“A panic attack,” said Khoury.
“Button it!”
“Both of you shut up,” said Rossi. “Here’s the plan. Again...”
Rolling over and opening his eyes, Petit was startled to see a white figure standing in his doorway. One of the cloistered nuns. He blinked twice and realized it was Mother Magdalen wearing a habit he’d never seen before. He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed. “Dinner?”
“Vespers.”
“I ain’t going to...” he cut himself off. A chance to escape? He stood up and dragged a hand through his hair. “Uh...okay.”
She guessed why he was suddenly so willing. “If you run, I’ll get the crayons for Babette.”
“Why can’t you let me leave?”
“I told you.” With a swish of her skirt, she turned her back on him and went into the hall.
“Won’t tell no one,” he said after her. “Won’t talk to the cops.”
“I don’t believe you, Trey.”
“You can’t keep me forever. We can’t hide here forever.”
“Lower your voice,” she whispered, and started down the hall.
Before he went after her, he pulled his tee shirt down over the top of his jeans. He wanted to make sure his best friend was well hidden. “Why are you dragging me? Never made me go to mass before.”
“You’re probably going to have to help me with them.”
“Afraid you doped them up a little too good?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw what you did with the juice. Sister Rose’s trick. Never figured you’d sink so low.”
“You didn’t stop me.” She stopped at their door and put the key in the lock.
“What’s the point of church if they’re comatose?” He checked his watch. Had he really slept that long? Kind of late for prayers. “Can’t we eat first? I’m starving.”
She pushed the door open to the girls’ room and stiffened. Stumbled backwards into the hall until her back hit the opposite wall. Pressing her fist into her bosom, she exhaled one word. “Babette.”
Petit stepped over the threshold and gaped at the drawing on the wall. Two stick figures holding hands, squiggles of hair surrounding their heads and big saucers for eyes.
He ran over to the bed with the two girls and tried to wake them. They were on their sides facing the wall, one child curled into the other like a pair of kittens. He felt the back of Cecelia’s neck and yelled to the woman in the hallway, “She’s warm.”
The abbess stood in the doorway for a moment, and then came up behind him. “They’re alive?”
He tipped the child toward him, rolling her onto her back. Both adults jumped away from the bed.
“Hell, no,” said Petit, shaking his head. “No, no, no.”
The abbess made a guttural, animal noise and ran from the room. Petit stumbled out of the bedroom and went down on his knees in the hallway. He vomited at the feet of the trembling nun, and blacked out with his face buried in his own bile.
When he came to minutes later, he was on his back – with his own gun pointed at his head.
On their way downstairs, Petit had to stop at a landing to rest the weight of the sleeping child on a window ledge and adjust his hold over her.
“That’s long enough,” whispered the nun, motioning him ahead of her with the gun.
Petit draped the girl over his shoulder and went down the steps. When he reached the main level he stopped again and got a fresh grip while peering down the long, narrow corridor that led to the back of the house. A lighted Virgin Mary sat atop a table in the middle of the shadowy tunnel, providing the only illumination.
Mother Magdalen pressed the gun muzzle into his lower spine. “Go.”
As he hiked the girl up over his shoulder, the child murmured something indecipherable but didn’t open her eyes. He patted her back. “It’s gonna be okay, Missy.”
They exited the dorm and walked to the northwest corner of the campus, their figures moving from the glow of one street lamp to the other, ghosts coming into view and then fading away into the darkness. The man’s profile that of a hunchback, carrying the plump child across one shoulder, and the white nun following close behind, a guardian angel with her hand in her right pocket.
A blast of wind blew against their backs, sending the nun’s skirt flying. With another gust, all the lights on the grounds were extinguished.
They were steering through the neighborhood when the phone rang with yet another call from Camp. As he listened to Rossi’s end of the chat, MacLeod tried to glean what information was being passed on to her. Apparently Xavier and the handyman were taking the children somewhere. Rather than transport the girls in the nun mobile, they were carrying them. This indicated they were staying on the grounds, according to this Camp chap.
A large part of MacLeod didn’t’ care about such details. Minutiae, all of it. His entire being – from his corporeal self to his psyche – was humming with anticipation. So intense was the sensation, it was a mystery why he didn’t set the entire car to vibrating. That’s why he’d taken his partners’ heads off earlier: He had to release some of the tension before he exploded like a human grenade. At the same time, he couldn’t catch his breath. He knew this was no panic attack; it was related to what was about to transpire.
Unfortunately the Scot couldn’t discern whether what was about to take place would be good for humanity, or herald its doom. He compared himself to one of those gadgets that detected the formation of storms and earthquakes. It didn’t judge the rightness or wrongness of the oncoming storm; it merely predicted it was on the way.
One thing he did know: Putting the world’s fate in the hands of the priest was utter bollocks. Nothing about the man instilled confidence. Here he was breaking out the rosary when he should have been familiarizing himself with Rossi’s handgun. Khoury was going to have the bloody panic attack, and leave his partners to finish the job.
MacLeod questioned whether Rossi was up to the task. Before she’d lost her ex husband, he would have thought, Yes. Absolutely. This is a woman who instills confidence.
