The First Prophet (42 page)

The inside of the church was dim and dusty and very quiet. Sarah paused only a moment
among the few remaining pews, then made her way to the back where she knew the stairs
would be. She found them easily enough, the door waiting open for her, and again it
took more courage than she thought she had to make herself walk down into that black
maw.

She paused only long enough to light the kerosene lamp. It had been chosen with care,
because it would give off plenty of soft light all around her rather than a beam of
brilliance as a flashlight would. Even so, it threw as much shadow as light as she
went down the narrow stairway, and those shadows made her skin crawl once more.

Shadows. You’re here. Close.
But she thought there was only one or two of them beneath the church, which surprised
her for only a moment.
Of course I can’t get out of the trap. So two—one to grab me, and one to guard Tucker.
And all the rest guarding the door.

The smells of musty age closed around her, damp and moldy and dank, and she found
herself breathing through her mouth rather than her nose. It got colder with every
step she took, and despite her warm sweater
and jeans, she was chilled before she reached the bottom. At the bottom of the stairs,
she found herself in the large, square room that was the original cellar of the church,
her lamp showing her what she had felt her way through before. Numerous doorways and
halls opened off this central room, some of them cut into the rock the building sat
upon while others tunneled through earth.

Sarah made her way immediately across the central room to the narrow table holding
all the pillar candles. Without so much as a glance toward any of the rooms or corridors
around her, she set her lamp on the table, reached into her pocket for matches, and
began lighting the cobwebbed candles.

She was nearly done when a gust of air from somewhere nearby caused the flames to
waver wildly, then blew half the candles out. She dropped the match, and it sputtered
out on the stone floor.

“Waauur.”

Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin, and stared incredulously at the large black cat
that had leaped onto the far end of the table and sat watching her with a slowly lashing
tail.

“Pendragon?” Surely, it couldn’t be…

“Waauur.”

Despite her amazement, she didn’t have much doubt that this was the cat she had left
behind in Richmond. He was just too distinctive looking, those eyes too blue and collar
too individual for her to be mistaken. What she couldn’t begin to imagine was what
he was doing here. And how he’d traveled so far.

Another brief gust of air made the candles waver again. Pendragon hissed softly, then
leaped from the table and vanished into the shadows near the stairs. Before Sarah
could do more than stare after him, a voice spoke mockingly no more than three feet
away from her.

“Don’t like the dark, I see.”

She turned quickly and for an instant thought her eyes were playing tricks on her,
because all she saw was a huge, hideous shadow looming toward her. But when she blinked,
it was only a man.

A very average man. Average height and weight, average brown hair, and average blue
eyes. Wearing a very average business suit.

Somehow, that made it worse.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Not Duran.”

That surprised him. “No. I’m Varden.”

“So this was your game.” She wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying, just
talking to stall for time.

“It was.”

“Bucking for a promotion?”

He smiled thinly. “If so, you’ll help me get it, Sarah.”

“Pass. Where’s Tucker?”

“Safe. I just sent one of my men to…watch him. We’ll let him go, of course, as soon
as you leave with me.”

She smiled. “Sure you will.”

Varden shrugged carelessly. “He’s of no interest to us.”

“But I am. Want to tell me why?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I know it’s because I’m psychic. I don’t know how you mean to use that.”

“Come with me and find out.”

Sarah stared at him almost curiously. “It’d be a feather in your cap if I did, wouldn’t
it? Why is a willing psychic better for you?”

His mouth tightened. “We’re wasting time. It’s over, Sarah. It’s time to go.”

Even though she had been expecting it, Sarah jumped just as he did when, high above
their heads in the rotting building, the old church bells began a jangling, discordant
song, accompanied by the sharp reports of gunfire.

“Your backup, I presume,” Varden drawled, his face calm even as his hand dived inside
his jacket and produced a businesslike black automatic. “We were expecting them, Sarah.”

“You’re a very good shot,” Leigh said, looking admiringly toward the church and its
swaying bells.

Murphy swore and aimed a shot at one of the broken windows, where a head had momentarily
appeared. “I’d rather hit some of them instead of the damned bells. Just one, at least.
Come on, Leigh—”

“No bodies, Murphy. We can’t afford them.”

