Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (34 page)

“Gotta delivery here,” Decker said, chewing noisily on the gum as he fished a slip of paper from his pocket.  “The rect’ry.”

“Yeah?  Nobody told me about that.”

“We deliver alla time, man.  Youse guys maya shut down da choich, but dem priests still gotta eat, know’m sayin’?”

As the cop stared at Decker, Emilio winced and closed his eyes.  He heard Mol groan softly.  Decker was laying it on too thick. 

The cop pulled a flashlight from his belt.  “Let’s have a look at what you’re deliverin’.  You wouldn’t be the first Mary-hunters tried to sneak by us tonight.”

Emilio nodded as Mol nudged him.  They’d done this right.  This was no fake D’Agostino’s truck.  This was the real thing.  They’d hijacked it just as it left the store.  The driver was bound, gagged and unconscious in the trunk of a car Mol had stolen this afternoon.  The back of the panel truck was loaded with grocery bags, all scheduled for delivery elsewhere, but Emilio had changed the addresses on half a dozen of them to read “St. Joseph’s rectory.”

Emilio heard the rear doors open, heard the rustle of paper as a few of the bags were inspected, then heard the door slam closed.

Seconds later, Decker was slipping back behind the wheel as the cop slid the barrier aside and waved them through.

“‘Choich?’“ Mol said, leaning forward and staring at Decker.  “‘
Choich
?
’“

Decker shrugged, grinning.  “What can I say?  I’m a Method actor.”

Mol laughed and grabbed his crotch.  “Method this!”

Emilio let them blow off a little steam.  They were in—past the guard house, so to speak—but they still had a long way to go.

Decker gave a friendly wave to the cop standing on the sidewalk in front of the church as he drove past, and backed the truck into the alley on the far side of the rectory.  Mol and Emilio got out, opened the rear of the trunk, grabbed some bags, and left the doors open as they approached the rectory’s side door with loaded arms.

A middle-aged woman opened the door.

“A gift for Father Dan from one of his parishioners,” Emilio said.  “Is he in?”

Emilio knew he was in—he’d confirmed that with a phone call.

“Why, yes,” the woman said.  She let them into the foyer, then turned and called up the stairs behind her.  “Father Dan!  Someone here to see you!”

By the time she turned back again, Mol had put his grocery bags down and had a pistol pointing at her face.

“Not a word, or we’ll shoot Father Dan.  Understand?”

Eyes wide, jaw trembling, utterly terrified, she nodded.

“Anyone else in the house besides Father Dan?” Mol said.

She shook her head.

“Good.”  Mol smiled.  “Now, let’s find a nice little closet so we can lock you up where you won’t get hurt.

Emilio had his own automatic—a silenced Llama compact 9mm—ready and waiting for Father Dan when he came down the stairs.

“Hello,” the priest said.  “What—”

And then he saw the pistol.

“Let’s go to church, shall we, Father?” Emilio said.

The young priest looked bewildered.  “But there are police all over—”

“The tunnel, Father Dan.  We’ll use the tunnel.”

The priest shook his head.  “Tunnel?  I don’t know what you’re—”

Emilio jabbed the silencer tip against his ribs.  “I’ll shoot your housekeeper in the face.”

“All right!” Father Dan said, blanching.  “All right.  It’s this way.”

“That’s better. 

Mol rejoined them then, and gave Emilio a thumbs-up sign.  The housekeeper was safely locked away.  She’d keep quiet to protect her precious priest from being shot while the priest was leading them to the church in order to keep his housekeeper from being shot. 

Wasn’t brotherly love wonderful?

But repeated reminders never hurt.  Emilio had worked this one out and memorized it: “No heroics, please, Father.  We’re not here to hurt anyone, but we’re quite willing to do so without hesitation if the need arises.  Remember that.”

‡

Why are all these things happening, Mother?

Carrie sat in the front pew, staring at the Virgin where she lay upon the altar. 

She could not get the sight of her father—now that he was dead, had died so horribly, it seemed all right to call him that—out of her head.  The flames, the oily smoke, the smell, the obscene sizzle of burning human flesh haunted her dreams and her waking hours, stealing her appetite, chasing her sleep.  That had been no ordinary fire.  Only the man had burned, nothing else.