The demise of this Tommy person had knocked something loose in the previously efficient Yank machine. Rather than cause her to become more cautious, it had made her angry and vengeful.
“If you can’t, I will. In a heartbeat, I’ll do it.”
As much as he was loathed to admit it, Khoury had been correct in saying the nun couldn’t be killed as part of a personal vendetta. Beyond the moral issues, approaching the mission in that manner would cause them to make mistakes.
So who was left to serve as the hangman?
Once again it would be up to a Scot to preserve modern civilization – or die trying. But could he kill a child to save himself and his partners? He didn’t know. What a bloody mess. Another saying from the old country came to mind, this one from the bard, Robert Burns: “Welcome to your gory bed, or to victory.”
Rossi finally closed her cell and started in with her summary of Camp’s call. “You guys heard?”
“Mother Superior is moving the triplets,” said Khoury.
“One of them.”
As if he were a runner trying to talk, MacLeod struggled to moderate his voice and breathing. “But they remain penned in, aye?”
“Right. They’re still on the grounds.”
“Separating the girls from each other and shuffling them around in the dark,” said MacLeod. “What’s that about?”
“Can’t be good,” said Rossi.
“Where are they headed?” asked Khoury.
“Our men are trying to figure it out,” she said. “We keep losing sight of them. We’re in pretty dense woods and stuff keeps blowing around. Impeding the view. The lights on the grounds went out. Power outage from the wind, maybe. Our night vision equipment is acting weird, too. Going out.”
“What’s Xavier saying to her merry band of demons?” asked MacLeod.
“Generally eavesdropping wouldn’t be
a problem. It’s what we do. But...”
“Aye?”
“It’s that blowing. All we’re picking up is the wind.”
As they wove through the residential neighborhood outside the monastery, MacLeod peered through his window and knew his partners were doing the same. The wind was blowing with such force, it appeared as if a hurricane had made landfall. Another warning shot from God?
CHAPTER FORTY
With her left hand and hip, the abbess muscled open one side of the wooden double doors and held it wide for Petit and his cargo. Her hand was in her pocket, over the gun. During their march across the campus, they hadn’t spotted a single person, but she’d taken the precaution of hiding the weapon, even after all the lights went off. She didn’t want anyone trying to stop her.
After fighting the wind to close the door, she pivoted around with the revolver steadied between both hands. With the barrel, she directed him deeper inside. The worship space was normally lit at all hours, but whatever had taken the lights on the grounds had also darkened the chapel. But there were candles. In every corner, stands filled with rows and rows of votives. In front of statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, each in its own alcove on the right and left side of the church, were more candles. Every flame represented someone who needed a prayer. The sick. The dying. The dead. The desperate. When this was all over, would someone strike a match for her soul?
Adjusting the child in his arms, Petit went toward the front. “I gotta put her down. Left hand’s getting numb.”
“No,” she said as he started to slide into a pew. “Up there.”
He hiked up the two steps to the raised platform and laid the child down in front of the marble altar, on her back. Before leaving her, he turned his head and lowered his ear to Babette’s mouth.
The abbess stood at he bottom of the steps. “What are you doing?”
He brushed the hair off the child’s face. “Checking to see if she’s breathing. All that medicine you gave her...”
“She’d live through anything.”
“She’s a kid.”
“She did those things to her sisters and then she went to sleep.” The nun’s eyes flitted down to the small body. “She’s the devil.”
He started to stand, but instead turned around and sat on the steps. “She’s a kid.” Propping his elbows on his thighs, he dropped his face in his hands and repeated it through his fingers. “She’s a kid.”
Mother Magdalen lowered the revolver, wondering whether she really needed the thing. During their walk across the grounds, Petit had moved mechanically, following her instructions without argument or question. He was in shock. Guilt was mixed into it. He’d forgotten about the crayons Adeline and Cecelia had left in the backseat of the car, after their McDonald’s breakfast run.
The abbess was way past shock. Since arriving at her old monastery – a place she’d fled to for refuge and rest - she’d learned she’d been institutionalized, raped and given birth to triplets. Witnessing what one of those offspring had done to the other two had sent her over the edge. While Petit moved like a robot, she was thinking like one. She had a mission, and nothing could shut her down until she completed it.
“She’s a kid...She’s a kid.”
As Mother Magdalen watched Petit sitting on the steps, muttering into his hands, she weighed which would be kinder: Letting him go or releasing him from the memories. She’d decide later. For the moment, he was simply in the way. “Trey?”
He lifted his face out of his hands.
“Over here.” she said, pointing the gun at him while tipping her head toward the front row.
He came down from the steps, shaking his left hand out as he went. “Damn thing.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, scrutinizing the hand with the restored fingers. So long ago that those seemed a miracle. Had any of the healings been real and good?
He slid into the pew, lowered himself onto the bench and slouched into the corner. Closed his hand into a fist and opened it. “Feels dead.”
So did she. When it was all over, she’d take the gun and release herself. Suicide was a mortal sin, but after everything else she’d done, it would be a minor offense in the eyes of her Lord. Perhaps it would even be a sort of redemption.
