeon to tell them if Reverend Casey would live to see the dawn.
The woman was gone.
They sat in the rain, not smiling, not talking, until Beagle trotted over and squeezed between them, and whimpered.
“Hungry,” Reed guessed.
“Probably,” Cora answered, hugging the dog to her side. “Probably.”
He almost said something, but had nothing else to say. To want to tally the dead, to feel for them, to miss them, was, for now, too big a chore.
Mourning would have to come some other time.
The rain was cold; they didn’t feel it.
“I should have helped him.”
Cora cupped a hand around the back of his head, stroked it once, and the hand fell away. “Where will we go?” she asked instead.
He lifted one shoulder. “Anywhere.”
“Good enough.” She hugged the dog again. “Want a pet?”
“I think Miss Jonsen will want to look out for him, don’t you?”
Cora nearly made it to a smile. “Help her look for UFOs or something.”
Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01] Page 33
