F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 (29 page)

 
          
He
sounded a lot tougher than Joe knew he was. He hoped the
Vichy
were fooled.

 
          
Maybe
they were. They looked at each other but didn't back off. A stand-off was good
enough for now. Joe nodded and kept up with the Offertory.

 
          
Then
he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. One of the
Vichy
had ducked through the side door behind
Lacey. He carried a raised two-by-four.

 
          
"Lacey!"
Zev cried. "Behind—!"

 
          
She
whirled, ducking, pistol raised, but the
Vichy
had the jump on her. The two-by-four
glanced off the side of her head and slammed into her forearm. She dropped the
gun and went down. But not before landing a vicious kick on the inside of his
knee. He staggered back, howling with pain while Lacey, cradling her injured
arm, jumped up and scrambled toward the altar.

 
          
The
Vichy
cheered and went on with their work. They
split—one group continuing to pull down Carl's crosses, the other swarming
around and behind the altar.

 
          
Joe
chanced a quick glance over his shoulder and saw them begin their attack on the
newly repaired crucifix.

 
          
"Zev!"
Carl said in a low voice, cocking his head toward the
Vichy
. "Stop em!"

 
          
"I'm
warning you," Zev said and pointed the shotgun.

 
          
Joe
heard the activity behind him come to a sudden halt. He braced himself for the
blast. . .

 
          
But
it never came.

 
          
He
looked at Zev. The old man met his gaze and sadly shook his head. He couldn't
do it. To the accompaniment of the sound of renewed activity and derisive
laughter behind him, Joe gave Zev a tiny nod of reassurance and understanding,
then hurried the Mass toward the Consecration.

 
          
As
he held the crust of bread aloft, he started at the sound of the life-size
crucifix crashing to the floor, cringed as he heard the freshly buttressed arms
and crosspiece being torn away again.

 
          
As
he held the wine aloft in the Pepsi can, the swaggering, grinning
Vichy
surrounded the altar and brazenly tore the
cross from around his neck. Zev, Lacey, and Carl put up struggles to keep
theirs but were overpowered. The
Vichy
wound up with Carl's gun too.

 
          
And
then Joe's skin began to crawl as a new group entered the nave. They numbered
about twenty, all undead. He faced them from behind the altar as they
approached. His gut roiled at the familiar faces he spotted among the throng.

 
          
But
the one who caught and held his attention was the one leading them.

 
          
Alberto
Palmeri.

 
          
PALMERI
. . .

 
          
Palmeri
hid his hesitancy as he approached the altar. The crucifix and its intolerable
whiteness were gone, yet something was not right. Something repellent here,
something that urged him to flee. What?

 
          
Perhaps
it was just the residual effect of the crucifix and all the crosses they had
used to line the walls. That had to be it. The unsettling aftertaste would fade
as the night wore on. Oh, yes. His nightbrothers and sisters from the nest
would see to that.

 
          
He
focused his attention on the man behind the altar and laughed when he realized
what he held in his hands.

 
          
"Pepsi,
Joseph? You're trying to consecrate Pepsi?" He turned to his nest
siblings. "Do you see this, my brothers and sisters? Is this the man we
are to fear? And look who he has with him! An old Jew, a young woman, and a
parish hanger-on!"

 
          
He
reveled in their hissing laughter as they fanned out around him, sweeping
toward the altar in a wide phalanx. The young woman, the Jew, and Carl—he
recognized Carl and wondered how he'd avoided capture for so long—retreated to
the other side of the altar where they flanked Joseph. And Joseph . .. Joseph's
handsome Irish face so pale and drawn, his mouth stretched into such a tight,
grim line. He looked scared to death. As well he should be.

 
          
Palmeri
put down his rage at Joseph's audacity. He was glad he had returned. He'd
always hated the young priest for his easy manner with people, for the way the
parishioners had flocked to him with their problems despite the fact that he
had nowhere near the experience of their older and wiser pastor. But that was
over now. That world was gone, replaced by a nightworld—Palmeri's world. And no
one would be flocking to Father Joe for anything when Palmeri was through with
him.

 
          
Father
Joe . . . how he'd hated it when the parishioners had started calling him that.
Well, their Father Joe would provide superior entertainment tonight. This was
going to be fun.

 
          
"Joseph,
Joseph, Joseph," he said as he stopped and smiled at the young priest
across the altar. "This futile gesture is so typical of your
arrogance."

 
          
But
Joseph only stared back at him, his expression a mixture of defiance and
repugnance. And that only fueled Palmeri's rage.

 
          
"Do
I repel you, Joseph? Does my new form offend your precious shanty-Irish
sensibilities? Does my undeath disgust you?"

 
          
"You
managed to do all that while you were still alive, Alberto."