How had she been so delusional? She’d told herself that she was acting out the Book of Revelation by plotting to use the girls’ gift to intimidate the world. In reality, she’d been a whore for a group of people who were even more insane than she was. They’d used her like a test tube to produce three babies. Those children weren’t some magnificent personification of the Antichrist. They weren’t part of some larger, preordained plan. They were a mistake. Wrong.
Evil.
She couldn’t let Jehu and his group get their hands on the remaining girl, the strongest and worst of the three.
Rossi parked the Crown Vic in the neighborhood south of the monastery and led her partners into the forest surrounding the campus. Trees swayed and bent. Low-hanging branches and bushes whipped their faces. Rossi fended the foliage off with one hand and aimed her flashlight ahead of them with the other. They both turned to MacLeod. Standing with his back propped against a tree trunk, he was clutching at the front of his shirt.
Rossi went over to him and shined the light in his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Is it your chest?” asked Khoury.
The Scot shook his head and panted his response. “Something...with the girls...or the nun.”
Rossi: “Should we call a...”
“Keep moving,” he said, peeling his back off the tree.
“We’re close,” she said, and the three of them continued threading through the trees while batting away what the wind threw at them.
Off of the road leading to the convent gates was the FBI Mobile Command Center, sent over from the Washington Field Office. Better than thirty feet in length, the stainless steel hulk looked like a futuristic, windowless RV. Also parked in the woods were two armored assault vehicles, a bomb truck, a WMD vehicle and an Evidence Recovery Team vehicle.
Rossi took her partners inside the command center. So the team could talk with him in private, Camp ordered the other agents outside. While the army of men in black funneled out of the vehicle, the panting MacLeod dropped into a chair and Khoury stood off to the side. Bug-eyed and silent, both men took in the technology. Walls of monitors. Desks lined with laptops. Handsets for talking and headsets for listening. Blinking lights everywhere.
Seated at one of the laptops, Camp swiveled around in his chair and stood to shake hands with the two civilians. He was a tall, square-shouldered man with white-blond hair. He ended the introductions by nodding to Rossi. “Samantha.”
“Sir.”
“How’re you holding up?”
“Fine,” she said shortly.
He eyed MacLeod, who’d stood to shake hands and then dropped back down. Rossi intercepted Camp’s questions. “He’s alright, sir. His condition is related to what’s going on with the nun and the kids. Mr. MacLeod is...I don’t know...psychically connected to them.”
“Do you need anything?” Camp asked the Scot.
MacLeod shook his head.
Rossi noticed the rig’s monitors were all blank. Normally, they’d be filled with everything from news broadcasts to surveillance footage. “Anything new with the televisions?”
“Still dead. Everywhere. That’s not the half of it. This windstorm is knocking out power all along the east coast, and the outage is spreading. Cascading. Airports have shut down. Two dozen nuclear power plants have been shut down for safety. We’ve got looting, fires. Some states have called in the National Guard.”
“This wind, the blackout - these aren’t natural events,” said MacLeod.
“I agree,” said Khoury, and he quoted Revelation. “ ‘The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness.’ ”
“We gotta get inside the monastery,” said Rossi.
“You need to know we’re not immune,” said Camp. “In terms of technology, your capabilities are going to be limited.”
“But this trailer’s got its own power supply,” said Rossi.
“It goes beyond electricity. Even basic, stupid tools...” He plucked a set of binoculars off a desk and dropped them down. “...are turning to crap.” He paused. “Pardon me, Father.”
Khoury gave it a dismissive wave.
“The technical problems, combined with the weather conditions...” On cue, a blast of wind buffeted the side of the command center. “...have made me rethink sending the three of you in without backup.”
“What happened to operating in secret?” asked Rossi, getting on her feet.
“We can send men inside the fence with you without revealing everything,” said Camp.
“They still think we’re pursuing the nun and the handyman as part of a child exploitation case?” asked Khoury.
“Yes, Father.”
“Haven’t your people already seen too much to make that believable?” asked MacLeod. “The bleeding statue...”
“That’s already been explained away,” said Camp. “Seepage from the stone. Some sort of fungus.”
Khoury: “The helicopter crash...”
“Is being blamed on gearbox failure.”
“Sir, besides you, who else in the bureau knows what this is really about?” asked Rossi.
“That isn’t information that you or the rest of the team needs to do your jobs.”
Rossi and her partners exchanged looks but said nothing.
“Shortly before you arrived, the head of the monastery – Mother Regina - contacted the police to turn in the fugitives and the locals patched her through to us. She’s cooperating fully and has instructed her sisters to stay locked in their rooms while this thing plays itself out.” He handed each of them the same printout, a map of the grounds with two buildings circled, one labeled A and the other B. Both were in the center of the campus. “The nun’s entourage was given housing on the top floor of building A – a dormitory-style residence - and we believe that two of the three children are still there.”
MacLeod winced and wheezed. “That’s where I need to go, mates. I can feel it.”
The Devil's Own Crayons Page 35