'Here, Jack!'
Presto's voice, not far off, coming closer.
The one-eyed man whimpered like an animal and raised the knives again; she wiggled to her right along the wall, parried the slash of one blade with her knife while the other scratched along her arm, opening a deep gash.
'You
His face only inches from hers as their locked knives pushed against each other; blood and fear on his breath. Her arm began to drop under his weight.
A sharp beam of light shot through the dark and found his face; it lit up like a full moon, blinding his one good eye. Walks Alone slipped to the side and raised her knife. He fell forward and she drove the knife deep into the sky-blue sightless marble resting in its socket. Heard the marble crack against the blade. He screamed and staggered back, dropped his weapons, trying to pull out her knife by the handle.
She pointed her pistol and fired; two red holes appeared in the monster's head. He fell out of sight as the gunshots exploded in the tunnel.
Jack reached her first. Presto at her side from the other direction, holding the light for them to see.
'Can you move?' asked Jack.
'I don't want to look at him,' she whispered. 'I don't want to look at him.'
They helped her to her feet and moved quickly away from Dante's body to the intersection marked by the two glowing patches.
Jack had run off into the dark without saying a word; when Lionel tried to follow, he stumbled ahead in the corridor and quickly lost his way. He heard a man shouting and bursts of remote gunfire coming from his left where the light was growing stronger, so he began to run and two turns later he abruptly entered the round room. Haunting screams from somewhere above underscored staccato gunbursts. Light in the room dazzled his eyes, and he raised his arm against the brightness; what he thought he saw in the center of the floor was a steady stream of blood pouring out of the ceiling onto a figure lying in a pool below.
It looked like his father.
'What's that you have there?' said a voice to his left.
He turned. A nightmarish figure that looked like a walking dead body gestured at him; the crate Lionel held flew out of his hands across the ten feet between them and into the arms of the ghoulish man. He ripped open the crate and laid his hands on the Gerona Zohar.
'I don't know how to thank you,' said the man.
He seemed to lose all interest in Lionel. He rushed to his father's side and pulled him from the cascading stream of blood, flowing in volume down a trough to an open pit at the end of the room.
'You're alive,' gasped Lionel.
'And I'm really very glad to see you, my son,' said Jacob quietly. 'Do you have a gun?'
Lionel took the pistol from his belt.
'Shoot him.'
Jacob nodded at the man across the circle, the hump of his back to them, setting the Book of Zohar into the last of the silver caskets.
Lionel aimed the Colt with shaking hands. The man turned and waved his arm at them; the shot fired wide as Lionel's body was jolted. The gun flew out of his hand and into the pit. Lionel fell to his knees.
Paying no attention to them, Reverend Day walked to a brazier at the edge of the circle, took a handful of matches from his pocket, and tried to strike one on the brazier; the match broke in his hand. He tried another with the same result, then a third.
'Damn,' said Reverend Day, laughing. 'For the want of a match ...'
A bloodcurdling scream and two shots boomed out of the maze. Reverend Day cocked his head, listened, tossed the matches away, limped over, yanked a lantern off the wall, and carried it back to the brazier.
Lionel worked furiously to untie his father's hands. Above them, the burst of gunfire died; they heard only occasional rifles and the rising, pitiful cries of the wounded.
As blood poured out of the grills and down the trough into the pit, the rumbling from deep belowground grew louder and more sustained.
The last of the black shirts left alive in front of the church dropped their rifles and ran shortly after the last machine gun quit firing. Through his glass, Doyle saw the first white shirts splattered with red crawling out of the open cathedral doors.
'Come on,' he said.
Eileen and Doyle helped Innes up, and they hurried toward the church. Doyle broke into a run ahead of them. He passed the blackshirted bodies lying around the perimeter and stopped when he reached the doors.
A massacre inside. Bodies sprawled on top of one another. The cathedral floor red with blood and shattered glass. Numbed survivors staggering to their feet.
Eileen and Innes joined him; Eileen's breath caught, horrified.
'Good God, Arthur,' said Innes, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Good God.'
There were many wounded, hundreds, and they needed help fast.
'Got to get them outside where we can see,' he said. Doyle took Eileen by the arms, looked her in the eye, and spoke firmly. 'I need your help. No time for tears now.'
She saw the fierce compassion in his eyes and nodded. They entered down the bloody steps; they spoke to the ones who could still walk, directing them to help survivors to the front of the church. Many remained unresponsive, some needed to hear the instruction twice; the guns had nearly deafened them. It seemed to Doyle's eye that the deadliest casualties were concentrated in the center of the room, where blood was running down into a circle of drains.
The sound of children's cries outside drew Innes to the left side doors.
'Arthur, over here.'
Doyle joined him on the steps, and they saw the circle of children sitting fifty steps outside, listening to a man in black who knelt before them in the dirt. Doyle and Innes walked past the dead at the machine gun to the man; he looked up at them as they stopped.
'Kanazuchi?' asked Doyle.
The man nodded; his face pale, ashen. Critically wounded.
'See to them, please,' said Kanazuchi.
The man winced and with dreadful effort rose to his feet; Doyle helped him up. Innes tried to hold him back.
'You must rest, sir,' said Innes.
'No,' said Kanazuchi. 'Thank you.'
Kanazuchi bowed slightly, gathered himself, and walked slowly toward the church, grasping the hilt of his sword.
Innes and Doyle looked down at the small piteous faces staring hopefully, fearfully up at them.
'I'll look after them,' said Innes in a husky voice.
Doyle clutched Innes and held him until their tears passed, bodies trembling with the effort to contain them.
'Dear God. Dear God in heaven.'
'Mustn't show them we're frightened, too,' whispered Innes.
Doyle looked away, gripped Innes's hand, then followed Kanazuchi back to the church.
As she reached the back of the cathedral, Eileen saw Frank through the rear doors outside, twisted around the machine gun. She ran up the steps to him, saw the blood pooled around him in the dirt, and went to her knees.
'No. No, please.'
Frank opened his eyes and looked up but didn't see her.
'That you, Molly?'
'Frank, it's Eileen.'
