He fell to his knees. More screams rang from behind him, shrill as bat cries and edged with hysteria.
His arms sagged. Dark loops of entrails moistly glistening slopped out over them upon the stoop of the church.
Chapter 18
Terrified people rushed from the church door. The first shied back like startled horses at the sight of the disemboweled priest lying right at their feet. The pressure of others behind thrust them forward irresistibly. Some were forced to trample the body or were crushed in the entryway in front of the door as the fleeing mob drove them onward to the gate.
The outflow met the crowd condensing and flowing in through the arched gateway. It produced swirling turbulence that filled the courtyard and jammed the gate.
Annja ran for the gate. Cell phones still went off all around. The Holy Child was a busy little apparition tonight, it appeared. People were listening to distraught friends and relatives on the other end while looking around trying to figure out why everybody around them was so upset.
Outside the courtyard wall people began to scream, seeing what was going on inside. The pressure of pilgrims seeking entry to the sanctuary ceased. People fell back from the gates in apprehension or frank terror, depending on how much they had seen.
Annja reached the gate.
It was all she could do to hold her ground against the human flood.
She glanced back. She could see Godin likewise just managing to stand and let the stampede flow around him. He had his stubby revolver out, pointed safely skyward in both gloved hands.
She vaulted to the top of the wall to the right of the quaint adobe arch over the gateway. Her feet slipped slightly in the snow. She teetered dangerously, windmilling her arms. She found her balance.
Celebrants still poured out of the church, breaking around the sealed well with the crucifix and the millstone set in the pedestal. From inside the church came shrieks that soared above the panicked noise of the crowd like a terrified bird.
Annja ran forward, pushing urgently against the crowd. She reached the doorway. The screaming from within had also ended. Cautiously she advanced inside.
As she entered, her nostrils wrinkled to a terrible stench. The church's interior was darker than outside. The low, heavy roof beams seemed to waver in the unsteady glow of candles. The shadows seemed to live. As her eyes adjusted, Annja made out uncomfortable-looking old-fashioned pews to either side of a narrow aisle.
Then her stomach clenched in horror. At the end of the aisle, in front of the gaily painted altar screen, sprawled a body dressed in black. It was an elderly lady, with a bun of gray hair. Her black pillbox hat with crepe veil had fallen to the side. The gray hair was daubed with red as by the careless stroke of a brush.
Slowly a black shape appeared from the shadows before the altar, looming above the prostrate body. It looked immense. Or was that exaggeration, conjured by adrenaline singing in her veins? The slope of its back to high withers suggested a wild boar. As did the strange grunting, gobbling sounds that seemed to emanate from its direction.
Slowly, Annja advanced.
The beast raised its head.
Dark fluid dripped from its muzzle as black lips drew back in a low snarl. The eyes that rose to chill Annja's soul glowed red in the gloom.
She formed her right hand as if grasping, extended her will. The reassuring cool metal of the heavy hilt suddenly filled her palm and fingers.
"Come on, then," she whispered hoarsely to the horror. "Come on, and I'll send you back to Hell where you belong!"
The red eyes stared at her. The skin on her face and ears and shoulders seemed to contract in an emotion that transcended terror to achieve revulsion. This creature was wrong.Everything about it was wrong. It no more belonged on this Earth than the bloody horror it wrought belonged in the two-century-old air of peace and serenity within the church.
It hunched its shoulders and charged. Not at her. Rather to her left. To her despair Annja saw something she had missed before. A child in a dark winter coat and white-trimmed hat huddled against a carved and painted wooden panel in the whitewashed wall that showed the stations of the cross. The child whimpered, clearly trying to make no noise, but unable to remain silent in the face of such overwhelming terror.
Annja sprang up onto the back of a pew. It rocked beneath her weight. She began to move forward as fast as she could from seat back to seat back. She knew that she would never be able to interpose herself between the nightmare creature and its helpless prey.
The chapel echoed to a shattering boom. A second followed. The beast flinched. It screamed like an anguished woman. It stopped its blinding rush to snap at flanks that had started to bleed.
At the first shot Annja had halted. Teetering on the back of a pew halfway to the altar, she glanced back. Father Godin strode down the aisle holding his big short-barreled revolver out in front of him in a black-gloved hand.
"The child," he called. "Hurry!"
In two springing steps Annja reached the child. The girl looked up in fear as the last pew overbalanced and toppled backward with a crash. Her olive face had gone ashen.
Annja touched down before her, holding her sword out to her right, in case the creature should charge again. As she did Godin fired twice more. He was answered by a furious, guttural snarl.
"Run, girl," Annja shouted in English. She repeated it in Spanish. The little girl stared at her as if doubtful and gave no sign of understanding.
Annja heard the scrabbling of great claws on a wooden floor polished by generations of pious feet. With no more time Annja grabbed the girl by the shoulder and propelled her bodily down the space between pews and wall. The little girl bounced off a heavy wooden pew eight or ten feet back with a little cry of pain that wrenched Annja's heart. But it seemed to snap her back to herself. In a flash she recovered her balance and raced toward the exit with surprising speed.
Godin had stopped ten feet inside the entrance. Now he advanced again to cover the little girl's retreat. He fired the final two shots in his cylinder. Behind him the child scuttled out into the snow.
Annja smelled something like burning fuel oil and hair. The monster rocked back as a little gout of flame jetted from one shoulder. A gash along its muzzle bled smoke.
Seeming to sense its tormentor was out of cartridges, it charged. Again it voiced its horrifying cry. Godin stood square. Still holding his huge revolver with its barrel tipped toward the ceiling, he reached behind him for the handgun Annja knew he carried there.
The heavy .45 slugs had not come close to incapacitating the beast. The lighter if faster 9 mm bullets would never stop the creature from smashing the Jesuit to the floor and mauling the life from him.
As the monster raced past Annja she sprang. High over it she soared. She slashed downward with her sword.
She felt it bite. The beast's scream was like a steam whistle. It put down its haunches and spun, skidding on the slick floor. It slammed into a pew and shattered it. Then it completed its turn to charge at Annja.
She had already jumped up to run toward the altar, leaping again from pew back to pew back, just succeeding in managing her balance so she didn't tip one beneath her.