The Blessed

Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes heard footsteps descending rapidly down the staircase.

Their hearts raced.

“He’s coming back,” Agnes said, relieved.

“No,” Cecilia said suspiciously. “It’s not him.”

CeCe looked down at her hands, her stigmata, and saw them starting to bleed. Her warning bell.

“What the hell do we do?” Lucy asked, staring at the other two in semipanic. The footsteps, which sounded more like an army, stopped for a minute outside the chapel door and the girls stood stiffly, expectantly, eyes locked on the door, until it was kicked open.

Cecilia recognized them as soon as she saw them.

“Look what Satan dragged in,” Cecilia said nonchalantly. “Ricky.”

“You know him?” Lucy asked.

Ricky answered for her. “She does. Intimately. Isn’t that right, CeCe? Surprised to see me?”

“Not really. Playing basements is your thing, isn’t it? How did you know I was here?”

“Your drinking buddy. It’s amazing the covert intelligence you can gather for a pint of Jack. I should call the CIA.”

“Bill,” Cecilia gasped softly, a sick feeling settling in her stomach. Sebastian was right, she thought. It was those closest to you.

“Don’t take it too hard. He probably doesn’t even remember what he told me, poor drunken bastard. I would have found you anyway. We’ve been tailing you for a while.”

“Too much stalking, not enough rehearsing. I told you you’ll never get anywhere that way, Ricky,” Cecilia said. “Did you come to entertain me?”

“No. I came to kill you. And you. And you,” he said calmly, smiling through his nicotine-stained teeth and pointing to Lucy and Agnes. “So did they, by the way.”

The guys behind him tightened up, ready for a fight.

“None of you is smart enough to plan this,” CeCe said. “Who sent you?”

“A doctor friend I met in rehab,” Ricky said. “Networking, you know.”

Lucy and Agnes backed up, but there was nowhere else to go. They had their backs to the altar and the wall. Cecilia backed up as well, the heel of her shoe kicking into her guitar, which was leaning against the altar, making a terrible clang.

“New song?” Ricky said. “A death knell, maybe?”

“A requiem,” Cecilia answered. “For you.”

“Tough talk,” he said dismissively. “Did I mention we’re going to kill you?” Ricky said, feigning forgetfulness. “But maybe a little fun first. What do you say, gents?”

The sound of shrill, compulsive, hormonal laughter, like a tribe of chimps, echoed through the tiny room.

“And who do we have here?” Ricky asked, approaching Agnes and stroking her hair. “Fresh meat.”

“Leave her alone, Ricky!” Cecilia yelled.

“Awww, don’t be jealous,” he said. “There’s plenty to go around.”

“Sebastian,” Agnes whispered, cringing in disgust, trying to make herself disappear.

“Don’t bother calling for your boyfriend,” Ricky said, stepping up to the altar. “He’s busy dying upstairs by now.”

Ricky kicked the altar over and the book and stand and candles came crashing down in a racket. Bubbling trails of flaming wax flowed along the crevices of the wood and tiled flooring, seeking something to ignite.

He walked over to their statues and ran his hand lasciviously along their porcelain bodies, thrusting his tongue into each of their painted mouths.

“Cold as ice,” he said snidely. “Not that different from kissing you, CeCe.”

“Did we kiss, Ricky?” Cecilia spat. “I was sure that was a puddle of piss I was sucking in the other night.”

He picked up the statues off their pedestals and crashed them to the ground, one by one, huge shards of molded plaster and painted ceramic exploded upward.

“Such a perfect place to die, wouldn’t you say?” Ricky observed, smoke slowly rising up around him. “A church and a crypt. One-stop shopping.”

Ricky and his sadistic band eyed the girls threateningly, ravenously. However much they wanted to, Lucy, Agnes, and CeCe didn’t flinch. There was no escape anyway. They stared their tormentors down. It was a standoff.

“Time for a little ultraviolence, fellas.”

“Now that’s original,” Cecilia said scornfully. “A Clockwork a*shole. Still stuck in the seventies. Just like your music.”

