The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,103

a handful of her hair and sniffing like a pig, reaching for the button on the top of her blouse.

“Smells like Teen Spirit,” he hissed, his sickening breath puffing straight up her nostrils.

“Smells like shit,” Agnes said, spitting in his face.

In a split second, Cecilia reached behind her and grabbed the neck of her guitar and swung it full force into the head of the attacker.

He fell to the floor in a heap at her feet.

“I told you to leave her alone.”

She raised the solid-body electric and with a frightening screech slammed the gearhead right through the back of his head, burying the neck of it there like a skewer, nearly decapitating him. A sinewy stew of blood, bone, and brain exploded outward and onto Ricky and his crew.

Lucy and Agnes were momentarily stunned but not afraid as they watched the life bubble out and around his head in a river on the floor. Ricky was impressed.

“Hunt you back,” she said with a smirk, resting her boot heel, like a proud forest ranger on a bear carcass, in his gaping wound.

“That’s way inappropriate,” he scoffed, pulling a motorcycle chain out of his back pocket. “Aren’t you supposed to be saints or something?”

“Saints, maybe. Not angels,” Cecilia said, swinging her guitar overhead once more in a wide arc, keeping them all at bay and slamming it into the bone legs of the altar behind her, shearing them off.

She tossed a length of broken bone to Lucy and to Agnes, who caught the clubs with the skill of athletes and stood at the ready, armed and dangerous. Full of zeal and confidence that they could scarcely have imagined even a few minutes earlier.

“Don’t be afraid,” she commanded.

“I’m not,” they said in unison.

Ricky and his crew bum-rushed the girls, swinging their chains ahead of them.

Lucy’s attacker was on her before she could move. He swung wildly and connected, striking her in the jaw and knocking her back toward the urn and reliquary.

The vandal laughed and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

“Smile,” he said, snapping her picture. “That’s bank when you’re dead.”

Lucy gave him the finger with one hand and tossed a hammer lying on the floor directly at him, hitting him in the chest.

“Bitch, this is your lucky day,” he railed, grabbing at his crotch. “First I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to screw you.”

“Screw me?” she chided him. “Alive or dead, I wouldn’t feel it, loser.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Lucy tried to call on whatever basic self-defense skills she could muster in the moment but kept it simple. She extended her leg straight outward, her gold-spiked designer heel first, and leveled it right into his balls.

“Flats are for quitters.” She smirked.

His face turned a bluish white, and his body began a slow-motion collapse to the floor.

“You should never think with your dick,” she huffed, helping him along with another kick, this time with the pointed toe, to his nose, shattering it, along with his cheekbone. She was about to bludgeon him with her bone club when an awful cry came from the other side of the chapel. It was Agnes.

“Lucy!”

Agnes was bent over the kneeler, her skirt hiked up, lace panties revealed, and the vandal behind her fumbling for his zipper. He had her by the throat and the hair, jerking her head back. Immobilized. Ready to defile her.

“What, no tramp stamp?” he said, noting her unmarked skin, gyrating his hips threateningly behind her.

Agnes spasmed as he pulled a key from his chain and carved a cross into her back with the sharp teeth, on the flesh above her tailbone. Blood seeped up to the surface and Agnes was overcome with burning pain. She didn’t cry out.

“That’s better,” he said, admiring his cruelty.

Then suddenly she felt a silky wave of comfort as her hair began to lengthen and grow down her back, to blot the wound and cover her nakedness.

“Agnes!” Lucy screamed, desperate to come to her aid.

Lucy suddenly felt a hand around her ankle and was unable to break free of the vandal’s grip. Just behind her was the fourth covered statue. She tore at the knot and loosened it, ripping the linen fabric from it, revealing the figure of a Roman soldier, in full armor, shot full of arrows. At the bottom it read SEBASTIAN.

“He’s here,” she said. “With us.”

Lucy pulled the sword from its scabbard and tossed it to Agnes, who was being smacked viciously on either side of her head. Suffering in silence.

Agnes grabbed it