Reborn

18

"You don't deserve to have those prayers on your lips!" Bill shouted to the unheeding room.

Heads bowed, hands folded, they prayed on.

Bill shut out the voices and thought of Carol. Her shrill pleas and piteous wails had cut off abruptly a few moments ago, and then he had heard the kitchen door shut.

My God, my God! What are they doing to her in there?

He knew damn well what they were doing, but his mind shied away from the horror of it, especially since they were doing it in the name of God.

If only they'd listen to him! If only they'd—

The drape that covered Emma moved.

He stared at it, watching for another sign of life, sure that he must have been mistaken. But then he saw it move again. His stomach lurched. This was no random postmortem twitch, if there was such a thing. Emma Stevens's body was rising up under the drapery.

The prayers died in the throats of Brother Robert and the so-called Chosen as they noticed it too. The room was deathly still as they all stood and stared with gaping mouths at the body beneath the drapery rising to its feet. Bill, too, was transfixed, but he stole a glance at Jonah Stevens and was appalled at the sight of his bright, hungry eyes and flinty grin.

The drape slid to the floor and there stood Emma, the bloody ax still protruding from the back of her cloven skull. Slowly she turned in an unsteady circle, her eyes wide and blank, her lips pulled back in a grim rictus, dried rivulets of blood streaking her forehead and cheeks.

The tableau suddenly fell apart as all but one of the Chosen males scrambled from the room, crying out and tripping over each other in their mad haste to flee the horror before them. A moment later Bill heard a car speed away. No doubt some were running back to the safety of their homes and neighborhood churches, but a few remained huddled in the shadows of the hall.

Only Brother Robert stood his ground.

He pulled a long, slim, shiny brass crucifix from within his habit and thrust it before Emma's face.

"Back to hell, demon!" he cried. "Back to the pit you crawled from!"

She cocked her head to the side and stared at the crucifix. Slowly she reached out and touched it, running a fingertip softly over the figure of Christ.

Then her hand moved quickly, gripping the crucifix and snatching it from Brother Robert's bandaged hand.

"No!" he cried. "You can't have that!"

But he made no move to retrieve it from her. He simply stood there and watched her, as did the other two living occupants of the room.

For a moment Emma held the crucifix up between them, gripping it by the short upper end, her palm wrapped around Christ's head, the crosspiece flush against the body of her hand.

With the light gleaming along the slim length of its long lower end, Brother Robert's crucifix looked like an Art Deco dagger That thought was just passing through Bill's mind when Emma's arm straightened in a pistonlike thrust. Still grinning horribly, she drove the lower end of the crucifix deep into the left side of Brother Robert's chest.

With a shout of pain and shock he staggered back. Blood spurted from the wound, blossoming across the scapular of his habit like a crimson flower opening to the morning. He stared down dully at the crucifix protruding from his chest, a bloodied Christ staring back as it bobbed up and down with the chaotic rhythm of his fibrillating heart. He looked up, looked around the room, his eyes finally coming to rest on Bill's.

Bill flinched from the impact of those frightened, agonized eyes. It took all of his strength not to turn away. Then he saw the life slip from them. Brother Robert's mouth opened but no words came forth, only a trickle of blood, running slowly into his beard. He toppled backward like a felled tree, twitched once, then lay still.

"May God have mercy on your soul," Bill said, really meaning it.

He looked up and saw that Emma seemed to have forgotten her victim. Numbly he watched her step around him and move toward the kitchen, the protruding ax handle bobbing up and down over her as she walked.