“We can’t afford to leave our own here, either,” Murphy snapped. “Dammit, Leigh, will
you get down? One lucky shot and—”

Leigh obeyed, ducking for a moment behind the pile of old lumber they were using for
cover. When there was a lull in the gunfire coming from the church, she got off
a few shots of her own. She hardly knew one end of a gun from the other, but the illusion
of an army was needed, so periodically she aimed her pistol at the largest expanse
of wood she could find on the church and fired.

“You’re a menace,” Murphy noted as what was left of a stained-glass window shattered
under one of Leigh’s bullets.

Leigh winced. “Now, if that isn’t bad luck, I don’t know what is.”

“We make our own luck,” Murphy told her flatly.

“Um. Maybe so, but I think I’ll circle around and check on Nick. There’s less glass
on his side. And I’ve got to take care of step two.”

“I wish you’d let me handle that,” Murphy said.

“You’re a much better shot than I am. You and Nick are needed for this.”

“Will you, for Christ’s sake, be careful?”

“You bet.”

“We were expecting them, Sarah.”

“Were you? Damn.”

His eyes narrowed at her mild tone. “What have you done?”

“Read my mind.” She knew that taunting him was a bad idea, but she couldn’t help herself.
She had been getting angry for a long time, and Cait’s senseless death the night before
had turned anger into rage.

He cocked the pistol and leveled it at her. “We’re going upstairs, Sarah. Now.”

The bells jangled above them, along with gunshots and, now, a crackling, whispery
sound.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Varden! Get out of there!”
The voice came echoing down the stairs, urgent and more than a little panicked.
“They’re burning the place!”

Sarah had counted on a moment of surprise, and she got one as Varden’s gaze lifted
instinctively toward the burning church above them. She moved instantly, leaping away
from him and the light and toward the protection of a jumble of wooden crates.

A bullet splintered wood a heartbeat behind her, accompanied by a snarl from Varden.

Sarah didn’t waste a moment, moving as swiftly as she could toward the corridor she
knew would lead her to the escape tunnel. She tried to keep the boxes and junk of
the cellar between her and him, but she had to circle widely to pass by him. She counted
on Varden to head toward the stairs and his own escape.

For once, her instincts and senses failed her.

He was there, in front of her, gun leveled and face savage, blocking her way to the
tunnel. “Bitch. Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t come this far to let you
get away now.”

For an instant, staring down the barrel of that gun and listening to the whispery
“voices” of the fire spreading above them, Sarah felt an urge to just accept the inevitable.

I’m going to die here. The vision’s coming true.

Destiny.

But the rage bubbling inside her was, finally, stronger. “I want my life back,” she
snarled right back at him. “You can’t have it, you son of a bitch. You can’t have
anything I am.”

Whatever he saw in her face, it was clear that Varden recognized a point of no return.
And his own defeat. But his failure was mixed with thwarted fury. His free hand lifted,
a walkie-talkie in it, and he snapped, “Braun! Kill Mackenzie!”

Murphy tried to keep Leigh in sight as the older woman put step two of their plan
into action and torched the building. It was supposed to be a fairly simple action:
toss a couple of incendiaries against the back of the church and set that end on fire,
driving those inside out the front door.

Murphy had argued for a good, old-fashioned turkey shoot but was overruled. So it
was with utter disgust and an itchy trigger finger that she watched several men stumble
from the burning church within minutes and pile into two waiting long black cars.

The gunfire over, she eased the hammer back on her pistol but remained wary until
the men had fled the scene.

“Not very loyal, are they?” Nick noted as he joined her. “They left at least two of
their own behind.”

“They’re bastards, every last one,” Murphy said, more or less automatically. Her gaze
was directed toward the church. Through one of the glassless windows, she could
see inside the church. See flames and falling pieces of timber. And…

“Jesus. Is that—?”

Nick followed her gaze, and his thin face tightened. Very quietly, he said, “Oh, my
God.”

“Braun! Kill Mackenzie!”

Sarah’s heart stopped for an instant. But then a voice she recognized as well as her
own erupted from the walkie-talkie in a cheerful response.

“Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but Braun sort of fell down on the job.”

On the last syllable, a Molotov cocktail crashed against the wall just a few feet
from Varden, and he flinched away from it instinctively, his gun hand lifting to shield
his face from the heat.

Sarah wanted to kick him where it would hurt the most but still didn’t dare touch
him, and it was with immense satisfaction that she saw Brodie step from the doorway
behind Varden and bring a bottle of something crashing against the back of his head.