The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,106

sacred chapel into a crime scene. More urgently, a fire hazard. Ricky’s jacket exploded in flames and ignited the wooden altar, the fire seeming to lick the giant Sacred Heart fresco that was disappearing into the billowing smoke. Slowly incinerating the bodies and the evidence.

“Ashes to ashes, prick,” Lucy mused. “Let’s go.”

“Not yet,” Cecilia said.

She righted the kneelers, the only pieces of wood still not aflame and kneeled down to pray. Without exchanging any words, Lucy and Agnes joined her.

“We don’t know what we are doing,” Cecilia said. “But we will do our best.”

They prayed for guidance, they prayed for wisdom, they prayed for strength, they prayed for Sebastian, they prayed for one another, they prayed for themselves. Prayed like they never had before, because they never had. Most of all they gave thanks to the ones who’d come before, whose presence, strength, and bravery they felt inside the room and inside themselves now.

As she raised her head, Agnes was troubled. She was having an attack of conscience. “Do you think that killing them makes us evil? Makes us like them?”

“I guess we’ll find out someday,” Lucy said. “But not today.”

“Time to go,” Cecilia pressed.

The fire was raging now, and the heat, smoke, and stench of burning flesh were stifling.

Agnes grabbed Legenda Aurea, flipped through it quickly, and tore out a single page. Lucy grabbed a length of bone from the ossuary and plunged it into Ricky’s burning body, turning it into a torch to light their way out. Cecilia bent down and picked up the hair shirt that had been thrown from the reliquary during the fight. She winced as she put it on her bloody back.

“Follow me,” Lucy said.

Agnes stopped as they reached the door and looked back.

“Are we the monsters now?” Agnes wondered. “Did we ruin this place?”

“No!” Cecilia said, pulling her away. “We restored it.”

Sirens began to blow before even the first few puffs of black smoke cleared the chimney. Jesse was instantly suspicious. He looked over in the café window and noticed Frey just hanging up from a call and collecting his things.

The smoke from the chapel fire began to escape through the old chimneys and vented out into the open air.

Jesse was panicking. If Lucy and the others were in there—and he was now sure they were—they wouldn’t last long. Frey had played this perfectly. Creating a literal smoke screen behind which to operate.

His flash mob was late. The police were sure to be first on the scene, and Frey had them wired from the top down. A crowd, witnesses, was their only hope.

“Jesus,” he moaned. “You can get five thousand kids to do the friggin’ Macarena slathered in Hershey’s syrup on Cadman Plaza but not a soul to witness a mass murder in progress.”

The doctor strolled casually across the street and up the church stairs.

“Arrogant prick.”

Jesse turned around and saw a few kids hanging around the corner. Could’ve been local rubberneckers now that a fire was going, but they seemed to have something else on their mind. Maybe there was hope.

Outside, he thought, would take care of itself. He was needed inside. He waited for a minute and followed Frey into the church.

Sebastian had been outmaneuvered. The vandals had drawn him upstairs and sneaked down behind him while he searched the church, locking the sacristy door from behind. He kicked at the door over and over to no avail.

“God help them,” he prayed, tears and sweat mingling in sorrow and passion.

“Sebastian.” A menacing voice rang out from the back of the church, filling it like the tolling of a bell. It was not the voice of God.

Sebastian walked out into the church, facing the altar. His back to Frey.

“You know, priests used to say mass that way. With their backs to the people. Things change,” Frey said wistfully.

Sebastian proceeded to the altar and climbed the stairs into the marble pulpit, facing out at the church and the doctor, who was not alone. From the elevated podium, he also saw another figure in the back. A head, nervously popping up from behind one of the back pews. It was Jesse. He didn’t react, unsure if Frey knew the blogger had followed him in or not.

“You sure you want to come in here, Doctor?”

Frey sighed. “We do what we must, you understand.”

“I do.”

“Another assistant to sacrifice?” Sebastian asked, gesturing toward the dead-eyed, uniformed psych-ward flunky Frey had brought with him.

“No,” Frey answered. “A patient. Like you. I thought you should be properly introduced,” he explained