Did I do that, Mother?  Did you?  Or was that the work of Someone Else’s hand?

And now the church was closed, the sick and lame turned away, the building sealed, the street blocked off.  What next?  Tomorrow these aisles would be crowded with investigators from the Archdiocese and the Vatican, trailed by nosy, disrespectful bureaucrats from City Hall and Albany, from Washington and Israel, all poking, prodding, examining.

They’ll be interrogating me about how you got here.  I won’t tell them a thing.  It’s not me I’m worried about, Mother.  It’s you.  They’ll treat you like a thing—an
it
.  They may even decide you belong back in Israel.  What’ll I do then, Mother?

Carrie felt tears begin to well in her eyes.  She willed them away.

There’s a plan, isn’t there, Mother?  There has to be.  I just have to have faith and—

She heard a noise in the vestibule and turned.  She smiled when she saw Dan leading two other strange-looking men up the aisle, but he did not return her smile.  He looked pale and grim.

And then she saw the pistols.

She shot to her feet.  “Dan?  What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”  His voice was as tight as his features.  “They came into the rectory and—”

“What we want is very simple,” the bigger, bearded one said.  He stopped a dozen feet or so down the aisle from Carrie and let Dan continue toward her.  He gestured toward the altar with his pistol.  “We want that.”

Carrie was stunned for a few seconds, unable,
unwilling
to believe what she’d just heard.

“Want her for what?” she managed to say.

“No time for chatter, Sister.  Here’s how we’ll do this.  You two will carry her back through the tunnel to the rectory, and we’ll take her from there.  No tricks, no games, no heroics, and no one gets hurt.”  He gestured with his pistol at Dan.  “You take the head and she’ll take the feet.  Let’s move.”

“No!” Carrie said.

The bearded man snapped his head back in surprise.  Obviously he hadn’t expected that. 

Neither had Carrie.  The word had erupted from her with little or no forethought, propelled by fear, by anger, by outrage that anyone could even
think
of stealing the Virgin from the sanctuary of a church.

She faced him defiantly.

“Get out of here.”

He stared at her for a heartbeat or two, then pointed his gun at Dan.

“You cause me any trouble and I’ll shoot your priest friend.”

“No, you won’t.  There’s a cop outside that door.  All I have to do is scream once and he’ll be in here, and that will be the end of you.  Get out now.  I’ll give you a chance to run, then I’m going to open the front doors and call the police inside.”

“I’m not kidding, lady,” the big one said through his teeth.  “Get up there and do what you’re told.”

“Carrie, please,” she heard Dan say from her left.  “It’s okay.  They can’t get past the cops with her anyway.  So just do as he says.”

Dan might be right, but Carrie wasn’t going to let these creeps get their filthy hands on the Virgin for even a few seconds.

“Get out now or I scream.”

The shorter one looked about nervously, as if he wanted to take her up on the offer, but the bearded one stood firm.  His eyes narrowed as he raised his pistol and aimed it at her chest.  His voice was low and menacing.

“
No me jodas.
”

He wouldn’t dare, she thought.  He’s got to be bluffing.

“All right,” she said.  “I gave you your chance.”

Still they didn’t move, so she filled her lungs and—

She saw the flash at the tip of the silencer, saw the pistol buck, heard a sound like
phut!,
felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her scream but she was punched backward and didn’t seem to have any air to scream with.  And then she was falling.  Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an all-encompassing darkness...

‡

Nara, Japan

As the first rays of the sun crest the horizon and light the flared eaves of the Todaiji temple, the largest wood structure in the world, it begins to dissolve, to melt into the air.  And as the sun rises farther, the temple further dissolves.  Finally the sun strikes the bronze surface of the Daibutsu.  The bronze of the Buddha seems to glow for a moment, then it too dissolves.

In a manner of minutes, nothing of the Todaiji or its Buddha remains.

‡

Manhattan

Emilio stood frozen with his automatic still pointed at where she had been standing as he watched her fall and lay twitching on the marble floor, the red of her life soaking through the front of her habit and pooling around her.

“Christ, Emilio!” Mol gasped beside him. 