It was time. They all felt it.

“I always said I had a killer band, didn’t I?”

“Save yourself,” Lucy said, just loud enough for the other girls to hear. They understood.

Cecilia started to count her enemies out loud. “One. Two. Three. Four. Not a fair fight.”

“Life’s not fair,” Ricky said bloodlessly, motioning to one of the guys, who stepped forward silently and headed for Agnes, grabbing a handful of her hair and sniffing like a pig, reaching for the button on the top of her blouse.

“Smells like Teen Spirit,” he hissed, his sickening breath puffing straight up her nostrils.

“Smells like shit,” Agnes said, spitting in his face.

In a split second, Cecilia reached behind her and grabbed the neck of her guitar and swung it full force into the head of the attacker.

He fell to the floor in a heap at her feet.

“I told you to leave her alone.”

She raised the solid-body electric and with a frightening screech slammed the gearhead right through the back of his head, burying the neck of it there like a skewer, nearly decapitating him. A sinewy stew of blood, bone, and brain exploded outward and onto Ricky and his crew.

Lucy and Agnes were momentarily stunned but not afraid as they watched the life bubble out and around his head in a river on the floor. Ricky was impressed.

“Hunt you back,” she said with a smirk, resting her boot heel, like a proud forest ranger on a bear carcass, in his gaping wound.

“That’s way inappropriate,” he scoffed, pulling a motorcycle chain out of his back pocket. “Aren’t you supposed to be saints or something?”

“Saints, maybe. Not angels,” Cecilia said, swinging her guitar overhead once more in a wide arc, keeping them all at bay and slamming it into the bone legs of the altar behind her, shearing them off.

She tossed a length of broken bone to Lucy and to Agnes, who caught the clubs with the skill of athletes and stood at the ready, armed and dangerous. Full of zeal and confidence that they could scarcely have imagined even a few minutes earlier.

“Don’t be afraid,” she commanded.

“I’m not,” they said in unison.

Ricky and his crew bum-rushed the girls, swinging their chains ahead of them.

Lucy’s attacker was on her before she could move. He swung wildly and connected, striking her in the jaw and knocking her back toward the urn and reliquary.

The vandal laughed and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

“Smile,” he said, snapping her picture. “That’s bank when you’re dead.”

Lucy gave him the finger with one hand and tossed a hammer lying on the floor directly at him, hitting him in the chest.

“Bitch, this is your lucky day,” he railed, grabbing at his crotch. “First I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to screw you.”

“Screw me?” she chided him. “Alive or dead, I wouldn’t feel it, loser.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Lucy tried to call on whatever basic self-defense skills she could muster in the moment but kept it simple. She extended her leg straight outward, her gold-spiked designer heel first, and leveled it right into his balls.

“Flats are for quitters.” She smirked.

His face turned a bluish white, and his body began a slow-motion collapse to the floor.

“You should never think with your dick,” she huffed, helping him along with another kick, this time with the pointed toe, to his nose, shattering it, along with his cheekbone. She was about to bludgeon him with her bone club when an awful cry came from the other side of the chapel. It was Agnes.

“Lucy!”

Agnes was bent over the kneeler, her skirt hiked up, lace panties revealed, and the vandal behind her fumbling for his zipper. He had her by the throat and the hair, jerking her head back. Immobilized. Ready to defile her.

“What, no tramp stamp?” he said, noting her unmarked skin, gyrating his hips threateningly behind her.

Agnes spasmed as he pulled a key from his chain and carved a cross into her back with the sharp teeth, on the flesh above her tailbone. Blood seeped up to the surface and Agnes was overcome with burning pain. She didn’t cry out.

“That’s better,” he said, admiring his cruelty.

Then suddenly she felt a silky wave of comfort as her hair began to lengthen and grow down her back, to blot the wound and cover her nakedness.

“Agnes!” Lucy screamed, desperate to come to her aid.

