The Blessed Page 29

  “Nothing is more dangerous than truth, Doctor.”

  “Science is truth. A rigorous process of study undertaken over years to arrive at answers to age-old questions. To separate fact from fiction. There are papers, reviewed and published, open to scrutiny.”

  “All paid for by the like-minded, Doctor. Ever changing. Evolving, as they say. What I know can’t be bought. It is eternal.”

  “Why am I bothering? I had this argument recently with Father Piazza. You remember him?”

  Frey could see that even the old priest’s name was painful to Sebastian.

  “Even self-styled men of God didn’t believe you. Betrayed you. The world has turned, Sebastian.”

  “Yes, it has turned. To shit.”

  “And you and your little harem are here to give it a colonic? Is that right? Cleanse us all for the Second Coming? Please don’t preach to me.”

  “If you didn’t believe it, Doctor, fear it, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “All hypotheticals, Sebastian. But keep telling yourself that.”

  “Reality, Doctor. And soon everyone will know it.”

  “No. The reality is that the police will be here shortly. Fire department too, from the looks of things. Your girlfriends will be dead. I will be a hostage. And you will be blamed. Or dead.”

  “They can take care of themselves,” Sebastian responded. “And so can I.”

  “Such faith you have, Sebastian. But so rarely tested.”

  Jesse poked his head up again and began to tremble, frightened out of his mind for Lucy and the girls, and for Sebastian. What was coming next was obvious to all of them.

  “Sicarius,” Frey commanded.

  Frey motioned to his lackey, who seemed to snap out of his stupor at the order, rushing forward down the center aisle like a wild animal smelling blood. Sebastian jumped to the chancel floor from the pulpit to intercept him, defending the church sanctuary as if his life depended on it.

  A last stand.

  The massive collision carried them both over the altar and to the floor in a cloud of grit and dust. All of the assassin’s weight was pressing down on Sebastian as they grappled and he struggled to free his arm before he was pinned, fatally. Sebastian elbowed Sicarius in the temple, stunning him, and pushed him off.

  Jesse snapped picture after picture of the brutality as it unfolded.

  Sicarius got to his feet first and grabbed one of the long, heavy pipes stacked next to the wall. He swung it down toward Sebastian like the handle of an executioner’s ax, missing by inches. Sebastian tried to get to his feet, but Sicarius kicked him once in the stomach and then in the jaw, drawing blood from his nose and mouth. His breathing was labored and he could taste his own blood.

  From his position on the floor Sebastian spied an aspergillum, a holy water wand, and rolled toward it. As Sicarius raised the metal pipe to strike, Sebastian slammed the butt end of the hardwood and brass sprinkler into his leg and kneecapped the larger and slower man, shattering his patella. As the killer buckled, Sebastian drove the wand into his solar plexus, winding Sicarius and incapacitating him. Sebastian wound up and struck for a third time, bringing the holy instrument down on Sicarius’s bald head with all his might.

  Sebastian stopped to wipe the blood away from his face and bent down, grabbed Sicarius by the collar of his jumpsuit, and dragged him to the massive marble baptismal font in the chancel. He stared directly at the doctor, who was unmoved.

  “They don’t use these much anymore,” Sebastian said, sitting Sicarius up and bending the back of his neck over the communion rail. “Things change.”

  Sebastian walked over to the holy water buckets the girls had placed around the altar to catch the leaks from the storm. He picked up three and carried them over to his broken adversary.

  Through gritted teeth, Sebastian raised a bucket and poured the stale water into the man’s mouth.

  “Do you renounce Satan?” Sebastian asked, beginning the faux baptism ritual.

  With his last bit of strength Sicarius spit the water out into Sebastian’s face and tried to close his mouth.

  Sebastian jammed the aspergillum into his mouth and down his throat, breaking teeth and forcing his mouth to remain agape.

  “And all his works?”

  Sebastian continued to question Sicarius according to the ritual as he poured first one bucket, then a second, then a third, down his throat, until it was backing up out of his mouth, nose, and ears like an overfilled gas tank.

  “And all his pomps?”

