Sisters of Sorrow (22 page)

“This ain’t gonna work,” Donny said.

Anna stood on the step beside him, watching the swirling mass of black water at their feet. Six steps above them, the girls huddled on the landing, inside the basement door. The twist of the spiral staircase put them just out of sight and earshot.

“Can your girls swim?” Donny asked.

“I don’t know,” Anna said. “I don’t think
I
can swim through that.”

The water eddied and spun, thick with the smell of sea and decay. Rats floated among the crates and bundles that bobbed into view, then disappeared again into the dark basement. Anna calculated the depth by gauging the gap between the ceiling and the water’s surface.

“Maybe we can wade through it…if we hold tight to the little ones,” she said.

“It’s rising too fast. If it ain’t over your head already, it will be by the time you convince all them girls to jump in.”

A rat fighting against the current hooked his claw on the step just below them. After a brief struggle, it dragged itself onto the stair and began to scamper up. Anna stomped on its head.

“Anna!” Donny said.

“It would have scared the girls,” she replied, without looking up. The rat’s hind leg jittered. Its tail coiled and uncoiled stupidly. Anna kicked it back into the flooding basement. “I’m taking them out of here, Donny. Every last one of them.”

“I know, Anna. I know you will, but this ain’t the way. We gotta find another exit. How’d you get out the first time?”

Rising water lapped over the edge of their stair step, rinsing a smear of rat blood off Anna’s shoe.

“The kitchen,” she said. “But we’ll have to go straight through Abbess McCain to get there.”

Below them, the rat’s crushed body pirouetted in a slow eddy before drifting into dark oblivion under Saint Frances de Chantal. Donny watched it disappear, then looked up at Anna. “Makes me real glad I’m not Abbess McCain.”

“Basement’s flooded. We have to go out the kitchen,” Anna told the girls at the top of the stairs. She waited for objections. No one spoke, so she continued. “You all know how to get there, but Abbess McCain is camped out in the Great Round Room. We’ll have to get up on the balcony, creep around the back of the rotunda and drop down into the factory wing without being seen or heard. From there, it should be easy.”

“I thought you blew up the factory,” Mary One said.

“We’re not going into the factory, just over to that wing,” Anna said. “The kitchen is a wreck, but it’s still there.”

“And you think you can sneak all nine of us right under McCain’s nose without any of her mercenaries seeing us?” Jane asked.

“You got a better plan?” Donny said, stepping toward her.

Anna put a hand on his arm and said, “I don’t know, Jane. It’s a lousy idea, but it’s the only one we’ve got – other than stay here and die.”

“All their offices are up there, on the balcony level, McCain’s, Eustace’s, Martha’s…” Jane said.

“Martha is dead,” Anna said. “Dolores said they’ll be below, trying to keep Joseph out until reinforcements arrive. If they are up there, well, we might have to fight. But, Dolores will likely be giving them a fair piece of trouble herself, just for the devilry of it. McCain will have a lot on her mind this evening, and the storm will cover any noise we make.”

“We’re going to
fight
?” Jane rolled her eyes and flopped her arms in the air. “Fight, Anna? Have you seen yourself? You can’t hardly keep your feet under you. And your boy, here, appears he couldn’t stand up to a nasty look.”

“I’ve stood up to plenty of nasty looks from you already,” Donny said.

“Nasty looks are the only kind of looks Jane’s got,” said Lizzy.

Donny snickered. Jane balled both fists. Anna stepped between them. She kept her eyes on Jane but said, “Careful, Lizzy, Jane’s got a right hook like a mule kick.” To Jane she said, “I have never, in my life, ever heard you scared of a fight, Jane.”

“
Anna
!” Jane nearly cried, “They have
guns
! And axes! There’s one guy I saw out there – he’s an ogre, I tell you, at least seven feet tall. One of his legs is as big around as my whole body, and I only come up to his belt buckle. He’s got a
sword
, Anna, a sword taller than this door. How are we supposed to fight against that?”

“I’ve got a gun,” Donny said flatly. “There’s an ax up in the hall, if you want it.” He paused, then added, “Swords are over rated.”

“Jane,” Anna reached out and took both her hands, “Dolores said…”

“I know what Dolores said. I was there, remember?”

“We can’t…” Anna tried.

“We can’t stay here,” Jane said. “We can’t go through the basement because of the water. I get it, Anna, I do. We have to go through the kitchen, and to do that we have to get past McCain. I understand.

“This is what
you
need to understand,” Jane continued. “Dolores is insane. She’s unreliable at best. McCain is also insane, and so are all her henchfolk. If we go for the kitchen and McCain finds us, she will kill us. We are
not
strong enough to fight her.” She glared at Donny. “Even if we do have
one
gun and
one
ax.”