Lucy suddenly felt a hand around her ankle and was unable to break free of the vandal’s grip. Just behind her was the fourth covered statue. She tore at the knot and loosened it, ripping the linen fabric from it, revealing the figure of a Roman soldier, in full armor, shot full of arrows. At the bottom it read SEBASTIAN.

“He’s here,” she said. “With us.”

Lucy pulled the sword from its scabbard and tossed it to Agnes, who was being smacked viciously on either side of her head. Suffering in silence.

Agnes grabbed it in midair and raised the weapon as high as she could and drove it downward hard as she could, right through the top of her attacker’s foot and out the bottom of his sneaker. He was literally pinned, bleeding out quickly, his neck veins popping in pain.

Agnes stood calmly and turned to face him.

“Sorry, I must have severed an artery,” she said calmly, watching the blood wash over her flats. She let her hair and dress fall to their natural length once again and bitch-slapped him, wiping his snot from her hand on his jacket. He was weakening and unable to defend himself.

“You like to pull hair,” she said seductively, slowly wrapping her locks around his neck and jerking him toward her. “Me too.” She leaned in close to him. Face-to-face, close enough to kiss under less confrontational circumstances, and tightened her grip on the nest of hair now encircling his throat. He saw the fire in her eyes and she watched the life leave his slowly, like a sun setting into the horizon, degree by degree. She pulled and kept pulling. Until his eyes popped and his tongue swelled past his lips. Until he was dead. She untangled him and let him drop.

The thug pulled Lucy down to the floor and covered her, his weight preventing her from moving. He tore at her blouse and made a juvenile effort to feel her up. “They’re real, despite what you might have heard.”

Lucy grabbed for his throat and dug in her nails, and he scraped at her eyes, trying to push them right through the back of her head. Lucy pulled at his wrist until she could get a piece of his hand in her mouth. She bit down and tore a piece of him off and spit it out on the floor beside her. He wailed in pain. She grabbed for the Legenda at her feet and pummeled the vandal on top of her with the heavy, leather-bound book. His forearm and ribs cracked easily under the force of her blows. He released her, but she wasn’t done. Lucy looked up at the windows, with their scenes of tortured saints, and found some inspiration. She dragged the nearly unconscious vandal onto the altar and scooped a few still-burning coals from the toppled urn. She tugged at his jaw until it opened and turned slack and dropped the hot charcoal into it and closed it back up with her heel. She held her foot there, kissing his lips with her sole. Soot and ash from his boiled and blistering lips soiling her shoe.

“You have a dirty mouth.”

He literally sizzled. Cooked from the inside out. His screams, a high-pitched whistle like nothing she’d ever heard, shot up from his eustachian tubes and out his ears. Steam poured from his nose, like a raging bull in his death throes.

“Payback’s a bitch. Even if it is a few thousand years late.”

Lucy brought the Legenda Aurea down on his face full force, killing him.

“Who says I’m not merciful.”

Ricky meanwhile had bum-rushed Cecilia, knocking her down hard. She was breathless and dazed momentarily and looked up at him, her vision fuzzy, knees and elbows scraped and bloody, as he removed his thick leather belt and folded it over, snapping it against his thigh. She’d seen him look like that before above her. With evil intent. Then, it was only her self-respect that was at stake. This time, it was her life. This time, she understood.

“Don’t,” she said, still defiant, struggling to her hands and knees. “You’ll turn me on.”

Ricky smiled.

“You’ve been a very bad girl.”

He grunted and struck her. Whipping her back, her arms, and her legs savagely. Kicking her butt like a disobedient dog. Over and over. Her skin flushed and welts appeared almost instantly. Tears of pain and humiliation rimmed her eyes.

“I have,” she confessed regretfully, taking the punishment almost to see how much she could stand.

With what strength she had, Cecilia crawled over to the votive stand and tried to scale it, lifting herself upright however which way she could as Ricky beat her incessantly. If she was going out now, she wanted it to be standing. She grabbed a votive cup in each hand and flung the boiling liquid at Ricky’s face with all her might. He dropped the strap and fell to his knees, clutching at his face, screaming, but more in anger than pain. While he was blinded momentarily, she ran toward him and kneed him in the head, pushing him over onto his belly on top of the overturned wooden altar, stunned. But not dead.

