The List Of Seven (44 page)

"This was the church," said Sparks.

Sparks moved forward toward the altar. Larry and Barry fanned out with their lanterns, and the room grew more evenly illuminated. Snow continued to fall through the open ceiling. The air felt as dense and ponderous as the glaze on a

frozen lake.

"There used to be witches used this place for sport," said

Larry.

"You mean nuns," corrected Barry.

"Nuns wot had lost their way is wot he said."

"Feller told us in some pub," said Barry to Doyle and Eileen—mostly Eileen.

"That's wot he said. Whole convents' worth, the lot of 'em, went chronic, over to the other side. Devil dodgers one day, consortin' with the Prince of Darkness the next. That's why people put the torch to the place."

"People from the village?" asked Doyle.

"That's right," said Larry. "Took matters in their own hands. Killed and tortured and otherwise beat the devil right out of them nuns, right here in this room, that's what we heard."

"Tommyrot," said Eileen.

"That's the jimjams," agreed Barry. "The fella was wonky

wit' gin."

"I'm not sayin' it's the virgin Gospel, I'm just sayin' it's

what he—"

"Bring the lanterns!" shouted Sparks.

Barry and Larry scurried to the front of the cathedral, bearing the light. Doyle and Eileen quickly followed. Sparks was standing over a closed and weather-beaten crate lying in the altar area on a loose pile of dirt.

"What's that then?" asked Larry.

"It's a coffin, idn't it?" said Barry.

Doyle thought of Stoker's account of the old sailor's story and the night cargo he saw brought ashore from the ship.

"The nails securing the lid have been removed," said Sparks, kneeling down with one of the lanterns.

"Didn't the old man say they brought two coffins up here?" said Doyle.

"Yes," said Sparks, looking at the wood.

"So what's inside the bloody thing?" said Eileen.

"Only one way to find that out, isn't there, Miss Temple?" said Sparks, and he reached for the lid.

As Sparks's hand made contact with the wood, a chilling howl went up from just outside the building: the cry of a wolf, almost certainly, but the timbre lower, more guttural than any Doyle had ever heard. They froze as the sound echoed away.

"That was very close," whispered Doyle.

"Extremely," said Sparks.

Another animal answered back an identical howl from the other side of the abbey. Then a third sounded, at a greater distance.

"Wolves?" asked Barry.

"Doesn't sound like springer spaniels, does it?" said Eileen.

"Turn very slowly around and face the room," said Sparks.

"No need to turn slowly, guv," said Larry, already facing that way and pointing to the center of the cathedral crossing.

A dizzying welter of blue sparks was spinning in a loose circle around a still point two feet above the floor. As it continued to gyrate, the circumference of the circle expanded, first horizontally, then vertically, until it equaled the span of the broken stone pews. The air crackled with a noxious energy. Doyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck elevate.

"What the bloody hell—" muttered Eileen.

The blue sparks faded as a shape emerging out of them defined itself: five translucent, cowled figures kneeling in prayer, knees resting a foot off the floor, as if supported by a spectral prayer rail. Issuing from exactly where it was impossible to determine, but the room was suddenly alive with a chorus of soft, whispery voices. The words were obscure, but the harsh, fervent tone of the invisible chorale penetrated sharply the ear of the listener, a heavy, distressing blow to the conscious ordering of the mind.

"Latin," said Sparks, listening carefully.

"Is it a ghost?" Doyle heard himself ask.

"More than one, guv," said Larry, crossing himself.

"See, there's your nuns," said Barry, who seemed not the slightest bit discomfited by the sight.

Upon longer examination, the figures did project as aspect more feminine than monkish, and the high, insinuating voices that swirled around them did nothing to alter that perception.

Eileen grabbed Larry's lantern, stepped fearlessly down off the altar, and started directly toward the apparitions.

"Miss Temple—" protested Doyle.

"All right, ladies, that'll be quite enough of this prattle," she said in a strong, projected voice. "Vespers are done for the evening, now run along; back to whatever hell-place you came from with you."

"Barry," said Sparks, a command. Barry immediately jumped down after her. Larry pulled his knives and moved to the right, while Sparks drew a bead with

the shotgun.

"Be gone, stupid spirits, fly away, disperse, or you'll make

us very angry—"

The ghostly voices suddenly stilled. Eileen stopped ten feet

away from the penitent wraiths.