  Sicarius’s belly had swelled abnormally and his eyes rolled over. He was dead. Drowned. Sebastian pulled the wand out of his mouth and dropped it in one of the empty buckets with a loud clang.

  The doctor spoke. “Some might say such a thing is blasphemy. Unforgivable.”

  “We do what we must,” Sebastian answered, echoing the doctor’s own words. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Exhausted, Sebastian recapped. He knew Jesse was there and he wanted it on the record for all time.

  “You set me up and let me go. I find the girls. They lead you to me and them.”

  “Simple, you have to admit. And flawless.”

  “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Doctor. You have it all worked out. Totally rational, logical.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Except for one thing. What if I wasn’t hiding? What if I was waiting? What if I wanted you to find me?”

  “Why would you want to be found?”

  “Maybe because I’m insane, Doctor. You said it yourself. Or you can do the math. I can decrease your kind by one, right here, right now.”

  Sebastian and Frey were startled by a racket coming from outside as well as downstairs. Jesse’s flash mob had arrived, hopped the fences, shimmied up the scaffolding, and begun banging on the boarded-up windows. From the chapel. Smoke began to escape through the doorjamb and out into the church soon after.

  “I’m sure you would like to kill me, Sebastian, but I have done the math, and judging from those slamming car doors outside, you are at quite a numerical disadvantage.”

  Sebastian eyed the door and the thickening smoke with increasing trepidation when it unexpectedly flew open and Lucy, Agnes, and Cecilia burst out, bruised and bloodstained, from the smoke-filled sacristy, tongues of fire nipping at their heels. They ran immediately to Sebastian and encircled him in the tightest hug any of them had ever felt.

  “You’re alive!” he said, happier than they’d ever heard him. “Thank God.”

  Frey’s expression was grim. Jesse, still ensconced in the balcony, was so relieved at the news he was brought nearly to tears.

  “Agnes, dear. Lovely to see you again. Didn’t we have a follow-up?”

  “I’ll have to reschedule.”

  “He’s a fanatic. You’ve just killed for him. How much further will you go?”

  “Mind games,” Sebastian noted. “Don’t listen to him.”

  “You’re just enabling his fantasy and your own.”

  Lucy spoke for all of them, holding tight to Sebastian.

  “What happened down there was no dream. A nightmare, maybe. Not an illusion.”

  “Miss Ambrose. I understand now why you haven’t called. You’ve been busy.”

  Frey was working them. Getting into their heads.

  Suddenly, the windows were filled with police snipers. Sirens wailed, rifle barrels poked through empty spaces between the loosened boards in the lower and upper windows. The sound of static from police radios filled the air. Lights from news cameras booting up outside shone an otherworldly glow into the church. A third alarm sounded, alerting firemen in distant stations to head for the scene, creating even more chaos in the vicinity.

  “I see him, but I can’t get a fix on him!” an officer yelled. “Too much smoke.”

  “The hostages are too close!” yelled another.

  A voice came hurtling from a megaphone.

  “This is Captain Murphy. The building is surrounded. We don’
t want anyone to get hurt. Raise your arms in the air and walk forward.”

  “We’re not hostages!” Cecilia wailed to no avail, drowned out by the helicopter whirring overhead and the expectant mob surrounding them.

  The fire chief ordered his men back until the police had done their job, leaving the fire and the smoke to build. The crowd outside was growing.

  Sebastian turned the altar behind them on its side and ushered the girls to kneel behind it like a shield. He stepped out in front. Vulnerable. A standing target.

  “Step away from the girls,” Murphy ordered. “This will be your last warning.”

  Jesse was freaking. He was sure he’d be caught in the crossfire, that they all would.

  “Don’t shoot!” he stammered from the balcony, revealing himself. “Don’t shoot!”

  Frey and the girls looked up at him in surprise.

  “Call the police and tell them you are coming out,” Sebastian ordered Jesse. “With the girls.”

  “We’re not leaving!” Cecilia screamed at him, holding him even tighter, more closely.

  Jesse nodded nervously, but fumbled his phone as he dialed, dropping it to the aisle below.