“If you hit me, you better kill me,” Ricky growled, pulling gobs of wax along with layers of skin from his face.

Ricky rushed her again, picked her up, and slammed her to the floor so hard she felt her lungs hit her rib cage. She gasped for air, lying motionless on her back. He stepped away and jumped up on the altar and kicked the glass reliquary, shattering it as he let out an ungodly harrowing wail, the veins in his neck near bursting as he swatted the remaining candles to the floor. “You always wanted to be the center of attention—the bride in the wedding and the body in the casket. Well, one of those is about to come true at least!”

Just like her dream, she thought.

“Saints alive!” he said in the midst of the rising smoke and fire, his raw face and bloodstained teeth causing him to appear as the wild beast he actually was, gloating over his prey, as she’d let him gloat over her many times before on lost and lonely nights. “But not for long.”

Ricky jumped from the altar to the bone chandelier suspended from the chapel ceiling, hung from it, and began to swing back and forth, building momentum and staring down at Cecilia. A pendulum of unsalvageable human degradation twirling ominously above. “I think it’s time somebody knocked some sense into that thick skull of yours, CeCe.”

All she could bring into clear focus as she waited for the deathblow were the metal-studded soles of his hobnail boots. She waited for the nail heads to leave across her face the filthy imprint of the simple, mocking word they spelled out. DOUBT.

And then, as she stared up at him and waited, she thought she saw something else. The delicate pendalogues of the chandelier where Ricky was holding on, which were made from the bones of fingers and hands, appeared to slowly release him from their grasp. From her view below, it was as if they were holding Ricky up instead of him holding on. He began to count, oblivious to anything but her imminent demise.

“One,” he yelled. Cecilia noticed his grip loosen even more.

Century-old plaster from the ceiling broke free; fiery liquid dripped down and fell on top of her. She remained still, taking the pain, all the while feeling a supernatural force was at work. Cecilia spied her fractured guitar neck on the floor beside her, gearhead aflame, and took it as a sign.

“Two.” He swung over her again, the whoosh of air from his motion feeding the flames that now nearly encircled her and kept Agnes and Lucy at bay.

She waited.

“Cecilia!” Agnes screamed.

“Thr—”

The canopy that affixed the chandelier to the ceiling gave way and came crashing down, along with the ornate bone chandelier. Cecilia quickly grabbed for her broken instrument and slid under Ricky just as he landed, guitar neck pointed forcefully upward, impaling him.

They lay face-to-face, inches apart, for what felt like hours but was just seconds, as they had many a night. She watched him turn white, gurgling for his breath and begging for his miserable life.

“How about showing a little mercy?” he gasped pathetically, his tone changing to suit the dire predicament he found himself in. “Forgiveness.”

“Like you showed Catherine? Showed us?” CeCe countered. “I don’t do mercy or forgiveness, Ricky. I just work here. You will have to take that one up with the boss.”

As his breath became more labored, she brought her lips even closer to his and whispered sweetly, “I warned you never to fall for me, didn’t I? Oh, that’s right. Too late.”

With all her might she tossed him off of her, driving the splintered fretboard completely through him as she did.

Agnes and Lucy grabbed the coverings from the saints’ statues for protection and leaped through the wall of fire to CeCe and lifted her up. They brushed off the shards of glass and splinters protruding from their bruised and swollen skin and wiped the blood and ash away. Agnes lay her covering over the bones of the candelabra, which was now on the ground, as if she were respectfully burying it. Lucy veiled Cecilia with hers.

Four dead. Three injured. One missing.

“There will be others. You know that, right?” Cecilia said. “They were just the opening act.”

The girls surveyed the carnage. A killing field of broken bones and broken glass, shattered bodies and splintered wood all around them. They’d turned the sacred chapel into a crime scene. More urgently, a fire hazard. Ricky’s jacket exploded in flames and ignited the wooden altar, the fire seeming to lick the giant Sacred Heart fresco that was disappearing into the billowing smoke. Slowly incinerating the bodies and the evidence.

