Sanctus

around the gun, all the pain suddenly gone, all the strength returned. He angled it up at Cornelius and fired three quick shots.

Cornelius stood motionless for a shocked moment then looked down at the holes that appeared in his body. He watched the blood begin to ooze from them, joining the torrent of red already cascading down him. Then he looked up at Gabriel, took one step forward and fell dead to the floor.

Chapter 143

Liv felt like she was sinking deep into water that was warm and thick with memories that swam before her as she sank; images from her life, flashing and fading like glittering fish. The breeze she had felt rinsing through her was now a current, bringing whispers of forgotten voices and fragments of distant memories with its flow. She sank deeper and the images thinned out, drifting upwards and away as a much brighter light rose up beneath her.

This is death, she thought as she watched it rise from the darkness to meet her. The light overwhelmed her and new images crowded behind her eyelids.

There was a garden, green and lush, and a man walking through it, and the sun shining down, or something like the sun. Then the shadow of a tree rose up and cut out the light, and she was in a cave, surrounded by men with hate in their eyes.

Then there was pain.

An eternity of pain and darkness as her flesh was ripped, and cut with blades, and burned with fire and boiling oils.

And there was the smell of blood.

And an endless, desperate yearning for the sun, to feel it on her skin and walk soft across the cool earth.

And pain was everywhere, flashing out of the darkness, imprisoning and overpowering her, for ever and ever.

Then she saw a face, with eyes full of sorrow and compassion.

Samuel’s face.

She fixed on the image, not wanting it to flit past like the others, holding it with her eyes until more things appeared within it.

She saw his body, naked from the waist up, flowing with blood from cuts deep in the skin. Then a cave, crowded with other men who reached up as one to draw bloody lines round their left shoulders with sharpened blades. And she heard a sound. An echoing chant of low voices bleeding together in an ancient language she somehow understood.

‘The first,’ they said over and over. ‘The first. The first.’

And pain flashed out of the darkness and exploded in her left side along with the sound of shearing flesh. And a new voice rang out, full of anguish and pain.

‘Where is God in this?’ Samuel cried. ‘Where is God in this?’ Then the images fled. And for a moment all was silent, and all was dark.

Then she felt herself starting to rise.

Chapter 144

Liv’s eyes fluttered open.

She was back in the chapel, lying on the spot where she had fallen. As she focused she saw Gabriel’s face filling her vision, smiling down at her like warm sunshine. She smiled back, thinking she was still in her dream, then he reached out, laid his palm on the side of her face, and she felt the warmth of him and realized he was really there.

She glanced across at the Tau. The blood miring the spiked interior was now the only sign that Eve had been there at all. Liv traced its flow, down to the floor and the wet channels where it mingled with hers. Then she saw the figure rise up from behind the iron cross, his body running with blood, making him look like a demon in the dim reflected light. He raised the burning flambeau he held in his hand, the flames throwing ghoulish light across his hate-filled face. Gabriel sensed movement and started to turn but the heavy torch was already swinging down, aimed at his head, the flames roaring as it fell. A thunderclap shook the room, knocking the demon away and back towards the altar.

Liv looked across at the entrance, to where the sound had come from. A slightly built monk stood in the doorway. He had a gun in his hand and from where she lay his smooth scalp seemed to shine like a halo in the candlelight.

Athanasius looked upon the slaughterhouse scene he had discovered. The gunshot had thrown the Abbot away from him towards the vile needles inside the empty sarcophagus that dominated the far end of the room. He took a step into the room, the gun still trained on the bloodied figure of his former master. The Abbot wasn’t moving.

He looked at the other two figures, a man and a woman. They were both looking at him warily. He lowered the gun and moved towards them. The man wore a cassock but Athanasius didn’t recognize him. He had a cut in his side and another on his arm, judging by the blood that stained the sliced material.

The girl was much worse. She had a deep slash across her neck from which blood still flowed on to the ground and into the channels carved in the floor. He bent down to look closer. Then froze as the flesh around the wound started closing up, watching in silence as the miracle unfolded before him. Within moments the blood that had flowed so freely became a trickle then stopped altogether. He looked up into the girl’s face, saw something timeless in her eyes and remembered the words he had read in the Heretic Bible.

The light of God, sealed up in darkness.

He reached out a hand to touch her face, then a noise by the altar made them all spin round.

The Abbot had shifted position. They each watched as his head lolled heavily on his shoulders, turning towards them until his eyes stared straight at Athanasius. The flambeau lay where he had dropped it, smouldering against his cassock and shrouding him with smoke. ‘Why?’ he asked, a look of confusion and disappointment on his face. ‘Why have you betrayed me? Why have you betrayed your God?’

Athanasius looked up at the savage opening of the Tau and the wrist manacles dangling at the end of the crosspieces.

Not a mountain sanctified, but a prison cursed.

He looked back at the girl, her slender neck now completely healed, her endless green eyes burning with life.

‘I have not betrayed my God,’ he said, smiling down at the miraculous woman. ‘I have saved Her.’

Chapter 145

Distant sounds began to penetrate the woolly numbness of Arkadian’s head: muffled shouts from urgent voices; the squeak of rubber soles on hard floors. He tried and failed to open his eyes, the lids too heavy to shift, so he lay there and listened, letting his senses warm up while the dull ache in his chest and shoulder blossomed into pain.

He took a deep breath and concentrated all his energy on opening his eyes. His lids parted for a split second, then he screwed them back shut.

It was bright: painfully bright. A negative image of what he had seen was now seared on his retina: a chequerboard outline of a suspended ceiling; a rail over to one side with a curtain hanging from it. He realized he