Hallowed Ground

Chapter Thirty-Four

The Deacon was aware that something had changed behind him, but he ignored it. He sensed Colleen and the child at his side. They’d entered from the rear earlier. He closed his eyes, breathing in the heady rush of sound and scent permeating the tent. He opened his eyes, turned, and smiled at Colleen. The serpents twined in and around her legs and slithered off into the crowd. They’d been released in the tent some time earlier by Longman, but had remained dormant. All of this fit the pattern nicely. Then something changed. It was as simple and absolute as that. Something rippled through the steady rhythms and sent rings of energy running against the grain of his will.

It wasn’t enough to stop what he’d set in motion – he was sure of that. The ritual was too far along. The disturbance, though, was sufficient for him to be aware of, and enough to change the way things felt. After the initial surprise, he welcomed it. He felt the inevitability of the power he controlled. It flowed through his veins. He was connected to it in ways that went beyond flesh, blood and bone. He was part of something bigger, something ancient. Whatever else happened in the tent, or in the world surrounding it – didn’t matter at all.

In fact, it made him smile.

‡‡‡

Behind the Deacon, Creed danced to the side, barely avoiding the first striking serpent. He looked down at his feet. The floor was alive with diamondbacks. Not one or two or even a dozen. The floor was a writhing mass of them. Most slithered away from him toward the pews at the far side of the tent, but a couple, as though aware of his presence among them came together determined to prevent his advance.

Creed didn’t hesitate. . The head of the first viper disappeared in a spray of blood and scales, and a second later the other joined it, bone splattering across the ground. Creed's six-guns spit fire. He saw the snakes blown to bits, but impossibly, he heard nothing. There was no sound. The bullets took chips out of the wooden floor, but the impact was silent. The only sound in the entire place was the swell of the Deacon’s voice. It soaked into Creed’s thoughts and confused him.

He stood there for a long moment, the snakes coiling around his feet then found himself taking a step backward.

The locket at his chest flashed hot tearing a cry from him.

The pain cleared his mind for a moment, and in that heartbeat of clarity he did the only thing he could think of. He holstered his guns with quick flips of his wrists, drew two bullets from the loops on his belt, and jammed them into his ears. It didn’t silence the chanting, but it muffled it. He glanced down at the floor. The serpents seemed to have lost interest in him.

Colleen stood behind and to one side of the Deacon, and Creed saw she held something in her arms. She swayed from side to side, and despite the rapt stares of everyone in the tent, she wasn’t watching the Deacon. She was intent on the bundle clutched tightly to her chest, and in a moment of ghastly realization, Creed knew it had to be the child he’d seen ripped from its mother the last time he’d been in this accursed camp.

He drew his guns again and moved slowly up behind the Deacon. He thumbed back the hammer, knowing it would be a second’s work to silence the preacher but he wasn’t quite ready to shoot a holy man in the midst of a sermon. It wasn’t that he was afraid of going to hell. Far from it. Come the time, he’d happily put a slug between the Deacon’s eyes. No, it was all about the numbers. He needed to know the stakes. He needed to know what was going on with Brady and the others. They appeared to have slipped into some sort of trance, lulled by the Deacon’s weird chant. That was enough for the preacher to earn a bullet as far as Creed was concerned, but not until he was certain the shot would set the others free.

He was only a few paces away from Colleen, so Creed targeted her and started forward. The closer he came to the ex-whore – to the child – and to the Deacon, the more difficult it became to take that next step forward. Each was harder than the last. Despite the bullets in his ears, the words of the chanted sermon were working their mind-numbing magic. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold them off. With a quick snap of his jaw, he bit his lip, drawing blood and bringing enough pain for another short moment of clarity.

Creed didn’t hesitate. He stepped up beside Colleen, brushed her shoulder with the back of his hand, and leaned in close.

"Colleen!" he rasped.

His words died soundless.

Like the gunshot, they failed to find life in air thickened by the Deacon’s voice.

He leaned closer and spoke again, louder this time.

Colleen didn’t react.

Creed saw his breath lift the hair from her neck, but she stared blissfully at the Deacon’s back as he spoke. She rocked very slowly back and forth. The child squirmed now and then; apparently oblivious to whatever held the rest of those gathered in thrall. It didn’t scream – or if it did, Creed had no way of knowing.

There was no time. Creed reached up, tucked the barrel of one gun under her chin, and pulled up and back hard. At first it seemed as though she’d resist him and let the metal tear her throat out, but after a moment she spun. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, and he felt her pull against the tentative hold of the gun barrel on her chin.

"Colleen!" he screamed.

She blinked. She stared back at him, her features shifting from the distant, empty void to some semblance of the girl he’d known. She blinked, and then glanced stupidly down at the child in her arms. Creed followed her gaze.

The thing glared back at him through the face of an infant but it was no child. The eyes blazed with intelligence and hunger. The tiny hands groped impotently at the air, fueling the creature's rage. Colleen mouthed his name, and then she turned back toward the Deacon, and that fragment of clarity was lost.

Creed stared past her into the sea of faces, each set of eyes locked on the Deacon as his voice roared like a storm, raged like each of the named winds, tolling out the words and sounds and spells in some lost, ancient tongue. Each of them held either a tin cup or beaker in their hands. As Creed watched, they raised them. Creed saw Brady standing at the end of the aisle, swaying as though mesmerized. He raised his cup to his lips.

"That’s it," Creed said.

He stepped up behind the Deacon, just as the Holy Man dropped his arms in a motion of completion. The congregation drank their communion and the Deacon mouthed a single, final word.

"Remliel."

Creed stepped forward, drew both guns, and fired. He was so close he expected to jam the barrels of both guns into the Deacon’s back, but he met resistance. It was like walking into a wall of clear mud. It didn’t stop him, not exactly, but it slowed him. Light flashed from above, a huge burst of brilliant white light that should have blinded him – but didn’t.

The Deacon turned and smiled. Serpents struck, latching onto Creed’s ankles and calves. He fired again, and again. The Deacon glanced down and smiled. Blood oozed from the front of Creed’s shirt where the bullets had failed to penetrate their target and the agitated air had turned them back on him. Colleen stepped up beside them, and the Deacon took the child from her arms.

A second flare of light exploded from somewhere near the Deacon’s chest. It pierced the child. In that moment, whatever force protected the Deacon wavered, and Creed lunged forward, clutching the preacher tight.

A great cry rose, and the canvas roof was wrenched aside by huge talons. Dark winged shapes swooped in low, and a rain of something – dirt? Sand? Something that glittered like diamonds and seemed to adhere to the Deacon like feathers to tar. They clung to Creed as well, and the child.

Finally the light grew too bright, too intense, and the sound too loud. Creed felt his lifeblood pulsing way, staining his shirt and pooling on the floor at his feet. The snakes lapped at it.

"Damn you," he choked, spraying more blood with each syllable. "Damn you to hell."

And everything grew dark.