A Tear in the Sky - Chapter One
ANCIENT ENEMIES
The priest ran toward the altar as if hell itself followed on his heels.
He didn’t have much time, minutes at best. Still it would be enough. It had to be. He had but one final act to perform.
Racing up the steps, he crossed to the tabernacle and spun the dials on the lock with trembling fingers. He set the second one incorrectly and had to do it again, losing precious seconds in the process. Opening the tabernacle, he bent one knee, genuflected, and then removed the ciborium from inside the blessed chamber.
From the other end of the church he could hear them banging on the inside of the sacristy door. He’d locked it behind him, but he didn’t expect it to hold them for long.
Opening the ciborium and removing one of the communion wafers, he begged for Christ’s forgiveness for his sins and then placed the wafer on his tongue. From years past the voice of Father Jerome, his old seminary professor, came to him.
“Viaticum, from the Latin ‘via tecum’, meaning ‘provisions for the journey.’ The final rite in the sacrament of Extreme Unction, the giving of the Eucharist ensures that the dying do not die alone, but have Christ with them in their final moments just as He has been with them in life.”
Behind him, the door to the sacristy burst from its hinges and the howls of his pursuers filled the nave.
He was out of time.
Steeling himself for what he knew was to come, he calmly closed the tabernacle and spun the dials, locking it against intrusion. It wouldn’t hold out a determined thief, but he had done his part to protect the holy elements and could rest easy on that score. Getting to his feet, he turned to face the front of the church.
The shadows had reached the transept already.
He hurried to the altar and took up the Bible resting there. It wouldn’t hold them off but he felt better with it in his hands.
As they reached the foot of the altar, he calmly went down to meet them.
* * *
Fourteen hundred miles away, the man known as the Necromancer paced the narrow confines of his cell. He was unable, perhaps even unwilling, to sleep. He simply walked from one side of his cell to the other, twelve steps in each direction, over and over again.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Waiting.
He knew she would come again tonight. He could feel it in his bones, in that deep place in his gut where the dead spoke to him, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wouldn’t be able to ignore her any more than he’d been able to ignore her last night.
Or the night before that.
It seemed he was destined to be tormented by her presence, until he did whatever it was she expected of him. He was determined that tonight would be her last visit.
He’d completed another half circuit of his cell when a deep, bone-chilling cold filled the room. The Necromancer spun around to find her standing nearby, dressed in the same long hooded robe that she’d worn on each of her previous visits. The robe left her face in shadow and hid her true form from view, preventing him from recognizing her.
But unlike her other visits, this time she held something small and shiny in her hands.
As the Necromancer stared in fear and wonder, she began to speak.