Jane’s words settled into the muffled background rumble of the storm, and sank into the hearts of the little party of orphans. Dark water churned, only four steps below them now. Darker thoughts swirled in Anna’s mind, circling this central vortex –
They can only kill you once. After that, they can never hurt you again.

Anna squeezed Jane’s hands. “Last time, you were going to freeze to death if I didn’t save you. This time, it’s ogres with claymores. I’m taking us out of here, Jane. After tonight, one way or the other, we will be free of this place, forever.”

Jane stepped back from Anna as understanding dawned in the older girl’s eyes, but did not release her hands.

“Will you come with me?” Anna asked.

Jane sighed, looked at the other girls, then answered, “Yes, Pinky, I’m coming with you.”

Donny drew the flintlock as they re-entered the corridor. He extinguished his lantern and handed it to Lizzy. Storm light and memory were sufficient for Anna to guide her party toward the center of Saint Frances de Chantal.

She picked up the ax as they passed it. Hattie’s blood, sticky and dark, covered its head and most of its handle. The girls huddled close behind her. Jane guarded the rear of their pack, wielding a long sickle of window glass with a scrap of blanket serving as its handle.

Stealth seemed irrelevant. The storm’s violent bombardment raged against the roof. The stone walls shuddered, as if the island itself were being shaken by the storm. The constant rumble of thunder and the bell’s eerie wail covered any sound the orphans may have made. But Anna could not make herself hurry along the hall. The storm’s erratic, wavering light sent shadows jumping and dancing on all sides. In Anna’s eyes, every one of these shadows was McCain, or Joseph, or Hattie – her face split in half, coming to reclaim her ax.

Something jumped at Anna from her left. She swung, eliciting shrieks from several girls. The ax sliced straight through the menacing shadow, glanced off the wall in a flash of orange sparks, and splintered into a wooden bench. The blow sent a shock of pain through Anna’s wrists and elbows, nearly jarring the ax from her hands.

Donny said something that the pounding storm obscured. His tone was cautious, patronizing. Anna gave him a miserable, irritated glare and yanked the ax free from the bench. After that, the girls spread out, at least far enough that Anna wouldn’t decapitate one of them in the event of another false alarm.

The shadows continued to leap, but Anna did not swing again. Not until a real pair of claws sprung at her out of the darkness.

The thing screamed as it attacked, dropping from the ceiling in a flurry of beak and talons and feathers. The girls screamed with it. Anna fell to the floor, flailing her ax. The bird, Anna realized it was a seagull, flapped and squawked in circles around the children, bumped the ceiling, collided with the wall, then settled awkwardly on a wall sconce.

Anna lay on the floor, panting. Agitated birds murmured and cooed above the din of the storm. The air smelled of sulfur smoke, and blood. The corridor was darker here. They had passed the final set of doors. All the light came from behind them, ahead lay only darkness…and apparently, several birds.

“Donny,” Anna said, not bothering to whisper, “Light your lantern. This is the end of the hall. There’s no one here.”

Anna stood in the darkness. She planted her feet, tightening her fingers around the ax, preparing for whatever Donny’s lamp may reveal. Her hands ached from death-gripping the handle, but when the darkness melted, she would be ready.

The darkness held. She heard talking behind her, loud whispering. A second later, she understood the reason for the delay. Donny was teaching Lizzy how to work the lamp.

“Donny!” she said, turning on them.

The lamp flashed to life, blazing a hole in Anna’s vision, just to the left of center.

“Oops, sorry Anna,” Lizzy said, redirecting the light away from Anna’s face. Then she gasped, “Holy moly!”

Anna turned. Birds, thirty to forty of them, roosted everywhere, seagulls, crows, cormorants, a bald eagle, a couple of owls. They sat on the chandelier, on wall sconces, on benches, on railings. They waddled and stalked, patrolling back and forth across the hall, murmuring and bickering and squawking.

Several more lay dead, scattered around the floor. As the lantern’s glow stabilized and Anna’s vision cleared, she also saw blood – more blood than the dead birds provided – splattered on the floor, sprayed on the walls.

“What is this, Anna?” Donny asked.

“This is the end of the hall,” she replied. “Those stairs,” she pointed to four wide steps descending to a pair of oak doors, “lead to the Great Round Room, the rotunda at the center of Saint Frances. That’s where McCain and all her goons are holed up. These birds were looking for McCain. I guess this is as close as they got.”

“I smell gun powder,” Donny said. “I think somebody was shootin’ these birds.” He kicked at a limp seagull on the floor. Its beak opened slowly, bubbling blood out its nose holes. “Not too long ago, either.”

“Lizzy,” Anna said, “Bring the light over here, shine it down the stairs. I think someone’s down there.”

