'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.
Bright light and the rush of many footsteps entered the cathedral. Sparks picked up the lid and ran out the door.
'Hurry!' he said.
Doyle and Eileen gathered the snowshoes, and they scrambled after Sparks. He dropped the lid so it hung over the lip of the hill that sloped steeply away from the ruins and anchored it with his foot.
'You first, Doyle. Grab the handles and hold on,' said Sparks.
The main band of pursuers burst out of the abbey behind them toward their position, a black-cloaked figure in the lead. Doyle pocketed his gun and jumped aboard. Sparks grabbed Eileen around the waist, pushed her down on the middle of the lid, and followed her onto it, using his weight to tip them over the edge. They slid forward and rapidly accelerated down the incline as the pack reached the lip: Two hoods hurled themselves after the makeshift sled, one raked a hand across Sparks's back, nearly dislodging him before they pulled away from the tumbling bodies. The sled gained speed as they plummeted down the embankment in the dark; every bump and hillock sent them flying into the air, only to be rocked heavily as they hit the snow again.
'Can you steer?' shouted Sparks.
'I don't think so!' answered Doyle. It was all he could do to hang on. The sheer cliffs falling to the sea somewhere on the right and their unknown proximity to them hurtled into his mind.
'Can you see?' asked Eileen.
'A little!'
The next thing he saw were two figures standing ahead of them waist-deep in the snow, frantically waving their arms. In the split second before the sled reached them, Doyle thought they might be Barry and Larry, but then he saw the hoods and the weapons in 'their hands. Doyle leaned all his weight to his right, and the lid veered slightly in that direction, enough to crash into the hoods, bowl them like ninepins, and scatter them down the hill. The collision knocked the wind out of Doyle, changed their direction, and shaved an edge off their velocity. He gasped for breath, trying to figure out where they were when he felt a sensation of skidding, looked to his right, and just ahead saw the white expanse of the snow pack end abruptly in sheer blackness.
'The cliffs!' cried Sparks.
Doyle threw all his weight to the left. Sparks stuck out his right foot as a runner to push them away from the brink, and a moment later that foot was suspended out over thin air. They screamed as the sled rocketed along the edge of the cliff for twenty yards, scraping stone, whipping through saplings that had grown up over the lip, before Doyle's crude course correction inched them away from the precipice and back onto solid snow. He could see the shape of the new abbey ahead on their left, but Doyle had barely a moment to register relief, idly wondering what those gray shapes coming out of the snow straight in front of them were when he realized they were headed directly into the cemetery.
'Headstones!' Doyle shouted.
Doyle guided them through the first group of markers, then the next, but as they moved to the middle of the yard, the concentration of stones grew denser and the stones themselves larger and more grandiose. There was no way to brake, and a massive mausoleum dead ahead suddenly gave no opportunity to maneuver. Doyle yanked on the handles, turning them sideways; they went into a skid, hit a bump, flew skyward, and the coffin lid splintered beneath them. Doyle hit the snow, clutching the broken handles in his hands. Eileen and Sparks were thrown high
