She squeezed the trigger. Just before it clicked home, a burning chunk of rafter fell onto her leg, pulling her aim slightly to the right…
…THE .40-CALIBER BULLET tore a huge chunk out of the old crucifix, spraying splinters into Magnus’s cheek. He ducked back, his face consumed with pain. He popped around the other side and fired a wild burst, hoping to hit Colding, but the man disappeared up the stairwell. Magnus looked to his right, back out into the church. Maybe twenty of them. Some sprinted up the main aisle, some crawled over the moldy, smoldering pews—all wanted to get him. Magnus moved out from behind the cross and shuffle-stepped toward the stairs, opening up with the MP5. The one closest to him fell hard, blood spurting from a half-dozen fresh bullet holes, but there were so many of them…
SARA FINISHED SMACKING the flames on her pant leg, then looked over the edge of the choir loft for another shot. Her eyes stung from the smoke. She fought back a cough. Magnus was shuffling to his left, toward the stairs, his attention occupied by the wave of sail-finned land sharks sprinting for him. No cover for him this time. She raised the gun, a part of her brain telling her it felt funny even as she did.
The slide had locked back.
Empty.
She holstered the weapon and ran for the bell-tower ladder.
BREATH RAGGED FROM stress and exertion, Colding cleared the final stair step. The thicker smoke up on the choir loft made him cough violently. Through the black clouds, he saw Sara at the other end of the loft, her feet on the bottom rung of a metal ladder.
“Peej, come on! Up here!”
Colding ran to the ladder and started up, hoping against all hope that Sara knew what she was doing.
MAGNUS FLEW UP the stairs, firing blindly behind himself until the MP5 clicked on empty. As he ascended he tried to pop in a fresh magazine, but the narrow staircase made it hard to bring the gun around while taking the steps two at a time. The wooden stairs shook from something even larger than he was.
He had almost cleared the last step when that something hit him from behind. His face cracked into the choir loft’s stone floor. The MP5 skidded free. The fresh magazine flew out of his hand, rebounded off the wall and skittered over the loft’s edge to fall among the burning pews below.
A slashing pain seared up the back of his left leg.
Magnus rolled to his back, cocked his right leg and kicked with all his power. He felt his foot smash against solid muscle, against skin and bone. The creature roared with anger and pain. In a single motion, Magnus sat up and slid his feet beneath him, leaving him with knees bent, fingers on the floor, weight on his toes. The big animal recovered from the kick, reared back and charged up the final five stairs. Magnus shot forward, ducking under the jaws and driving his shoulder into the monster’s throat. The impact shuddered through him, far worse than any hit he’d suffered in the CFL, but enough to keep the creature’s body trapped in the narrow stairwell. Sliding off the impact, Magnus moved to the right and locked his thick arms around the ancestor’s barrel-like neck, left arm underneath, right arm over the top. Its big body thrashed against the stairwell walls, blocking the way for the others.
Magnus let loose his own savage, primitive roar and squeezed with all his power. The muscular monster thrashed its head back and forth, trying to bring its jaws around for the killing bite, but the stairwell kept it from turning. Magnus timed a thrash left, a pause, a thrash right, a pause, then slid his left hand farther up and jabbed his thumb into the monster’s right eye. He pushed the thumb in deep and hooked it, using the inside of the orbital bone like a handle. The giant head pulled away, jaws snapping clack-clack-clack, trying to back up, but its pack mates blocked the stairs behind it.
In the split second it took the creature to realize it couldn’t retreat, Magnus’s right hand drew his knife. Left thumb still deep in the animal’s eye socket, Magnus drove the Ka-Bar blade into its throat.
“You killed Danté!” Spit flying from his mouth, his face a warped mask of psychotic fury, Magnus twisted the knife, pulled it out, struck again.
Blood gushed across the floor, across his legs, so thick he heard it splatter against stone even over the crackling flames and the roars of this bastard’s brethren.
“You all killed Danté! You hear that, Colding? I’ll kill this thing and then I’m coming for you! You murdered my brother!”
The ancestor weakened, and then it shot backward down the stairs. But the things couldn’t move that way. Magnus had a moment of confusion before he realized the others had yanked it away. Some of them started biting it, tearing off great chunks as blood and bits of flesh splashed the stairs, the walls and the ceiling. Only some of them, though, because another scrambled past both the eaters and the eaten.
Magnus stepped forward to meet it. They could only come up the stairwell one at a time, and he would kill them all.
Hand to hand.
One by one.
7:14 A.M.
Sara climbed through the trapdoor. Just two rungs behind, Colding had stopped, unable to look away from the battle. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Magnus turned his body just before a huge head shot out of the stairwell, white teeth clacking on empty air. Magnus kicked out, the sole of his left shoe pinning the monster’s head against the corner of the stairwell. Before it could adjust its body to push back, Magnus drove a knife in an over-handed arc, burying it in the creature’s left eye. Magnus screamed, pulled the blade out, then rotated in an underhand windup that drove the bloody blade deep into the monster’s neck. The creature kept fighting even as its blood shot across the already slick floor.
“No,” Colding said quietly. “You don’t get to live.”
He put his feet on the outside of the metal ladder’s poles, then slid down to the bottom. He grabbed a piece of fallen rafter and held it like a torch, the burning end hissing and crackling with flames.
“This is for Jian and Doc.”
Colding reared back and hurled the burning wood. It spun three times in the air before the flaming end hit the left side of Magnus’s face. The big man screamed, then fell to his back. Colding hurried up the ladder.
A monster walked out of the stairwell and closed in on Magnus.
MAGNUS’S HANDS PRESSED at the seared cheek. Even as his skin bubbled and he howled in pain, he knew he had to move. He sat up fast, trying to bring his feet underneath him, but before he could a wide mouth and long teeth snapped for his face. Magnus brought up his hands and hooked his thumbs inside the skin at the sides of the creature’s jaws. Five hundred and ten pounds drove him to his back. He locked his arms straight out, fingers digging in from the outside to grab big handfuls of coarse fur. The jaws cracked shut less than an inch from his nose. Sharp claws dug into his massive chest.
He was trying to bring his heels up to hook-kick at the eyes when another creature came from his right, teeth snapping down on his arm, his shoulder, punching into his chest, through his lungs.
His eyes went wide and his body stiffened. The creature shook him, snapping bones, rending flesh. Hot blood in his face, again, but this time his blood.
Movement from his left. A third creature, mouth open wide, blocking the fire’s flickering light. Three-foot-wide jaws smashed shut with crushing power. Teeth punched down through his right temple and up through his left cheekbone, sliding together somewhere in his brain.