"That's better," she said approvingly. "Now the rest of you girls just trot on off as well. Go on."

The ghostly figures lowered their hands. Barry slowly moved after Eileen, only a few strides behind her now.

"Miss Temple," said Sparks, loud and clear, "move away from the center of the room, please."

"We run into ghosts in the theater all the time—" she said.

"Please do as I say, now."

She turned back to Sparks to argue. "There's nothing to worry about, they're perfectly harmless—"

Moving as one, the ghostly figures threw back their hoods, revealing hideously deformed and hairless heads that looked half human and half predatory bird. They let loose a shrill, paralyzing shriek and rose up above Eileen to a height of ten feet or more, preparing to strike. At that moment, two huge wolves sprinted into the nave from either side of the apse, growling ferociously, making straight for Eileen. Barry dove forward and tackled her to the floor as the wolves leapt to attack. Sparks fired the shotgun, both barrels, knocking the lead

animal backward off its airborne course; it hit the ground with a hard thump and lay still, ruptured and bleeding. In the same instant, Larry let fly his knives; there was a loud yelp as the second animal came down on Barry, handles of the knives protruding from its neck and upper chest. The beast still had enough ebbing strength and instinct left to tear into Barry, the arm he'd raised to fend it off gripped in its ripping jaws. Barry reached around, pulled the knife from the wolf's side, and plunged it decisively into the back of its skull. The animal spasmed and fell back, dead before it landed.

"Stay down!" cried Sparks.

But Eileen jumped to her feet, grabbed a lantern, and hurled it at the phantom figures towering above her. The lamp exploded on contact; the images combusted, disintegrating into a shower of silvery sparks and red smoke.

"I hate nuns!" shouted Eileen.

Doyle heard a low, feral growl behind him and turned cautiously. A third wolf stood beside the crate, a few feet behind Sparks, his back completely exposed to the animal.

"Jack ..." said Doyle.

"My gun's not loaded," said Sparks quietly, without moving. "Is yours?"

"I'll have to reach for it."

"Do that, would you?"

Doyle undid his coat and slid his hand delicately inside. With fiercely intelligent eyes, the wolf looked slowly back and forth from Doyle to Sparks. This was by far the biggest of the three brutes: six hands high, at least ten stone. As it inched forward, Doyle pulled out the pistol, but instead of attacking, the king wolf took two running strides and in a high arc leapt out one of the open windows behind the altar. Doyle got off one errant shot and rushed to follow it. Looking down, he saw the drop from the window was at least twenty feet to the cushion of drifts below. He held out a lantern, but the animal had already disappeared from view.

Eileen and Larry attended to Barry, whose lower left arm had borne the brunt of the wolf's attack. Blood ran freely down his hand as she guided his arm gingerly out of the sleeve.

"Not too bad, is it, old boy?" asked Larry.

"Coat took the worst of it," said Barry, testing his fingers, the movement of which was not impaired.

"Ghosts, can you fancy that?" said Eileen, with the calm neutrality of a practiced nurse.

"Seen worse," said Barry stoically.

"I hate nuns," said Eileen. "I've always hated nuns."

"These woolly sheep-eaters were real enough, weren't they, though? No hocus-pocus here," said Larry, leaning over to kick one of the corpses and then retrieve his knives from its hide.

"All right then, Barry?" asked Sparks, reloading the shotgun with shells from his pocket.

"Ugly as ever, sir," said Barry, with a toothy smile for his ministering angel as she examined the puncture wounds on his forearm.

Doyle's heart rate was just coming under control again when he glanced back out the windows.

"Have a look at this, Jack," he said.

Sparks joined him. In the distance to the south was a line of bright orange lights, moving in formation toward their position.

"Torches," said Doyle.

"Coming for something. Us. Maybe that," said Sparks, gesturing back at the crate. "Keep an eye on them."

Doyle estimated they were still a good mile away. Sparks moved to the crate and knelt down to examine the dirt on which it rested, rubbing it between his Fingers, sniffing it. Sparks dislodged the lid. He made no sound, but when Doyle turned back, he saw a sick, stricken expression on Sparks's face.

"What is it, Jack?"

"Games," muttered Sparks darkly. "He's playing games."

Doyle moved to Sparks's side and looked into the crate. There was a corpse inside, little more than bones really, amid rotting burial clothes and matted clumps of scorched hair and flesh. A photograph in a gilded frame had been positioned between its skeletal hands in a travesty of covetous possession: a formal posed portrait of a man and woman, married and upper-class English by the form and style of them.

