“Petey, Petey,” she cried.
She wiped something out of her eyes, dust, dirt, sweat, and blinked to focus on her brother. She had shielded most of his body from the falling wall, but a chunk of plaster the size of a backpack lay on his head.
She bit back a sob. She pressed two fingers against his neck and felt a pulse. She could feel his shallow breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, beneath her.
“Help,” she croaked, unsure if she was shouting or whispering, unable to hear for the ringing.
“Someone help us. Someone help us.”
“Save my brother.”
“Save him,” she pleaded, and the plea became a prayer. “Save Sam. Save us all.”
She began to recite from memory a prayer she’d heard once long ago. Her voice was faraway, someone else’s voice.
“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.” She could feel more than hear her own sobbing, a racking shudder that twisted the words in her throat.
As if in mocking answer to her plea for mercy, a shower of glass and plaster fragments fell around her.
“May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do you, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God…”
Little Pete stirred and groaned. He moved his head and she could see the deep gash, pushed inward, a cleaver-mark in his head.
“…cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.”
Someone stood on the rubble above her. She twisted her neck and saw, silhouetted against the high ceiling in a sudden flash of green lightning, a dark face.
“Amen.”
“I’m not exactly an angel, let alone an archangel,” Dekka said in a voice Astrid could only just make out. “But I can get this stuff off you.”
Caine leaped from the wreckage of the building.
He had done it.
He had done it.
Sam was under the tangled debris, buried. Beaten.
But Caine could scarcely enjoy the moment. The pain from the damaged left side of his body was shocking. The dangerous green-white light had fused his shirt to his flesh and the result was beyond any agony he had ever imagined.
He staggered toward the ruined church, trying to make sense of the chaos around him. There was no more gunfire, but there were still screams and cries and snarls. And something else, a series of tiny sonic booms, the crack of a bullwhip. Below that, a bass drum keeping a random beat.
Caine stopped, stared, momentarily forgetting his pain.
On the steps of the town hall a titanic battle raged between Drake and some rough-hewn monster.
Drake cracked his whip hand and fired his pistol.
The monster lunged with clumsy blows that missed again and again as Drake danced around, whipping and whipping and yet not even backing the beast up.
The beast swung and missed Drake by inches. The stony fist slammed one of the limestone pillars in front of the town hall. The pillar cracked and almost shattered. Little stone chips flew.
Caine’s gaze was drawn downward by a snarling, slurring, high-pitched voice.
“Female say Pack Leader stop,” Pack Leader said angrily.
“What?” Caine could make no sense of it till he saw Diana striding up, dark hair flying, eyes furious.