 
          
Palmeri
allowed himself to smile. Joseph probably thought he was putting on a brave
front, but the tremor in his voice betrayed his fear.

 
          
"Always
good with the quick retort, weren't you, Joseph. Always thinking you were
better than me, always putting yourself above me."

 
          
"Not
much of a climb where a child molester is concerned."

 
          
Palmeri's
anger mounted.

 
          
"So
superior. So self-righteous. What about your appetites, Joseph? The secret
ones? What are they? Do you always hold them in check?" He pointed to the
girl in the leather jacket. "Is she your weakness, Joseph? Young,
attractive in a hard sort of way. Is that your style? Do you like it rough? Are
you fucking her, Joseph?"

 
          
"Leave
her out of this. She just showed up today."

 
          
"Well,
if not her, then who? Are you so far above the rest of us that you've never
given in to an improper impulse, never assuaged a secret hunger? You'll have a
new hunger soon, Joseph. By dawn you'll be drained—we'll each take a turn at you—and
before the sun rises we'll hide your corpse from its light. You'll stay dead
all day, but when the night comes you'll be one of us."

 
          
He
stepped closer, almost touching the altar.

 
          
"And
then all the rules will be off. The night will be yours. You'll be free to do
anything and everything you've ever wanted. But blood will be your prime
hunger, and you'll do anything to get it. You won't be sipping your god's thin,
cold blood, as you've done so often, but hot human blood. You'll thirst for it,
Joseph. And I want to be there when you take your first drink. I want to be
there to laugh in your self-righteous face as you suck up the crimson nectar,
and keep on laughing every night as the red hunger carries you into
infinity."

 
          
And
it would happen. Palmeri knew it as sure as he felt his own thirst. He hungered
for the moment when he could rub dear Joseph's face in the reality of his own
bloodlust.

 
          
"I
was just saying Mass," Joseph said coolly. "Do you mind if I
finish?"

 
          
Palmeri
couldn't help laughing this time.

 
          
"Did
you really think this charade would work? Did you really think you could
celebrate Mass on this?"

 
          
He
reached out and snatched the tablecloth from the altar, sending the Missal and
the piece of bread to the floor and exposing the fouled surface of the marble.

 
          
"Did
you really think you could effect a transubstantiation here? Do you really
believe any of that garbage? That the bread and wine actually take on the
substance of"—he tried to say the name but it wouldn't form—"the
Son's body and blood?"

 
          
One
of his nest sisters, Eva, a former councilwoman, stepped forward and leaned
over the altar, smiling.

 
          
"Transubstantiation?"
she said in her most unctuous voice, pulling the Pepsi can from Joseph's hands.
"I was never a Catholic, so tell me ... does that mean that this is the
blood of the Son?"

 
          
A
whisper of warning slithered through Palmeri's mind. Something about the can,
something about the way he found it difficult to bring its outline into
focus...

 
          
"Eva,
perhaps you should—"

 
          
Eva's
grin broadened. "I've always wanted to sup on the blood of a deity."

 
          
The
nest members hissed their laughter as Eva raised the can and drank.

 
          
Palmeri
watched, unaccountably fearful as the liquid poured into her mouth. And then—

 
          
LIGHT!

 
          
An
explosion of intolerable brightness burst from Eva's mouth and drove him back,
jolted, cringing.

 
          
The
inside of her skull glowed beneath her scalp and shafts of pure white light
shot from her ears, nose, eyes—every orifice in her head. The glow spread as it
flowed down through her throat and chest and into her abdominal cavity,
silhouetting her ribs before melting through her skin. Eva was liquefying where
she stood, her flesh steaming, softening, running like glowing molten lava.

 
          
No!
This couldn't be happening! Not now when he had Joseph in his grasp!

 
          
Then
the can fell from Eva's dissolving fingers and landed on the altar top. Its
contents splashed across the fouled surface, releasing another detonation of
brilliance, this one more devastating than the first. The glare spread rapidly,
extending over the upper surface and running down the sides, moving like a
living thing, engulfing the entire altar, making it glow like a corpuscle of
fire torn from the heart of the sun itself.

 
          
And
with the light came blast-furnace heat that drove Palmeri back, back, back
until he had to turn and follow the rest of his nest in a mad, headlong rush
from St. Anthony's into the cool, welcoming safety of the outer darkness.

 
          
ZEV
. . .

 
          
As
the undead fled into the night, their
Vichy
toadies behind them, Zev stared in horrid
fascination at the puddle of putrescence that was all that remained of the
undead woman Palmeri had called Eva. He glanced at Carl and Lacey and caught
the look of dazed wonderment on their faces. Zev touched the top of the altar—clean,
shiny, every whorl of the marble surface clearly visible.