  “Shit,” he whined and raced for the staircase.

  In that instant, the scene turned even more intense. Red and green lasers sliced through the acrid smoke, a spectacular light show unlike any they’d ever seen at any concert. Tiny glowing dots searching for targets.

  “Get down!” Sebastian screamed to Jesse as he reached the nave.

  Jesse hit the floor and crawled between pews, out of view.

  Sebastian turned to them. Even in the haze, they could see the farewell in his eyes.

  “It’s time,” he said. “I didn’t know it would be this hard. But it is. Now that I know you. Now that I love you.”

  “Sebastian, no!” Lucy cried. “Don’t do this.”

  “We need you!” Cecilia screamed. “Please.”

  “Don’t leave us!” Agnes wailed.

  “I’ll never leave you,” he said. “If you believe nothing else, believe that.”

  “Yes, you are leaving,” Frey said. “In handcuffs or a body bag.”

  “They aren’t fooling around, Sebastian,” Lucy pleaded urgently. “Just surrender. We will fight for you whatever happens. Don’t let him win.”

  Sebastian smiled sweetly. “Don’t you understand? He can’t win—not now. It’s up to the three of you.”

  “The night isn’t over, Sebastian!” Frey exclaimed.

  “I told you there would be others, Doctor,” Sebastian said defiantly. “The war goes on with or without me.”

  “Collateral damage.”

  Sebastian ripped his shirt off, revealing the brand, their brand on his heaving chest, spread his arms, and let out a loud yell.

  “Brave,” Dr. Frey acknowledged with a modicum of respect for his adversary. “And foolish to the end.”

  “It’s not the end,” Sebastian corrected. “It’s the beginning.”

  At that, Lucy, Agnes, and Cecilia jumped up and stepped in front of Sebastian, forming a human wall in his defense. Frey smiled. Chaos was his friend and the odds of a happy accident, from his perspective, was still possible.

  “Hold your fire!” Murphy shouted into the snipers’ earpieces.

  The tumult outside began to spill into the church with Jesse’s flash mob banging on doors and whatever was left of windows. Sneaking smartphone pictures and video that prompted a frenzy of posting to social media sites by the thousands. The three girls, standing defiantly, risking their lives for love and mercy, were suddenly famous. “Saints of Sackett Street” Jesse coined them.

  “Shoot him!” someone screamed in random bloodlust.

  The scene, inside and out, was getting completely out of hand.

  “Captain, we can’t let this go any longer. The whole neighborhood will go up in flames,” the fire chief insisted. “You’ve got to end it.”

  Sharpshooters had their itchy fingers poised on triggers, waiting for a clear shot. Any sudden moves and it was over. They all knew that.

  “My heart is your heart,” Sebastian whispered to them, kissing each gently good-bye on the cheek. “Remember what I said. Remember me.”

  “Your choice,” Frey said, backing farther away from the altar and the smoke.

  His words echoed powerfully. “There was never a choice.”

  Before they could restrain him, Sebastian broke through the girls’ human shield and lunged for Dr. Frey, who fell backward in his cowardly haste to retreat.

  “I’ve got a shot,” a sniper said into his mouthpiece.

  Murphy issued the command. “Take it.”

  A prolonged, guttural scream from the altar and gasps from the crowd outside filled the room. And then silence. Complete silence.

  Five shots rang out and struck Sebastian. He stumbled to the tiled floor, mortally wounded.

  Lucy, Agnes, and Cecilia rushed to him, surrounding him, comforting him and themselves, mourning him in the few seconds they had left together, brushing his hair from his eyes and covering his wounds with their hands, professing their undying love.

  He was beautiful.

  Serene.

  If it weren’t for the blood leaving him, he would have seemed an athlete resting from fatigue, catching his breath. A scent of clove and roses emanated from him. His gaze was distant, turned to heaven. With his last breaths he looked at them and recited from the prayer of the Sacred Heart:

  “I will come back again

  and take you to Myself,

  so that where I am

  you also may be.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” Agnes assured him through her sobs. “Always.”