Lizzy’s approach agitated the birds. Their murmurs took on a tone of warning. The eagle spread his wings and cawed a low, ratcheting caw. Lizzy slowed. This hall, which had always seemed enormous, now felt crowded and tense.

“Jane, keep the girls back,” Anna said. “Donny, come with me.”

She and Donny moved to Lizzy’s side. The three of them crept toward the stairwell. As the lamp penetrated deeper into that recess, they saw a figure slumped against the double doors at the bottom of the stairs. In the gloom, they were unable to discern any details of the figure except that it moved wrong – twitchy, slight movements, inhuman gestures.

Donny took two careful steps to the right. He held his flintlock in both hands, thumbing back the hammer. Anna stepped away from Lizzy, two steps to the left, and raised her ax. The three inched forward, the lamp revealing more details with each step.

Light gleamed off the toes of black patent leather shoes. It glinted, in two parallel lines, along the twin barrels of a blood-streaked shotgun. It glowed in the brass of several spent shotgun shells. It scintillated among the black feathers of crows that swarmed over the body, like ants on a bit of fallen food.

The rest of the figure sparkled red in the dark basin of the stairwell. The oak doors behind it were splatter-painted crimson. Blood and bird droppings marred the body. Its head hung down, chin to chest. So much of its face had been pecked off that Anna could not tell if it had been a sister or one of the off-island recruits. A large crow perched half on the shoulder, half on the chest, craning his beak around and up, prospecting in the figure’s empty eye socket.

“It’s dead,” Donny whispered.

As soon as Donny spoke, the large crow flicked his head around, gore flying from his beak, and stared at Donny. The black feathers along its neck and head ruffled. Then it shrieked a long angry squawk,
caa- aaa- aaa- ca- ca- ca - ca- ca- aaaeeee.
The other crows stopped pecking and cocked their heads toward Donny. They, too, began to croon low, hateful caws.

“Careful, Donny!” Lizzy whined, retreating in comically stealthy steps.

Donny froze. The birds around and behind them stirred, their chatter turning ominous. He glanced over at Lizzy, then followed her lead. Anna, also, backpedalled as smoothly and inoffensively as she could.

“Anna!” Jane said in a half shout, half whisper.

“Shh!” Anna hissed back at her. “Dim the light, Lizzy.”

Donny and Anna returned to either side of Lizzy and together the three of them retreated to Jane and the girls. The birds continued to fuss and squabble, but Anna saw the big crow turn its attention back to mining the dead witch-hunter’s eye socket.

“Did you see that?” Lizzy gasped as they rejoined Jane’s group. “They’re eating that person, the birds are! Do you think they killed him?”

“Hush, Lizzy!” Anna said. “Everybody, quiet.”

“What’s going on up there, Anna?” Jane whispered.

“We can’t get through this way. McCain must have posted a guard at the door,” Anna said. “It looks like Joseph’s birds killed the guard…”

“It’s horrible,” Lizzy whispered, wide-eyed. “You should see it! The birds ate his…”

Anna clapped a hand over her mouth. “I don’t think the birds will let us near the stairs.”

“If it wasn’t for those birds,” Jane said, “the guards would have got us.”

Anna nodded.

“And McCain is just beyond those doors?” Jane asked.

Anna nodded again.

“What did you think was going to happen if we did get through those doors?” Jane demanded.

“I had hoped that Joseph would be in there by now. We could have crept up the grand staircase to the balcony without being seen,” she sighed. “But, I think if he were in there, we would know.”

“Could be just ‘bout anything goin’ on in there,” Donny said. “Can’t hear nothing over this storm. What now, Anna?”

“There is another way.” She pointed up. “The window.” High above, near the peak of the cathedral ceiling, the stained glass eye stared down at them. “It opens into McCain’s office. From there, we get out onto the balcony. We’ll be able to see what’s going on, and we’ll be able to get to the kitchen from there.”

“That window is twenty feet up,” Jane said.

“We climb up the tapestry,” Anna said with a wicked grin. “It’s easy. I’ve done it lots of times.”

Lizzy giggled.

Jane said, “Anna!”

“Where do you think the books came from?” Anna said. “It’s easy, really. There’s actually a ladder cut into the stones behind the tapestry. Rebecca showed me years ago. We might have to help Lilly and Maybelle, but the rest of you should be fine.”

Jane opened her mouth to object, closed it, shook her head, then looked back the way they had come. After a second, she turned back to Anna. “How do you know she’s not up there watching us right now?”

“If she knew I was here, she’d come out and get me, birds or no birds. Besides, see how the lamp-glow backlights the window? If anyone
was
up there, we’d see her shadow.” Anna flashed her tired, cunning grin again. “That’s how I always knew whether she was watching us or not.”

Jane snorted a humorless laugh. “Okay, Anna, okay. You want to go first?”