The Avenger

church rising like Hawthorne's seven-gabled house some hundred yards off a narrow, paved road. But that was not where the enemy had accessed the building.

An empty parking area, overgrown with weeds pushing up through the cracks and crannies of cement, stretched in front of the edifice. The entire erection looked like a giant dollhouse, tossed into the wilderness and forgotten, only to be taken over by the encroaching forest.

Jack padded carefully around the perimeter, sniffing cautiously, seeking the strongest scent left by the killer. He nosed his way around to the side of the building where a short flight of concrete steps led below the ground level. A basement.

When he jiggled the knob, it turned beneath his hand. Unlocked, though a barred door wouldn't have stopped him. As he stole inside, he found himself among a series of pipes and storage cages, dust and cobwebs and general clutter. A set of wooden steps in the corner wound upward. Even from the outside entrance he could hear the clear sound of footsteps above him.

*

She was naked.

The pungent odor of incense filled the room where Olivia lay on her back, her head cushioned by some soft material, her legs straight out, and her arms crossed over her breasts. The dim room was lighted by dozens of candles that cast eerie shadows on the walls. The vaulted ceiling stretched far above her head and domed in a set of paneled religious carvings.

She lay naked inside a church.

'You're awake.' The disembodied voice echoed off the walls. A figure rose up from the floor to her right.

A priest, she thought at first, even though she knew. Not a priest, but Howard dressed in a priest's double- breasted black cassock and white clerical collar. He came closer and peered at her curiously. She shifted to cover her nakedness and realized that her legs and arms were immobile. She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. She blinked her eyes rapidly and tried to open her mouth.

Was she dead already?

No, he'd given her something. Something in addition to the initial pinch of the needle. Some kind of drug that affected her muscles and rendered her helpless. Panic as strong as a tidal wave smashed over her. He'd paralyzed her! Her respiratory system would shut down and she'd die. She gulped in a series of harsh gasps. Sweet air filled her lungs and fury settled in her mind.

The son of a bitch! For months, he'd worked alongside her, used his slick, cloying manners and arrogant airs to fool her. And all the while, he'd been on a murderous spree, leaving all those helpless victims in the wake of his insanity.

She slanted him a look from the corner of her eye. No, she amended, Howard wasn't insane. She took in the costume he wore, his sacrilegious posture as a priest, a holy man of the clergy. Howard was driven by religious mania, not madness. By sexual perversion, not lunacy.

Olivia realized now that the maniacal glint of his eyes, the twisted leer of his lips had always been there, but gone unnoticed. He believed he was a holy avenger punishing sinners for their evil deeds and using ancient modes of execution.

What had Jack said? For a serial killer, it was all about sex. Howard wanted to have sexual power over her, not mete out punishment for her sins. She saw the dichotomy that he wrestled with. Needing to rape her and wanting to offer her as a religious sacrifice. Coveting both, but realizing he'd have to choose one or the other.

Howard's lips moved minimally in a face set in carved stone. 'Feeling the effects of my little drug concoction, are you, my dear?'

His eyes ran up and down her body, and she felt the arrows of a thousand stings against her flesh, the humiliation of every one of his victims. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat muscles remained locked.

'Never mind,' he chortled, 'the effect is short-lived. You'll be chattering like a jaybird in a few moments.'

Indeed, a moment later she felt the numbness receding, the particular tingling that meant the return of feeling. But how to handle him now that he seemed practically giddy with anticipation?

When her speech returned, Olivia wet her parched lips. 'Would you please cover me up?' She forced herself to remain civil, and mildly subservient. Her anger would only make matters worse as it had before.

He hesitated, brows lifted. 'Of course, my dear.' He reached behind him for a pristine white cloth – a surplice, she thought – unfolded it, and draped it across her body. The brief surge of gratitude she felt for the man who'd kidnapped and drugged her annoyed the hell out of her.

Howard loomed over her. If all her muscles had been working properly she could've clawed his face. Spat at him. As it was, she could only muster up a frown. 'What are you… ' Her voice cracked like a rusty pipe and she tried again. 'What are you going to do?'

'Something holy.' He swept one hand around the spacious room. Then he dipped his fingers in a small stainless bowl she hadn't noticed resting beside the platform on which she lay.

'In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,' he intoned, his solemn voice echoing in the vast room.

'What's happening?' The oily moistness of his fingers touched her forehead, her chest, and her shoulders. Anointed oil. Was he baptizing her? She gazed into the face hovering over her and knew she was looking into the face of moral and psychic aberration.

'I'm giving you a new name. Henceforth and forever, you will be known by this name. When God calls you up into his sacred presence, this is the name He will use.' He closed his eyes and tilted his head backwards, raising both hands and uttering the phrase. 'Deo volente. Deo volente. Deo volente.'

God willing. God willing. God willing. Repeated three times representing the Holy Trinity, she realized.

'Introib ad altare Dei.' He uttered what sounded like random words cobbled together as gibberish until she recognized disconnected words from the opening phrase of a Catholic mass.

I shall go to the altar of God.

Her head and neck now mobile, Olivia glanced around her to confirm that she indeed lay on an altar, its faux marble hard beneath her hips and shoulders.

'Magnificat anima meas Dominum,' he intoned.

Her best hope for survival lay in pretending to accommodate Howard's religious fervor. She repeated his last words in English, 'My soul does magnify the Lord.'

A look of surprise crossed his face. 'Deus vobiscum.' God be with you. His lack of proficiency in Latin was clear now. Howard used only common Latin phrases, apparently all that he knew, with only vague understanding of their applications.

Trance-like, he pulled the white cloth down to her waist and placed the flat of his hand on her chest, nestled between her breasts. As she felt the return of sensation to the rest of her body, she twisted her head. At some point he'd unbuttoned the bottom of the thirty-three fastenings of the cassock. The robe fell open to show his nakedness and the undeniable evidence of his arousal.

And the unmistakable point of the knife in his other hand. A bulge in the left full pocket that could mean another weapon.

'Ave Maria,' he whispered. 'Beata Virgo Maria.' Hail, Mary, blessed Virgin Mary. Did he mistake her for another vestal virgin? Or did he think she was Mary, the Mother of God?

'Mater Dei,' she spoke softly, letting the words trail from her tongue in what she hoped imitated religious rapture. Mother of God.

'Amen,' he answered. So be it. He reached both hands toward her, pulling her up from her prone position on the altar. As she sat up, the cloth clung to her loins. Putting modesty aside, running only on the instinct of survival, she stood and allowed Howard to take her left hand and escort her naked down the two steps from the altar podium to the carpeted runner that divided the congregational aisles.

'From now on, you will be called Mary – Maria – and to this name you will answer for the rest of eternity.' He