Frank growled through his disgust and snared another fistful of bindings, tearing a bundle of muscle from the monster’s right leg.
“Not so strong now,” Frank shouted.
One of the human appendages reached for him. He grabbed it and held fast. The beast pivoted for a second assault and he ducked, twisting the joints, executing an arm lock. He braced one foot on the thing’s thigh and tore the captured limb off the body. It pulled away to the sound of snapping twine and ripped fibers.
A pestilent river of yellow fluid spilled from the hole.
Frank flung the severed arm aside. “For a ‘god’ you don’t seem to be holding together so well. Also, you smell like an asshole!”
The monster roared. It swung a massive paw and raked Frank’s back with its talons as he attempted to dodge. Adrenaline muted the pain, but the impact spun him around—throwing him into the other claw-tipped extremity. Its razor sharp points sliced across his chest.
They cut deep, severing muscle, scraping bone.
Night air rushed into the wound, chilling his nerves before being flushed out by a deluge of hot blood.
Frank staggered and fell to his knees.
The creature caught him before he hit the ground, clamping his body in its arms. He twisted and kicked, squirming to break free.
Frank’s struggle slowed when he became aware of other movements pushing against his body. He looked down to see the creature’s hide bulge and swell, stirred from within.
A line of stitches unfurled along the monster’s right side and the half-skeletonized head of a dead woman emerged from the gash. It sprung forth on an impossibly long neck, trailing slime-soaked purple hair that dangled from the remnants of her scalp. Frank stared in horror. Trapped by the beast, he was unable to avoid the head’s lipless teeth when they bit into his abdomen.
On the other side, a mummified dog’s skull burst from the creature’s huge chest. Its jaws gnashed, sinking fangs into Frank’s shoulder.
He screamed and thrashed in its grasp, fighting to escape.
The creature laughed in his face. Its vertical mouth disgorged a foul breath of postmortem gases along with the bodies of five dead rattlesnakes that nipped at his face.
One tore off his eye patch, exposing the empty socket beneath.
The beast’s demonic voice boomed. “Now we’ll see how well you hold together.”
CHAPTER 61
“Let me go,” Mallory yelled.
She struggled against Tim’s grip, knowing he was only trying to protect her but furious with him for keeping her from helping her dad get back to the church—even after the monster had dropped him.
She dug her nails into his skin. Kicked at his feet.
“Please, Tim!”
“No! You go out there and you’re dead!”
In the parking lot, her dad stumbled toward them. He’d reclaimed the gun with his good hand and kept it aimed at the creature.
“Dad!”
Tim finally released her once her father reached the church steps, and she flung herself at him, clutching him around the neck. She wanted to remain calm, to be the action-oriented heroine she’d been at the barn, but once they were reunited her emotions overflowed, and she collapsed into sobs.
“Are you okay?” she cried. “I heard your arm break. Oh, God, Daddy, I heard it all the way over here!”
“I’ll live,” he said. “We have to help Frank, though.”
They looked to the parking lot and saw the other man hoisted into the monster’s arms, clutched in a titanic bear-hug.
Her dad aimed the gun with his good hand, but then lowered it again. “I can’t shoot with this arm. Even if I could, I’d probably miss or hit Frank.”
“Guns won’t stop it,” Tim said. “But I know what wilclass="underline" Kane’s body.” He turned and pointed at the cemetery. “The coffin is right there. That’s what this thing wants.”
Her dad’s expression went gray. “Kale Kane?”
Tim nodded. “It made us dig him up. It had Mallory.”
“Frank said the entity could bring that maniac back to life somehow. I don’t think I believed him at the time, but—”
Frank screamed.
Mallory flinched at the sound, not wanting to look.
“Get in the doorway,” her dad ordered.
Mallory shook her head. “But—”
“Do it, Mallory. I’m not leaving you.”
Tim slipped his hand into hers and pulled her to the top of the steps.
Her dad edged away from them, facing the graveyard. He snapped up the pistol, aiming at the coffin, and fired his final five rounds. Three of the shots missed, sparking off the fence and putting scars in nearby tombstones. The other two bullets opened dark holes in the cheap boards surrounding Kale Kane’s body.
Mallory spun to see if the creature had responded when—
“Look out!” Tim screamed.
Before she knew what was happening, he yanked her through the church doorway. His quick action gave her only a second to glimpse the twelve-foot long log that hurled out of the darkness toward them. It smashed through the steps and tore the whole staircase off the building, leaving a dusty cloud in its wake.
Mallory rushed back to the opening to find her father already climbing the ruins.
“Get inside,” he shouted. “It’s coming!”
Mallory didn’t hesitate this time. She joined Tim and dashed through the entryway.
Beyond lay a large, open room, lit only by fragile threads of outside light that stitched together the two opposing rows of boarded-over windows set in the building’s longest walls.
Another object rocketed toward them, this time a bolder the size of a car tire. It hit the church two feet above the double doors, punching through the forward vestibule and out the opposite wall, leaving two enormous holes in the building’s skin. Mallory and Tim ducked into the musty interior under a hailstorm of debris. Wood exploded across the one-room sanctuary, clattering over the rows of old pews and off the floor.
Mallory spun around, searching for her father.
He hurried close behind them. “Come on, kids, keep going.”
A second rock tore across their path. It shot through one of the windows, obliterating the wooden frame and covering boards, pelting them with more hazardous debris. It struck the end of a pew only two rows ahead of Tim, reducing the long bench to shattered kindling, simultaneously causing the one beside it to jump upward like a catapult.
“It’s trying to flush us out,” Tim said over the noise of destruction.
The upended pew crashed to the floor.
“All the way to the back,” her father cried.
They waded through the mess of splintered timbers as if navigating a jungle full of booby traps, but after the last rock, an ominous calm had settled over the scene.
They reached the halfway mark of the main chamber when an enormous, bone-jarring impact rattled the entire building.
Mallory glanced behind her and gaped in silent horror at the sight of Derrick’s Mercedes bulldozing through the ceiling, smashing apart the overhead crossbeams, barreling straight toward them.
The entity watched the Mercedes stab into the church, no longer caring if Mallory died before it had a chance to resurrect Kane and access her energy. She’d evaded its grasp again and again, and now moved too far out of its reach. It would rather leave with Kane to begin again knowing she’d perished in the one place she thought was safe.
The car blasted through the sanctuary’s roof, its rear bumper chased by the bell tower and most of the forward rooftop when those sections of the building caved in behind it.
Though it couldn’t detect even Mallory’s extraordinary life force from within the hallowed walls of the Other’s domain, it couldn’t imagine the girl surviving such an attack. She was only human, after all.