"What is this?" asked Doyle.

"My parents," said Sparks, nodding at the photograph. "Those are my parents."

"Good Christ."

"And this is my father's body."

The outrage that welled inside him rendered Doyle speechless. Any remaining doubts he harbored regarding the mon-strousness of Alexander and Jack's relative innocence were finally and irrevocably removed.

"Soulless monster," spat Doyle finally.

Sparks took a series of deep breaths and clenched his fists, closing and opening them rhythmically, trying to bring his tumultuous emotions under control. Moving back to the window, Doyle saw that the lights were moving closer, at least six torches, and moving against the snow beneath them he could make out dark shapes. A formidable number of them. A quarter-mile away and closing fast.

As Eileen finished dressing a strip of shirt cloth around Barry's wounds, Larry joined Doyle at the window.

"What should we do?" asked Doyle.

"The odds don't favor a fight here, guv. Not against those numbers. No cover or high ground. Too many doors. Too hard to defend."

"Tell him," said Doyle, gesturing toward Sparks.

"He knows," said Larry. "Give him a minute."

"A minute's all we've got."

Larry winked at him. "Minute's all we need."

Larry picked up the shotgun and gave a short whistle, Barry jumped to his feet, kissed Eileen on the cheek, and the brothers quickly moved out of the cathedral toward the trackers. Doyle could differentiate individuals in the group now; there were at the least two dozen in the pack. Eileen stepped back onto the altar. To prevent her from disturbing Sparks, Doyle gestured for her to join him at the window.

"Are we just going to stand here and wait for them?" asked Eileen.

"No," said Doyle, steadying his pistol on the window, taking aim on a lead torch-bearer. Before he could squeeze off a shot, he heard the rolling crack of the shotgun from off to the left; there were shouts, and two figures in the group went down. The man with the torch stopped to look in that direction; Doyle fired, the figure fell, and its torch was extinguished in the snow.

"Here! Over here, you rotters!"

More taunting shouts followed. Doyle saw Barry wave their lanterns, trying to draw the party away from the abbey.

"Come on then! Get a wiggle on, we 'aven't got all night!"

Six attackers ran after Barry; the rest continued toward the ruins. Doyle emptied his pistol at the advancing column, felling another of them. As he reloaded, he heard the shotgun boom again and saw one of the men headed for the brothers fall silently.

The rasp of the cover coming off the coffin pulled his attention back to the room. Sparks emptied the oil from his lantern into the crate, then set it aflame by crashing the lantern on top of it. The crate ignited like dry tinder. Sparks stepped back, intoned something Doyle couldn't hear, and watched the fire consume the box, committing his father to final rest.

"We really should go, Jack," said Doyle, waiting a decent interval as he reloaded his pistol.

Sparks turned away from the flames and picked up the lid to the crate by its handles. "This way," he said, heading toward the end of the nave they'd entered.

"What does he want with that?" asked Eileen, pointing at the lid.

"I'm sure I couldn't say," said Doyle, as they caught up to Sparks and ran into the antechamber where they'd stacked the snowshoes.

"We'll need those," snapped Sparks, pointing at the shoes.

As Eileen bent to retrieve them, three gray hoods came in through the front entrance. One raised a spiked cudgel to strike at Sparks. "Jack!"

Sparks whirled, lowered the lid, and drove it into the chests of the three hoods, his legs pistoning mightily, pushing them back and pinning them against the wall. Doyle stepped forward and methodically fired two shots in each of the hoods as they squirmed behind the wood. "Behind you!" shouted Eileen.

Two more hoods rushed in at them from the cathedral. Doyle spun around and pulled the trigger, but the pistol was empty. The three dispatched hoods slumped to the ground as

Sparks let go of the coffin lid and turned to face this new assault. Eileen swung a snowshoe up by the tail and cracked the trailing one hard across the face, knocking it off its feet. A blow from the onrushing hood's club clipped Sparks on the arm: he dipped, caught the hood's momentum with a shoulder, straightened up, and flipped the creature against the wall. Eileen whacked the downed hood a second time as it tried to find its footing; Doyle turned the pistol in his hand and whipped the handle across the back of the hood until it lay still. Sparks drove a boot down into the neck of the second attacker, and it snapped like a hollow branch.