The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,105

him over onto his belly on top of the overturned wooden altar, stunned. But not dead.

“If you hit me, you better kill me,” Ricky growled, pulling gobs of wax along with layers of skin from his face.

Ricky rushed her again, picked her up, and slammed her to the floor so hard she felt her lungs hit her rib cage. She gasped for air, lying motionless on her back. He stepped away and jumped up on the altar and kicked the glass reliquary, shattering it as he let out an ungodly harrowing wail, the veins in his neck near bursting as he swatted the remaining candles to the floor. “You always wanted to be the center of attention—the bride in the wedding and the body in the casket. Well, one of those is about to come true at least!”

Just like her dream, she thought.

“Saints alive!” he said in the midst of the rising smoke and fire, his raw face and bloodstained teeth causing him to appear as the wild beast he actually was, gloating over his prey, as she’d let him gloat over her many times before on lost and lonely nights. “But not for long.”

Ricky jumped from the altar to the bone chandelier suspended from the chapel ceiling, hung from it, and began to swing back and forth, building momentum and staring down at Cecilia. A pendulum of unsalvageable human degradation twirling ominously above. “I think it’s time somebody knocked some sense into that thick skull of yours, CeCe.”

All she could bring into clear focus as she waited for the deathblow were the metal-studded soles of his hobnail boots. She waited for the nail heads to leave across her face the filthy imprint of the simple, mocking word they spelled out. DOUBT.

And then, as she stared up at him and waited, she thought she saw something else. The delicate pendalogues of the chandelier where Ricky was holding on, which were made from the bones of fingers and hands, appeared to slowly release him from their grasp. From her view below, it was as if they were holding Ricky up instead of him holding on. He began to count, oblivious to anything but her imminent demise.

“One,” he yelled. Cecilia noticed his grip loosen even more.

Century-old plaster from the ceiling broke free; fiery liquid dripped down and fell on top of her. She remained still, taking the pain, all the while feeling a supernatural force was at work. Cecilia spied her fractured guitar neck on the floor beside her, gearhead aflame, and took it as a sign.

“Two.” He swung over her again, the whoosh of air from his motion feeding the flames that now nearly encircled her and kept Agnes and Lucy at bay.

She waited.

“Cecilia!” Agnes screamed.

“Thr—”

The canopy that affixed the chandelier to the ceiling gave way and came crashing down, along with the ornate bone chandelier. Cecilia quickly grabbed for her broken instrument and slid under Ricky just as he landed, guitar neck pointed forcefully upward, impaling him.

They lay face-to-face, inches apart, for what felt like hours but was just seconds, as they had many a night. She watched him turn white, gurgling for his breath and begging for his miserable life.

“How about showing a little mercy?” he gasped pathetically, his tone changing to suit the dire predicament he found himself in. “Forgiveness.”

“Like you showed Catherine? Showed us?” CeCe countered. “I don’t do mercy or forgiveness, Ricky. I just work here. You will have to take that one up with the boss.”

As his breath became more labored, she brought her lips even closer to his and whispered sweetly, “I warned you never to fall for me, didn’t I? Oh, that’s right. Too late.”

With all her might she tossed him off of her, driving the splintered fretboard completely through him as she did.

Agnes and Lucy grabbed the coverings from the saints’ statues for protection and leaped through the wall of fire to CeCe and lifted her up. They brushed off the shards of glass and splinters protruding from their bruised and swollen skin and wiped the blood and ash away. Agnes lay her covering over the bones of the candelabra, which was now on the ground, as if she were respectfully burying it. Lucy veiled Cecilia with hers.

Four dead. Three injured. One missing.

“There will be others. You know that, right?” Cecilia said. “They were just the opening act.”

The girls surveyed the carnage. A killing field of broken bones and broken glass, shattered bodies and splintered wood all around them. They’d turned the