  He smiled and took one last breath.

  Frey looked on at the wretched spectacle unsatisfied, having achieved only a partial victory.

  “Ecce homo,” Frey said to them mockingly. “What do you see? A man. Just a man.”

  “We’ll see you again, Doctor,” Cecilia vowed through bitter tears.

  “You will,” he concurred. “One way or another.”

  Frey dusted himself off and walked toward the exit. He spied Jesse’s cell phone on the floor and stepped on it. Crushing it and the evidence. He picked it up casually and placed it in his pocket, beneath notice in the confusion. He turned to see Jesse, still hiding in the pew.

  “Coming with me?” the doctor asked him.

  “No,” Jesse said.

  Frey accepted Jesse’s answer with an expression of derision and disgust and made his way out into the waiting throng of cops, EMTs, and reporters, quick to offer his story of the events that had just transpired for the record.

  The police and firefighters crashed in, guns drawn and hand axes at the ready.

  “It’s over,” the police captain assured them. “You’re safe now.”

  He was chilled by the girls’ blank stares and quickly left this business to his underlings.

  Swelling hoses blasted rivers of water onto the burning embers fuming all around them. The runoff filled the holy water fonts, replenishing them, for the first time in years. One by one, the girls were helped up to their feet.

  “We can’t just leave him here,” Agnes moaned, wiping the blood and cold sweat from his face with her garment.

  “We’re not leaving him,” Lucy said, hugging her.

  Lucy bent down and kissed his cheek and placed her hand on his.

  “Rest easy,” she said. “No one will forget what you did here today. I will make sure of it.”

  Finally, Cecilia bent down. She reached for his hand and noticed that he was holding a black rosary. It was small, like a child’s rosary, likely the one he received when he was an altar boy. The one he probably held on to in the psych ward all those years. He was gripping it so tight. She opened his hand and noticed that the crucifix was missing. Lost in the spray of gunshots. Cecilia took the rosary out of his hand and kissed it. She took out her earring and unfastened the charm that was dangling fr
om it—miniature brass knuckles. She fastened it to the rosary where the crucifix was, put it around her neck, and kissed it again. Then she kissed him.

  As they were escorted down the center aisle to the door, they stopped and looked back at Sebastian one last time.

  And they saw it happen right in front of their eyes.

  On his chest.

  From each of the bullet holes.

  One by one.

  Arrows sprouted.

  All doubt, all sorrow disappeared from them.

  “Seeing is believing,” Lucy whispered.

  “Saint Sebastian,” Cecilia said, awed by the vision.

  Agnes ran back to him. And pulled Sebastian’s Legenda page from her pocket that she had taken from the chapel and left it next to him.

  “My sacred heart,” she said, kissing him for the last time. “Pray for us.”

  Agnes rejoined Lucy and Cecilia and headed toward the vestibule. Grief emptied from their hearts and they were filled with a sense of purpose. The black smoke inside was turning a grayish white. A decision had been made. The threat was over. But their fire inside was still burning.

  They walked toward the church doors.

  Jesse stood as they passed.

  The unruly crowd was waiting outside. Restlessly. Whether to absolve or condemn them, what others would think of them, they didn’t know. And didn’t care. Perhaps for the first time in their lives.

  Cecilia lifted her hoodie onto her head, sheltering her straight bangs and choppy bob.

  Lucy veiled her head in a designer silk scarf, fixing it loosely over her blond locks.

  Agnes placed the cowl of her lamb poncho over her long, auburn hair.

  Heads covered, they joined hands and stood in the doorway.

  Shouts and cheers rang out, cameras flashed, camcorders rolled, microphones were thrust toward them as they silently descended the church steps, humbly victorious. The lights from the cameras illuminated them, causing auras around them. The sea of law enforcement, media, and onlookers parted reverently before them as they were ushered into a waiting police cruiser.

  A few reached out. Some to touch them. Others to rebuke them. Praised, cursed, and everything in between.

  They marched forward, unlikely icons, their purpose clear, as Cecilia said to Agnes and Lucy flanking her: