Artemis had been a real up and comer in Franco's get until he allowed a child he'd been about to sup on to jab a crucifix into his eye. He might have lived it down if the eye had regenerated, but wounds from holy objects never healed. His puckered scar and sunken socket were eternal reminders of his blunder, and he'd sunk to the rank of one of Franco's get-guards and errand boys.
"Very well, Artemis," she said, switching to English. "But I just want you to know that I had no control over Gregor. Whatever he did, he did on his own. I am in no way responsible for what happened to him. You can tell Franco that."
Artemis laughed. "Franco did not send me here about Gregor. He wanted to let you know that he has personally broken the back of the insurrection."
"How, pray, did he do that?"
"By capturing the priest himself, the one who took over your little church here."
"Not my church. It was Gregor's responsibility."
"But it happened while you were here on your inspection tour. Don't worry. That is of no import to Franco."
Olivia seated herself on the bed where she spent her hours of daysleep.
"Broken their backs, has he? What did Franco think of Gregor's idea that the insurgents in the church and the vigilantes were two separate groups?"
"He gave it the amount of consideration it deserved, which is none at all. The priest didn't even bother to deny that he was part of the vigilantes."
Olivia took some small satisfaction in being right, but she wondered . . .
"How is merely capturing the priest going to break the back of this situation?"
Artemis smiled. "Franco has turned the priest—not by himself, but by one of his pet ferals. He was delivered back to his own rectory less than an hour ago. He's been hidden in the basement. Come sundown he'll be one of us and will start to prey on his own followers. And as days go by he'll become increasingly depraved looking, increasingly vicious and feral. Isn't it simply delicious?"
"Perhaps. But it's complicated. I prefer simpler, direct solutions. Why doesn't he just burn them out and capture them?"
"You know Franco. He'd deem a frontal assault unworthy of his intellect. He saw too many Dr. Mabuse films while he was living in Germany, I think. Sees himself as the Grand Manipulator, the Demonic Maestro, the Great Orchestrator of life and death and undeath. He must work his coups with style, with elan."
"Elan is all fine and good, but I'd much prefer to see this over and done with."
"But you're not in charge, are you?"
Olivia didn't dignify that remark with an answer. "So what are we to do then? Sit around and hope this undead priest follows Franco's script?"
"We'll be providing direction. We'll watch after sundown and give him a little help if he needs it. Sometime during the next night or two—before he starts losing his mind—we'll question him about the vigilantes. Just in case there are cells outside the church. After that, he's on his own."
"I'm not so sure I like the idea of a feral running loose."
"Good point. He may become uncontrollable. If his followers don't get him first, we may have to put him down ourselves."
Olivia had to smile. "Not much of a future for this priest. What's his name, by the way?"
Artemis shrugged. "You know, I never thought to ask."
"Well, whoever he is, he deserves everything that's coming to him."
LACEY . . .
Startled out of sleep by a hand shaking her shoulder and a strange voice whispering in her ear, Lacey came up swinging.
"Easy, Lacey," said a woman's voice. "Easy. You're safe. No one's going to hurt you."
Lacey blinked. A small room, a single candle, and some stranger bending over her. No . . . not a stranger . . . she recognized her now. The one who'd led her back to the church, who'd said she was a nun. Lacey groaned. Her head throbbed, she hurt all over, especially between her legs.
"Where—?"
"You're in the convent. Listen to me. Something terrible has happened and—" Her voice broke. She blinked, swallowed, then said. "I need your help."
Lacey glanced at the window. Still dark out there. "Can't it wait till morning?"
The nun—what was her name? Carrie? No, Carole with an e—shook her head. "Morning will be too late. We have to act now before anyone finds out."
"About what?"
"Your uncle."
Lacey listened in a daze, struggling to understand Carole's story, but the words seemed to congeal in the air, clumping together into indecipherable masses. Something about her Uncle Joe ... something about him being—
"Dead? No, no! No! You can't be serious! He can't be! He can't!"
"He is," Carol said. A tear ran down her cheek. "Believe me, Lacey, he is."
"No!" She wanted to smash this crazy woman's face for lying to her. Her Uncle Joe couldn't be dead!
"But he won't stay dead. By tomorrow night he'll be one of them."
"Not Unk! He'd never!"
"He'll have no choice."
Lacey tried to stand but crumbled back onto the bed. Her legs didn't want to support her. "But if they can turn him ... make him one of them, then what's the use?"
"That's exactly how they want you to feel. And that's exactly why we must move him away from here and save him from that hell."
"We?" Lacey's stomach twisted and bile rose in her throat. "You mean ... ?"
Carole was nodding. "There's no other way."
"No! I can't!"
"I can't move him alone, Lacey. The parishioners must never know, must never find him. They must think he died fighting for them. If they learn he's become the enemy, that he's preying on them ..."
"But put a stake through his heart? I can't!"
"You can't not, Lacey. Not if you have the slightest bit of regard for who he was and what he stood for and how he'd want to be remembered."
In that instant Lacey knew Carole was right. Her Uncle Joe had lived his life by a certain set of rules, not simply avoiding evil but actively trying to do good. She couldn't let these undead vermin make a lie and a mockery of his entire life. Stopping that would not be something she did to him, it would be for him.
Somehow, somewhere, she found the strength to rise from the bed. Let's go.
"Can you get a car?"
Lacey nodded. "We brought in a bunch of them to block the streets. There's extras. I'm sure I can get one."
"Good. Keep the lights out and drive it around to the side door of the rectory, then come inside. I'll be waiting in the basement."
The next ten or fifteen minutes would forever be a blur in Lacey's memory. Finding the keys to an old Lincoln Town Car and sneaking it around the block remained clear, but after that. . . creeping down into that dank cellar .. . seeing her uncle's lifeless, bloodless face when Carole unwrapped the top of the sheet—it was him, really, really him—and then struggling his dead weight up the stairs . . . placing him in the trunk of the car . . . hearing the clank of the tools Carole had found in the caretaker's shed as she carefully placed them on the back seat. . . slumping in the passenger seat as Carole drove them away toward the brightening horizon . . .
And thinking about her Uncle Joe . ..
The earliest memory was riding on his back, he barely a teenager and she barely in kindergarten. A flash of watching from a front row pew as he took his Holy Orders and officially became a priest. And then later, much clearer memories of long conversations about faith and God and the meaning of life with her doing most of the talking because no one would listen to her, only him, and Uncle Joe not agreeing but giving her his ear, letting her finish without cutting her off and dissing her dissidence.
And now he was gone. Her sounding board, her last anchor... gone, erased. She felt adrift.