Sebastian, and when he looked up, Ryan once again saw the figure of Christ hanging upside down on the suspended cross. The Savior’s mouth was open, and his entire body was writhing in agony. From the wound in his side, blood was streaming, and as Ryan stared upward a few drops hit his face.
His skin burned as if the blood were glowing embers.
Now Ryan’s own hands were bleeding again, his blood once more mixing with Melody’s and Sofia’s.
Father Sebastian’s voice fell silent, and he rolled up the parchment and slipped it back in the sleeve of his cassock. He approached Sofia. His hands, too, were bleeding now, and he held them out to Sofia, laying them on each of her cheeks. “It is through my blood that you live and you are bound to my bidding,” he said.
“I will obey,” Sofia whispered.
Father Sebastian turned to Melody and placed his hands on her face, repeating the words as blood flowed from his palms down Melody’s cheeks.
“I will obey,” Melody said quietly.
Now Father Sebastian was facing Ryan, gazing directly into his eyes, and when his bleeding palms came up to press against the flesh of Ryan’s face, a great exaltation flooded into Ryan, and, as he listened to the priest’s words, he knew what his answer would be.
“It is through my blood that you exist and you are bound to my bidding,” Father Sebastian intoned, his eyes still locked on Ryan.
Ryan stood perfectly still, and his voice rose from his throat, confident and strong: “I will obey.”
Father Sebastian broke the circle and moved to the altar, where three packages lay neatly wrapped. “Here, then, are your vestments for tomorrow,” Father Sebastian said as Ryan and Melody and Sofia followed him from the labyrinth. “Put them on, and then I will instruct you as to exactly what you will do tomorrow.”
Ryan opened his package and took out the crimson cassock, slipping it on over the pajamas that were all he wore. It felt heavy and bulky under the arms, but he ignored the weight and put on the surplice, whose lacy cuffs concealed those of the cassock itself.
Not a single drop of blood from either his hands or his face stained the white surplice when he was finished.
“May Allah be pleased with you all,” Father Sebastian said softly when all three of them were fully clad in their vestments. “
As Ryan and Melody and Sofia watched and listened, the priest showed them how to arm the bombs concealed within the cassocks, and where the trigger buttons were concealed in their sleeves.
Finally, he told them the exact moment during tomorrow’s public Mass at which they would press the triggers, ending not only the life of the Pope of Rome, but of themselves as well.
“
CHAPTER 62
ALONE FIGURE stood on the hill far off to Ryan’s right, silhouetted against the clear, scarlet light of early dawn.
As he gazed at the figure, he wasn’t quite certain what it was.
A man?
A scarecrow?
The figure came slightly more into focus, and now he could see that it was a man. A man on a cross! He was at the foot of Calvary, gazing up at the crucified Savior! He took a step closer, and then another. Yes, it was a cross, but as he drew nearer, he could see that the man wasn’t hanging on it after all.
Rather, he was standing in front of the cross, and though he was bound to it with chains wrapped tight around his body, his eyes were serene.
Serene, and fixed steadily on Ryan.
Now, as the sky began to brighten, Ryan could see the man’s face more clearly, and his breath caught in his throat. “Dad?” he breathed so softly that the word was instantly lost on the morning breeze.
“Come here, Ryan,” his father called. “Come back to me.”
But now another voice was calling to him from somewhere off to the left, and Ryan turned away from the figure bound to the base of the cross.
“No, Ryan,” his father said. “Don’t look anywhere but here. I am your salvation.”
Ryan hesitated, but the other voice called again, and there was a note of command he couldn’t ignore: “You will stay with me. It is by my blood that you live, and you will do as I bid.”
Ryan moved farther away from his father.
“No, Ryan,” his father whispered, his voice low but his words distinct. “Come to me, Ryan. Come back to me. Only I can save you.”
As his father’s voice called out to him, Ryan tried to turn back, tried to begin the climb up the hill to where his salvation stood bound to the cross. But his body was no longer his own, and slowly he turned once more in the other direction, turned once more away from his father. And there, on another hill, a hill much lower and much closer than Calvary, he beheld another figure: Father Sebastian Sloane standing at the headwaters of a river of blood that seemed to flow out of nowhere.
“It is through my blood that you live and you are bound to my bidding,” Father Sebastian repeated, quietly and with no emotion whatsoever.
His words struck a chord deep within Ryan, and he started toward the dark figure that was the priest. “I come, Father. I obey. I will always obey.”
“Ryan!” his father called, his voice already fading as Ryan drew farther and farther away from him. “Do not forget my gift. Do not forget the gift I left to you.”
As if he hadn’t heard his father’s words at all, Ryan kept walking toward the dark priest. But as he drew near, he suddenly saw that Father Sebastian was not alone. Melody was with him and she was smiling at Ryan and beckoning to him. He quickened his step, reaching out to her as she was reaching out to him, but just before their fingers touched, Father Sebastian’s right hand rose high in the air, clutching a silver crucifix that was as long as his arm. His hand was clutched around the face of Christ, and as he raised it high, the light of the rising sun glinted off the keenly honed blade to which the feet of the Savior were bound.
Then the crucifix flashed downward in a great arc, and in the instant his fingers touched Melody’s, the glittering blade slashed through the flesh and tendons and bones of her neck.
As Father Sebastian let Melody Hunt’s body fall to the ground, her blood gushed from her neck to join the river that flowed from beneath the priest’s feet. Her head dropped next to Ryan’s own feet.
She looked up at him, her agony clouding her perfect blue eyes and twisting her face into a mask of pain. Her lips worked, and he could see her trying to form a word. She struggled, her eyes tearing, and then—
Ryan awoke, gasping and sitting straight up in bed, his heart pounding, his skin clammy, and a vision of Melody’s tortured features still hanging in the fading darkness before dawn.
Clay Matthews slept peacefully on the other side of the room.
Ryan lay still, waiting for the terror of the dream to pass. And soon it would pass and he would go back to sleep and when he awoke again he would be ready for the day.
The day that was to be the most important day of his life.
The most important, and the last.
The Pope was coming today, and by the end of the day, Allah would have three new martyrs, who would live in eternal glory for the deed of their martyrdom.
Now, as he lay in the brightening light of the dawn, Ryan knew what the dream had meant. It had been a temptation from the Infidels who would turn him away from the true faith. But he would deny temptation today. He, and Melody, and Sofia would obey.
