The man let out a blood-curdling howl, and I spun around just in time to see his wide-open mouth being freed. On the end of the glowing golden cord was the man’s still-beating heart. The bastard stared at it in shock for a few seconds as Elyse held it in front of his face, before his eyes rolled back in their sockets as death took him.
“They deserved death,” she said, “and they got it.”
“I, for one, enjoyed watching the cleric grow a spine,” Rami said with a cool smile. “Still, we have to keep our emotions under control from now on. Caution is required for what we’re attempting to achieve. Blood magic such as this can give a man great and terrible powers.”
“The Blood God is dead,” I said. “This must all be for show.”
“Dead like Xayon, Goddess of Wind is dead?”
“The Lord of Light killed all the other goddesses,” Elyse said. “This must be merely a vain attempt to serve a dead god.”
“I don’t think so,” Rami countered. “The Blood God must still live. You’re clearly ignorant of the different shapes of the divine.”
“We’re not here to talk about what gods are dead or alive, or what bloody shapes they’re made of,” I said. “We’re going to kill Nabu. Tonight. So, we need to get moving.”
“What we need to do is give these poor girls decent burials,” Elyse said, her rage rapidly fading as it gave way to sorrow and pity. “We can’t just leave them here like this.”
I gripped her arms in my hands and looked her deep in the eyes. “Listen to me, Elyse,” I said, my tone sympathetic but firm. “I know your heart is in the right place, but we simply don’t have time for that. Nabu and his Crusaders first. I promise you, once we’ve killed them, we’ll make sure these poor girls get a proper burial.”
She nodded silently.
“For the time being,” I continued, “you have to get your mind off what you’ve seen here. We need to be as focused as possible. Channel that anger so that you can crush Nabu’s skull like you did here. Hell, use your rope trick to tear out his heart, too. It would be my greatest pleasure to see you do that.”
She drew in a deep breath, and while anger and pain continued to dance in her eyes, she was doing her best to try to calm herself.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, I just… I couldn’t control myself.”
I considered raising the girls on the meathooks as skeletons. It could be a kind of poetic justice, but I figured Elyse might actually pulverize my skull if I tried it. So, I contented myself with producing skeletons from the two corpses of the hooded creeps. Bones burst from their flesh in an explosion of blood and viscera before they reassembled in the rough form of human bodies. My two new creations tilted their heads a little, and I half-wondered whether they were bowing to me. I chuckled as I ordered them to join the others.
Elyse, Rami, and I hurried out of the room, leaving its grisly contents behind, and pushed on ahead through the dark corridors until we arrived at a narrow, spiral staircase leading upward.
“This will take us to the surface level of the cathedral,” Elyse informed us. All signs of anger were gone, and she spoke with ice-cold resolution. “From there, we can move around the outermost section, locking all the doors.”
We’d barred the outer gates that provided access to the cathedral grounds, but we still needed to lock the doors that would provide anyone from inside the grounds access to the cathedral proper.
“Then, we make our way to the inner sanctum,” she continued. “Nabu and his Resplendent Crusaders will be there.”
“Well, after everything I’ve seen tonight,” I said, “I’m more than ready to kick their asses. One question though: do you think the Crusaders know about Nabu’s blood sacrifices? Would they be in on it? Do you think they’ve gained magical powers?”
Elyse frowned. “I wish I knew.”
She went on to explain where we would find the doors we needed to bolt shut. I passed the information on to my skeletons, assigning a specific door to each of them.
“Meet back here in five minutes,” I said. “Then, we’ll get this party started.”
We split up, moving swiftly through the shadows of the enormous cathedral. If I hadn’t been in here with a mission to assassinate a bishop, I could easily have spent a good hour or two wandering around the place.
Vaulted ceilings soared hundreds of feet up from the ground, and many impressively lifelike marble statues of various saints were set in alcoves in the stone walls. Tall, intricate stained glass windows glowed colorfully as moonlight filtered through them. Polished brass and bronze fittings gleamed subtly in the gentle light. Thousands of candles were scattered through the enormous open space, arranged in groups of 50 or so set in steel pyramid frames. We had to dart silently from shadow to shadow to avoid being seen through the gaps that revealed the numerous rows of pews inside the cathedral.
Eventually, we all managed to get the doors locked and returned to our meeting point without anyone having being spotted.
“Now that we’ve got the place secured,” I said, “it’s time to attack. Elyse, which way to the inner sanctum?”
“Follow me.”
Chapter Thirteen
Instead of leading us through any more secret passages and back corridors, Elyse simply walked through the large open archway to our left and headed into the nave, among the pews.
The domed ceiling was formed by hundreds of stained glass windows, and multicolored light drizzled down from above, illuminating everything in rainbow tones.