“Ashes to ashes, prick,” Lucy mused. “Let’s go.”

“Not yet,” Cecilia said.

She righted the kneelers, the only pieces of wood still not aflame and kneeled down to pray. Without exchanging any words, Lucy and Agnes joined her.

“We don’t know what we are doing,” Cecilia said. “But we will do our best.”

They prayed for guidance, they prayed for wisdom, they prayed for strength, they prayed for Sebastian, they prayed for one another, they prayed for themselves. Prayed like they never had before, because they never had. Most of all they gave thanks to the ones who’d come before, whose presence, strength, and bravery they felt inside the room and inside themselves now.

As she raised her head, Agnes was troubled. She was having an attack of conscience. “Do you think that killing them makes us evil? Makes us like them?”

“I guess we’ll find out someday,” Lucy said. “But not today.”

“Time to go,” Cecilia pressed.

The fire was raging now, and the heat, smoke, and stench of burning flesh were stifling.

Agnes grabbed Legenda Aurea, flipped through it quickly, and tore out a single page. Lucy grabbed a length of bone from the ossuary and plunged it into Ricky’s burning body, turning it into a torch to light their way out. Cecilia bent down and picked up the hair shirt that had been thrown from the reliquary during the fight. She winced as she put it on her bloody back.

“Follow me,” Lucy said.

Agnes stopped as they reached the door and looked back.

“Are we the monsters now?” Agnes wondered. “Did we ruin this place?”

“No!” Cecilia said, pulling her away. “We restored it.”





Sirens began to blow before even the first few puffs of black smoke cleared the chimney. Jesse was instantly suspicious. He looked over in the café window and noticed Frey just hanging up from a call and collecting his things.

The smoke from the chapel fire began to escape through the old chimneys and vented out into the open air.

Jesse was panicking. If Lucy and the others were in there—and he was now sure they were—they wouldn’t last long. Frey had played this perfectly. Creating a literal smoke screen behind which to operate.

His flash mob was late. The police were sure to be first on the scene, and Frey had them wired from the top down. A crowd, witnesses, was their only hope.

“Jesus,” he moaned. “You can get five thousand kids to do the friggin’ Macarena slathered in Hershey’s syrup on Cadman Plaza but not a soul to witness a mass murder in progress.”

The doctor strolled casually across the street and up the church stairs.

“Arrogant prick.”

Jesse turned around and saw a few kids hanging around the corner. Could’ve been local rubberneckers now that a fire was going, but they seemed to have something else on their mind. Maybe there was hope.

Outside, he thought, would take care of itself. He was needed inside. He waited for a minute and followed Frey into the church.



Sebastian had been outmaneuvered. The vandals had drawn him upstairs and sneaked down behind him while he searched the church, locking the sacristy door from behind. He kicked at the door over and over to no avail.

“God help them,” he prayed, tears and sweat mingling in sorrow and passion.

“Sebastian.” A menacing voice rang out from the back of the church, filling it like the tolling of a bell. It was not the voice of God.

Sebastian walked out into the church, facing the altar. His back to Frey.

“You know, priests used to say mass that way. With their backs to the people. Things change,” Frey said wistfully.

Sebastian proceeded to the altar and climbed the stairs into the marble pulpit, facing out at the church and the doctor, who was not alone. From the elevated podium, he also saw another figure in the back. A head, nervously popping up from behind one of the back pews. It was Jesse. He didn’t react, unsure if Frey knew the blogger had followed him in or not.

“You sure you want to come in here, Doctor?”

Frey sighed. “We do what we must, you understand.”

“I do.”

“Another assistant to sacrifice?” Sebastian asked, gesturing toward the dead-eyed, uniformed psych-ward flunky Frey had brought with him.

“No,” Frey answered. “A patient. Like you. I thought you should be properly introduced,” he explained snidely. “You have a lot in common. Both sociopathic and violent. Murderous. Incurable. Though in his case it was young children, not teenage girls.”

Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “A death-penalty candidate.”

“Nearly. But as I explained to the court, he’s not responsible for his actions.”

“We are all responsible for our actions, Doctor. And for the consequences.”

Dr. Frey patted Sicarius on the shoulder, drawing a twisted smile from the defective delinquent. Frey’s crunchy footfalls echoed loudly as he and his assassin drew slowly closer.

“Still quite a mess in here. I have to make a note to speak to the developers about the status of my investment in the conversion.”

“Why are you so afraid of me?” Sebastian asked coolly. “I understand the need for you, for what you believe, yet you see no place for me.”

“Not afraid. Concerned. As I am for all my patients.”

“Bullshit, you tried to erase my mind. My identity.”

“Erase you? Or treat you?”

“Same difference, Doctor.”

“You are sick, Sebastian. You think me evil, when all I’ve ever tried to do was help you, protect you from your own insanity. And when that proved impossible, to protect others from you.”

Sebastian fought the urge to strangle Frey right on the spot and kept his cool.

“Is that what you told the police? And Jesse?”

“I told them that you were a murderer and a kidnapper. A uniquely dangerous and delusional young man. The truth.”

“It all sounds so reasonable, Doctor—even to me.”

“It should. Those girls down there are in jeopardy because of you. Not me.”

“That’s a lie.”

“You filled their heads with the same superstitious nonsense. We are long past the need for this,” Frey said adamantly, pointing to the altar. “Or for those like you.”

“Why? Because now we have you?” Sebastian said derisively. “You don’t offer happiness. You don’t offer fulfillment. You don’t offer love. You prescribe it. Soulessness. In daily doses.”

“Whatever works,” he said blithely.

“What happens when the prescription runs out, Doctor?”

“You get a refill, Sebastian.”

“Here, I’m always full,” Sebastian said. “I don’t need a refill or an insurance card or a straitjacket.”

“No, just a small weekly donation.”

“No one charged me admission.”

“So romantic. I can see why the girls fall for it. Dangle a few bracelets, tell them you are destined to be together. Surely there are easier ways to get a date.”

“They came to me. They were led to me as I was to them.”

“There is nothing special about you, Sebastian. You are as deluded as a person who sees the face of Jesus in a bowl of cornflakes.”

“I know what I know,” Sebastian said firmly.

“You know nothing. You believe. You are spreading lies. Dangerous ones.”

“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 from 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:

“Thy will be done.”





THE WORD ACCORDING TO SEBASTIAN





Seekers of Hope.

Seekers of Faith.

Seekers of Love.

Come to Me

And to These Three

Who Hold My Heart

And You Will See

All You Want and Wish to Do

Is Already There

Inside of You

Fear Not

For I Am With You

Always

Even to

The End.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




THANKS to my husband, Michael Pagnotta, for his undying love and support. This book would not have been possible without you.

Heartfelt thanks to the extraordinary team at Simon & Schuster: Jon Anderson, Justin Chanda—for believing, Anne Zafian, Zareen Jaffery, Julia Maguire, Elke Villa, Chrissy Noh, Lizzy Bromley, Lucille Rettino, Paul Crichton, Lydia Finn, Mary Marotta, Christina Pecorale, Jim Conlin, Mary Faria, and Teresa Brumm.

Special thanks to the people I have been blessed with in my life: Isabelle Rose Pagnotta, Beverly Hurley, Tracy Hurley Martin, Oscar Martin, Angela and Tony DiTerlizzi, Vince Clarke, Martha and Anthony Kolencik, Mary and Salvatore Pagnotta, Mary Nemchik, Clementina and Bill Morton, Thomas J. Hurley, Thomas A. Hurley, Denise DeCarlo, Heidi Holmes, Lauren Nemchik, Tamara Pajic Lang, Mary-Jo Pane, Abbey Watkins, Paul Sych, Adriana Beltrán, Natalie Shau, Andy McNicol, Laura Bonner, Alicia Gordon, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, all at Aflaguara and William Morris Endeavor, and especially to my amazing publishers and readers around the world.