“Carrie!” the priest cried, dropping to his knees beside her and gripping her limp shoulders.  “Oh, God,
Carrie!
”

I’m sorry, Emilio thought.  I’m so sorry!

And that shocked him.  Because he’d killed before without the slightest shred of guilt.  Anyone who threatened him or stood between him and what he wanted didn’t deserve to live.  It had always been that simple.  But here, now, in this place, before that old woman’s body on the altar, a new emotion, as unpleasant as it was unfamiliar, was seeping through him.

Guilt.

The priest looked up at him, tear-filled eyes wild, rage and grief distorting his features almost beyond recognition.  With a low, animal-like growl he hurtled himself at Emilio.

A bullet in the head would have been the simplest, most efficient response.  But Emilio couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.  Not again, not here, with...
her
here.  Instead he dodged aside and slammed the Llama’s butt and trigger guard hard against the priest’s skull, staggering him.  Before the man could shake off the blow, Emilio hit him again, harder this time, knocking him to the floor where he lay still with a trickle of red oozing from his scalp.

Mol had already started back down the center aisle.

“Where are you going?”

He turned and looked at Emilio, fear in his eyes.  “I—”

“Shut up and stand still.  Listen!”

Emilio strained his ears through the silence.  And as he’d hoped, it remained just that: silent.  None of the noise in here had penetrated the heavy oak front doors; the cop outside had no idea anything was going on inside.

“All right,” Emilio said, gesturing toward the altar.  “Let’s get moving.”

Mol hesitated, glanced once more at the front doors, then shrugged and hurried toward the altar.  Emilio directed him toward the head of the body while he took the other end.

But as he reached to take hold of the feet, he hesitated.  He hadn’t believed in this church-priest-God-religion bullshit since he’d been a little boy in Camino Verde and watched his older sister screw the neighborhood men in the back corner of their one-room shack.  Any guilt he’d felt a moment ago had been a leftover from the times his grandmother would drag him off to church before he was big enough to tell her to go to hell.  And yet...a deep part of him was afraid to touch this mummified old woman, afraid a lightning bolt would crash through the ceiling of the church and fry him on the spot.

“Bullshit!” he whispered and gripped the body’s ankles.

Nothing happened.

Angry with himself for feeling relieved, he nodded to Mol who had her by the shoulders, and together they lifted her off the altar.

Surprisingly light.  They each got a comfortable grip on her, then hurried down the center aisle, Emilio leading, carrying her feet first.  Through the vestibule, down the steps into the locked-up soup kitchen in the cellar, through the tunnel, and back up into the rectory.  All still quiet there.  Decker would have been inside if anyone had come in.  They eased the body out the side door, slipped her into the back atop the grocery bags, and locked the doors.

Emilio climbed into the cab next to Decker and slapped the dashboard.  “Let’s go.”

“Any trouble?” Decker said as he nosed the truck into the street.

“Not really,” Emilio said.

Mol snorted.  “Like hell!”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Emilio said.  “Just drive.”

He wanted Decker cool and calm for the drive back past the police and through the crowd, but he needn’t have worried.  The police waved them by, and even made a path for them through the horde of Mary-hunters beyond.

Once they were free of the crowd and rolling toward the FDR Drive, Emilio allowed himself to breathe a little more easily.  And he’d breathe even more easily when they ditched this rig and switched the body to the Avis panel truck he’d rented earlier.  But he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax fully until they had it aboard the
Senador
’s waiting jet and were airborne over LaGuardia.

‡

Angkor, Cambodia

As the rays of the rising sun touch the five towers of the Temple to Vishnu, the stone begins to dissolve.  By the time the sun is fully above the horizon, the temple is no more.

‡

Manhattan

She is gone!

Kesev violently elbowed his way through the crowd near St. Joseph’s, leaving a trail of sore and angry Mary-hunters in his wake.  Let them shout at him, wave their fists at him, he didn’t care.  He had to reach the church, had to know if his suspicion was true.

During the past hour he had felt a dwindling of the Mother’s presence, and then suddenly it was gone.

He’d sensed something else, felt a change coming over the world.  A wheel had been set in motion.  What would its turning bring?

Finally he reached the front of the crowd, but as he squeezed under the barricade, two blue-uniformed policemen, one white, one black, confronted him.