The congregation stirred in shock and surprise.
Simon leapt from the gallery. He landed lightly onto the back of a pew amidst a crowd who were already rising and jostling one another. Far ahead of him, the woman shoved the unprepared rector aside and began to climb onto the altar. The congregation flooded into the aisles in confusion, streaming for the main door in a crush.
Simon jumped into the air, rising above the growing sea of chaos. Several struggling parishioners knocked him aside as he came down again onto another pew. He tried to keep his feet, watching the woman on the altar lie flat on her back. Her knife caught the candlelight.
As Simon began to spring forward again, he was held fast. The wound over Simon’s heart roared like he’d been shot with a musket ball. The spell on Simon’s lips faltered and he fell hard onto the wooden bench. Pain racked his body, causing his vision to blur. Doubling over, through the haze he saw Rowan Barnes grasping his ankle.
“I am sick to death of you!” Barnes snarled. “Britain is depending on me. Albion must rise.”
Simon tasted bile and fought to push himself up. He tried in vain to focus. If Barnes was close enough to touch him, he could be struck. If only Simon could fight through the pain. His limbs grew numb and empty noise roared in his ears.
Then the pain vanished, leaving him sweating and facedown on the wooden pew. A slight turn of his head revealed Barnes above him, wide-eyed with shock. A shining blade protruded from Barnes’s chest. Simon caught a glimpse of Kate behind the necromancer with an expression set in ferocious anger.
Simon whispered a spell and reached to where Barnes still held his ankle. He wrenched the fingers free and proceeded to crush the man’s hand. The snapping bones sounded like dry twigs.
Simon looked at the altar. The woman held a serrated as if waiting for an order from Barnes. Simon searched for Charlotte who was crawling along the edge of the gallery with her shoes kicked off. “Charlotte! Stop her!”
The girl smiled and threw her head back. She loped down the gallery rail passing through patches of light and dark until the flashes of shadow on her body were permanent because of sprouting fur. Her arms and back tore free of her dress. Her face grew dark and savage, no longer human. Screams pierced the melee of the fleeing crowd, pointing up at the creature that leapt for the altar in a long lunge through empty space, suspended in midair, stretched out like an animal going for the kill. Girlish fingers turned long and gnarled and clawed.
The great beast landed hard on the altar, crouching atop the nude woman. Charlotte’s massive hand slapped the dagger aside, sending it spiraling against the Ten Commandments. The woman lying beneath the werewolf was undisturbed by the slavering thing over her. She was nearly catatonic; her eyelids quivering. Hogarth dropped from the gallery and fought to Charlotte’s side at the altar.
Simon heard Kate cry out. Barnes had driven an elbow into her face and she toppled out of sight. Simon’s strength was still with him and he landed the handle of his walking stick against the side of the necromancer’s head. The man went spinning to the ground, dark blood spurting from his nose and mouth. The necromancer turned back to Simon and cursed. The word delivered a burst of searing pain, which slammed Simon against the seat.
Kate brought her sword up into the light, but Barnes knocked it aside, and called out a word in a strained voice. She fell back, screaming as if engulfed in flames.
Simon was on him, brutal fingers around the man’s throat, digging in so hard that Barnes’s face began to turn purple. “Release her! Remove your influence from her, or I’ll tear your head off!”
Barnes stared fearfully at Simon and waved a quivering hand at Kate. She gasped with relief and shook her head to clear it. Simon yanked Barnes to his feet. The necromancer was surprisingly spry for a man recently stabbed through the chest, but Simon saw very little blood on the man’s shirt. Barnes was no doubt struggling to use his powers to hold back the damage and pain.
Charlotte and Hogarth stood before the altar, preparing to come to Simon and Kate’s defense. The prospective bride dropped off the back of the altar and crawled toward the reredos to retrieve her knife. The manservant spun and seized the hopeful sacrifice by the wrist. The naked woman struggled and screamed. Hogarth wrenched the dagger away and held her tight around the waist.
“No! No! Don’t stop me! It’s not fair!” She looked up at Hogarth with a tear-streaked face and mewled like a child begging for a toy. “Give me my knife. Give it to me!” She dissolved into a shuddering wreck, with fingers outstretched to her dagger. As Hogarth started to slip off his coat to cover the woman, she cried, “Please don’t take this from me.”