Chantal made her way through them, gun still raised.
Stack was bent backwards at the waist, limp at the knees. He was feebly scrabbling at Behr's metal-ringed wrist.
Chantal had a good shot now. She took it.
The gun clicked. She remembered she had emptied it at the bell. There was no time to reload.
Through Behr's tattered shirt, she saw a patch of scrawny skin unprotected by fleshplate armour.
She braced herself against a tombstone, and vault-kicked with both feet.
Her kick landed hard, and gouged a gobbet from Behr's back. But she didn't knock him off his footing, and the jolt shocked through her feet and legs. The tombstone tipped over—the sandy ground was too loose to be an anchor—and she fell on top of it, hurting her hip.
Behr straightened, and turned robotically. He held Stack at arms' length, lifting him off the ground. His face was greyish now, and he was bleeding where Behr's fingers were sinking into the flesh.
"What'd ya do that fer, lady," he asked. "I tole you it weren't me. It's these damn doodads. I cain't control them all uv the time."
She tried a double karate chop, either side of his neck. Behr cried out, but didn't die.
His half face was crying, she saw. The pain and the frustration must be intense. But his electronic eye was glowing evilly.
"Tiger, did you have an optic burner implanted?"
The old Angel looked awesomely fed up. "Dad blast it, I did, lady. I wish it weren't so, but…"
The glow turned red, and Chantal cartwheeled out of its path. Behr's head wrenched around on his neck, soliciting a shout of pain from him, and the beam raked the graveyard. A stone crucifix exploded into shrapnel fragments, and weather-beaten 19th Century wooden markers burst into flames.
The mourners had mainly taken cover in the church. Those that were armed had their guns out.
Bullets rang against Behr's armoured chest.
"Careful," shouted Chantal, "you'll hit the Trooper."
No one seemed much to care about that. A long-haired old man in torn leathers jumped out of Father O'Pray's grave with a shotgun, and primed it. Before he could fire, the optic burn had caught him in the centre of his chest, and he tumbled backwards, dead.
Chantal danced around Behr, realizing that she could move faster than be could turn, and that his range with the burner was at best 120 degrees of his eyeline. She got in close, and struck wherever she saw Behr's original body.
He continued to complain. "Don't hurt me, sister. Hurt this thing!"
She had to do something about Stack.
"Shovel," she shouted. Armindariz was cringing between a pair of tombs, still clutching the spade. "Shovel," she repeated.
Armindariz stood up, and lobbed the spade to her. It spun end over end until she snatched it from the air. She got a good hold and swung it two-handed at Behr's flesh-and-bone elbow.
Behr screamed as the blade sliced through, breaking the brittle bone.
"Sorry, Tiger," she said.
Stack fell, gasping for bream, detaching the severed robo-arm from his throat. It continued to clutch automatically as he smashed it against the ground. Wires and transistors leaked from its stump.
Chantal took aim at Behr's head and swung again. The optic flashed, and the spadehead exploded into red-hot shards. She was left with a burning pole, which she shoved at the cyborg's torso. It splintered against his dented chestplate.
Through the glass, Chantal could see red blood leaking into Behr's mechanism, shorting out some of his electronics.
She ducked under the swing of his left arm, and threw herself against him, hoping to open a crack with her shoulder.
She felt as if she had tried to tackle Notre Dame. The cathedral, not the college football team.
She rolled away from the cyborg: The beam was getting too close.
A huge figure loomed up behind Behr, and a claw locked around his throat. Shell had stepped in. Sweat ran from his ebony-muscled arm and blocky face as he exerted pressure.
"Hold on there, sonny boy," Behr spluttered.
Shell had his real hand pressed against the back of Behr's head, to keep the cyborg's burner pointed away from him. Behr's head was still turning, inexorably. Chantal heard the old man's vertebrae straining inside his exoskeleton.
"This freakin' hurts, ya know," Behr shouted.
Shell was grunting now, losing his fight against Behr's neck. There was a sudden crack as Behr's spine snapped.
The Gaschugger relaxed, but Behr's head kept turning, until it was seeing backwards, his dead face against Shell's living one.
The optic burned, and Shell fell away from the cyborg, a ragged, smoking hole where his eyes and nose had been. Chantal glimpsed daylight through the headwound as the 'chugger fell. In the church, someone—Miss Unleaded?— howled with unfeigned grief.
What was left of Behr was unsteady on its feet. Chantal stood up, and waited for it to bring its face to bear again. Behr's tongue lolled from his mouth and his real eye was fogged. The optic was burned out, its solid cell used up on Shell. Inside all the bio-mechanics, he was dead, but the robot half of him was still going to kill her.
It raised its hand to its face, and pushed its tongue into its mouth. Then, using three fingers, it propped its jaw open. Behr had had a partially synthetic voice-box.
"Helllloooo, bayby-beach!" it said.
"The Big Bopper," she snapped. 'IP. Richardson, 'Chantilly Lace,' 1958."
"Highest chart position. Number Twelve." The mechanical voice grated. "Trust the Sister from Switzerland to have a photographic memory."
The dead man lurched forwards, arm out like Lon Chaney Jr as the Mummy. She realized the thing was blind, but guessed it would have some kind of sonar or heat pattern sensor inside it.
"Who are you?" she asked, stepping backwards a pace.
"My name is Legion…" it said.
"…for you are Many. That's an old joke."
"The oldies are the goodies, don't you think, mon petit choux."
It was using her father's voice.
"That's an old trick, too. It didn't work in California, and it's not going to work here."
It took a step, and changed voices. "Chantal, come back," it said in Italian, in Marcello's whine, "don't you like me any more?"
She kicked it in the throat. It was less steady now.
“I'm still dead, daughter," said her father. “I'm busy ducking rocks in Hell. And what have you done about it?"
Her foot hurt. That last kick had been rash.
"Ahh, the Sin of Pride," said Father O'Shaugnessy, "that was always your failing, Sister Chantal, always overreaching, always overconfident."
Someone rushed at the thing, screaming like a banshee, and was bent into broken halves in an instant. It hadn't been anyone Chantal had noticed before.
"Call me Georgi," said the Pope, "and come to bed."
She landed the heel of her hand on the glassex chest. It cracked.
The thing coughed mechanically, and she could see the wheels going round. She punched the crack, and it widened. Something was broken inside.
The people were creeping out of the church now. It must be obvious that the fight was between Chantal and the thing in Tiger Behr's body. The Behr creature wouldn't mimic life long after it had killed the nun. Stack was down and out of it, fallen in a swoon by the grave.
Chantal sucker-punched the thing, without any notable effect. Her hard knuckles were bleeding.
She pulled her bowie knife, and embedded its point in the crack in the demon thing's chest, working it back and forth. It laughed, and took her neck from the back, hugging her to him. The knife wedged into the chest cavity.
"Come to Papa," it cooed obscenely. She felt nails dig into her.
Then they were both falling into the grave, another active body pressed down on top of them, shrieking.
It was Miss Unleaded, a ladies' revolver in her little fist. Chantal pushed herself away from the Behr creature, and found herself bunched against Father O'Pray.