Vicious Circle

Fanke was still standing his ground on the far side of the circle, and his mouth was open as if he was yelling something. There was no sign of Abbie: I wasn’t sure exactly when she’d winked out, but she was no longer wrapped around his clenched fist. Everyone else was collapsing to their knees or trying to run on suddenly rubberized legs. A gout of oily black smoke erupted up the center aisle, creeping low along the ground at first but rising and opening out as though it was alive and hungry, flickers of flame winking on and off within it like eyes.

I looked up at Asmodeus—I mean, at the clotted shadow thing that was condensing over our heads. In a different way, I knew, the whole building was Asmodeus. The thing was spasming arrhythmically, the veinlike tendrils drawn in to the heart and then spat out again in whiplash curves, tightening on themselves with audible cracks. That meant my ears were working again, at least: in the initial shock after the movie canisters blew, I was afraid my eardrums had burst.

First things first. I shrugged off the piano wire, feeling it pull and then give, releasing a shower of blood droplets where it had been partially embedded in the flesh of my throat. Letting it fall, I leaned forward across the magic circle and hauled off with a punch that hit Fanke full in the face. It sent a thrill of agony through my burned fingers, but it also sent him flailing backward into the altar rail. Jumping over the circle, I followed up with a low blow that doubled him up and made him drop Abbie’s locket. Good enough. I snatched the little golden heart up off the flags, and as I straightened again I brought my knee up into the bridge of Fanke’s nose for good measure. That should give him plenty to think about while I took care of Pen and Juliet.

Of course, how I was going to carry two women out of a burning building was a question that I hadn’t really thought through to any firm conclusions. But turning around with the locket clasped in my injured left hand, I discovered that it was unlikely to become an issue. In spite of the flames billowing up toward the ceiling at the back of the church, and the filaments of smoke crawling forward along the aisles, Fanke’s followers had rallied and were running to the defense of their master. The first reached me just as I turned, throwing a clumsy punch that I clumsily blocked. I caught him on the rebound with a head butt that he didn’t see coming. The second had a knife, and he stepped in around his injured colleague so that he could use it. But a couple of other robed figures surging up behind him knocked him off balance, and I was able to do a step-and-roll over the altar rail and back away from the charge.

They scrambled after me, fanning out along the length of the rail so that there was nowhere I could run to. This was the last place any of us wanted to be if the fire spread to cut us off from the main doors, but Fanke’s acolytes obviously cared more about completing the ritual than they did about their own safety. That’s what I’ve never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he’ll stick to the rules.

I sprinted for the altar, but only because there was nowhere else to sprint. It was a lousy place for a last stand, as the crucified Christ had already discovered. I tried to vault up onto it, but since my left hand was out of action I had to use my right, which as a southpaw I’m a lot less handy with. I didn’t quite clear the marble top of the altar, which projected out about six inches from the base all around: instead I caught it with my knee, slipped, and fell back to the floor in a sprawling heap.

The satanists converged on me, too many to fight and too damn stupid to scare. Then, amazingly, instead of trampling me down and tearing me apart in the time-honored way of religious zealots everywhere, they hesitated and came to a stumbling halt, staring past me across the altar. I saw why a moment later, as something scratched and skittered along its upper surface, and a set of long, slender talons gripped the stone rim just above my head.