Oh, shit. Who the hell are these people? Time to get outta Dodge, baby. But how?
I moved back toward the door, but in a flash the monks and Grethe completely surrounded me, chanting.
“What do you want from me? Who are you?” I shouted, still trying to back out, but clearly without a shot—at least of getting out alive.
Then it hit me: They were Headquarters.
This is like a scene out of Rosemary’s Baby! Again.
I backed up once more and could feel the arms of someone in back of me grab me around the waist.
I got up my best New York tough act and spat out, “I’m going to move back, and I am going to leave. You all should leave, too. There’s a war raging.…”
“No, no, no! You must not leave.” It was Grethe. “You can never leave us now. No, never. Your destiny is fulfilled.”
I moved back an inch and while someone else kept the grip around my middle, she grabbed my arms and shoved and held them behind my back with the strength of a twenty-year-old wrestler. “Tell her, Fratello Antonio.”
It was the man I’d seen behind the window who had turned the gun sight on me yesterday. “You have nowhere to go,” the friar reasoned.
You’re trying to reason? You are all insane. I have to get out!
The circle tightened and the robed monks surrounded me, suffocating me with their breath and their chants. Louder and louder. The more I struggled the tighter the circle became.
“Ecce electa! Ecce electa! Ecce electa! Ecce electa! Ecce electa! Ecce electa!” The sound was piercing my brain.
“Stop! Stop!” I shouted above the din, but the chanting was growing more frantic. Others made the double sign of the cross as they sang.
Antonio, who was standing outside the circle, lifted the frame and held the Volto Santo aloft. “Behold the Chosen One!”
I struggled to break free, but was helpless against their combined strength.
“Help!”
Help me somebody.
A shot rang out, blasting the monks out of their reverie. They jumped back in horror as Brother Antonio dropped to the ground in the middle of them, blood gushing from a giant hole in his chest. I spun around to duck, but before I or the monks could take cover, the robed brothers began falling around me like bloody dominoes with each new, precisely aimed gunshot.
Who the hell is shooting? I was too tired to run for it, but I stopped dead. That can’t be the shooter!
Standing at the back of the room was Maureen, two hands around a Glock in the shooter position. The only other person left standing was Grethe, who, shocked, turned to look at Maureen, recognition and disgust registering on her face at once.
“Daemonium, Antitheus, Diabulus,” Grethe cried out rapid-fire. She reached into the pocket of her habit—it looked like she was reaching for a gun—but as she did so, Maureen turned her pistol on Grethe and fired. The old nun fell wounded but not fatally, bleeding from her shoulder, a bloodstain spreading down the right side of her habit.
“They were going to sacrifice you,” Maureen cried out to me. “A pagan ritual! I saw a pyre already prepared down on the hill; they would burn you to get rid of the last of the Cathars.”
“But I thought they were the last of the Cathars…”
Grethe, weakened and gasping, managed to croak out, “We are. You are!” She pulled herself up by holding on to the altar, and she and Maureen faced one another.
“Once before but never again,” Maureen said, shoving the barrel right between the old nun’s eyes tauntingly. Grethe didn’t back down.
“Murderer! Paid assassin. Whore of Babylon!” Grethe spat back before literally spitting in Maureen’s face. Maureen wiped the sputum off her face with her sleeve as gracefully as she could. Her gun never wavered a centimeter from its spot between Grethe’s eyes.
“You can kill me, but you can’t kill the spirit of ben Yusef, Son of the Son!” Grethe taunted.
At that, the light from the old chandelier flickered and died, and except for the candles, the room was thrown into semidarkness.
I felt as though I’d suddenly gotten vertigo and could no longer keep my balance. But it wasn’t me—it was the earth beneath our feet that had started to shake. I could hear buildings collapsing and the roar of what sounded like the earth literally being torn asunder.
Despite this, Maureen never moved her gun from between Grethe’s eyes. “We have to get under a doorway—it’s the only place that’s safe in an earthquake,” I yelled out, like some demented Girl Scout.
The two women were seemingly oblivious to the danger, locked as they were in their deadly hatred of one another.
“You think you’ve won?” Grethe shouted at Maureen. “You will never win!”